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Is it just me or has this happened to others. Yesterday I tried to review John Arthur (philosopher), but when I hit submit, I realized my comments were placed under Jaime Areizaga-Soto. I moved the comments to the correct hook and then for good measure, I also reviewed the Soto article as I assumed it was my mistake and I should have been more aware of what I clicked. Then today, I tried to edit Bullskin Creek Site, and I noticed when I clicked the "Edit" link, it actually took me to the section below it, "Special occasion holding area". I tried it a couple times with the same results. I found that clicking edit next to "Henryk Kuna" actually brought me to the Bullskin Creek Site hook. It appears as if the "Edit" link for any section actually brings you to the section below it. Has anyone else experienced this?--v/r - T P 19:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Everyone seems to agree that there is no problem with creating lots of DYK about Bach or bugs or other non-controversial items. We have often had questions raised about people (allegedly) using DYK to "promote" political POV or book sales, etc. If the articles and hooks are neutral, do we need policy to prevent "promotion"? And if so, what further policy? Would spacing hooks out in time make things better or worse? The policy issues that have been raised by recent discussions should be considered in a neutral, hypothetical way. Could we start such a neutral discussion here? Sharktopus talk 15:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
That's what I understand reading in Prep1: "... that an apprentice who served on board Empire Deben was the captain of Canberra during the Falklands War?" I am also surprised how different the new name of the ship is from the former, and wonder if the old name should be mentioned somehow, in brackets, or "formerly"? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 09:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Reviewing Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI), I gave it a ?no because it was unsourced except to BRRI's own website, and because many parts were entirely unsourced. In response to my concerns, the nominator has added two citations from other websites ( first and second citations) and used the BRRI website to cite what was missing. Technically, I suppose that our requirements have been passed, but I'm concerned about promoting an article to the Main Page that lacks both substantial coverage in a print source and substantial coverage in an online source independent of the subject, especially since the hook itself comes from BRRI's website. What say you to the idea of promoting this article as-is versus requiring more work first? Aside from sourcing issues, the article doesn't seem to have much of any problems: it's long enough and new enough, and I suspect that it's notable because it's apparently both a major part of Ghana's academic world and a player on the international West African academic scene. Nyttend ( talk) 22:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Q4 has three hooks related to Europe - to appear when Europe sleeps. Yes, one is mine, Paulinerkirche, with dynamite, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 23:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Two hooks waiting in Special occasions, sorry to be boring, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 12:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
This hook is presently at T:DYK/P4: "... that William Hopkinson Cox, who was Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky from 1907 to 1911, was believed to be a descendent of William the Conqueror?" But we're all descended from Charlemagne, so by the same reasoning, we're almost as surely descended from William the Conqueror. We might change it to "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror", but including the weasel word "believed" would be difficult, and the claim still isn't unusual; my wife's ancestry has also been traced back to William the Conqueror. That much genealogy was less common in 1911 than it is with the Internet, but "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror, even though there wasn't any Internet yet" sounds too much like "Gee whiz, Batman!" Art LaPella ( talk) 21:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Earlier tonight, I created an article on Ron Bruder. Not long after I finished the bulk of the work, I ran a more intensive Wikipedia search to see what other articles were referring to him so I could add wikilinks in them and found that there was an article already on him at Ronald B. Bruder (what it looked like prior to redirection). Somehow, it hadn't popped up when I ran a Wikipedia search before making my article in the first place. I started a discussion at the Help Desk here to ask what should be done, since the other article was mostly unreferenced and written like a resume and also seemed to have a COI problem based on who the creator was. I was directed to merge any relevant content. After looking it over and snagging any references that were different from what I had, I ended up just redirecting it, as the information was either already covered in the one I had made or it was unsourced and, thus, shouldn't be copied. Therefore, none of the content from that article was actually merged. Because of this, it's pretty much like i've written an entirely new article, since the content is practically entirely different from the other one and written entirely by me without having looked at (or known about) the other one. Therefore, is it out of line for me to ask whether this can be counted as a new article and thus qualify for DYK? Silver seren C 07:41, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
5x expansion, fine, but unsourced information, as almost the entirety of that other version was, shouldn't count towards prose. If you take away all of the unsourced information, you're left with,
"Ronald B. Bruder, a serial entrepreneur and social entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Bruder is the founder of Education for Employment (EFE), a network of locally-run non-profit organizations dedicated to creating economic opportunities for unemployed youth. The network currently operates in the Middle East and North Africa - the region with the world's highest youth unemployment rate. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of The Lighthouse International. Prior to founding EFE, Bruder was a serial entrepreneur mainly focused on real estate development. In 1977, Bruder founded Brookhill. In 1995, Bruder formed Dames & Moore/Brookhill."
