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Template:Did you know nominations/Prius Missile

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Prius Missile

Created by AlphaBetaGamma (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 02:09, 6 December 2024 (UTC).

  • Comment: @AlphaBetaGamma: Thanks for such an interesting article. I'm from California but I live in Hawaii. Both states have a lot of Priuses, so I was pretty confused by your hook when I read it, because in those two states, the Prius is not really known for crashes. (The joke around these parts is that it's usually a Nissan, but it's not exactly clear why that is). I read your article, and I see that it is mostly about a phenomenon in Japan involving older drivers, which makes a lot of sense and is quite interesting. I think this is the kind of hook (ALT0) that shocks readers (like myself) and increases traffic to your article, but I also wonder if it is somewhat misleading since the hook itself doesn't mention Japan or older drivers. In any case, it's a great hook, but I wonder if it is legit to shock the reader like this. If it is, it's highly effective and would probably get a lot of traffic. I'm not sure if we can trick readers like this, so I will ping a few people and see what they say: @Launchballer and RoySmith: Thanks. ABG, you are also missing the word "as" in ALT1. Viriditas (talk) 10:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

This seems like click bait. I wouldn't run it. RoySmith (talk) 13:59, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Thank you, that was one of my concerns. My other question is where is the red line? In other words, some of our most successful hooks approach clickbait, wouldn't you agree? How do you know when you've crossed that line? For me, this hook crosses it, as it doesn't let the reader know that the Prius is only considered accident prone in Japan due to the demographic of older drivers. Perhaps, if it just stopped there, it would be fine, but it doesn't. Reading further, we discover this is just a slang term, and that official data shows that Priuses are no more accident prone than other vehicles, which is what I suspected from the jump. For this reason, I am leaning into crossing out ALT0. Viriditas (talk) 21:15, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
Review
General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Article is new enough and long enough and moved from draft to mainspace. Earwig shows no issues. It's not clear if the nominator is the author of the original article, which was created on ja.wikipedia in mid 2021. If not, I believe you're supposed to attribute when you copy over the material as a translation in your first edit, but you just wrote "start draft". In any case, you've got a fully formed, well written article over at ja, yet you only copied over (or wrote) a minor version of it here. I don't get why you did that. The current version here on en.wikipedia needs copyedits. However, I would encourage you to return to the ja article and import the majority of it back over here, as it makes much more sense and covers the entire topic in a comprehensive manner. As for your hooks, ALT0 is ragebait (see the discussion above), and you got me good! I was genuinely upset as to why the beloved Prius (official car of liberals in the US) was associated with crashes! I clicked so fast and hard that smoke came out of my mouse. It was then that I realized, I had been fooled. More so when I check the original article on ja. Then there's the image of the crashed vehicle. I recall seeing that image before, and I think it's from California. Have you considered using Japan-related images? So, you've got a lot of issues to deal with here, but I can walk you through them. First things first, why not copy over the entire article from ja? It's really well done and would clear up a great many things. Viriditas (talk) 21:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC) Viriditas (talk) 21:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Not really, the paragraph
Extended content
According to Masaki Kubota [ja], the viral spread of the slang and the creation of the Prius's public image as a crash-prone car is thought to be caused by the extremely large amount of the car in use, the car being popular among older drivers, older drivers usually being overconfident in their driving skills, and the Prius's significance as a well-known car brand.

Covered the entire "原因" paragraph. Not too sure how much I should cover beyond that. I hope the next ALT is more informing, because the lack of information causing "click bait" seems to be the issue here. ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 22:12, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

  • IMO, "referred to a missile" doesn't really work in English. Also, try rearranging your primary link so that it comes first; that tends to increase views. You may also want to work in the fact that this is a slang term or a meme, as that isn't made clear. As for the main ja article, I'm not clear on the disconnect based on your response. There's a lot of content in that article that didn't find its way here, and it more accurately describes the topic.[1] Viriditas (talk) 22:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
  • What about "referred to as a missile"? I think that's grammatically correct. Bremps... 19:13, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
  • @Bremps: See my original review at the top. I already made that recommendation. Viriditas (talk) 19:51, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
I was quite stuck, so I reached out for help off-wiki, and some of them argued that specifying too much would not make a good hook. I've had issues thinking of a hook, and for the article itself, you told me a lot of information on jawiki didn't find way into the enwiki version I made. I did try to do my best to cover the content, but my lack of knowledge for cars itself basically barred me from inserting clear details to improve the article. I didn't really want to machine-paste the content either because google translate tends to be faulty for some words.

TL;DR - I'm stuck, because I thought I wrote a hook that gets views for once, but got turned down because the hook crossed into the boundaries of "click bait". (Aren't most successful hooks clickbaits or borderline clickbaits?) ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 05:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

It's a great question. I asked ChatGPT, and it gave some good answers. Non-clickbait should be 1) accurate 2) transparent, and this last one is the big one, 3) engage the reader through intrigue instead of deception, fabrication, or distortion. As I said above, without mentioning you are talking specifically about Japan and older people, it's pretty deceptive. Viriditas (talk) 08:10, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
@AlphaBetaGamma: Provided the article is in acceptable shape, I would support a hook that addresses the points in my above comment. In other words, mention Japan and the older demographic. No reason to still be stuck. Add new hooks. Viriditas (talk) 08:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is interesting

Then write a hook that is interesting. You'll also need to fix your lead section, which contradicts what we know about the accident rate. In other words, the slang didn't arise from the increased amount of accidents, but from the perception of it on the internet. It's basically a meme, not a real thing. One of the reasons I asked you to expand the article with the material from the Japanese Wikipedia is it would clear up all of these inconsistencies. It isn't exactly clear to me why you are hesitant to do this. Viriditas (talk) 10:43, 18 December 2024 (UTC)