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In a somewhat related matter:
...that the Fauna of Scotland includes almost half of the EU’s breeding seabirds, but only one endemic vertebrate species, and that although a population of Wild Cats (pictured) remains many of the larger mammals were hunted to extinction in historic times?
Who can read my mind? House of Scandal 18:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
eh.... :) House was making a point. And I didn't want to play along so I gave him a different answer than he expected. Sorry if explaining the joke wrecks it. :) ++ Lar: t/ c 15:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Although it is now out on the front page, I think it was probably ineligible. We are getting a lot of nominations coming through nowadays, so we don't even need to consider borderline cases. If they run out of time before any problems are resolved that is hard luck, but not an entitlement to have them on the front page when the problems are fixed. At the moment, even some perfectly sound nominations are missing out. Unfortunately there aren't enough people checking the noms to pick up problems before they go to the front page and we are running behind, so there is no leeway to wait a day for somebody to fix an article up. Yomangani talk 11:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Based on the fact presented and the quality of the article, this was not a borderline case. Just lack of communication and an administrator who trusted an annonymous tip and deleted a nomination - instead of returning the nomination for further review, and communicating accordingly. I find it rather provocative that the same administrator deleted the article for a second time because it had then reached the 5 day time limit anyway. With that kind of reasoning, all nominations could be disqualified by dishonest disputes and questioning. With better communication, this incident never needed to have happened in the first place. We should all learn a lesson from that in the future. Bondkaka 17:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Why on earth did you change Hurricane Bob with Fyodor Pavlovich Reshetnikov?!! Camptown 19:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
"
"
Nishkid64, sorry for the rough tone, but this drives me nuts! The article was indeed in the sandbox till just some days ago. And therefore eligible for DYK (as the main issue is when an article hits the main space).
Camptown
20:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
It probably was in mainspace, because at that time Hurricanecraze32 (now Mitchazenia) had no idea what he was doing, as a relatively new user. I think that that does mean that Bob should be excluded from DYK and declared ineligible. – Chacor 10:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
The article was created in mainspace, however given the absurd title (which corresponds to the User's main sandbox at the time), I feel it was the users intent to create it as a sandbox; it was moved to his userspace by another user following discovery of the article. See the last thread here, this seems to corroborate my viewpoint. As the user's intent was not to put the article in mainspace, but had made a naive error (but still in good faith); I don't think this should count for DYK purposes. As an aside I don't think Nishkid's talkpage is the best place for this discussion - would it be better to move it to WT:DYK?-- Nilf anion ( talk) 17:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You know that a contested article may be eligible even after 5 day. I therefore returned the article to next update, since you didn't provide any material objection to the article, such as qulity concerns etc. Camptown 09:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
This article was nominated less than a day before it was moved by its nominator (and creator) to Next update - and now appears on the Main page. I think the nominiation process will turn into a big joke if happens on a regular basis. Camptown 22:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
The images in Banjee (and the one now appearing on the main page) are potentially libelous to the persons in the images since the images appear to be of living people and the persons in the image are associated with being thuggish men who have sex with men. The article does not include Wikipedia reliable sources to support such an association. DYK rules state that the item mentioned in the tagline should be sourced in the article. In view of all this, perhaps the Banjeeness of this person should not have been asserted as being true on the Wikipedia main page. -- Jreferee 20:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Aveline's Hole is currently on the "next update" page. It is very close to stub length. If we have plentiful candidates perhaps we should replace it with something more substantial? Thanks. Shaundakulbara 12:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Certainly no big deal, especialy now that it's already posted. Thanks! Shaundakulbara 15:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, recently DYK has not been updated frequently — and as a result a number of articles' nominations have expired - past the 5 day date. As of today, January 29 is expired. The rules are clear. Unless there is community consensus to change/bend the rules, they should be adhered to. — ERcheck ( talk) 21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
While urging the guidelines and deadlines be better observed may indeed be wise, I gently suggest trying not to revert another editor's editions to next update unless a specific article definately shouldn't hit the front page for some major reason. Thanks for considering my comments. - Shaundakulbara 22:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
For the record, I left the above comment (deliberately) having no idea who reverted first. I was just hoping to help maintain the high level of goodwill that generally exists among DYK editors. Shaundakulbara 05:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Any opinions on making the minimum length for a DYK longer? 1000 character articles look short now as we have a reliable supply of longer articles. Yomangani talk 23:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Shall we try for 2000 characters and see how it pans out? We can always raise it further if we still see a lot of articles just scraping the limit (or send GeeJo shopping). Yomangani talk 09:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I have not been here for ages, and I see I have only just come back in time! Is the intention to exclude pretty little articles like Link-boy or Tomlin order, then. :( -- ALoan (Talk) 19:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
To raise a different viewpoint, surely interest of article should also play a role? I'd rather read a few paragraphs about something genuinely interesting than several screenfuls of something dull. I'd agree that references, infoboxes &c should not count, but a relevant, good-quality image would seem to be a bonus. Espresso Addict 10:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Previously, article under 1000 characters that were expanded were elegible for DYK. Now, the article must both be under 1,000 characters and marked a Wikipedia:Stub. See Suggestions. Isn't being under 1,000 characters enought? There are many stubby articles that never get marked as a stub. What is the reasoning behing this new DYK qualification rule? -- Jreferee 16:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Shrug. Marking an article as a stub is neither here or there, really - the question is whether it actually is a stub or not. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
So how do we feel about lists, like Blair babe (although the lead section just about counts on its own). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
ALoan. I am glad your question was "how do we feel about lists" rather than "what's the policy?" or any question requiring a justification of one's viewpoint. I feel DYK shouldn't feature lists. -- House of Scandal 13:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, sorry - I did not notice these responses. For what it is worth, I think we ought to ignore the listy part and see if it would qualify on the basis of the prose (which this just about does, I think). Anyway, I have added it to the suggestions page - hopefully someone will pick it (plus my two Australian cricketers) in the next update in about 5 hours (hint).