That is 655 characters. The article I wrote, which is completely sourced from top to bottom, is more than 5x that. Silver seren C 19:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
The thumb for that queue will be the same in the OTD section so that'll have to be changed (either the hook or the picture, the main article has some nice pics). – HTD ( ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 17:03, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
The thumbnail for prep 2 was a nice side view of a
decim periodical cicada but I am thinking this head-on headshot would be more dramatic. I have made the change but in case I should not have done so, I'm asking for feedback.
Sharktopus
talk
21:48, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
In the body of an article, to italicize something, you just surround it with ''italics''. But how do you italicize the actual title of the article? I mean the part that shows up above "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" at the very top? See The Legend of Lizzie Borden for reference. Tks. BarkingMoon ( talk) 23:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
Italic title}}
or {{
DISPLAYTITLE}}
. The latter is more flexible, e.g. when you need to italicize only one word, but you'll need to add the coded article name into the template.
Materialscientist (
talk)
23:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
After a concern was raised at my user talk page, I voluntarily took the initiative to remove a few self-noms from consideration at the suggestions page T:TDYK — please see diff. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Request: I respectfully request that the DYK submission currently in Template:Did you know/Queue/1 which is credited to myself, please be removed from consideration. Thank you, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Request: I have removed my self-noms from T:TDYK a 2nd time, diff. I respectfully request that they not be considered. Thank you, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:59, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
OCNative asked a few good questions that only SlimVirgin can answer. If such a reply is not forthcoming, or if the reply is unsatisfactory, then taking this further from us a group of concerned editors could well be considered. Schwede 66 08:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
Khazar asked me to comment here. First, let me make clear: I have zero interest in Dan Savage or Rick Santorum, and without meaning any disrespect to them, wouldn't know them or their views if I fell over them in the street. My only view in this matter is about how Wikipedia should approach contentious issues about living persons; and in the Savage/Santorum situation I think we're getting it wrong. I haven't been involved in editing the articles in question. My involvement is that I recently opened an RfC to help settle the issue.
As for the DYKs, the background was an AN/I report on May 26 in which several editors said Cirt appeared to be engaged in promotion. Dan Savage and other issues were mentioned. Note: I assume good faith of Cirt's intentions. But promotion or advocacy can occur inadvertently, regardless of intention. I think we are all at risk of that when we're intensely interested in something.
In response to the AN/I, I asked the people complaining about Cirt to give Cirt some space, and I asked Cirt in return to take on board their criticism that some of his edits could be interpreted as promotional. He agreed on May 27: "I will take your advice and try to make efforts to avoid editing in the manner you describe." [1]
I found out days later that he had continued to propose six or seven DYKs about Dan Savage. Two appeared on the main page on June 5; another was at the front of the queue; and I believe another four had been suggested. This seemed inappropriate by any standard, but especially so in light of Cirt's assurances. I therefore asked him to remove the ones that hadn't already been on the main page. That struck me as a reasonable request in the circumstances. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 14:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, I have no horse in this fight race, but I was considering raising the sudden surge of Dan Savage related DYK's on the nominations page - not for any political or other reasons, but only because there were an awful lot of them one after another, and the subjecxt risked getting a bit stale. I don't know if Cirt is watching this page (a shame if he is not) but I was going to suggest he userspace draft a set of the articles, shift them across, and do it all in one hook. That would be a really great way to do it. Unfortunate that the matter was resolved like this, but I am happy to see less Savage (ahem) content on the DYK page for the moment. --
Errant (
chat!)
18:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
I also thought we had a rough consensus between SlimVirgin and other concerned editors, but it seems that's no longer standing. Jayen, Off2riorob, and myself are all involved in Savage/Cirt debates happening elsewhere, and the last thing I think anybody wants to see is a third (fourth? eighth?) front opening up here. I remain uncomfortable with editors involved with debating Cirt's material elsewhere to come here to block his nominations once they've been passed and approved by the normal process, and when no content issues are involved; I'm also uncomfortable with the fact that they seem to see this rule as applying only to Savage-related content, and not the examples cited above such as Bach, the International Press Freedom Awards, Stanford University, or the Paralympics. But I've become an involved party over there myself at this point, so I realize my own judgment is becoming clouded. Let me propose a few options and then try to leave:
Jayen, Rob, Slim, do any of these sound fair to you? Khazar ( talk) 16:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
There is an arbitration request related to this thread, filed by User:Coren: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Political_activism. -- J N 466 00:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
The original hook appears, but the approval was given (only) for ALT2, something like ... that the cargo ship Empire Defender was seized by Britain twice, – in World War I under a German flag, and again in World War II under an Italian flag? (or was it the other way round?) - Please, Tony, strike out overlinked etc alternatives. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Changed to a tweaked version of ALT2. Materialscientist ( talk) 22:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
The hook was changed from "Jersey City boasts ..." to "Lincoln Park boasts ...". Learning English: Can a park really boast? - Please consider Prep1, above. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 16:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm becoming concerned that subjects like quiz shows, fruit producers, fossil dentition, and Bach cantatas might be appearing too often. I remember a thread somewhere that discussed this; what was the outcome? Editors who start multiple articles on similar topics should not expect them all to be given main-page exposure. The main page is more important than the local efforts of individual editors. Tony (talk) 10:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
