Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Rutherford

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 PrimalMustelid talk 02:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tom Rutherford

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... that New Zealand politician Tom Rutherford is a firefighter and hockey umpire? Source: "Rutherford has been a volunteer firefighter at the Mount Maunganui Fire Station, a New Zealand Hockey umpire, a Bay of Plenty rugby referee and has captained the Greerton Cricket Club" from [article]
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Cedars, Sunninghill
- Comment: This bio was originally part of a mass DYK nomination from 17 October, i.e. on time. We've agreed to nominate five of them individually, including this one. QPQ from the original nomination. Thanks to Vaticidalprophet for the hook.

Moved to mainspace by Moondragon21 (talk), Lcmortensen (talk), and DrThneed (talk). Nominated by DrThneed (talk) at 23:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Tom Rutherford; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

Article length is past the minimum at 1632 B (267 words) readable prose size. Article creation in namespace date versus original mass filing date okay. Article neutrality and sourcing okay. No evident signs of copyvio. But:

The article's "Personal life" section's contents should be merged into the "Early life" section, since that's where information about parents usually goes and since the officiating information is partly duplicated later.

The article should make mention of and link to Rotorua Lakes Council, since working for it seems to be the bulk of his prior political experience.

Speaking of which, why did he get involved in electoral politics at such a young age? That's really the missing element in this article. Was it a connection through his mother? Was it an accident of his job as a communications executive? Something else?

Per this newspaper story and this one earlier, he was previously short-listed for the Tauranga electorate, but lost out to Sam Uffindell. He then switched constituencies, I presume? This should be included in the article as well.

The article should be moved down into Category:New Zealand field hockey umpires.

The listed QPQ was not worked on by the nominator, unless I am missing something.

The hook is dull and unexceptional. Maybe it should focus more on his field hockey involvement, since sports officiating (which I did myself for many years, albeit at a lesser level) gives one a different feel for handling competing perspectives than most politicians ever get. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:57, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the review Wasted Time R. I have consolidated info on family into early life, changed the hockey category as requested, and added in the link to Rotorua Lakes Council. I haven't seen any mention of why he was interested in politics so young, although if I find a source that talks about it I'll certainly add it in. I've added the earlier shortlisting in Tauranga (the Herald article was paywalled so I used Stuff instead). The QPQ was donated to the multihook by theleekycauldron, if you check their talkpage you'll see they agreed for me to transfer it to the multihook, sorry I could have made that clearer.

I am amused by your reaction to the hook - I don't love it either but was assured by other editors that it would be interesting, particularly I think the firefighter aspect! To avoid you having to trawl through the discussion (on the multihook nom), the relevant comments are "(I think Rutherford is fairly remarkable to people not from rural NZ. Volunteer firefighters are common enough in rural Aus too, but most people here aren't rural, so it's a distant concept even to me.)" from Vaticidalprophet

And "In the case of the firefighter thing, Wikipedia has a broad, global audience, so they might not even know that New Zealand politicians often have or had side gigs, so regardless of how common it is they might still find it unusual." from Narutolovehinata5

DrThneed (talk) 02:13, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay, article looks better now, I see the QPQ donation, and I will accept the wisdom of others regarding the hook. Good to go. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:35, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I was busy so apologies for the late response, but I have to agree with VP here that the firefighter angle is unusual and I'm actually surprised it would be considered "dull and unexceptional". Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)