I suppose I ought to canvass opinion about the cricketers while I am here. These two people were opening batting partners in cricket, so they naturally fit togther, and I recently expanded the articles on both of them. Can we have them both in the same DYK item? We usually insist on only one bolded item, although (IIRC) there have been a few special cases with more than one. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
...Montelupich prison located in Cracow, which was used by the Gestapo throughout World War II. Prisoners in Montelupich included political prisoners, members of the SS and Security Service (SD) who had been convicted and given prison terms, British and Soviet spies and parachutists, victims of Gestapo street raids, soldiers who had deserted the Waffen-SS, and regular criminals. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Umedard ( talk • contribs) 03:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC).
In trying to figure out how DYK operates, I found that much of the operating information was scattered over several pages and other information missing. I revised the
project page to help new comers better understand DYK. My revision is a working draft, so there are errors in it. Please fix rather than rv or delete. : )
I revised the project page first by adding background information that will help new comers get a better feel for the scope of the department. I placed this background information above the The DYK Rules, which I did not change. I then copied the Updating the DYK template next update template from the
suggestion page and copied the Updating the DYK template from the
guide page and added them below the rules. I did not change the text of either of these.
I think including "Updating the template" information on the suggestion page may be confusing to those adding DYK suggestions and seems to belong on the project page. I think it should be deleted from the suggestion page. The guide page information seems to fit better on the project page and should be deleted as an individual page. --
Jreferee
18:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, and about time. I have hacked it about a bit. There is clearly lots of overlap between the various guides in different places. Perhaps we need to create a subpage - "DYK rules" or "what is a DYK?" or "DYK criteria" perhaps. We could rationalise the header and footer of the suggestions page at the same time. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the timer should be move from the suggestion page to T:DYK/N, the rules and regulations page, or some other page. I remember finding the timer very confusing when I posted my first DKY request, thinking the timer had something to do with my suggestion since the timer was on the suggestion page.-- Jreferee 17:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I would like to delete the {{ Did you know}} template from the suggestion page as it really does not relate to the suggestions, clutters up the page, and is already on the Main Page. If there is agreement, I will delete it. -- Jreferee 16:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I just created WP:DYK/A so that the list of DYK admins could be transcluded (per someone's request a while ago (I think it was Lar.)) -- Jreferee 14:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Would something like Controversy with Harry Potter, taken from a section of Harry Potter to shorten the length of the latter, eligible for DYK, if I made it today? -- Fbv 65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 00:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I can't see any relevance of having that picture and I didn't find any link to the "Did you know?"-facts. Is it perhaps a misstake? Poktirity 09:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4 out of 5 of today's "Do you know...?"s regards the USA. I add this just to note that this should be an international encyclopedia. Bye. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Attilios ( talk • contribs) 20:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC).
Lately, I have seen that many admins have mistakenly forgotten to unprotect images once they are off DYK. Some of these images are {{ cuploaded}}, so they can be deleted, but there are others which have been directly uploaded here, and were not at Commons. I was looking through my image contributions, and saw that nearly half a dozen images had not been unprotected days after they appeared on the Main Page. Please remember to do this! It would not be particularly helpful if we kept images protected for no reason. Thanks, Nishkid 64 22:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Expansion? When was it decided that "proposed articles should be over 2.5 KB"? Personally, I think WP:DYK should emphasize more on quality than quantity. Long articles are unfortunately not always the greatest articles... -- Camptown 20:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
No more than 1.5 please. ++ Lar: t/ c 17:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
There's a template to congratulations creators of articles that make DYK, but is there one people who simply nominate other people's articles? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I've compiled a list of new article announcement pages. These are generally associated with some kind of project, portal, or notice board. I hope they can be useful for finding articles for DYK.-- Carabinieri 10:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
One of our most prolific contributors and another potential updater. Blnguyen ( bananabucket) 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Now that I'm here, let's hope I didn't destroy anything too fundamental with my go at updating DYK earlier today. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Today's DYK "...that Professor Józef Łukaszewicz took part in a failed attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III of Russia?" lists only Polish-language references. Given the high profile of DYK articles, it would seem prudent to have some assurance that they have been reviewed by editors with fluency in both English and the other language. Novickas 15:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Although the "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article, the DYK rules do not seem to require verification within the article regarding that specific fact used for DYK. In view of the DYK for the Józef Łukaszewicz article, should the DYK rules be changed to include something like "Select articles that specifically cite the source(s) for the hook. Articles having uncited hooks are unlikely to be chosen."-- Jreferee 17:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
moved by
ffm
yes?
00:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
pl don't use link on main page which might lead to material which is not safe for children as wikipeida is now a days the main source of ref. for use in home work.so pl avoid terms such as does used on today's DyK's section.
User talk:Yousaf465
07:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
This sounds an awful lot like the whole disturbing images debate (i.e. should graphic or potentially disturbing images be used on Wikipedia). I Love Cookies 23:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
DID YOU KNOW ...that according to legend, Joseph Stalin remained in Moscow during World War II partly due to a prophecy from Matryona Nikonova, who he covertly visited while she was hiding from his government?
How about "whom he covertly visited"? - Alekjds talk 06:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Should the DYK rules be changed to include something like "Select articles that specifically cite the source(s) for the hook. Articles having uncited hooks are unlikely to be chosen." The DYK for the Józef Łukaszewicz article brought up this issue. -- Jreferee 00:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I think there should be more precise and clear rule about DYK selection to the Next Update. It seems now that DYK is the easiest way to publish new articles into the main page. I see some people are racing to get as many as DYK templates into their talk page. Because of no rules on how to select new suggestions into the Next Update, one user attempted to pass their own suggestions. I don't know yet in details what the better rules are, but somehow similar with WP:ITN/C is better which only admin can pass suggestions to the Next Update. — Indon ( reply) — 10:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Um, this is going to sound strange, but I just received a message saying that I created or expanded an article called Leo J. Ryan Federal Building, when I have never even heard of this article. So unless I have finally lost my mind, someone else should be credited with this DYK. (I wonder how this happened, this also raises other concerns by the way - it means that if someone was trying to fraudulently credit me with the article, and succeed, then it can happen in the reverse, if you see where I'm going. Perhapes some sort of system should be implemented?) Anonymous Dissident 23:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
For the love of god, can we lay off the damn Eurovision DYKs? Are there so few new articles created (and posted to TT:DYK) that we have to see something about an incredibly stupid (personal opinion) song contest (fact) almost every other day (also a fact)? -- Kicking222 02:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I've had a few occasion, while I am in the middle of making the update to the Main Page and completing credits, where the Next update page is being changed as I work. In order to prevent an edit conflict/losing information in the process, I've protected the next update page while I am working on it. (I'm not as fast as some of the DYK admins.)