<--Bach cantatas? How could we possibly have too many articles about Bach cantatas? ... But srsly, if you want to thin out DYK, thin out bad articles, don't discourage good ones. Sharktopus talk 11:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) I have to agree with many of the responses above. I suspect the perception of preponderance of certain topics is affected by one's level of interest - someone said not long ago that we had an awful lot of lead hooks about English churches, and I've noticed a certain fondness for US college sports, but fossil dentition over-represented?! But I think Tony is thinking of the "COI" thread above, and its predecessor, and in both of those the point has been made that many people write articles in clusters on a particular (group of) topic(s). Whatever. The solution is not discouragement, it's encouragement of more articles on a greater variety of topics, to dilute the concentrations and offer something for the widest possible variety of interests. And in fact DYK works extremely well in fostering and drawing attention to a variety of articles. It also demonstrates over and over again how diverse readers', as well as editors', interests are. To compare 2 articles from my own list of DYKs: both Jelling stone ship and Techno Viking are in the hall of fame, but the former is the one with over 13k hits. You just never know what people will be interested in :-) (I also wanted to set another powerful example beside Sharktopus '-).) Yngvadottir ( talk) 19:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
No doubt I'll be mauled for saying this. DYK is being used by a lot of editors who have expertise in a certain field to gain publicity and attract editors at the initial stages. The problem arises when too many start-up articles on the same narrow set of topics are nominated here too fast, and when editors are allowed just to drag out a sentence from their post-stub that is patently not hooky. Both practices are mutually supportive: I can see this from having intensively reviewed over the past few weeks. I mean no offence to the Ghana expert, who I strongly encourage to keep churning out those articles and improving them—and to selectively nominate the odd one that contains hook interest; just not every one of them.
These are just not hooky, yet are currently nominated. I believe they should be rejected:
This next one is getting there: I wouldn't oppose it, and I'd comb through the article to identify anything to make it the required "punchy". I fixed a few glaring issues in the article, which were for some reason missed by the nominator-reviewer. Why?
This next one might have balls, but not yet: the hook is all too bureaucratic in its theme. There might be more interesting things in the article, which desperately needs more than my quick-fix copy-edits. Such articles are not yet suitable for main-page exposure, and it is idle to suggest that nominators who tick off other nominations have done more than a 10-second flick through and word count:
You know, what is SPOPCL, and who cares? (To be brutallly honest.) I'm seeing things from the perspective of visitors to our showcase page. Tony (talk) 05:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, my feeling is also that temporal balance/variety is only going to be noticed by very regular DYK readers. I think it's most useful to show as much new content on the main page as we can (given that it fulfills our requirements), in order to promote and encourage further editing/integration of as many articles as possible. If much of Wikipedia's newest content for a week happens to be about Ghana, I'm fine with DYK reflecting that; ditto Bach, paralympics, etc. I've found that when my own DYK articles go to the main page, they always come back improved--additional sources I wouldn't have thought of, minor proofreading that I missed, foreign language help, etc. For example, when my DYK on journalist Muhammad al-Saqr went to the main page, another editor helped find a second article on the same person at Mohammad al-Sager, which I hadn't found as the latter happened to focus on his banking career. I had searched high and low through my sources, and even brought in an Arabic-speaking editor, without finding this alternative transliteration, but once properly merged, it made for a much better article. In click terms, my nomination was a dismal failure (less than 400, I think), but in terms of improving Wikipedia, that front page appearance was a big win. (Al-Saqr/Al-Sager has won international awards for his reporting and also served as chairman of the Arab Parliament for three years, so he's not exactly a minor figure, either). So while I can see where Tony's coming from, I think this potential good--giving as many qualified new articles a showcase as possible, and encouraging the creation of as many new quality articles as possible--clearly outweighs the potential harm--a four-times-a-day DYK reader being frustrated by the number of Ghana articles. Khazar ( talk) 17:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
Now in prep2, the Culture Centre (pictured) has a comma after New Caledonia which separates the subject from the rest of the sentence, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:25, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I need a second pair of eyes to look over this nomination please. Technically ALT2 seems ok, but I'm not sure whether the citations are suitable. — Bruce1ee talk 11:02, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
This is a side topic of the discussion about variety, and is a copy of my comment on the suggestions page where it will disappear soon, so please forgive my personal examples: In general, a link serves(!) many purposes: it is an offer of explanation of a term which may not be known (example canticle), it "defines" a term which doesn't need quotation marks then (example Feast of St. John the Baptist), it provides the long version of something shortened (example Bach). Of course I don't have to link Bach and his cantata to someone who followed the cantatas for a year, - but to a first-time reader I want to provide this little service. - As for Lincoln Park, I agree that it is not good to link New Jersey, but I voted for linking Jersey City as being part of the article name. Now we have Jersey City, New Jersey in the queue, well, why not? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
I find that I'm having to do a lot of copyedits to DYK-nominated articles. Whether they do it on purpose or not, I wish nominators would not rely so much on DYK contributors to do the copyediting for them. *Sigh*. Drmies ( talk) 16:46, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
If there is a shortage of pictured hooks, one way around is to go through ample articles and suggest a picture (authors often forget that), sometimes from a linked, but non-bolded article. Sometimes just by reading a hook it is clear that some article in it should have nice pictures. This is to avoid putting stubs as leads only because they happened to have a picture at T:TDYK. Materialscientist ( talk) 02:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Intending this in as light-hearted a way as is possible. One thing that might help on both the pictured and quirky front would be if prep loaders tried to avoid unilaterally pissing off literally a dozen editors who have worked together in an attempt to do both. Especially when it comes to articles with dozens of plausible hooks and matching images. — W F C— 01:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
The problem I sometimes have is where the image is of a good quality, but the hook is a bit dull. What is the best thing to do in those circumstances? Should it go as the lead with the good image, or be hidden in the middle of a set without it? Miyagawa (talk) 22:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Hello, my name is Sharktopus and I'm a Novato. I am an enthusiastic reviewer at DYK, a native speaker of English, and etc. But I don't know every line of WP:MOS, I never heard of WP:MEDRS until somebody got blasted today for not applying it, and there are lots of other things that might be wrong in an article I'm reviewing. So I have a suggestion.
