Template:Did you know nominations/Nikolaus Mollyn

• ... that Nikolaus Mollyn was the first book printer in Riga, the capital of Latvia, and the first to print a book in Latvian within the present-day territory of Latvia? Source: Both Sander and Berthold for the first claim (their articles literally have "first printer of Riga" in their titles); Sander p. 796 for the second claim.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Standard-winged nightjar

Yakikaki (talk) 16:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC).

• Comment: While there's no hard rule or guideline discouraging it, best practice is to try and avoid superlatives if possible because as it turns out, the claim that x is first with y tends to be disputed, controversial, or a matter of opinion in many cases. I'm not sure how to best word it, so perhaps User:RoySmith would care to correct me. Viriditas (talk) 23:47, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
  • The way I generally approach these is to consider how reliable the record keeping is and especially if it's possible to enumerate all the possible other examples and show that this one must be first. So, it's a safe statement to say that Neil Armstrong was the first person on the moon because I have exceptional confidence that somebody didn't get there before him and somehow the record of that just got lost. Not so with this example. I'd recommend this be qualified with something like "is believed to be", "the first recorded", or something like that. I've been slowly working on an essay on this topic. It's not complete, but User:RoySmith/essays/First is worst may provide some value. RoySmith (talk) 00:20, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

• @Yakikaki: I planned to review this and request new hooks per the above, but it failed the very first spot check. I made the change in the article.[1] Please take a moment to review the article and make sure the text to source integrity holds up. Viriditas (talk) 08:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas:, @RoySmith: Thanks both for engaging in this review and trying to improve it and the article. First of all, regarding the minor change to the article concerning Mollyn's father and his printing activities in Antwerp: fair enough, the revised wording is closer to the source. I do in general try to avoid phrasing which is too close to the source, as this can be a copyvio issue. In this case I think I also got a bit confused because Mollyn junior was in the same situation later, which is described in detail in the next page of the same article, and since he doubtlessly DID print religious material critical to the Catholic church I made a minor mix-up. So thanks for spotting that. Now to the question of the claim in the hook. Well, I can live with "the first recorded" by all means. I would however like to underline that the claim that he was the first printer in Riga has been put forward at least since 1795 (but of course, since I try to be a serious Wikipedia editor, I would not dream of using a source from 1795 in the actual article) and has not been contested. In fact, all sources – reasonable, academic sources – I've been able to find on the subject confirm the claim. It is not an outlandish or grotesque claim. In fact, it used to be precisely the kind of things one was encouraged to put in DYKs (provided, of course it was properly supported). I understand that in some other cases there may have slipped through one or two claims in DYK which were on closer inspection quite fanciful (and, perhaps, politically motivated or in general sensationalist). I would argue that this is not the case here, and that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath-water. Yakikaki (talk) 14:00, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas:, @RoySmith: A small addendum: comparing the claim in the hook here with the examples given in Roy's draft essay, I would say this one is comparable, at worst, to the Roger Bannister example. The history of early printing is a thoroughly researched area. We have a good idea at the pace in which printing spread through Europe and 1588 seems in no way unreasonable for the first printing press to have been set up in Riga. Furthermore, it was an undertaking which required financial muscles and was something of a major event in the history of a city, so it usually left a mark in archives etc. So all in all, again, the claim is not extravagant or strange. It is certainly very far from the example of the pub with the traffic lights (a peculiar claim to fame indeed!). Sorry for my wordy replies here but I thought it best to put forward my thoughts and reasoning, to let you know that it wasn't a proposal I hatched on a whim. Yakikaki (talk) 14:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Overall: Article is new enough and long enough. Earwig shows no problems. First part of the hook verified, second part sourced to Sander (1998) taken on good faith as I don't have access to it. The English is well written and engaging. I recommend altering the hook per RoySmith's suggestion, although I'm not going to hold up this nomination, but others might. I made a small number of minor copyedits.[2] Please review. Viriditas (talk) 02:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)