Template:Did you know nominations/Library of Alexandria


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Library of Alexandria

 * ... that Eratosthenes, the head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, calculated the circumference of the earth with near-perfect accuracy in the third century BC? Source: "Eratosthenes was the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and map-making[51] and, in his treatise Concerning the Measurement of the Earth, he calculated the circumference of the earth and was only off by less than a few hundred kilometers.[51][46][52]"
 * ALT1:... that the Library of Alexandria was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world? Source: "The Library [of Alexandria] was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world, but details about it are a mixture of history and legend.[17]"

Improved to Good Article status by Katolophyromai (talk). Self-nominated at 17:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg Substantial article on excellent sources, offline sources accepted AGF, no copyvio obvious. The image is licensed, but not impressive in small size, and only an imagination. I prefer the original hook, and we could perhaps use the image of him.? Minor: refs Canfora, Empereur and Gibbon are not used, - please use or move to further reading. Not sure about Roman Period vs. Roman period. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:21, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I prefer to original hook as well, but I offered up the second one just in case the reviewer preferred one more focused on the Library itself. The image is optional and I did not really expect it to be used, but I thought I would put here just in case the reviewer wanted an image. There are no authentic representations of Eratosthenes from his own lifetime, but there are a number of imaginative portrayals of him from later periods. I do not think any of them would show up very well at a small size,though. I have removed the ref for Empereur, since that source was a book clearly aimed at elementary and middle schoolers and I have moved the ref for Canfora to the "Further reading" section. I have kept Gibbon where he was, since he actually is cited in the article, but not as an sfn. I have corrected the one instance of "Roman period" to "Roman Period" for consistency. Also, note that I still need to fulfill QPQ. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:18, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for reminding me of the qpq, and for the explanations. - I fixed the refs, to avoid ugly error messages. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I have now reviewed the nomination for the article Scharwenzel. I believe that fulfills QPQ. Regarding the refs, I could find no error messages in the version of the article you corrected, but, for some reason, people always seem to be seeing error messages on their computers that I cannot see on mine. I think someone mentioned something once about needing to have a special software installed in order to see them. In any case, thank you very much for correcting them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Symbol voting keep.svg (little time, or would expain the tool, - later) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)