How about if the people who are really familiar with all the ins and outs of Wikipedia policy (things all articles including DYK articles are supposed to meet) get excused from general T:DYK and just review articles already in prep, articles that have already been reviewed and improved and passed by less-skilled reviewers. That way our front page is protected from shame, and if we do have careless ok-stampers among us they can be privately cautioned on their talk pages about what they are doing wrong. Maybe there could even be a funny cautionary quiz page somewhere with examples of things like multiplication signs or links in quotes that learners like me could review to help us get better. Sharktopus talk 22:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
Let's discuss the two-tier idea in this section, OK? And if anyone wants to propose an unrelated idea about improving DYK, let's put that into a different section. I don't think any formal change would be required to try out post-reviews-by-DYK-ninjas. For a start, we could just go with people's self-noms if they want to review at prep or at T:DYK. Would others besides me agree that somebody who is checking all the articles in a prep is doing work that counts at least as much as reviewing one article at T:DYK? Sharktopus talk 11:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Special occasions, one more time, please.
On top of what was said above about the quality of the Main page. I am concerned about the quality of articles. I asked a question on the talk of an article which passed by on the Suggestions, creating a lot of attention for its wording, juicy language quoted from the subject's father, the article changing name to the dramatic. It's now under a modest name, the question open. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 06:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
regarding the Noel F. Parrish article. user:BarkingMoon is the editor who created the article. He asked me to do some copy-edit work on it (which I've been doing). I see that it's now in the queue. The editor retired (hopefully not for long). He mentioned that I should follow up on the matter. Ummmm ... I'm just not sure what to do though. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers. — Ched : ? 02:08, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Hey...I'm trying to do a little of the work that was suggested, not just opining. Have reached out to the bot request desk about getting a bot made that would look at DYK statistics. Has this ever been done before?
I think I want to get a scrape of a month (or even a year) of DYKs (article, hook, submitter, co-authors, time and date run). Also some features of the submitters.
Then do some analysis. For instance, what percentage of DYKs are "first DYK", Pareto diagram. Also, maybe look at user tenure (time, edit count, admin status) versus DYKs. I'm also a little curious how decisions are made on which hooks get run at the less desirable times (no biggie, just want to look at the data).
Having all the stuff in one excel file would also allow doing some randomized sampling to then look at article quality, hook wording, etc. So even the non-quantitative data can be helpful.
Anyhoo...I am pretty stupid at this stuff, which is why I'm reaching out to the bot desk.
But just curious...has something approaching this exercise ever been done before? Like to look at it.
TCO ( talk) 19:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
One thing I wondered is, is there a database by name of all the DYK award/ees? Sorta like we have all the FA awardees listed and even a sort of a ladderboard page. TCO ( talk) 21:22, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about doing some analysis of DYKs as well though perhaps coming at it from a different angle. I'd like to know article length, article views after being featured, number of images, and a couple other things. TCO, let me know what kind of data you collect please. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 21:54, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Awesome feedback. Really appreciate the insights. Should be fascinating. Will definitely try to get as much data and do as many analyses as possible. It's not just about answering one question. I'm trying to get a botmaker involved now, and also figure out what Piotr's mail list has to support. TCO ( talk) 02:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The recent proposals made by TCO have made me do quite a bit of thinking about DYK, it's history, and its continued relevance to wikipedia. A recurring theme from TCO's comments seems to be a dislike for the DYK's reward system; specifically the awarding of DYKs to those editors who have either been long time contributors to DYK or to those who practice churning out articles as quickly as possible to get more DYKs. In general, his attitude towards these editors is that they should by now have moved beyond DYK to doing more beneficial work within the encyclopedia, such as writing GA/FA articles. But is this really a fair assessment of DYK and the work produced by its main contributors? In reflecting, I do not think so.
