Talk:Matt Larkin

Did you know nomination

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• ... that NATO's General Secretary was denounced by the Catholic church for communism?

• Source: https://www.filmireland.net/review-the-rent-strike/

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Achilles Schucan Template:Did you know nominations/Clipping (media)

Created by Finnfrog99 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 32 past nominations.

Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2026 (UTC).

• New, (barely) long enough, no plagiarism, QPQ done. The article is not well written: there is zero mention of where the man lived and did his work, it took me a while to even realize that he was Irish and in Eire. We sometimes get this type of snobbery in US- or British-themed articles, where it is forgotten that there is an outside world actually reading these articles; it is very surprising to encounter an article on Ireland where this happens -- I'm sure most readers in the US will also have trouble locating where the man actually lived, until maybe going into the third paragraph. The hook is a gimmick, and I must say I don't approve of it -- unless you're going for the April Day's batch. It is disrespectful to the reader, and to Larkin himself, that we are being attracted to the text solely by a prank, in which we "fail" to clarify that the NATO in the hook is not the usual acronym, but a rather obscure Irish group. Moreover, the hook is technically not cited, as the citation right after (identified as "Film Ireland") appears to be about a different fact -- if it cites the "communist" allegation and who issued it, please make an effort to cite it after the relevant phrase as well. I also have to wonder what the syntax means in this case: why does the bolded link end on "denounced", as if to imply that the article is about his denouncing, rather than about his entire bio? (And more quibbles: why not italicize An Phoblacht, especially after United Irishman is italicized just words before it?) Dahn (talk) 09:24, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
  • Clarified where he lived in the lead. Im not changing the hook, its a perfectly normal hook, DYK hooks are like this frequently (im not saying the full name of NATO, these are supposed to be short). The film Ireland source says "The government pushed the narrative that the rent strikers were a small group of subversives only out to cause trouble, while the church denounced Matt Larkin as a communist.", and is the next source after this information is said. @Mandarax: changed the link, so you'll have to ask them for their reasoning. An phoblacht has been italicised Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 11:01, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
    • It is a requirement that a citation follow a hook fact; I tend to be lenient when the citation is on a fact stated right after that is implicitly tied to the hook fact -- but this is not the case here, since the citation is for Film Ireland calling him respectable; you can either duplicate the citation or make the phrase into one, for instance by replacing the dot with a semicolon. Your choice, but as we stand this is not compliant with the DYK citation requirement. Moving on: no, the Easter-egg on "NATO" will not stand, you have designed the hook precisely so as to mislead readers into thinking that a leader of the better-known NATO was called a communist by the Catholic Church. This is a way of drawing in views based not on the article's intrinsic merits, but on a joke or a prank done as a conscious editorial choice -- and you can, or at least should, only be allowed to do so on April Fools' Day. I strongly object to the hook, on policy grounds. Any clarification that "NATO's General Secretary" means something else in this context would make the hook much less appealing to, well, people getting pranked. (The absurd syntax is also unaddressed, but that's okay -- the hook should not pass in its current form either way.) Dahn (talk) 11:13, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
    • @Dahn: Revisiting this. This similar "prank" hook ran today with no issues, so I dont think there should be any issues running this outside of April Fools Day, but if you still insist, I dont mind running it then. Thoughts? Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 17:46, 21 September 2026 (UTC)
      • I do not uphold that hook as a paragon of good hooking, but it actually is not exactly the same, since it relies on a pun rather than a plain misdirection. Dahn (talk) 17:55, 21 September 2026 (UTC)
        • I think that we should bring this to Wikipedia talk:Did you know, as we cannot agree on whether or not the hook is suitable. Is this fine with you? Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 18:09, 21 September 2026 (UTC)
      • I've duplicated the citation. If you want to run it for WP:DYKAPRIL im fine with that! Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 11:27, 5 September 2026 (UTC)
        • I had changed the bold link because the original link just said "General Secretary", so it looked like the article was about a specific position in the NATO hierarchy. I just moved a couple of words into the link to avoid MOS:EGG, with a note that the nominator might want to do it differently. I did not realize that the NATO link wasn't the one I expected, making it even EGGier than the other one. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 16:00, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

The hook idea is brilliant. It will make a great April Day's hook. I would propose slight adjustments, namely capitalization and naming the subject:
ALT1: ... that NATO's general secretary Matt Larkin was denounced by the Catholic Church as a communist?
Surtsicna (talk) 11:06, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

These adjustments are fine by me Froglord (Finnfrog99) (talk) 19:55, 14 September 2026 (UTC)