A fact from A Field Guide to Otherkin appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 January 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spirituality, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of spirituality-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpiritualityWikipedia:WikiProject SpiritualityTemplate:WikiProject SpiritualitySpirituality
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Internet culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of internet culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Internet cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Internet cultureTemplate:WikiProject Internet cultureInternet culture
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.
... that A Field Guide to Otherkin is the first book entirely about otherkin, people who consider themselves animals or mythological creatures? Source: Mara-McKay, Nico (6 February 2008). "A Field Guide to Otherkin, by Lupa". Spiral Nature Magazine. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
ALT1: ... that the publication of A Field Guide to Otherkin sparked scholarly interest in otherkin, people who consider themselves animals or mythological creatures? Source: Cusack, Carole M (2017). "Spirituality and self-realisation as 'other-than-human': the Otherkin and Therianthropy communities". In Cusack, Carole M; Kosnáč, Pavol (eds.). Fiction, Invention and Hyper-reality. Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. p. 40. ISBN978-1-4724-6302-9.
ALT2: ... that A Field Guide to Otherkin is the first non-fiction book about people who consider themselves animals or mythological creatures? Source: as ALT0
Comment: I'm not totally sure how much context is needed here, so I've leaned towards more. Usually I'm a less-context partisan, but the idea itself is unfamiliar enough that it might make or break it. (For similar reasons, I'm not linking "otherkin".) ALT2 is an intentionally evasive phrasing; after further consideration, I think I like it best, though arguably it's less "obviously true" (you can do anthropological work about things that can be understood that way and don't use the otherkin framework). I've also considered some hooks from the work itself, but they become trickier and more compounded when adding context.
@Flibirigit: it's in Wikipedia:No original research. For example, WP:PSTS: "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge". This applies to articles which contain summaries of books and films (this is repeated in MOS:PLOTSOURCE and WP:FILMPLOT). A Field Guide to Otherkin is the primary source, which is already cited in the infobox. Back in the early days, many editors would make a note in the reference section indicating that the entire article relies on a specific edition, but over time, the infobox came to replace that style. Since there appears to be a lot of confusion on this point, with various people claiming it contradicts WP:V, I've proposed that WP:V should be updated to reflect our best practice, but I have never pursued it. If you would like to do so, please be my guest. I think Vaticidalprophet's use of a synopsis without citations—except for quotations—is house style and acceptable. Again, there appears to be a lot of people on Wikipedia who aren't aware of this, and because it comes up so often, I think something needs to be done to make it more explicit to newcomers and old editors alike. Viriditas (talk) 23:56, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: is the use of a "first" here in ALT2 an issue for you? ("A Field Guide to Otherkin is the first non-fiction book about people who consider themselves animals or mythological creatures?") Viriditas (talk) 00:01, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's the kind of "first" we really should avoid. The hook doesn't even say what the source says: "the first full length treatment" got turned into "the first non-fiction book", which isn't the same thing. Maybe go with ALT1, which avoids both those problems? RoySmith(talk)00:07, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Bit busy ATM, but I came to the thought ALT0 was the best hook sometime after the original nomination. I can write at more length about how this is fairly definitively the first non-fiction book on the subject (the traditional rejoinder to "first X" is the possibility of an extremely obscure unnoticed prior example; this was published by a tiny press, sold a couple hundred or so copies in its entire print period, has a bibliography comprising all known prior works on the topic, and is universally considered the 'first X' by all sources) when I have the time. Vaticidalprophet10:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well I've had enough of waiting for this. I need a QPQ, this is the oldest nomination in need of a review by more than two weeks, I pinged more than a week ago, and this nomination is more than two months old. This article is long enough. It is new enough. QPQ is done. Everything that needs a cite has one. I see no valid copyright concerns or maintenance templates or neutrality problems. And ALT1 checks out; I maintain that that the second 'otherkin' is unnecessary, and with the benefit of a week perhaps everything after that word should wikilink to it, but that's a matter for the prepbuilder. Let's roll.--Launchballer14:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The lede doesn't contain any synopsis of how the book itself was actually received critically.
Tricky thing is the critical and academic reception blend into one another so closely -- I felt in the lead it was better to focus on its academic impact. I'll take a look over again if you think there should be more critical reception there. Vaticidalprophet23:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Currently the only part of the lead that deals with actual reception is "Its limited accessibility...criticised by scholars", so there's no information on how critics actually received the book itself. I'd like to see some of the information from the second and third paras of Publication, reception, and legacy (A Field Guide...therianthropes alone".) also in the lead. AryKun (talk) 08:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of having multiple duplicate references for the same works just to change the page number, you could use sfn cites.
I am not a fan of sfn for reasons I've elaborated on before -- it's unintuitive to readers from a design perspective (Wikipedia's UI design expects links in references to go to other articles) and from a "not all readers will grok academic referencing" perspective. I need to finish my essay on this. Vaticidalprophet23:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that the book is very niche in its audience, but there seems to be very little coverage of it in any notable outlets. How are Spiral Nature Magazine, Facing North, and Panegyria significant reviewers?
Two of the three are very subculturally relevant in terms of neopaganism in general and one of the relatively few significant secondary sources on otherkin, respectively. Panegyria is smaller, but a review the author directly responded to (it was after she left the community), so seems relevant. Vaticidalprophet23:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Devin 2019 is a thesis; we can use those, but any reasons you believe this one in particular is significant?
It's been cited in the peer-reviewed and/or academic-press literature more than zero times, which counts as infinitely more citations than I'd expect for most dissertations from the past five years :) Proctor is also now a tenure-track professor, which is very much not a given for someone in a small humanities field. In fields like this, dissertations tend to be more important and play a relatively significant role in someone's early career, and TT positions are excruciatingly competitive. Vaticidalprophet23:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of primary sources used, but I guess that's justified when the article is mostly background and synopsis, so I'm fine with it.
Spot-checks: Sources checked cited claims made.
Mara-McKay, Nico (6 February 2008). "A Field Guide to Otherkin, by Lupa". Spiral Nature Magazine.
Daven (20 February 2010). "A Field Guide to Otherkin". Facing North.
Baldwin, Clive; Ripley, Lauren; Arsenault, Shania (2023). "Speaking of Elves, Dragons, and Werewolves: Narrative Hermeneutics and Other-than-Human Identities". In Freeman, Mark P; Meretoja, Hanna (eds.). The Use and Abuse of Stories: New Directions in Narrative Hermeneutics. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Lupa (2 April 2013). "Letting Go of Therianthropy For Good". Therioshamanism.
Well I've had enough of waiting for this. I need a QPQ, this is the oldest nomination in need of a review by more than two weeks, I pinged more than a week ago, and this nomination is more than two months old. This article is long enough. It is new enough. QPQ is done. Everything that needs a cite has one. I see no valid copyright concerns or maintenance templates or neutrality problems. And ALT1 checks out; I maintain that that the second 'otherkin' is unnecessary, and with the benefit of a week perhaps everything after that word should wikilink to it, but that's a matter for the prepbuilder. Let's roll.--Launchballer 14:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
