Template:Did you know nominations/Paramilitary punishment attacks in Northern Ireland

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 Montanabw^(talk) 17:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Paramilitary punishment attacks in Northern Ireland

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... that in 2000, a local newspaper claimed that the "North Belfast kneecapping squad" could win an election? Source: "The plain fact of the matter is if the North Belfast kneecapping squad stood for election tomorrow they would romp home on the first count. We are not a barbaric lot, we are just tired and frustrated, and disempowered by the joyriding and drug-loving crowd of lowlifes who make working class areas their happy hunting ground." Andersonstown News, 18 March 2000. Quoted in Hamill 2002, p. 62.
- ALT1:... that the United States found it "intolerably awkward ... to turn a blind eye to vigilante murder" during the Northern Ireland peace process? Source: Stevenson, Jonathan (1996). "Northern Ireland: Treating Terrorists as Statesmen". Foreign Policy (105): 125–140. doi:10.2307/1148978. ISSN 0015-7228. JSTOR 1148978. pp. 134–135
- ALT2:... that in the last year, one Northern Ireland resident was beaten or shot in a paramilitary punishment attack every four days on average? [1]
- ALT3: ... that nearly half of paramilitary punishment attacks in Northern Ireland have occurred since the official end of the conflict?[2]

Reviewed: Jack Gannon
Comment: This article was spun off of Alternative law in Ireland but most of it is original. There are a lot of potential hooks, but many of the details are a bit too gruesome for the main page.

Created by Buidhe (talk). Self-nominated at 08:03, 29 November 2019 (UTC).

Length and history verified. Two online refs verified; two offline taken on GF. Earwig shows a lot of correspondence with the HRW report, but on close examination that's mainly because of the use of some fully attributed and sourced quotes and the reuse of some unavoidable repetitions of the same phrases such as "the use of plastic bullets" rather than wholesale close paraphrasing or outright lifting.

Yes, a gruesome article (that image in "shootings" should technically be the lede image but I don't blame you if you didn't want to use it that way, and certainly we probably should not put it on the Main Page). I like ALT3 the best, it's a timely reminder that we have not seen the last of the Troubles and it uses the article title without straining the sentence too much, but ALT2 or the main hook also make that point. Daniel Case (talk) 23:11, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Promoted with ALT3. Montanabw^(talk) 17:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)