Talk:University of Chicago

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) 16:55, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Some of the University of Chicago team who worked on the production of the world's first human-caused self-sustaining nuclear reaction, including Enrico Fermi in the front row and Leó Szilárd in the second

• ... that the University of Chicago achieved the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the stands of a football stadium?

• • ALT2a: ... that the University of Chicago has hosted an annual debate since 1946 arguing whether latkes or hamantashen are superior? Source: https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0512/features/puns.shtml, University of Chicago Magazine
  • ALT4a: ... that the original University of Chicago, founded in the 1850s, was foreclosed upon and shut down in 1886? Source: The University of Chicago: A History, by John W. Boyer, pages 8-10. ISBN 9780226835303
  • ALT5: ... that the University of Chicago's Gothic architecture was deliberately designed to evoke Oxford and Cambridge, despite the university being located in America's Midwest? Source: Schulze, Franz; Harrington, Kevin (2003). Chicago's Famous Buildings (5th ed.). University of Chicago Press. pp. 246–50. ISBN 0-226-74066-8. Retrieved August 31, 2009.
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: I don't have the Boyer book with me at the moment, but if necessary I can get it and find the exact text supporting the claims.

Charter6281 (talk) 19:06, 14 October 2025 (UTC).

• I am reviewing this. Cielquiparle (talk) 22:13, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
• Article was nominated for DYK on the same day it passed GA (Oct 14) and at 44k characters and 6.5k words it is more than long enough. Sourcing is fine, although if I were the GA reviewer, I would have asked for more independent secondary sources rather than relying so heavily on University of Chicago-affiliated sources (understandable as this is pretty typical of university histories; it's just that it's not that hard to find secondary sources for a lot of the claims in the article). Article is neutral in tone. Earwig suggests that copyvio is unlikely; the match rate nevertheless seems high (31% with Britannica for example) but when you look closely it turns out to be due to things like the long institute names, which should remain fixed. As for manual spotchecks, a quick comparison with pages from the Boyer book, which the article cites heavily, makes it apparent that the Boyer book is much more flowery in tone and that close paraphrasing seems unlikely. Only one link in the proposed hooks is bold-linked and this article looks presentable. The QPQ is not required, as the nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.
• This leaves the hooks. ALT0, ALT1, and ALT2 fail the "short enough" test – ALT0 and ALT1 both contain very interesting facts, but they are crammed with so much detail and bluelinks, such that there is no compelling reason for the reader to click on the link to read the University of Chicago article. (In other words, you don't want to ask a question that contains the exact answer. ALT1, for example, could perhaps be shortened to "... that only Room 405 of the University of Chicago's George Herbert Jones Laboratory is a National Historic Landmark?" because at least then the reader would want to know "why only Room 405?" but it's not great in that it's more about George Herbert Jones Laboratory than the University of Chicago itself. And in any case, if you wanted to use that hook, you really should cite additional sources like this one in the article itself. To be honest, ALT3 is the hook that caught my eye from the very start, but WP:ERRORS is very unforgiving of superlative claims like "first" and "largest". Even if it technically is true that University of Chicago Press is the largest in North America, this claim is only sourced within the article to the University of Chicago Press itself (a primary source), which also fails to explain exactly why it's the largest (by what metric). This leaves ALT4. And while I thought ALT4 was going to be an easy pass, a potential problem is that the article itself doesn't use the words "bankrupt" or "bankruptcy" anwhere, and one could argue that foreclosure is not the same as bankruptcy. @Charter6281: If you are in a hurry to get this DYK approved, I would recommend doing a bit of work to resolve this and bulletproof ALT4. Otherwise, good job with the article; it's well written and very informative. Cielquiparle (talk) 04:25, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

• @Cielquiparle: Thanks for the review, I quite appreciate it. I made some changes based on your comments, let me know whether any of the hooks are now acceptable. Charter6281 (talk) 02:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

