Template:Did you know nominations/Cuban Friendship Urn

Cuban Friendship Urn
([ edit nomination page])
 * ... that the Cuban Friendship Urn monument (pictured) originally stood in Havana, was moved to Washington, DC, in 1928, disappeared around 1959, and was found and re-erected in the 1990s?
 * Reviewed: Communication strategies in second language acquisition

Created by Slowking4 (talk), Orlady (talk). Nominated by Orlady (talk) at 23:25, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg Requesting second opinion. Length, style, date, picture license and so on are fine, I did not find plagiarised content. I do have two concerns about the sources, though--one general, and one specific:
 * Technically the National Parks newspaper is not an independent source for a memorial urn in a National Park. The Washington City Paper, on the other hand, under a headline "Talking Trash", does not instil much confidence wrt reliability. The particular article cited seems to be on op-ed piece. Much of the article rests on those two sources, so that we have the classic combination of one reliable, dependent, and one independent and possibly unreliable source.
 * The last part of the hook, was found and re-erected in the 1990s, nicely circumvents the controversy described in the article. But for the section in the article, the National Parks source is now of even lesser value (reliability) because it was the National Parks administration that was accused of having lost this memorial urn.
 * I would like to request a second opinion about how credible this "city rumours" column in the Washington City Paper is. Personally, I have the feeling the hook is still acceptable (would remove the comma after Washington, DC). --Pgallert (talk) 08:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, it seems to me that the fact that there are two different versions of the monument's relatively recent history wonderfully illustrates the obscurity of this monument. --Orlady (talk) 21:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC) I thought we had "always" required reliable sources for hook facts (although I've been in some contention over whether IMDB and various other sources cited by other people were reliable, and I know we've not been strict about sourcing for non-hook parts of an article). And I still contend that both the National Park Service and the Washington City Paper are reliable sources for this article. The Park Service should be presumed to be giving an accurate rendering of what's recorded in its records and on the Spanish-language inscriptions on the urn, and the issues of the City Paper from 1996 and 1998 should be presumed to be giving an accurate rendering of contemporary information about contemporary events in 1996 and 1998. --Orlady (talk) 12:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The article in the National Park Service publication was written by a park ranger who likely had no involvement with the history of the urn, but was writing from Park Service records. I don't think the Park Service would misrepresent the history of this monument to avoid embarrassment, since the most salient fact about this monument is that no one much seems to have noticed it, nor cared about it, for decades. If there are errors in the Park Service account, that's probably one more symptom of the universal lack of attention to this monument.
 * The Washington City Paper is a print publication that has existed for 30 years and has online archives of a lot of its past content. That type of publication is normally regarded as fairly reliable. The Wikipedia article in question cites two different items in the City Paper, and most of the content sourced to the City Paper comes from a bylined article published in 1996 (bylines can be an indicator of credibility). One sentence is sourced to "Talkin' Trash", which is a collection of several short news items and news updates from the week (with bylines for the several contributors to the collection) -- something that many newspapers include. I would guess that they used the "talkin' trash" headline for that week's collection of random items because the concept of "trash" united several of the items: the first item was about recycling, another item was about public restrooms, and the item about the urn referred to the fact that it had been found in what might be considered a trash-like state. --Orlady (talk) 17:56, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Wait, you cannot have it both ways. One of the sources is clearly wrong on the particular issue of where this urn was found. If it is the City Paper then the rest of what they write about the urn should be treated with caution, as their fact-checking wasn't up to standard in this case. If it is the National Park publication then their view on the entire story of rediscovery would be a deliberate lie, given undue weight in the article. Either way, the article would have to be changed significantly. --Pgallert (talk) 21:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Verifiability is not the same thing as truth and reliable sources can be wrong. In this instance, two apparently reliable sources report different information. Instead of attempting to determine which source has the true story, the most honest and sensible thing for the encyclopedia to do is to report both versions and say where both versions came from.