Let's consider TCO's suggestions to stop editors from participating at DYK after they reach the 50 article mark. What is the benefit of stopping such rewards? Why stop incentives which encourage expansion? What does it matter if the article was written by someone who has been on wikipedia for 5 years or 5 days? New content is new content and the whole point of this project is to encourage new content growth, from both old and new users. Encouraging new users is important to this project, but so is encouraging those who have been editing since day 1.
Another concern TCO has is about those who churn out a large number of articles to get more DYKs. But is this really a problem? What is so wrong with those who pump out articles en masse? Are there really major quality issues here? I would say no. DYK policy is to not promote tagged articles, including those tagged as stubs, or for NPOV, orphan, copyediting, referencing, etc. Therefore, if it meets wikipedia's notability guidelines and passes the DYK criteria than those articles are going to be a positive addition to the encyclopedia, even if they are not of GA/FA quality. They will still provide more coverage than what was there before. Additionally, articles with room for improvement are often the best recruiters for new editors to the encyclopedia. How many of us made our first edits expanding or improving pre-existing articles? It is funny to me that TCO is complaining about editors who churn out articles en masse to get DYKs, since this is the exact effect DYK is hoping to achieve. In my opinion, we want DYK to produce editors that want to get DYKs over and over. We want editors to continue to churn out new articles. This was the whole point in creating DYK; to create editors who like to churn out new articles.
Ultimately, the conflict here seems to boil down to the issue of quality versus quantity. It is a fact that DYK has always emphasized quantity over quality and I do not feel we should apologize for this. It is not a coincidence that pretty much every editor that complains about DYK are those who participate in either GA/FA or both. These editors have become obsessed with improving wikipedia's quality, which is the point of the reward system at GA and FA. This is a good thing. We want editors to want to create quality articles. Yet, wikipedia also aims to create the widest coverage possible since our goal is to have a free encyclopedia which contains the sum of all human knowledge. Therefore, expansion (i.e. quantity) is also a goal of the encyclopedia. While GA/FA were created to stimulate quality, DYK was created to stimulate quantity.
The truth is that wikipedia needs both quality and quantity to achieve its purpose and maintain its relevance. With the total knowledge of humanity more than doubling every year according to some sources, there will always be a need to continue creating/expanding articles. The need for more article creation is never going to go away. Likewise the best quality article possible is the most desirable article to the reader, and therefore the need for quality will never go away. Therefore incentives for both quantity and qaulity are needed. DYK is the only award incentive on wikipedia for expansion other than wiki cup (which has only a relatively small number of participants). I despise wiki-cup since I think contests have no business being a part of wikipedia. On the flip side, we have two rewards for quality on wikipedia: GA and FA.
In conclusion, there should be room for programs that inspire article creation in addition to programs that inspire article quality. In an ideal situation, a program can do both. However, as a pragmatist I don't think it's possible to do both at the same time well. We could easily go to FA/GA and complain that their standards are too high and therefore not enough editors are interested in working on improving articles to FA/GA status. Yet, if FA/GA lowers it standards it would be bad for the encyclopedia. Likewise, raising the standards for inclusion too high at DYK would prevent it from doing what it is supposed to do: generate new articles.
I think a fair analysis of DYK is that it is an effective tool for encouraging expansion of wikipedia's coverage; a goal which is central to achieving wikipedia's primary purpose. As DYK is the only award given for new content, it is both a unique and vital program within the encyclopedia's community. While it does often produce articles of lesser quality, the vast majority of DYK articles are not bad articles, merely sufficient ones. One has to only look at any given DYK queue to see they are not articles in a horrible state, but are in general mostly mediocre articles with a few good articles mixed in. There are other award incentives on wikipedia, i.e. GA/FA, which do stimulate the raising of article quality to higher levels. Wikipedia, therefore does not need DYK to become another quality control program. It does, however, need DYK to continue doing what it does: encourage the creation of new content. 4meter4 ( talk) 06:42, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Is it just me who thinks that one of the current main page hooks doesn't make sense?
