Template:Did you know nominations/Selfish genetic element


 * 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) 07:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Selfish genetic element

 * ... that selfish genetic elements are genes that can invade a population even if they are harmful to the individual carrying them?
 * ALT1:... that selfish genetic elements can drive populations extinct?
 * ALT2:... that selfish genetic elements were discovered almost a century ago and have since been found in virtually all species?

5x expanded by Arvidagren (talk). Self-nominated at 18:54, 16 November 2018 (UTC).
 * As a note, Arvid Ågren and Andrew Clark were the contributors who wrote the expanded content, I merely copied it across from the drafting page (BY-CC license). T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 04:38, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Drive-by comment: Several paragraphs lack any citations, per Rule D2. Yoninah (talk) 00:40, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Good point - I've added in references to those paragraphs (mostly duplicates of references from other sections). T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 05:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have added other "citation needed" tags to paragraphs that lack citations and also to overlong text that is not cited. Please make sure that the writing is impartial and states facts rather than POV. Yoninah (talk) 10:45, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Please respond to the above comments as it's been several weeks. Otherwise this may be marked for closure. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:05, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I've contacted to ask them to address the cn tags. I'll keep this page updated. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 02:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello, I've gone through with to address the remaining cn tags and done a read-though for NPOV and statements liable to become dated. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 00:10, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Symbol possible vote.svg New enough and long enough for 5X expansion. Main hook seem ok, but the sources have not been quoted for any of the hooks as "strongly encouraged" to do. In particular, for ALT1, I see no claim in the article that sge can "can drive populations extinct", only that a theoretically possible route to do this exists.  For ALT2, I'm not seeing the claim that sge have "been found in virtually all species", and this seems an unlikely claim in any case.  How many species have been tested?  Certainly not virtually all of them.  The copying from PLOS has been done under a compatible license and correctly recorded in edit summaries and on the talk page.  However, the question arises of whether an article created and published outside Wikipedia can be considered "new".   is there any precedent for this?  Relevant dates are: creation of the PLOS wiki page, 12:45, 22 June 2018‎; publication of the original paper, 15 November 2018.  The image of the book covers is not acceptable.  The authors of the paper are not the authors of the book cover art and cannot be licensed under a CC license.  This image could only be used under a "fair use" rationale, but even then, it would probably not be acceptable in this article under the usual Wikipedia conventions (there is no substantial discussion of the books or the cover art).  Since it is not used anywhere else on Wikimedia, it should be deleted.  In any case, it must be deleted from Commons as fair use is not allowed there.  The remaining images seem to be acceptably licensed, but the error with the book covers has sown seeds of doubt in my mind.  I would like to here from the authors that they confirm they are the creators of the works.  It's the usual practice to state in the summary what tool was used to create the diagrams (Corel draw, MS Paint etc).  By the way, svg format is preferred for diagrams, but this is not a DYK issue.  QPQ is not required, nominator has no previous DYKs. SpinningSpark 20:02, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Spinningspark, I can't recall a situation like this before, where authors published external to Wikipedia and then had their own article copied here and nominated within seven days of official publication (while it was still "new"), and could serve as a 5x expansion. The obvious question is whether it can be thought to meet the DYK "long enough" criteria (2b on WP:DYK): DYK articles may freely reuse public domain text per Wikipedia's usual policy, with proper attribution. However, because the emphasis at DYK is on new and original content, text copied verbatim from public domain sources, or which closely paraphrases such sources, is excluded both from the 1,500 minimum character count for new articles, and from the ×5 expansion count for ×5 expanded articles. In this very unusual case, it was newly published and original to the nominator, but Wikipedia was not the first place of publication. I think you should take this question to the DYK talk page and ask there, in the hopes that a consensus develops. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:40, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Symbol delete vote.svg In light of rule 2b, I don't think there is any need to take this to talk, it's a straightforward fail. By Evo&Evo's own admission, the expansion material was copied verbatim from PLOS with only minor adjustments for citations etc. The PLOS article is not new in DYK terms; the journal article was published on 15 November, and its history on the PLOS wiki page (presumably the source of the copy-paste) shows that it was last edited on 16 November 2018, so it cannot even be a new 5x expansion there. SpinningSpark 10:26, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks both for your comments. is better placed than me to comment on the hooks, so I've emailed to ask them to post a response here (though there are certainly published examples of extinction by gene drive in lab populations). The delay between initial creation on PLOS Wiki and copy to Wikipedia is due to the peer review process, but articles are copied across within a couple of days after the peer reviewed final version is published in a PLOS journal. Often pages in Draftspace or Userspace are moved to Wikipedia mainspace in a similar manner. I'd argue that is follow the spirit of the DYK requirements to showcase interesting facts taken from Wikipedia's newest content, and possible also the letter of the requirements developed outside of article namespace, the date the article first appears in article space is counted as the first day towards the DYK seven-day rule. The three previous examples that I know of as possible precedent are: Talk:Circular permutation in proteins, Talk:Hypercycle (chemistry) and Talk:Transcriptomics technologies. For the book cover photos, I similarly can't find any examples of fair use of book covers on any Wikipedia article other than about that specific book so agree it's probably outside Wikipedia's fair use standards (and it's also not integral to understanding the article) and it's certainly outside Commons copyright policy. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:41, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * My apologies, you are right about the nomination date. I had misread your first comment as the nom date, which of course it isn't.  Striking my fail.  I would still like confirmation of the authorship of the diagrams, and if necessary, the licenses amended accordingly.  I am striking the two ALT hooks, if for nothing else, they are not directly supported by cites. SpinningSpark 11:08, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Re the hooks. Let's just go for number 1 (... that selfish genetic elements are genes that can invade a population even if they are harmful to the individual carrying them?), as that one is the most straightforward one?

I took the photograph of the Williams and Dawkins books, but I'd be happy to remove it if required. I designed all other figures and they were made in OmniGraffle, except the imprinting and greenbeard ones that were created using powerpoint. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arvidagren (talk • contribs) 16:35, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. Yes, the book cover image must be removed.  It is not public domain because the cover art is still in copyright. SpinningSpark</b> 18:49, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. I removed the photograph. Arvidagren (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svg approved. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 17:06, 13 January 2019 (UTC)