— ERcheck ( talk) 03:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Did you know...
"Eligible articles may only be up to 5 days old, or significantly expanded in the last 5 days."
It was expanded from a 3 sentence stub at the beginning of 28 February to its current decent length by about 17:30 on 5 March, and should have gone on the Main Page later that day:
the rules state 6-8 articles per update depending on how it fits on the main page. currently there are on 5 artilces on the main page. -- Parker007 19:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
An earlier version of the "rules" may have said 6 to 8, but I think they now say 5 to 8, which is in practice the usual range. I can't remember an occasion when we have had only 4 (except perhaps if one of 5 were removed and not replaced); 5 always used to be the usual number, although 6 is more common these days. 7 and 8 are less common, unless ITN and SA are unusually long, or TFA or the DYK hooks are unusually short.
In this particular case, I had intended to have 6, but inadvertently deleted one when formulating the Next Update (I deleted if from Suggestions, and even did all the credits, but it did not make the Main Page). Fortunately my error was spotted and it went into the update after that.
It may be worth making the point that the "rules" are not hard-and-fast injunctions, but rather descriptive of how DYK usually operates. There are occasions when editors or admins may exercise some discretion, and operate outside the usual bounds. There is occasionally a bit of flexibility with the 5 day limit or the 1,500 character limit. I pleased to see lots of comment on the suggestions page recently, but a bit disturbed at comments like "only 1,400 characters, excluding spaces" [only?! excluding spaces?!] or "only [only?!] expanded from 1000 characters to 3,500 character". Shrug. Perhaps I am a just soft touch. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
On March 7, the expansion rule page was changed (bold emphasis mine) - see diff below line 61 [1] - from what it had been on March 1 and before:
From:
To:
The earlier statement gives a clear goal for expansion. However, both are inconsistent with what is on the Suggestion page. The Suggestion page used to say "significantly expanded", but now it says
This is not completely clear and inconsistent with the 5x rule. Is the implication that stubby articles (<1,500 characters) need to be expanded by at least 1,500 characters. This is almost a 2x rule. What if it was a 3,000 character article? It could be interpreted that an additional 50% would be enough.
The spirit of the rule is that DYK is for new articles. So, substantial expansion should correlate to the article is in essence new.
I bring this up as there has been some recent confusion/discussion on article size and expansion with the nominations. — ERcheck ( talk) 05:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree - it makes sense to make the text consistent
For small articles, the gap between them was not that large, I think. The expanded article would have to meet the 1,500 character minimum anyway, so there would only be a conflict between the rules for articles that started at less than 375 characters and that expand by less than 1,500 characters (anything starting at over 375 characters which expands by a factor of 5 has to expand by 1,500 characters). I expect that a 375 character article that expanded by "only" 1,125 characters (to 1,500) would stand a decent chance of being be selected anyway.
The main difference is that the "5x" guideline prevents the selection of an article that expands from, say, 1,000 characters to 2,500 characters, or from 1,500 characters to 3,000 characters. I think we would say that the articles was too large to begin with in either of those cases. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
User:Alex Bakharev runs a bot that looks through new articles and filters out the ones that are related to a certain topic. He then lists these at the new article announcement pages for that topic. I asked him if he could modify the bot so it would filter out articles that seem to meet DYK criteria in terms of length, presence of an externanal links or references section, which indicates that the article is sources, and the absence of cleanup tags. He's now added this automatically generated list to the suggestions' page. I am not sure if that's the best place for it. What do you think?-- Carabinieri 09:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
A common practice is to nominate articles on the 5th day after its creation, sometimes possibly to avoid some inconvenient scrutiny. I'd therefore propose that candidates for DYK should have been "officially" nominated at least 24 hours before emerging on the front page. -- Camptown 12:56, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Today's first DYK item added by User:ERcheck is focused on Jāzeps Vītols and Saint Petersburg Conservatory, none of which are properly referenced. I believe this breaks one of the rules. 74.113.107.4 20:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I know some people don't see the point of writing articles, and they think bringing existing articles to FA is much better. However, I just wanted to let you know that you could put the same effort into writing a new article, and just as easily bring it to FA. A few weeks ago, The Four Stages of Cruelty, an article for DYK passed FAC and was featured on the Main Page. Just today, Act of Independence of Lithuania, an article that appeared on DYK nearly 4 weeks ago and passed FAC, appeared on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article. I just want to say that if some people can bring their new articles to FA, then others can to. Working on new articles can be treated equally as working on existing articles, since you're putting a lot of work into both, and both can easily reach coveted status given the quality of the article. I just wanted to point that out for some of people who feel writing articles should not be a concentration of many Wikipedians. Nishkid 64 23:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Do articles that have been on a userpage for a while, being worked on by several people over a few weeks, count as 'new' when they are finally moved to the article page? i.e. can they be put up for DYK? I can't seem to find any information on this - maybe I'm being blind!!! 82.32.238.139 18:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
-- Jreferee 15:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)For those workpages first developed in user space, the date the workpage is posted to article namespace may be counted as the first day towards the DYK 5 day rule. You may wish to consider adding {{ workpage}} to the top of the workpage.
