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: rejected by Schwede66 (talk) 18:30, 1 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• ... that the Sassoun Massacre was one of the first acts of systematic mass violence against Armenians, in 1894? Source: Mehmet Polatel. The Complete Ruin of a District: The Sasun Massacre of 1894. p. 179.
  • Reviewed:

Created by Nocturnal781 (talk). Self-nominated at 22:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Sassoun Massacre; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

• Created by Nocturnal781 (talk). Self-nominated at 22:42, 8 March 2023‎.
• General eligibility:
• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

Overall: Graearms (talk) 20:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The hook fact is cited to three sources in the article, and all of them qualify the claim in various ways.

Polatel 2016: The Sasun Massacre of 1894 was the first case of organized mass violence against Armenians in the late Ottoman period that brought about the complete ruin of a region and its inhabitants.

Dadrian 1995: The Sassoun massacre was the first instance of organized mass murder of Armenians in modern Ottoman history that was carried out in peace time and had no connection with any foreign war.

Martirosyan 2022: The Sasun massacre of 1894 was the first in a series of incidents of mass violence against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. This means it was the first in a particular series of incidents which the author goes on to discuss; not that it was the first ever.

Since the sources do not verify the claim, I'm going to remove this sentence from the article; a new hook will be needed. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They are all saying the same thing? Nocturnal781 (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how best to explain this; tell me if I'm not being clear. You have to look at each statement as a whole, and compare it with the claim in the hook. So the hook says "one of the first acts of systematic mass violence against Armenians", which implies one of the first ever, one of the first in history. This may be true, I don't know, but the sources don't support that claim.

Looking at Dadrian 1995, for example, it does not simply say that the Sassoun Massacre was the first instance of organized mass murder of Armenians; it does not even say it was the first in modern Ottoman history; it says it was the first in modern Ottoman history that was carried out in peace time and had no connection with any foreign war. That adds a lot of conditions to the claim. Polatel 2016 adds some different conditions; it says the massacre was the first in modern Ottoman history to bring about the complete ruin of a region and its inhabitants. Neither of these sources are saying that the massacre was the first act of systematic mass violence against Armenians in history (and the third, as I've said, is talking about something different).

Now, the hook could be amended into a more qualified claim, but I suspect this would fail the "interestingness" criteria, so I suggest finding a different hook altogether. Also pinging Graearms since I forgot to before. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just discovered the article has serious problems with close paraphrasing. The "Armenian genocide" section is copied from Martirosyan 2020, "Armenian Demographics of Sassoun in the Late Ottoman Period", pp. 83–84 (accessible through the Wikipedia Library). "International reaction" is copied from Miller, Sasun 1894: Mountains, Missionaries and Massacres at the End of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 23–24. These sections comprise about 50% of the article; I haven't checked the rest. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 09:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]