Talk:Delmass Cave

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: rejected, closed by JuniperChill (talk) 22:46, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the Delmass cave features a 14-metre-tall (46 ft) stone façade with multiple levels of windows and arrowslits built into the cliffside? Source: Frangieh 2014 & Baroudi 1998
  • ALT1: ... that local legends claim “bandit-monks” once lived in the Delmass cave, shoeing their horses backwards to mislead pursuers? Source: Baroudi 1998
  • ALT2: ... that the Delmass cave overlooks a caravan road once used by Sultan Qaitbay in 1477 on his journey from Baalbek to Tripoli? Source: Baroudi 1998
  • ALT3: ... that the Delmass cave is the only surviving medieval military site in the Bsharri District in Lebanon? Source: Baroudi 1998
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Abyssinian hare

Moved to mainspace by Elias Ziade (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 51 past nominations.

el.ziade (talkallam) 21:48, 23 September 2025 (UTC).

• @Elias Ziade: Red links aren't allowed in hooks per WP:MPNOREDIRECT, were you planning on making this a multinom?--Launchballer 15:11, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

• Launchballer No sorry, I misplaced a pipe and the other was a typo. I didn’t look back after I submitted the form. el.ziade (talkallam) 15:41, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems: - Very minor note about the article itself is that I would qualify the statement "It is noted as the only surviving medieval military site in the Jebbet Bsharri region of the Qadisha highlands" since it's an exceptional claim relying on one, older source. Like "according to GERSL report xyz (or however best to describe,..."

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article moved to mainspace on 9/23, so new enough. Long enough, EW 10.7%, the similarities look appropriate. I couldn't access Baroudi 1998 to check ALT1-3 but I think ALT0 is the strongest anyways- Frangieh 2014 confirms hook and looks to be a reliable source (An-Nahar). Going to AGF on source I can't access, but I wouldn't choose ALT3 just bc it's a harder claim to prove (as described above). Overall, really nice work- and super interesting site! Zzz plant (talk) 18:46, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Discussion of copyright issues copied from Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Delmass_cave_(from_Queue_7_to_Prep_3): @Elias Ziade, Zzz plant, and TarnishedPath: There appears to be copyvio in this article. According to an earlier revision, This article was originally published in the Speleological Lebanon Magazine "Bulletin of the Lebanese Association for Speleological Studies - Issue 5 / March 1998", pp. 241-247. I am not sure how much of that source remains in the article given the language barrier, but machine translation of this source indicates it may be duplicated in this passage: The Greater Delmass cave is situated at an elevation of 1,200 meters (3,900 ft) on a rocky limestone cliff about 100 meters (330 ft) high known locally as Shir ad-Delmass or ad-Dalmaz. The cave mouth is a large natural triangular northeast-facing cleft about 30 meters (98 ft) high. It opens onto a natural gallery approximately 30 meters (98 ft) in length with chambers and room-like cavities. I've moved the hook to another prep but it may need to be pulled if there is not a good explanation. Revision deletion may also be needed once we determine what material is copied. Much smaller issue: The hook is not the most interesting to me, but it's the best-supported of those proposed, and if that's the only remaining issue I'm not going to quibble with the nominator, reviewer and promoter who thought it was interesting. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:58, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Oof, thank you for flagging and kudos for catching it. I will be more careful about searching for copyvio in non-English sources going forward. As for the hook, I personally find it at least somewhat intriguing (mostly because of the height of the wall, which made me wonder how they logistically managed that i.e. with multiple floors/platforms?), but I can see how others might not. Although overall, agree that potential copyvio issues are much more important the hook's interesting-ness. Zzz plant (talk) 21:29, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@Zzz plant, will you be fixing the copyvio issue? TarnishedPath^talk 02:01, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

I reworked the flagged paragraph, but I think this needs a more in-depth look + it would be good to hear the author's perspective. As Dclemens1971 identified, this appears highly similar to Baroudi 1988. Made a revdel request for the most clearly similar stuff in older revs, but more may be in order. Zzz plant (talk) 03:28, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

@TarnishedPath @Zzz plant @Elias Ziade since copyright concerns remain, I am pulling this from Prep 3 for further attention. Dclemens1971 (talk) 23:25, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

There has been no discussion since participants were pinged 11 days ago. Possible WP:TRANSVIO remains in the article (compare language to machine translation of this source), and someone fluent in Arabic should have a look to ensure compliance with policies on non-free content. Since this nomination has now passed WP:DYKTIMEOUT with attention still needed, I am marking it for closure. Dclemens1971 (talk) 15:38, 24 November 2025 (UTC)