What exactly is the purpose of identifying entries with codicils like 'article by SnorkelWeasel (talk • contribs), nom by MonkeyMangler (talk • contribs)', or 'self-nom'? I don't see the point at all. These attributions do not actually go into DYK itself, and don't stick around here long enough for Wikipedia in general to even see them, anyone can figure this stuff out from the DYK'd article's edit history, and most importantly it seems to imply that there is a stigma of some sort attached to "self"-nominations (a silly term - you're not nominating you, you're nominating an article you wrote or heavily edited, after all). It seems to me these things ought to be examined on their own merit, not judged by who nominated or wrote what (I hope that they are). This probably sounds like more of complaint than intended; it's not really a complaint, just a "I don't get it. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 01:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to cascading protection, actually protecting locally uploaded images is no longer necessary. Commons images still have to be c-uploaded, unless you're a Commons admin too. Do we need to still keep the "PROTECT THE IMAGE!!!!!" instruction in the template? howcheng { chat} 03:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I would wish to know that can we nominate the DYK entry which has been added by us or only admins. can only nominate. Sushant gupta 05:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Now I have nominated the DYK entry made by me. Does it mean that now it will appear on the main page. Sushant gupta 06:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
before "that day" :)... are people working on "special" articles? If you are, great. If you aren't... here's a reminder! ++ Lar: t/ c 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
How does the DYK entry find its way to the main page. I mean the admins. select the entries or anyone can do this work. Sushant gupta 03:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Recently the minimum length an article has to have to be featured on DYK has been increased. I'm assuming that's mainly the result of the fact that there were just too many suggestions and that we needed some kind of criterium to exclude some of them. I think it would be better to focus more on the suggested hooks themselves, because I've noticed a lot of hooks being used that I don't find "interesting" (as the DYK rules call for) at all. They don't state anything extraordinary, astonishing, or even humourous. Often they just contain the content of the first sentence of an article. Here are some examples of what I mean, which I found just by looking through the entries from the last three days or so:
You tell me: is it just my personal taste or do are these really not particularly interesting. Take the Operation Queen hook for example: One could write an entry like ...that Operation X was NATION(S) operation at LOCATION in YEAR? What's special about this fact? Or what's special about the fact that a twin-engine, low-wing monoplane with a tailwheel undercarriage, was used as British communications aircraft? Or that a hurricane caused 2 deaths?
I think we should all be more picky about this and possibly even define what kind of entries we are looking for in the rules.-- Carabinieri 20:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Well I strongly believe that as well as checking for the articles being sourced and NPOV and of decent size, we should police the hooks. In the past, say about 12 months ago, when Petaholmes (PDH) and Gurubrahma were the admins doing this, they were (relatively) strict about the hooks having to be non-tautological, and regularly rejected "boring" suggestions. eg, when I first tried putting my articles into DYK 12 months ago, my first eight DYKs were ( User:Blnguyen/DYK):
In all the cases, I only nominated articles where the subject achieved something that was rare or unique, had a "double personality" or something counterintuitive to the name, or unusual deaths etc. Personally, I could go and put really bland hooks in there, and many people nominate all their articles for DYK, even if there isn't really anything unusual about it. -> There have been many random facts along the lines of "that SUBJECT did SOME RANDOM THING" or "that SUBJECT involves SOME NUMBER" without explaining how the random thing is unusual or the number is a remarkable figure like "that Mr X was the delegate of some country at some conference" or "that some phenomena has caused some number of deaths etc" or "that there are INSERT NUMBER schools/theatres/hospitals in INSERT JURISDICTION". I agree it is subjective and in the past it has lead to an edit war when an administrator self selected his article [3] despite prior complaints. I do support policing the hooks more but I do wonder whether there simply will be self-selection by admins or retaliatory vetoing of other people's noms etc. But in principle, I agree that hooks which don't express anything unusual or remarkable should be ignored or rewritten. Blnguyen ( bananabucket) 08:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Received the following DYK notice on my talk page that Indian copper plate inscriptions would appear today:
-- howcheng { chat} 06:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
However, the article is not there and has disappeared from the lists. I rewrote the hook yesterday, not knowing that it had already been placed on the template for today's DYK. Did I screw up something unwittingly? Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 13:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
It was in this update at 01:58, 22 March 2007 and then removed in the next update at 08:15, 22 March 2007. The above diff shows the changes between these two versions. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
On top of all else, would it be possible for people to archive WP:DYKA more often? I just created 8 archive pages -- that's roughly 400 DYKs! howcheng { chat} 00:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, the template for MiszaBot II to archive for us is now in place. No archiving has been done yet, from what I can tell, though. howcheng { chat} 16:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
User:Parker007 added the thing about "priority articles" in this edit. Are we all OK with this? Kind of makes sense to me, but it seems like it would be a PITA to find out which articles are "priority". howcheng { chat} 18:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
It occurred to me last night when I was doing the Main Page update that although we try and balance the countries/topics that are represented on DYK so that it's pretty random, it seems to me that the potential audience for certain articles would be greatest during that country's waking hours. For example, Seaport Centre was in this update, which was done at 10:45 PM on the West Coast of the US last night. This article is about a building in Redwood City, California. This sat on the Main Page until I did another update this morning at 8:59 AM. This 10-hour time span (which is long, but that's beside the point) was when most people in the US were asleep. Assuming that it had gone off the Main Page after six hours at 4:45 AM (West Coast, or 7:45 AM East Coast), then it would have gone completely unseen by most people who would could be expected to be interested in reading the article. Meanwhile, this time span was between 5:45 AM to 4 PM UTC or 11:15 AM to 9:30 PM in India. After all, the goal of putting the articles on the Main Page is to get them read, isn't it? I create a number of articles about people/locations in the US for example, and I can't imagine someone in India is really going to be interested in Eilley Bowers (one my noms), who got on the Main Page at 2:33 AM in California and would have gone off earlier if it hadn't been a Saturday.
So I'm proposing a rule of thumb that when we assign nominations to the next update, we try to do it so that they are likely to be read by the audience that would most appreciate them. I don't mean load up the ENTIRE update with articles appropriate to the time zone, but maybe give more of an emphasis to them (maybe like half of them). Naturally, this would only happen when we don't have noms that are about to expire and when we have enough of a variety that we can do it.
So I created a new template {{ DYKRefresh}}. This is what we would actually edit to update the timestamp. This one in turn calls either {{ DYK-Refresh}} or {{ DYK-RefreshNext}}, which looks like (I got this nested-template idea from how the POTD is currently done):
{{
DYKRefresh|Next}}
This could then serve as a guide to people doing the next update so that they would pick articles appropriate to the locations where most people could be expected to be awake and using Wikipedia. In this example, emphasis might be given to Australian and US/Canadian articles.
Thoughts? Flames? howcheng { chat} 17:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the current guideline - trying to ensure that each update has some variety, so we have some European items, some Asian items, some US items, some historical items, some biographical items, some geographical items, some high-brow items, some low-brow items, in each update - is the best policy. FWIW, I am just a likely to read something about India or Zimbabwe as the UK or the US - indeed, perhaps more so. My DYK are almost inevitably featured and then archived while I am asleep. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Your urgent DYK help would be most appreciated here. -- Jreferee 21:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
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In a somewhat related matter:
...that the Fauna of Scotland includes almost half of the EU’s breeding seabirds, but only one endemic vertebrate species, and that although a population of Wild Cats (pictured) remains many of the larger mammals were hunted to extinction in historic times?
