Talk:Andrew Ranken

Did you know nomination

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. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:32, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

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Andrew Ranken

• ... that a dog that smelt like bacon prompted The Clobberer (pictured) to return to college?
  • ALT1: ... that The Pogues once had a one-handed drummer (pictured)?
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Andrea Margutti Trophy

5x expanded by Launchballer (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 370 past nominations.

Launchballer 22:53, 14 February 2026 (UTC).

• Article expansion began February 14 and was nominated the same day. Character count before expansion was 1054 characters. Current character count is 4110 characters. This is below the required expansion. More content will need to be added to reach the required character count of 5270 characters. Article is cited to reliable sources. No copyright violations detected. Everything otherwise looks policy compliant, and QPQ has been done. Hooks are both interesting, but I am unable to verify them as google books has the pages blocked from view. I will need quotes to verify and approve the hooks. Please ping me when the expansion has reached the required length and quotes have been provided so I can complete the review. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 02:47, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I'll deal with the hooks in the morning, but the expansion started from this edit, which was 612; and before this was BLARed in 2014, the article was 743 characters; and the article was recreated on 12 February anyway, which is less than a week before I started playing with this. How are you getting 1054?--Launchballer 03:00, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know where you are getting 612. I copy pasted that text from that exact page into word counter. This page right before the expansion is 182 words at 1056 characters (I mistyped earlier it is 1056). If you dont believe me here is the text in green: Andrew Ranken (13 November 1953 – 10 February 2026) was an English drummer, best known as the percussionist for the English-Irish band The Pogues Ranken was born on 13 November 1953 in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. He joined the Pogues in 1982, and played his first gig with them at the 100 Club in London on 29 October 1982. He appeared on all of their recordings and tours until their breakup in 1996. He performed with The Pogues from their reunion in 2001 until their official break up in 2014. He contributed to the music soundtrack of "Macbeth", a Puppet Theatre Barge production, with a drumming improvisation. He sang in Andrew Ranken and Mysterious Wheels and played the drums for the Recidivists. In July 2023, Ranken and the Mysterious Wheels released a charity single in support of St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, London.The song is called “Take me down to St. Joe’s”. His diagnosis of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was the main inspiration for him to write the song. Ranken suffered from COPD. He died on February 10, 2026. You can copy paste the green text into https://wordcounter.net Best.4meter4 (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Firstly, I'm not copy-pasting anything into anywhere given that checks are supposed to be done with WP:DYKCHECK, secondly expansion started an edit later because your version included considerable WP:BLP violations, and thirdly the 1,0-whatever-it-was version had been created barely 31 hours earlier so this would still be eligible anyway as a new article. As for the hooks, the book says "Returning to the doctor's, Ranken was relieved to find that he could keep his finger and was back on stage for the rest of the tour, albeit in a one-handed capacity.", "Andrew Ranken was nicknamed The Clobberer after a MacGowan composition of the same name, and because he was a drummer.", and ""When I finished work, I'd have to close everything down and just hope everything had burnt properly. Anyway, I came in one morning and obviously the fire had gone out a bit too early. I opened the incinerator and there was this half-burnt Alsatian dog inside it. It smelt like bacon, funnily enough. It made me retch. I couldn't bear it any longer. I walked out." That was when Ranken decided to go back to college and began his three-year course at Goldsmiths."--Launchballer 17:54, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Nonsense. First BLP violations are not exempt from five time expansion prose count. Only copyright violations are exempt per WP:DYK5X policy. The objectionable text was not copyrighted, so the older and longer extant text with the BLP violations is included in the prose count as required under our guidelines for article expansion reviews. This is probably why your prose count was so different, because you incorrectly assumed BLP violations would not have their prose counted. That is simply not our policy at DYK.

Second, using DYKCHECK is not mandatory, and never has been (see WP:DYKCHECK#Counting prose characters without DYKcheck). Several older reviewers use other accepted methods which we've grandfathered in from long ago. I've used word counter since before DYKCHECK was even created. It was the long standing tool used at DYK for years (yes my history here goes back to pre-2009 under my first account which I long ago abandoned). This is old school expansion style reviewing which is still allowable. I stand by my prose count which carefully removed the items required as indicated in the DYKCHECK guideline for using word counting tools. I am the reviewer, and I use word counter, as many reviewers have for years. (Note I've never had an editor at review push back on this and I have been around at DYK for a long time and reviewed tons of 5x expansion hooks using this method).

Third, I note that this article was restored from identical pre-existing text from 2023 (see here in 2023 and here in 2026 pre-expansion). It was not simply a redirect turned into an article, but an old article that was restored and existed in article space in 2026 prior to your expansion. It's not eligible under the new article criteria because the page went live earlier. Some of the restored 2023 article text dates way back to the 2013 article. There is not a good new article argument to made here with an article history going back 13 years, and a brief period in 2026 without a redirect. I think you know that or this wouldn't have been a 5x expansion nomination from the start.

