Template:Did you know nominations/Bükrek and Sangal

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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The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by Pamzeis (talk) 14:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Bükrek and Sangal

  • ... that according to the Turkic mythology, the dragon Bükrek returns to the earth's surface every one thousand years to check on the situation? Source: Türk Mitolojisi ve Kutsal Varlıklar, Emre Sarı, page 83: "Rivayetlere göre her bin yılda yeryüzüne inerek durumu kontrol eder", meaning "According to the belief, he comes to the surface to check on the situation every thousand years".
    • ALT1: ... that according to the Turkic mythology, the dragons Bükrek and Sangal represent the balance of the universe? Source: Mitolojik Hikayelerin Resimleme ile İlişkisi, Hilal Sansar, page 116: "Bu önemli iki farklı ejder anlatımının ortak noktası olan 'evren dengesi'..."
    • Reviewed: Fourth DYK.
    • Comment: Barely long enough for DYK it seems.

Created by Styyx (talk). Self-nominated at 17:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC).

  • I will undertake the review. Cavalryman (talk) 01:56, 14 January 2022 (UTC).
General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
  • Cited: Yes - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith
  • Interesting: Yes
QPQ: None required.

Overall: Article is new enough and long enough (only just) at 1,730 characters.

All of the sources are offline but AGF, my only issue is some of the citations contain insufficient bibliographic details to assess their likely reliability. Earwig shows nothing close, a 1% match to the cited Turkish Mythology Dictionary [1].

I find the hook interesting (it drew me in to conduct this review) and it is sourced to a book with appropriate bibliographic data to verify its existence [2].

No picture is included so nothing to check there.

Nominator’s forth DYK nom (confirmed) so no QPQ required.

@Styyx: please could you add a few more parameters from {{cite book}} (or {{cite paper}} if relevant), particularly |location= |publisher= |isbn= and/or |issn=? That would aid in facilitating others to potentially WP:Verify the source’s contents.