Who can read my mind? House of Scandal 18:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
eh.... :) House was making a point. And I didn't want to play along so I gave him a different answer than he expected. Sorry if explaining the joke wrecks it. :) ++ Lar: t/ c 15:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Although it is now out on the front page, I think it was probably ineligible. We are getting a lot of nominations coming through nowadays, so we don't even need to consider borderline cases. If they run out of time before any problems are resolved that is hard luck, but not an entitlement to have them on the front page when the problems are fixed. At the moment, even some perfectly sound nominations are missing out. Unfortunately there aren't enough people checking the noms to pick up problems before they go to the front page and we are running behind, so there is no leeway to wait a day for somebody to fix an article up. Yomangani talk 11:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Based on the fact presented and the quality of the article, this was not a borderline case. Just lack of communication and an administrator who trusted an annonymous tip and deleted a nomination - instead of returning the nomination for further review, and communicating accordingly. I find it rather provocative that the same administrator deleted the article for a second time because it had then reached the 5 day time limit anyway. With that kind of reasoning, all nominations could be disqualified by dishonest disputes and questioning. With better communication, this incident never needed to have happened in the first place. We should all learn a lesson from that in the future. Bondkaka 17:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Why on earth did you change Hurricane Bob with Fyodor Pavlovich Reshetnikov?!! Camptown 19:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
"
"
Nishkid64, sorry for the rough tone, but this drives me nuts! The article was indeed in the sandbox till just some days ago. And therefore eligible for DYK (as the main issue is when an article hits the main space).
Camptown
20:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
It probably was in mainspace, because at that time Hurricanecraze32 (now Mitchazenia) had no idea what he was doing, as a relatively new user. I think that that does mean that Bob should be excluded from DYK and declared ineligible. – Chacor 10:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
The article was created in mainspace, however given the absurd title (which corresponds to the User's main sandbox at the time), I feel it was the users intent to create it as a sandbox; it was moved to his userspace by another user following discovery of the article. See the last thread here, this seems to corroborate my viewpoint. As the user's intent was not to put the article in mainspace, but had made a naive error (but still in good faith); I don't think this should count for DYK purposes. As an aside I don't think Nishkid's talkpage is the best place for this discussion - would it be better to move it to WT:DYK?-- Nilf anion ( talk) 17:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You know that a contested article may be eligible even after 5 day. I therefore returned the article to next update, since you didn't provide any material objection to the article, such as qulity concerns etc. Camptown 09:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
This article was nominated less than a day before it was moved by its nominator (and creator) to Next update - and now appears on the Main page. I think the nominiation process will turn into a big joke if happens on a regular basis. Camptown 22:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
The images in Banjee (and the one now appearing on the main page) are potentially libelous to the persons in the images since the images appear to be of living people and the persons in the image are associated with being thuggish men who have sex with men. The article does not include Wikipedia reliable sources to support such an association. DYK rules state that the item mentioned in the tagline should be sourced in the article. In view of all this, perhaps the Banjeeness of this person should not have been asserted as being true on the Wikipedia main page. -- Jreferee 20:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Aveline's Hole is currently on the "next update" page. It is very close to stub length. If we have plentiful candidates perhaps we should replace it with something more substantial? Thanks. Shaundakulbara 12:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Certainly no big deal, especialy now that it's already posted. Thanks! Shaundakulbara 15:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, recently DYK has not been updated frequently — and as a result a number of articles' nominations have expired - past the 5 day date. As of today, January 29 is expired. The rules are clear. Unless there is community consensus to change/bend the rules, they should be adhered to. — ERcheck ( talk) 21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
While urging the guidelines and deadlines be better observed may indeed be wise, I gently suggest trying not to revert another editor's editions to next update unless a specific article definately shouldn't hit the front page for some major reason. Thanks for considering my comments. - Shaundakulbara 22:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
For the record, I left the above comment (deliberately) having no idea who reverted first. I was just hoping to help maintain the high level of goodwill that generally exists among DYK editors. Shaundakulbara 05:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Any opinions on making the minimum length for a DYK longer? 1000 character articles look short now as we have a reliable supply of longer articles. Yomangani talk 23:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Shall we try for 2000 characters and see how it pans out? We can always raise it further if we still see a lot of articles just scraping the limit (or send GeeJo shopping). Yomangani talk 09:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I have not been here for ages, and I see I have only just come back in time! Is the intention to exclude pretty little articles like Link-boy or Tomlin order, then. :( -- ALoan (Talk) 19:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
To raise a different viewpoint, surely interest of article should also play a role? I'd rather read a few paragraphs about something genuinely interesting than several screenfuls of something dull. I'd agree that references, infoboxes &c should not count, but a relevant, good-quality image would seem to be a bonus. Espresso Addict 10:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Previously, article under 1000 characters that were expanded were elegible for DYK. Now, the article must both be under 1,000 characters and marked a Wikipedia:Stub. See Suggestions. Isn't being under 1,000 characters enought? There are many stubby articles that never get marked as a stub. What is the reasoning behing this new DYK qualification rule? -- Jreferee 16:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Shrug. Marking an article as a stub is neither here or there, really - the question is whether it actually is a stub or not. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
So how do we feel about lists, like Blair babe (although the lead section just about counts on its own). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
ALoan. I am glad your question was "how do we feel about lists" rather than "what's the policy?" or any question requiring a justification of one's viewpoint. I feel DYK shouldn't feature lists. -- House of Scandal 13:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, sorry - I did not notice these responses. For what it is worth, I think we ought to ignore the listy part and see if it would qualify on the basis of the prose (which this just about does, I think). Anyway, I have added it to the suggestions page - hopefully someone will pick it (plus my two Australian cricketers) in the next update in about 5 hours (hint).
I suppose I ought to canvass opinion about the cricketers while I am here. These two people were opening batting partners in cricket, so they naturally fit togther, and I recently expanded the articles on both of them. Can we have them both in the same DYK item? We usually insist on only one bolded item, although (IIRC) there have been a few special cases with more than one. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
...Montelupich prison located in Cracow, which was used by the Gestapo throughout World War II. Prisoners in Montelupich included political prisoners, members of the SS and Security Service (SD) who had been convicted and given prison terms, British and Soviet spies and parachutists, victims of Gestapo street raids, soldiers who had deserted the Waffen-SS, and regular criminals. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Umedard ( talk • contribs) 03:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC).