 * See the essay Conflicting sources. (I knew there was an essay on this topic around here somewhere!) --Orlady (talk) 22:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Two unreliable sources can equally contradict each other. It is hardly a month ago that I started a long discussion on WT:DYK pointing out that oftentimes a DYK hook is approved that is backed by a source that does not fulfill all RS-requirements. The comments overwhelmingly pointed out that we should never, ever, do that. Now here I see a hook that almost entirely rests on a source written by one of the custodians of the memorial, and I ask, How independent is that source? Again, I would like to see a second opinion from a DYK regular (other than the nominator). Nothing personal, just to try to stick to the higher standards we recently agreed to submit to. --Pgallert (talk) 08:24, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you please point to the discussion you are recalling? I can't find it by searching for your moniker in the last several WT:DYK archives (going back to March). Meanwhile, I quote from Conflicting sources: "If the conflict cannot be resolved by demonstrating the conflicting source(s) to be unreliable, in order to maintain a neutral point of view, include both." That's what this article does. --Orlady (talk) 12:05, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It might not be archived yet. I was the original poster in this thread which started on WT:DYK: Did_you_know/2011_reform_proposals, the subsequent discussion (about point 5) is the one I'm referring to. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by quoting from an essay which is barely half a year old--you're around much longer than I am and don't need a lecture on the status of essays, I presume. But anyway, I was contesting the reliability of the sources, not the display of the conflict. --Pgallert (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't think to check the "2011 reform proposal" subpage -- and I had limited internet access during the late-July period when DYK was blowing up, so I didn't read those DYK talk pages in real time and didn't seen fit to wade through the entire collection thereafter.
 * I think both are right. The Park Service says the urn was lost in storage sometime after 1963. This article claims the urn was found in Rock Creek Park near the site of the Park Service's former headquarters, ergo the urn could indeed have been lost in storage (as the Park Service claims) at the old Rock Creek Park office (probably some place outside, as the Washington City Paper claims). Froggerlaura (talk) 01:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Not quite, as the dates do not add up. claims the urn is there since 1992, while  claims to have found it in a dump, and is from 1996. --Pgallert (talk) 07:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Pgallert is correct in saying that the dates don't agree, but the City Paper did not say the urn was found in a dump. It says it was found lying on its side in Rock Creek Park, which is a large public park managed by the National Park Service. --Orlady (talk) 11:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * chapeau to Orlady for the rewrite. the city paper feature article is pretty good, and names names, however, you see the limitations in the "follow-up" which does quantify the rehab cost, but lacks rigor. this shows the problem with "reliable sources": the same source can exhibit more or less quality. the park ranger is reliable at repeating what they heard, but with no footnotes, it's hard to factcheck. this discussion is why i will never bother with DYK: i would rather write that argue. Slowking4 : 7@1|x 19:24, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that you feel this way, and I'm sorry to come across as combative. I still feel that this nomination should make it to the main page. But in light of persistent DYK-criticism I'm not willing to play along with what I perceive as persistent sloppiness in reviewing. Some nominations should have a somewhat broader audience than 1 reviewer and 1 or 2 creators. I'll ask for assistance at WT:DYK.--Pgallert (talk) 08:00, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Coming here from your WT:DYK request, I've had a good look at the article, the hook, and the three sources in question (two from the City Paper, one from NPS). It's not the New York Times or BBC, but the City Paper appears to me to meet the requirements of WP:RS, and the two pieces appear to me to both be news reporting, not op-ed. As for the NPS publication, there are five statements currently cited to it. The first three could well be cited to the inscriptions on the monument itself, while the fourth could, with minor re-wording, be cited to the City Paper article. That would leave only the fifth statement, which I think is approriate since it's attributed as a NPS statement; self-published sources can be reliable sources for the subject's statement about itself. cmadler (talk) 13:16, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svg Agree with Orlady's comments per conflicting sources. Article spotchecked for plagiarism and verified. Gatoclass (talk) 14:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)