George Ponderevo ( talk) 17:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
I recently did major work on Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water. The prose word count before I did anything [4] was 237 words; after I merged in a section from another article as a content fork [5] it was 1,792 words. However, most of that text was replaced in my successive edits, until the article's current state [6] of 6,034 words. So, I'm not sure if this meets the "fivefold expansion" requirement. Does it? // ⌘macwhiz ( talk) 19:58, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The current image on the main page has an inadequate alt text, those in Q6 and Q3 are inadequate and that in Q4 is missing completely. I have added alt text or made the existing text descriptive (which is after all the whole purpose) to all three prep area images. Could someone please add descriptive alt text to the images in those three queues and could I ask that people reviewing nominations with images to check this and for those composing sets to check it again - alt text is the only thing that you can't see without viewing the source and therefore gets easily missed. Thanks, Mikenorton ( talk) 18:28, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The current hook for Civil Harassment Restraining Order in the next prep (prep 4) is not entirely correct according to the source. California Penal Code (646.9) states that the 2 - 4 year imprisonment pertains to those who are first guilty of stalking the victim who has taken out the CHRO. Any suggestions to correct this, as I am having trouble getting it condensed to a manageable length, non-clumsy hook? Calmer Waters 04:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
I just re-read my hook there and decided the comma is not really necessary, but I can no longer remove it. It would be very nice if someone could do that for me. Thanks in advance. Marrante ( talk) 06:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Not sure about the re-write by Tony while it was at Prep 3 ( diff).
The problem is that the new text makes it sound as if Ptolemy, al-Battani and Hermes Trismegistus were the true authors. But they were not. The point the hook is (was) trying to make is that although the texts have names that associate them with these authors, those associations are generally held to be false.
So suggest a re-think on this change. Jheald ( talk) 17:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Please italicize the scientific name for Cephenemyia ulrichii currently at Template:Did you know/Queue#Queue 4.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
One thing that frustrates me in working on the T:DYK page is its massive structure, which makes it difficult to navigate and track changes. Has it ever been proposed to break the nominations into subpages per AfD, GAN, etc.? While this would slow the ability of editors to skim through multiple nominations, it would make it significantly easier to track individual threads, some of which have been pretty lengthy the past two weeks. It would also remove the burdensome step of notifying nominators/creators/reviewers every time their response is requested, as they could simply track the page for their nom. I find it very tiresome, too, to have to check my nominations on the page every day to make sure no one's added a comment without notifying me, since it's hard to search reliably enough through the history.
I don't know how feasible this plan would be, but I wanted to throw the idea out there and see if more experienced DYKers had any thoughts. Khazar ( talk) 17:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
Before voting, I would ask tech-minded editors to comment on feasibility. We usually have 200+ noms, every nom has a few ticks (dyknom templates are commented out), meaning ~600 transcluded templates on one page. I think this will crash due to WP:Template limits. We can ban ship templates and tick templates though. Materialscientist ( talk) 04:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
*mp}}
is to be banned, preferably by software, or crashes will be hard to debug. I'm not sure what happens if we just transclude 300 nomination templates (with zero templates in them). Maybe this would be enough for a crash (?).
Materialscientist (
talk)
04:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
*mp}}
with a simple * would make sense, since it's already present in the cleared prep queues anyway. I can poke around and see how close to the transclusion limits the page is already.
Template talk:Did you know/Full TOC transcludes the whole page already, so we can play around with a copy of that and drop some more transclusions in it to see what leeway we have.
28bytes (
talk)
04:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)rʨanaɢ ( talk) 04:29, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Here is a quick test of 300 transclusions from User:Materialscientist/Sandbox2. Seems Ok, but maybe I'm missing something. Feel free to experiment. Materialscientist ( talk) 05:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Preprocessor node count: 3003/1000000 Post-expand include size: 933300/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 0/500
I'm a bit too sleepy for deeper analysis at the moment, but my first impression is that a bot isn't necessary and may not even help much. IPs can create talk pages, and any subpage of Template talk:Did you know counts. I'm also curious about the transclusion limits and will play around with MatSci's sandbox sometime this weekend. Also, shifting to transclusion might affect DYKcheck, but as long as T:TDYK looks the same, the script shouldn't need major changes. Shubinator ( talk) 06:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
NewDYKnom}}
will still be usable on subpages, though.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
14:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)I fiddled around with MatSci's sandbox and came up with these numbers after adding more complexity:
Preprocessor node count: 3588/1000000 Post-expand include size: 1195554/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 535/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Looks good to me; we can also probably use {{*mp}} without worrying about the transclusion limits. Shubinator ( talk) 06:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
NewDYKnom}}
(and the various instructions associated with it) for subpages once you guys have decided what the format of the submissions page is going to be. (In fact, as far as I can tell so far, it should be basically possible to use it exactly as is, just on a subpage rather than on T:TDYK itself.) Just let me know.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
16:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
I would invite people to post their own experiences with their own articles as a counterexample to generalizations about people making junk for DYK with no care for quality, demanding a ribbon for every little thing. The "ribbons" motivate me, but they don't motivate me to put garbagy stuff on the front page of Wikipedia. The regulars I know are proud of the work we do here.
I was just doing random occasional edits until I started DYK. I met kind, collegial people here, right from my first DYKs. I have had 11 articles get DYK (that's only 8 hooks, because some were multis) and I have 3 more articles waiting at T:DYK (2 hooks because one is a double) and I am working on another new article now. I specialize in things I made photos of and science news I think Wikipedia should explain. I have created in all 27 new articles, mostly unsuitable for DYK and not nominated for it. I've also expanded a lot of articles I came across. So Wikipedia got a lot of good work out of me in exchange for the DYK "ribbons" I enjoyed so much.