In trying to figure out how DYK operates, I found that much of the operating information was scattered over several pages and other information missing. I revised the
project page to help new comers better understand DYK. My revision is a working draft, so there are errors in it. Please fix rather than rv or delete. : )
I revised the project page first by adding background information that will help new comers get a better feel for the scope of the department. I placed this background information above the The DYK Rules, which I did not change. I then copied the Updating the DYK template next update template from the
suggestion page and copied the Updating the DYK template from the
guide page and added them below the rules. I did not change the text of either of these.
I think including "Updating the template" information on the suggestion page may be confusing to those adding DYK suggestions and seems to belong on the project page. I think it should be deleted from the suggestion page. The guide page information seems to fit better on the project page and should be deleted as an individual page. --
Jreferee
18:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, and about time. I have hacked it about a bit. There is clearly lots of overlap between the various guides in different places. Perhaps we need to create a subpage - "DYK rules" or "what is a DYK?" or "DYK criteria" perhaps. We could rationalise the header and footer of the suggestions page at the same time. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:37, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the timer should be move from the suggestion page to T:DYK/N, the rules and regulations page, or some other page. I remember finding the timer very confusing when I posted my first DKY request, thinking the timer had something to do with my suggestion since the timer was on the suggestion page.-- Jreferee 17:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I would like to delete the {{ Did you know}} template from the suggestion page as it really does not relate to the suggestions, clutters up the page, and is already on the Main Page. If there is agreement, I will delete it. -- Jreferee 16:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I just created WP:DYK/A so that the list of DYK admins could be transcluded (per someone's request a while ago (I think it was Lar.)) -- Jreferee 14:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Would something like Controversy with Harry Potter, taken from a section of Harry Potter to shorten the length of the latter, eligible for DYK, if I made it today? -- Fbv 65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 00:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I can't see any relevance of having that picture and I didn't find any link to the "Did you know?"-facts. Is it perhaps a misstake? Poktirity 09:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4 out of 5 of today's "Do you know...?"s regards the USA. I add this just to note that this should be an international encyclopedia. Bye. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Attilios ( talk • contribs) 20:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC).
Lately, I have seen that many admins have mistakenly forgotten to unprotect images once they are off DYK. Some of these images are {{ cuploaded}}, so they can be deleted, but there are others which have been directly uploaded here, and were not at Commons. I was looking through my image contributions, and saw that nearly half a dozen images had not been unprotected days after they appeared on the Main Page. Please remember to do this! It would not be particularly helpful if we kept images protected for no reason. Thanks, Nishkid 64 22:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Expansion? When was it decided that "proposed articles should be over 2.5 KB"? Personally, I think WP:DYK should emphasize more on quality than quantity. Long articles are unfortunately not always the greatest articles... -- Camptown 20:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
No more than 1.5 please. ++ Lar: t/ c 17:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
There's a template to congratulations creators of articles that make DYK, but is there one people who simply nominate other people's articles? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I've compiled a list of new article announcement pages. These are generally associated with some kind of project, portal, or notice board. I hope they can be useful for finding articles for DYK.-- Carabinieri 10:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
One of our most prolific contributors and another potential updater. Blnguyen ( bananabucket) 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Now that I'm here, let's hope I didn't destroy anything too fundamental with my go at updating DYK earlier today. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Today's DYK "...that Professor Józef Łukaszewicz took part in a failed attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III of Russia?" lists only Polish-language references. Given the high profile of DYK articles, it would seem prudent to have some assurance that they have been reviewed by editors with fluency in both English and the other language. Novickas 15:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Although the "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article, the DYK rules do not seem to require verification within the article regarding that specific fact used for DYK. In view of the DYK for the Józef Łukaszewicz article, should the DYK rules be changed to include something like "Select articles that specifically cite the source(s) for the hook. Articles having uncited hooks are unlikely to be chosen."-- Jreferee 17:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
moved by
ffm
yes?
00:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
pl don't use link on main page which might lead to material which is not safe for children as wikipeida is now a days the main source of ref. for use in home work.so pl avoid terms such as does used on today's DyK's section.
User talk:Yousaf465
07:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
This sounds an awful lot like the whole disturbing images debate (i.e. should graphic or potentially disturbing images be used on Wikipedia). I Love Cookies 23:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
DID YOU KNOW ...that according to legend, Joseph Stalin remained in Moscow during World War II partly due to a prophecy from Matryona Nikonova, who he covertly visited while she was hiding from his government?
How about "whom he covertly visited"? - Alekjds talk 06:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Should the DYK rules be changed to include something like "Select articles that specifically cite the source(s) for the hook. Articles having uncited hooks are unlikely to be chosen." The DYK for the Józef Łukaszewicz article brought up this issue. -- Jreferee 00:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I think there should be more precise and clear rule about DYK selection to the Next Update. It seems now that DYK is the easiest way to publish new articles into the main page. I see some people are racing to get as many as DYK templates into their talk page. Because of no rules on how to select new suggestions into the Next Update, one user attempted to pass their own suggestions. I don't know yet in details what the better rules are, but somehow similar with WP:ITN/C is better which only admin can pass suggestions to the Next Update. — Indon ( reply) — 10:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Um, this is going to sound strange, but I just received a message saying that I created or expanded an article called Leo J. Ryan Federal Building, when I have never even heard of this article. So unless I have finally lost my mind, someone else should be credited with this DYK. (I wonder how this happened, this also raises other concerns by the way - it means that if someone was trying to fraudulently credit me with the article, and succeed, then it can happen in the reverse, if you see where I'm going. Perhapes some sort of system should be implemented?) Anonymous Dissident 23:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
For the love of god, can we lay off the damn Eurovision DYKs? Are there so few new articles created (and posted to TT:DYK) that we have to see something about an incredibly stupid (personal opinion) song contest (fact) almost every other day (also a fact)? -- Kicking222 02:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I've had a few occasion, while I am in the middle of making the update to the Main Page and completing credits, where the Next update page is being changed as I work. In order to prevent an edit conflict/losing information in the process, I've protected the next update page while I am working on it. (I'm not as fast as some of the DYK admins.)