@Charter6281: Better. Thanks for working on your hooks. There are still issues that need to be resolved, though. See below. (And also, from this point on, please don't swap out any ALT hooks. You can start new ones inline here in the Comments, formatted the same way (scroll through WP:DYKNA to get a feel for formatting options for revised ALT hooks) and strike any content you decide not to use like this. I've also re-numbered your ALT hooks so it's clear to any subsequent reviewers that we aren't talking about the same hooks as before. Cielquiparle (talk) 04:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

• ALT0a seems like an interesting hook. Can you find an additional source for it that isn't University of Chicago Press? For a "world's first" claim like that, we're looking for reliable secondary sources that verify that the claim is true. That source or sources need to be added to the article itself.
• ALT2a is better than it was before, but there is literally only one sentence about the topic in the actual article that doesn't give us any "reward" for clicking on the hook and no real argument about why this is a significant or interesting fact (plus it's only sourced to the University of Chicago magazine). Either expand the content in the article by at least one sentence, citing at least one reliable secondary source, or we can just table this hook.
• ALT4a is ok.
• ALT5 is interesting but the article refers only to Oxford, not Cambridge, and the hook itself is still way too verbose.

In conclusion, I would recommend you fix at least ALT0a and possibly ALT5 (meaning fix the corresponding sourcing in the article itself in the case of ALT0a, and fix the hook language and possibly the content within the article itself if you can find a source to back up the "Cambridge" part), and then we will have at least 3 approved hooks and leave it up to the hook promoter which one to choose. Cielquiparle (talk) 04:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

One possible solution to ALT0/ALT0a is to simply drop the "first" claim and just mention that the reaction took place under a stadium's stands. To me at least, that was the actually interesting part, not that it was a "first". Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 09:07, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

• @Charter6281 and Cielquiparle: Would you be okay with this revised version of ALT0?

ALT0b ... that the University of Chicago achieved a nuclear chain reaction under the stands of an American football stadium?

One issue is that the article currently does not mention "stands" but only the specific stadium itself (in this case, Stagg Field) is mentioned, without any mention of the experiment being done under the stands. Unless the article is revised, another possibility could be:

ALT0c ... that scientists at the University of Chicago achieved a nuclear chain reaction at the school's American football stadium?

Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 05:27, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

• @Narutolovehinata5: I like these versions, yes. I can edit the article to make the first hook possible if need be.

Charter6281 (talk) 17:12, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

You can do either. For what it's worth, I'm also fine with ALT2a, but not the other hooks. I find ALT5 not that interesting and even complicated. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 22:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@Charter6281, Cielquiparle, and Narutolovehinata5: What else needs doing here?--Launchballer 16:28, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

The article still needs to be edited to make sure that the "football stands" claim is explicitly stated and cited to a reliable source within the article body. Right now it just appears as a claim in the lede with no footnote. (Personally I find the insertion of "American" before "football" superflous in this case because "Chicago" implies "American" from context and the question of what kind of football stand it is doesn't impact the nuclear chair reaction.) Cielquiparle (talk) 17:11, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

@Charter6281: Are you up for fixing the article still? The main thing is to make sure that the "under the football stands" claim is explicitly stated within the article in a sentence that has a footnote at the end, citing a reliable source. Cielquiparle (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Or, if you want to sidestep the "football" issue, you could just omit the sport altogether and just say "a stadium". Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 21:57, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

@Cielquiparle and Narutolovehinata5: Alright, just added the claim and relevant citations. Let me know if there's anything else that ought to be changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charter6281 (talk • contribs) 20:00, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

@Cielquiparle and Narutolovehinata5: follow-up pings, because previous comment was unsigned :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 03:45, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

I will leave this to the reviewer, I'm not the best person to review the article myself. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 03:47, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

• ALT0d: ... that scientists at the University of Chicago achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the stands of a football stadium?

Need new reviewer to weigh in on hooks ALT0a, ALT0b, ALT0c, ALT0d. (Article itself was reviewed by me.) Cielquiparle (talk) 05:39, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Approving ALT0d.--Launchballer 15:22, 1 December 2025 (UTC)