My biggest DYK hit was a 3-article hook this month with a red-eyed cicada head – among the 3 articles, that hook got 20,000 hits. The article Wikipedia needed most got a pitiful number of hits, a bio for Alan B. Slifka. Here are all my DYKs so far. I have contributed way less than most regulars here. Sharktopus talk 03:16, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Harumph. I'm almost getting convinced we should just leave it the way it is. I mean if it makes the people involved happy. And they are willing to run it. I actually don't even begrudge them the spot on the page. When FL came in, they just moved down the page. TCO ( talk) 05:06, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Who approved this hook: Talk:Polytrichum juniperinum? Please read WP:MEDRS, and this business of having nominators review hooks is not working. There is copyvio throughout DYK still, and an ongoing lack of accountability here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
There is still no accountability here, and worse, now we have ill-prepared nominators reviewing ill-prepared articles. The question was, who approved the hook that breached WP:MEDRS. DYK is set up in such a way that only insiders can answer that question-- please do, and educate the reviewer. I continue to hope that the number of DYK articles run on the main page will be dramatically reduced so that only experienced editors will be reviewing them. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with that person, but if "valuable contributors" are leaving the project over the ongoing DYK issues, DYK should fix itself. But we've been asking for that for years. SO, I did it myself; I gather that User:Kevmin approved the hook and User:OCNative moved it to prep. (What a messy system.) I see no indication at User talk:Kevmin alerting him that he helped Wikipedia run faulty medical information on the mainpage. I 'spose I'll have to alert him myself, as well? [8] And that doesn't even deal with the extensive close paraphrasing in the article-- something DYK has yet to address in almost a year. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:33, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Let's not shoot the messenger. Obviously WP:MEDRS is important. If we need to add some language to the reviewing guides to draw some attention to it, let's do it. 28bytes ( talk) 15:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Right now, this place seems very much oriented to the desires of DYK submitters and not enough to our readers. Feels like we want to make sure every single child gets a ribbon at the relay races.
As it is, readers coming to the main page already have 8 or so hooks in DYK. Plus an FP, an FA, an FL (Mondays). Plus OTD and ITN (each with a slew of hooks in them).
I don't see any good reader reason why they should have new DYK hooks every 6 hours, over and over and over.
If we went to less hooks, this would raise quality (how ever the decision is made...I don't care about perfection...if you HAVE to pick 25%, the selection will be "better"...it doesn't matter if one hook loses that should have won...what matters is the broad quality increase.) It would also allow a bit more review. (And I don't want to slam you all too hard...DYK does have SOME review (think Sandy expects too much for DYKs) and they are clearly better than the average stub or AFD or the like.)
I mean with 10 per day instead of 40 per day, you are still talking about 3650 hooks per year for a reader.
As it is now, I respectfully get the impression that we are favoring editors too much over readers and just having a churn factory.
P.s. And I say this being VERY touched on how kind people here were to help me with my first DYKs and allowing them Swahili rule and all. And please don't take it out on me when I come back with more hooks in the future. TCO ( talk) 22:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Oppose this and similar ideas which amount to grabbing the DYK spot on the front page for a very different program run by and for a tiny elite group of editors who plan to call their own project DYK. The service DYK provides to readers is motivating people to create content. Lots of people from lots of backgrounds creating lots of different kinds of content--that is what DYK promotes now, what it was created to do, and what it does it remarkably well. Chopping down the number of people who can benefit to 1/4 the number we can benefit now is taking an ax to the root of DYK. Sharktopus talk 00:19, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Thus, I agree in principle with TCO's proposal for a 24-hour cycle, but I think it's too radical. A 12-hour cycle would be more reasonable. "Clogging" will result only if articles and hooks haven't been well-enough prepped. This longer cycle would bring four advantages:
(1) a less speed-obsessed process, with less stressful deadline pressure, particularly for the admins at the sharp end of the process who have to fill and verify so many slots;
(2) a better basis for making the hooks more generally "punchy" and "interesting" for our readers, as required by DYK rules—at the moment, some hooks are excellent in this respect, while others are a let-down (except you're not allowed to say this ... they'll bring out the old "that's your taste" argument);
(3) a greater emphasis on reviewing noms, and on nominator–reviewer and nominator–nominator collaboration to improve articles and hooks ("clogging" should be managed by rejecting more noms, in a more competitive process);
(4) greater prestige in having a DYK on the main page, and a higher reputation for DYK process in the community. Tony (talk) 06:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Malleus, DYK is constructed quite differently from the featured content sections on the main page, which emphasise quality over all else (within the rules), not newness in creation or expansion. DYK has been conceived as having a distinct function piggybacked on top of hooks that are "short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article". These hooks are a great idea for the main page, and so is the emphasis on newness and/or recent expansion. (There certainly is a continuous tsunami of these articles—too many to accommodate realistically in the review process, and too many to avoid eye-blinkingly quick turn-arounds.)