— ERcheck ( talk) 03:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Did you know...
"Eligible articles may only be up to 5 days old, or significantly expanded in the last 5 days."
It was expanded from a 3 sentence stub at the beginning of 28 February to its current decent length by about 17:30 on 5 March, and should have gone on the Main Page later that day:
the rules state 6-8 articles per update depending on how it fits on the main page. currently there are on 5 artilces on the main page. -- Parker007 19:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
An earlier version of the "rules" may have said 6 to 8, but I think they now say 5 to 8, which is in practice the usual range. I can't remember an occasion when we have had only 4 (except perhaps if one of 5 were removed and not replaced); 5 always used to be the usual number, although 6 is more common these days. 7 and 8 are less common, unless ITN and SA are unusually long, or TFA or the DYK hooks are unusually short.
In this particular case, I had intended to have 6, but inadvertently deleted one when formulating the Next Update (I deleted if from Suggestions, and even did all the credits, but it did not make the Main Page). Fortunately my error was spotted and it went into the update after that.
It may be worth making the point that the "rules" are not hard-and-fast injunctions, but rather descriptive of how DYK usually operates. There are occasions when editors or admins may exercise some discretion, and operate outside the usual bounds. There is occasionally a bit of flexibility with the 5 day limit or the 1,500 character limit. I pleased to see lots of comment on the suggestions page recently, but a bit disturbed at comments like "only 1,400 characters, excluding spaces" [only?! excluding spaces?!] or "only [only?!] expanded from 1000 characters to 3,500 character". Shrug. Perhaps I am a just soft touch. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
On March 7, the expansion rule page was changed (bold emphasis mine) - see diff below line 61 [1] - from what it had been on March 1 and before:
From:
To:
The earlier statement gives a clear goal for expansion. However, both are inconsistent with what is on the Suggestion page. The Suggestion page used to say "significantly expanded", but now it says
This is not completely clear and inconsistent with the 5x rule. Is the implication that stubby articles (<1,500 characters) need to be expanded by at least 1,500 characters. This is almost a 2x rule. What if it was a 3,000 character article? It could be interpreted that an additional 50% would be enough.
The spirit of the rule is that DYK is for new articles. So, substantial expansion should correlate to the article is in essence new.
I bring this up as there has been some recent confusion/discussion on article size and expansion with the nominations. — ERcheck ( talk) 05:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree - it makes sense to make the text consistent
For small articles, the gap between them was not that large, I think. The expanded article would have to meet the 1,500 character minimum anyway, so there would only be a conflict between the rules for articles that started at less than 375 characters and that expand by less than 1,500 characters (anything starting at over 375 characters which expands by a factor of 5 has to expand by 1,500 characters). I expect that a 375 character article that expanded by "only" 1,125 characters (to 1,500) would stand a decent chance of being be selected anyway.
The main difference is that the "5x" guideline prevents the selection of an article that expands from, say, 1,000 characters to 2,500 characters, or from 1,500 characters to 3,000 characters. I think we would say that the articles was too large to begin with in either of those cases. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
User:Alex Bakharev runs a bot that looks through new articles and filters out the ones that are related to a certain topic. He then lists these at the new article announcement pages for that topic. I asked him if he could modify the bot so it would filter out articles that seem to meet DYK criteria in terms of length, presence of an externanal links or references section, which indicates that the article is sources, and the absence of cleanup tags. He's now added this automatically generated list to the suggestions' page. I am not sure if that's the best place for it. What do you think?-- Carabinieri 09:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
A common practice is to nominate articles on the 5th day after its creation, sometimes possibly to avoid some inconvenient scrutiny. I'd therefore propose that candidates for DYK should have been "officially" nominated at least 24 hours before emerging on the front page. -- Camptown 12:56, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Today's first DYK item added by User:ERcheck is focused on Jāzeps Vītols and Saint Petersburg Conservatory, none of which are properly referenced. I believe this breaks one of the rules. 74.113.107.4 20:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I know some people don't see the point of writing articles, and they think bringing existing articles to FA is much better. However, I just wanted to let you know that you could put the same effort into writing a new article, and just as easily bring it to FA. A few weeks ago, The Four Stages of Cruelty, an article for DYK passed FAC and was featured on the Main Page. Just today, Act of Independence of Lithuania, an article that appeared on DYK nearly 4 weeks ago and passed FAC, appeared on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article. I just want to say that if some people can bring their new articles to FA, then others can to. Working on new articles can be treated equally as working on existing articles, since you're putting a lot of work into both, and both can easily reach coveted status given the quality of the article. I just wanted to point that out for some of people who feel writing articles should not be a concentration of many Wikipedians. Nishkid 64 23:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Do articles that have been on a userpage for a while, being worked on by several people over a few weeks, count as 'new' when they are finally moved to the article page? i.e. can they be put up for DYK? I can't seem to find any information on this - maybe I'm being blind!!! 82.32.238.139 18:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
-- Jreferee 15:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)For those workpages first developed in user space, the date the workpage is posted to article namespace may be counted as the first day towards the DYK 5 day rule. You may wish to consider adding {{ workpage}} to the top of the workpage.