Further, I would welcome the opinions of other reviewers if they feel that the article is not long enough. Cavalryman (talk) 03:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the review and the copyedit, I'll look at this later today. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 11:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks again Cavalryman. I did try to fill in what I could in those book sources. In addition to that, I've added some online articles in websites known inside Turkey which have passing mentions of the story, and one of them also confirms the hook. Also the article is now 1966 characters long. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 15:21, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Styyx, honestly those websites do not look terribly reliable (my Turkish is limited to ordering two beers and asking about a youth hostel) and I do not think they add much of value. I would suggest removing them and the little bit that they added to the article then we are good to go. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 04:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC).
Cavalryman I'd strongly argue that Yeniçağ and Gazete Duvar are reliable sources, but they indeed don't add anything, so I've removed them. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 07:32, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I think it looks good. I have removed one short sentence from the lead that I don’t think was necessary. I forgot to say in my initial review, thanks for the great little article. Cavalryman (talk) 10:37, 15 January 2022 (UTC).
  • I came across this the other day, but found that it was approved before I got back here. With apologies to Cavalryman and Styyx, I should note my concerns. Turkic mythology is a very difficult area to work on because there is quite a bit of unreliable "scholarship" out there, written with ideological concerns but not necessarily reflecting any research on the ground. Deniz Karakurt's Türk Söylence Sözlüğü (or its English translation) is a good example of this, it is self-published by someone with no expertise on the matter and its content is mostly either fabricated or misinterpreted. The author has tried to propagate his work by asking people to forward the book in mailing lists, and failing that, he licensed it under Creative Commons and used Wikipedia as a platform to promote his work. I've been trying to clear tr.wiki of this sort of content for a while and have deleted various articles. This article unfortunately relies heavily on Karakurt's work. The book by Emre Sarı, used to support the hook, is thoroughly unreliable, it contains a lot of content copied straight from Wikipedia (see the content on Ülgen Han, for instance). Again it appears to have been self-published through a predatory publishing house by someone with no academic credentials. I actually don't think that the article cites any reliable sources: I'm not sure who Hani Astolin is but they definitely don't have any academic credentials and their work doesn't appear to be reliable at all. Hilal Sansar's work from Hacettepe University is a master's thesis that appears at face value to be more reliable than the other sources but is insufficient on its own. As such, this article would unfortunately require a complete rewrite before becoming eligible for DYK. --GGT (talk) 11:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
  • GGT, many thanks for your analysis, as said above my Turkish is non-existent at best. What are your thoughts on the reliability of Yeniçağ and Gazete Duvaras sources? RSN is not particularly helpful (here & here are the two discussions in the archives).
Styyx, are you able to locate some independent reliable sources for this subject? If you can rewrite the article with such sources in a reasonable timeframe this nom can remain open. Cavalryman (talk) 00:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC).
Yeniçağ can be considered reliable in a number of contexts but this particular article does not appear reliable at all to support such facts. Gazete Duvar is generally a reliable source, but this particular article is a book review of Türk Canavarları Sözlüğü by Ahmet Burak Turan, so the information about the dragons would be as reliable as that book. Now I can't get any access to the actual contents of that; according to the review it doesn't look too bad (here he claims that the book has "academic verifiability") but then again Turan doesn't have any academic credentials in this field and I would actually need to have a look at a list of his references to be able to testify regarding the book's reliability. I would probably tolerate this being in the article but would consider it unacceptable sourcing for the hook. --GGT (talk) 00:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Cavalryman I had a weird past few days so apologies for a bit of a "later than normal" response. I can use the thesis to change some stuff as I haven't used it as much as the books, but I can't use the book of Turan since I'm not particularly close to a Turkish library, let alone a library that actually has it available. The thesis itself aslo cites this book and I also have no access to that. The Wikipedians in the Telegram group of the Turkish Wikipedia didn't respond when I asked if anyone had them, but received no answer so I think it's safe to assume they don't. So this is probably going to be on hold for quite a while. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 12:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Also GGT, the Turkish article on this topic is a plain CTRL-C + CTRL-V from the book above. I know you stopped contributing temporarily, but you can speedy it if you wish to do so, as I have no intention to improve or rewrite the trwiki article. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 13:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
There are dozens of articles exactly like that, unfortunately. It’s not a copyvio concern as it’s CC-licensed and clearly attributed, but it would require a significant investment of time to get rid of this mess. —GGT (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
The book by Uslu used as a source in the thesis has an extensive list of references at the end, which includes the book of Karakurt, and a closer inspection reveals that that is also a copy-paste. Still no sign of the book of Turan. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 16:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Understood, I think this nom can remain open for a while, after all the purpose of this process is to improve the article. Cavalryman (talk) 00:54, 18 January 2022 (UTC).
It should be noted that the article now stands as a stub, at 1,234 (heh) bytes of prose. theleekycauldron (talkcontribs) (they/she) 08:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Cavalryman, GGT, Theleekycauldron. The 1234 wasn't on purpose. :D I intended to use the book of Turan to expand the article, but since it became clear that that would take a long while, I just used whatever was listed in the Gazete Duvar source, which makes the article.... 1563 characters long. ALT0 is scrapped, new hook added. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 09:14, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Styyx: I have had to remove all information sourced entirely to Hani Astolin's book. This was published in Cinius Yayınevi, a vanity press (see this), Hani Astolin is actually a pseudonym (which almost certainly means that the work is not reliable) used by Latife Aşıkuzun and the work is clearly non-academic (it has no pretense of being anything other than a literary work as far as I can see). The content in it may well be entirely fabricated. This has brought the content down to 1,180 bytes again. All we have left in the article at the moment is a master's thesis and the Gazete Duvar article about a book whose reliability is difficult to ascertain. I've looked around myself to see if I could find anything reliable to support this article but I couldn't. I've had a look at the first volume of Bahaeddin Ögel's Türk Mitolojisi (1973), Celal Beydilli's Türk Mitolojisi Ansiklopedik Sözlük (which doesn't strike me as thoroughly reliable but at least he's got academic credentials) and Yaşar Çoruhlu's Türk Mitolojisinin Anahatları (2002). None of these sources mention Bükrek or Sangal, despite Çoruhlu and Beydilli having sections about dragons. At this point I'm not sure that we have enough sources to even verify that such a myth really exists in the first place. --GGT (talk) 20:59, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't see how I'm gonna get this to DYK standards after this. Is it possible to withdraw this nomination? Thanks. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 18:10, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Styyx, understood. Marking the nomination as ineligible. Cavalryman (talk) 21:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC).