Talk:J. Russell Smith

A fact from J. Russell Smith appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 March 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that geographer J. Russell Smith worked with the USDA to make 20 new varieties of Chinese chestnut, with the aim of creating a blight-resistant tree?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/J. Russell Smith.

Wikipedia

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Geography Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Geography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of geography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GeographyWikipedia:WikiProject GeographyTemplate:WikiProject Geographygeography articles

Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Geography To-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : See Requested articles/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places and Missing articles about Locations
Assess : Tag related article talk pages with {{WikiProject Geography}}. To help assess the quality and importance of geography articles, please see: Unassessed geography articles and Unknown-importance geography articles.
Cleanup : See Geography articles needing attention
Deletion sorting : Listed at Geographic related deletion discussions
Geographical coordinates : See Articles missing geocoordinate data by country
Infobox : See Geography articles needing infoboxes
Map : See Wikipedia requested maps
Notability : See Geography articles with topics of unclear notability
Photo : See Wikipedia requested photographs of places
Stubs : See Geography stubs

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Mid-importance).

University of Pennsylvania Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject University of Pennsylvania, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of University of Pennsylvania on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.University of PennsylvaniaWikipedia:WikiProject University of PennsylvaniaTemplate:WikiProject University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	An audio file has been created of this article.

Agriculture Mid‑importance

	Agriculture portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Agriculture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of agriculture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AgricultureWikipedia:WikiProject AgricultureTemplate:WikiProject AgricultureAgriculture articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Horticulture and Gardening Mid‑importance

	Gardening portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Horticulture and Gardening, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Horticulture and Gardening on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Horticulture and GardeningWikipedia:WikiProject Horticulture and GardeningTemplate:WikiProject Horticulture and GardeningHorticulture and gardening articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Forestry (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Forestry, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.ForestryWikipedia:WikiProject ForestryTemplate:WikiProject ForestryForestry articles

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. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:40, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that geographer J. Russell Smith worked with the USDA to make 20 new varieties of Chinese chestnut in hopes of creating a blight-resistant tree? Source: "In 20 years of experimentation he developed about 20 varieties of blight resistant Chinese chestnut, collaborating in the 40-year effort of the Department of Agriculture to acclimate tree from the area where the blight originated." ("J. Russell Smith, Geographer, Dies", The New York Times, February 27, 1966)

Reviewed: Joe Beggs

Created by Thriley (talk) and Silver seren (talk). Nominated by Silver seren (talk) at 19:37, 27 February 2021 (UTC).[reply]

The article is new enough (created on February 22, 2021 and nominated on the same day) and long enough (5800 characters (959 words) "readable prose size" according to DYK check). Copyright Vio detector found only the usual trivial cases (names of organizations, titles of books). The article is neutral in tone and is adequately cited.

The hook which is properly formatted, interesting enough, and is stated in the article, and immediately followed by an inline citation to a reliable source. To be very picky, I noticed two minor contraventions of the Manual of style: decades should not have an apostophe (e.g. 1960s, not 1960's) and the list of books should be in chronological order - neither of these affects DYK approval. The article is currently tagged as a Stub, which would normally invalidate it from DYK, but I believe that is an error and that Stub tag should be removed. Once that is done, it should be approved. Gronk Oz (talk) 06:08, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Gronk Oz: I've updated the talk page Wikiproject templates. Do I need to do something more than that to untag it as a stub? Silver seren^C 06:18, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No problems, ready for DYK. Gronk Oz (talk) 07:01, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]