What exactly is the purpose of identifying entries with codicils like 'article by SnorkelWeasel (talk • contribs), nom by MonkeyMangler (talk • contribs)', or 'self-nom'? I don't see the point at all. These attributions do not actually go into DYK itself, and don't stick around here long enough for Wikipedia in general to even see them, anyone can figure this stuff out from the DYK'd article's edit history, and most importantly it seems to imply that there is a stigma of some sort attached to "self"-nominations (a silly term - you're not nominating you, you're nominating an article you wrote or heavily edited, after all). It seems to me these things ought to be examined on their own merit, not judged by who nominated or wrote what (I hope that they are). This probably sounds like more of complaint than intended; it's not really a complaint, just a "I don't get it. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 01:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to cascading protection, actually protecting locally uploaded images is no longer necessary. Commons images still have to be c-uploaded, unless you're a Commons admin too. Do we need to still keep the "PROTECT THE IMAGE!!!!!" instruction in the template? howcheng { chat} 03:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I would wish to know that can we nominate the DYK entry which has been added by us or only admins. can only nominate. Sushant gupta 05:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Now I have nominated the DYK entry made by me. Does it mean that now it will appear on the main page. Sushant gupta 06:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
before "that day" :)... are people working on "special" articles? If you are, great. If you aren't... here's a reminder! ++ Lar: t/ c 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
How does the DYK entry find its way to the main page. I mean the admins. select the entries or anyone can do this work. Sushant gupta 03:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Recently the minimum length an article has to have to be featured on DYK has been increased. I'm assuming that's mainly the result of the fact that there were just too many suggestions and that we needed some kind of criterium to exclude some of them. I think it would be better to focus more on the suggested hooks themselves, because I've noticed a lot of hooks being used that I don't find "interesting" (as the DYK rules call for) at all. They don't state anything extraordinary, astonishing, or even humourous. Often they just contain the content of the first sentence of an article. Here are some examples of what I mean, which I found just by looking through the entries from the last three days or so:
You tell me: is it just my personal taste or do are these really not particularly interesting. Take the Operation Queen hook for example: One could write an entry like ...that Operation X was NATION(S) operation at LOCATION in YEAR? What's special about this fact? Or what's special about the fact that a twin-engine, low-wing monoplane with a tailwheel undercarriage, was used as British communications aircraft? Or that a hurricane caused 2 deaths?
I think we should all be more picky about this and possibly even define what kind of entries we are looking for in the rules.-- Carabinieri 20:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Well I strongly believe that as well as checking for the articles being sourced and NPOV and of decent size, we should police the hooks. In the past, say about 12 months ago, when Petaholmes (PDH) and Gurubrahma were the admins doing this, they were (relatively) strict about the hooks having to be non-tautological, and regularly rejected "boring" suggestions. eg, when I first tried putting my articles into DYK 12 months ago, my first eight DYKs were ( User:Blnguyen/DYK):
In all the cases, I only nominated articles where the subject achieved something that was rare or unique, had a "double personality" or something counterintuitive to the name, or unusual deaths etc. Personally, I could go and put really bland hooks in there, and many people nominate all their articles for DYK, even if there isn't really anything unusual about it. -> There have been many random facts along the lines of "that SUBJECT did SOME RANDOM THING" or "that SUBJECT involves SOME NUMBER" without explaining how the random thing is unusual or the number is a remarkable figure like "that Mr X was the delegate of some country at some conference" or "that some phenomena has caused some number of deaths etc" or "that there are INSERT NUMBER schools/theatres/hospitals in INSERT JURISDICTION". I agree it is subjective and in the past it has lead to an edit war when an administrator self selected his article [3] despite prior complaints. I do support policing the hooks more but I do wonder whether there simply will be self-selection by admins or retaliatory vetoing of other people's noms etc. But in principle, I agree that hooks which don't express anything unusual or remarkable should be ignored or rewritten. Blnguyen ( bananabucket) 08:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Received the following DYK notice on my talk page that Indian copper plate inscriptions would appear today:
-- howcheng { chat} 06:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
However, the article is not there and has disappeared from the lists. I rewrote the hook yesterday, not knowing that it had already been placed on the template for today's DYK. Did I screw up something unwittingly? Thanks! Sincerely, Mattisse 13:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
It was in this update at 01:58, 22 March 2007 and then removed in the next update at 08:15, 22 March 2007. The above diff shows the changes between these two versions. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
On top of all else, would it be possible for people to archive WP:DYKA more often? I just created 8 archive pages -- that's roughly 400 DYKs! howcheng { chat} 00:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, the template for MiszaBot II to archive for us is now in place. No archiving has been done yet, from what I can tell, though. howcheng { chat} 16:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
User:Parker007 added the thing about "priority articles" in this edit. Are we all OK with this? Kind of makes sense to me, but it seems like it would be a PITA to find out which articles are "priority". howcheng { chat} 18:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
It occurred to me last night when I was doing the Main Page update that although we try and balance the countries/topics that are represented on DYK so that it's pretty random, it seems to me that the potential audience for certain articles would be greatest during that country's waking hours. For example, Seaport Centre was in this update, which was done at 10:45 PM on the West Coast of the US last night. This article is about a building in Redwood City, California. This sat on the Main Page until I did another update this morning at 8:59 AM. This 10-hour time span (which is long, but that's beside the point) was when most people in the US were asleep. Assuming that it had gone off the Main Page after six hours at 4:45 AM (West Coast, or 7:45 AM East Coast), then it would have gone completely unseen by most people who would could be expected to be interested in reading the article. Meanwhile, this time span was between 5:45 AM to 4 PM UTC or 11:15 AM to 9:30 PM in India. After all, the goal of putting the articles on the Main Page is to get them read, isn't it? I create a number of articles about people/locations in the US for example, and I can't imagine someone in India is really going to be interested in Eilley Bowers (one my noms), who got on the Main Page at 2:33 AM in California and would have gone off earlier if it hadn't been a Saturday.
So I'm proposing a rule of thumb that when we assign nominations to the next update, we try to do it so that they are likely to be read by the audience that would most appreciate them. I don't mean load up the ENTIRE update with articles appropriate to the time zone, but maybe give more of an emphasis to them (maybe like half of them). Naturally, this would only happen when we don't have noms that are about to expire and when we have enough of a variety that we can do it.
So I created a new template {{ DYKRefresh}}. This is what we would actually edit to update the timestamp. This one in turn calls either {{ DYK-Refresh}} or {{ DYK-RefreshNext}}, which looks like (I got this nested-template idea from how the POTD is currently done):
{{
DYKRefresh|Next}}
This could then serve as a guide to people doing the next update so that they would pick articles appropriate to the locations where most people could be expected to be awake and using Wikipedia. In this example, emphasis might be given to Australian and US/Canadian articles.
Thoughts? Flames? howcheng { chat} 17:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the current guideline - trying to ensure that each update has some variety, so we have some European items, some Asian items, some US items, some historical items, some biographical items, some geographical items, some high-brow items, some low-brow items, in each update - is the best policy. FWIW, I am just a likely to read something about India or Zimbabwe as the UK or the US - indeed, perhaps more so. My DYK are almost inevitably featured and then archived while I am asleep. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Your urgent DYK help would be most appreciated here. -- Jreferee 21:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)