On a positive note, Alt1 is usable to the cited source. I can approve that one once the prose count issue is sorted. Alt0 sort of checks out, but I could see some people questioning whether the dog was the prompt or the aftermath of leaving the job was the prompt. It's borderline and I don't want to get dragged to ERRORS because somebody decides it is questionable. I can reject this if you don't want to expand further. You will need to meet the prose count as required by the guideline in order for me to give the DYK tick. I'm not trying to be mean here, just consistent with the way I have been reviewing for the last 20ish years. Best.4meter4 (talk) 05:56, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

The 2010s version has never been above 743 characters. The 2023 version lasted in mainspace for less than two and a half minutes and was not live again until 2026; it was essentially draftified. It would be unreasonable to count that. (There probably is tons of Pogues material I could add to the article, but the tale is largely best told at The Pogues.)--Launchballer 10:32, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I hate to do this to a valuable editor here at DYK who does excellent volunteer work here routinely, but if I can't get you to accept what I am saying in my review, then I am going to have to reject this. WP:DYK5X states Articles can be made eligible via a fivefold expansion of an article's prose. This calculation is made from the last version of the article before the expansion began, even if text from the original was deleted in the process (unless the text was a copyright violation, in which case it does not count towards the size of the original). We don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article. The guideline is the guideline. The prose size count before expansion is 1056. That version of the article existed both in 2023 and 2026 and never contained copyright violations. There is no time in article space exception component to the review guideline, and I can't just overlook this version of the article because it is convenient for the nominator. The required prose length for DYK pass is 5280 characters. The current prose size count is 4110. Given the nominator's unwillingness to accept what I am telling them, and that we are in backlog mode, the hook is rejected. I am willing to reconsider this if the nominator wants to do the work of bringing this up to required prose count, what I will not do is change the way policy instructs us to implement DYK5X. If we can't agree on this, than there is no point in going further here at review.4meter4 (talk) 13:26, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

The article existed in 2023 for three minutes. It should not count towards a week. I've posted at WT:DYK because it's clear we aren't going to agree on this.--Launchballer 13:41, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

No, that version of the article existed in 2023 and in 2026. It was there briefly, but it was there. There isn't a time in article space exception and the instructions are clear to begin with the last version of the article pre-expansion. This is what the policy says to do. I am following the policy as written.4meter4 (talk) 13:54, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Andrew Ranken, at least two other users have pointed out that this article meets WP:DYKNEW regarding 5x expansion. I also agree since Launchballer has over 300 nominations to the point that he definitely knows what qualifies as new under DYK. As the original reviewer also reviewed the other criteria, I'm going to approve this. JuniperChill (talk) 17:44, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• I object to this approval. There is currently an ongoing discussion on the talk page. We need to allow that discussion to happen before overturning my review. I note too that the tick was given without actually looking at the hooks, and going through the criteria. You can't just tick an article without addressing the DYKCRIT criteria. That's not a review. Thank you.4meter4 (talk) 18:28, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Subsequent reviews may rely on previous reviews per WP:DYKRR.--Launchballer 18:35, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

That may be, but I think it is disingenuous to give a tick here when there is an open thread on this review. If you going to start a conversation, good faith action is to allow time for input to reach a WP:CONSENSUS. That conversation has been open for less than a day. Ticking this rapidly in the middle of a conversation that hasn't reached a conclusive end is not acting in the spirit of the CONSENSUS guideline.4meter4 (talk) 18:42, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Given the input at the talk page discussion I am going to give this a tick for Alt1 only. I am making it clear here though, that I stand by the original prose count, and this is an WP:IAR tick on that front. The redirect was removed in a content dispute which restored an old version of the article just prior to the expansion, and technically the prose count from that restored version should have been the point from which the expansion began, not the redirect. That said, given the oddness of the situation and that it was a complete rewrite of what was in spirit a long standing redirect, and that the restored disputed content was only briefly live in article space, there is good reason to apply WP:IAR here. Alt 1 may be promoted with the blessing of community input. The licensing on the photo looks good, and is usable.4meter4 (talk) 15:57, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for ending the debate. As a secondary reviewer who approved this, I forgot about WP:IAR. I guess I should've left more time for other users to weigh in but I think at least two experienced DYK users (plus myself and Launchballer) overturning the rejection is enough consensus. JuniperChill (talk) 17:34, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Children listed inaccurately

Ranken is survived by one son and one daughter, not two sons. Cant see where in the Times article the “two sons” statement comes from since it is paywalled. I would edit it myself but I’m not sure how to as I don’t actually have a source to replace the existing one. ~2026-11076-15 (talk) 11:00, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Archived version says "He is survived by his sons Neil and Daniel.".--Launchballer 11:08, 19 February 2026 (UTC)