But just because an article is new or recently expanded doesn't mean quality and other standards can go out the window. To me, it's a matter of getting the balance right, so where Malleus might throw the baby out with the bathwater, I say improve the review process by slowing down the production line, raising expectations of quality in these showcased new/expanded articles, and be more selective. No one is suggesting GA or FA standards, but let's send a message to our keen editors (and visitors who can be recruited) that we'll work with them in a more orderly, organised way to shape their babies so their minimum quality is higher. I am, perish the thought, suggesting a move towards a more competitive environment for these babies.
We need to adjust the framework so engagement between reviewers and nominators (and nominators with each other) is more collegial. It is the essence of a wiki, and DYK should be taking the opportunity to be a competitive powerhouse for promising, interesting articles at the start of their lives. Tony (talk) 14:33, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
An honest question or two ignoring any of this oppose/support crap and without expressing my tastes - To those of you who don't know me I'll introduce myself as an editor who has contributed a decent amount (50+) of self-written articles to DYK and an editor who has tried to apply an above average level of diligence to their reviews of other DYK suggestions (others may disagree...).
I have, as things stand, lost any and all interest in contributing to DYK on the back of these half-arsed, semi-informed squabbles.
People claim to know what DYK is supposed to represent and proceed to divulge their views accordingly. People claim to know what readers of the main page want and proceed to divulge their views accordingly. It seems to me DYK has reached a cross-roads. We can carry straight on as the process stands. We can turn in one direction and apply a group of overlords who can on a whim decide what is worthy. We can turn in the other and expel the editors who come along saying nay to most of what is presented to them (that may be the same as continuing straight on to some). Or we can do what any sensible person would do when confronted with such a selection of courses and stop to thoroughly evaluate the options. A discussion here, whilst valuable in assessing the opinions of regular contributors, fails to address the key question - What, at this stage of Wikipedia's development, is the point of DYK? Is it to highlight the newest brilliant/mediocre/suggested work of established Wikipedia editors? Is it an incentive to bring new editors in to the project by offering them an opportunity at main page exposure? Is it an incentive to stop the creation of endless stubs by encouraging creation of longer (1500+ character) articles? Is it a chance to expose lesser known subjects/topics to a wider audience to educate or inspire further contributions to the Wiki? Is it merely a chance to accumulate credit for a run at adminship? Without this fundamental question being answered by the wider community I don't see how we can establish any policy going forward. Let's hope at least some of that made sense. - Basement12 (T. C) 00:52, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
1) encouraging the creation of new articles and the expansion of stubs 2) providing an early, low-level filter for those articles and expansions The more we seek to quota-fy or reduce the number of hooks going to the main page for fear the public will catch us in some bad prose or a dull hook, the more it interferes with the above goals by raising the bar for recognition of new content, discouraging editors from pursuing this process, and reducing the exposure (and thus chances for editing) of new content. We've all seen the process fail and the occasional truly bad hook get to the main page--an article with unreliable sources, copyvio, etc. But even this can be seen, in a way, as for the best: the momentary platform of the main page appearance allows these problems to be caught, rather than persisting for years in a low-exposure article. More importantly, though, I'd say for every "fail", 50-100 articles are minorly or majorly improved either pre-main-page appearance or because of their main page appearance, often by new or IP-address editors. The result is a significant net gain for our content. Personally, I say we shouldn't be afraid to let the public see the sausage being made--at least not at the expense of forwarding content growth. Khazar ( talk) 04:33, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
The unevenness of both hooks and articles is why editors have come here to discuss improvements. DYK is widely regarded as problematic, and it's a pity that regular editors who have justifiably taken on a sense of ownership through their tenure (we all do that, inevitably) have dismissed what others see as obvious measures to improve the system. This is the case even when such editors admit there are serious problems, such as Orlady has done. Still, they dismiss with a wave of the hand the input of others who have at heart only the quality of the main page and the effectiveness of the DYK process in achieving its stated aims. I've not yet seen a well-framed argument against change; bullying and personalising has been typically, which is a pity because it shoos away editors who would be critical in collaborative improvement.
I say again, six hours is a breathtakingly short period to allow a good hook and DYK article exposure on the main page. DYK's aims are better served by raising the standards, increasing the exposure time of the good ones, and reducing the break-neck churning speed.
In view of what Basement has said, and the views of others who want change, I'm surprised Khazar is putting him/herself down as an opposer. Tony (talk) 04:49, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
A gentler attempt at persuasion. Look, I totally HEART that this place can be good for the newbie article writer. I was very proud of my first DYK and felt that you all were genuinely KIND to me in applying the Swahili rule. Also, I remember Motennen being a young writer very proud of his DYK. That said...when we talk about people with 50 (see upthread), I don't buy so much the argument of be nice to newbies. If we really felt that this should be newbie friendly we would limit total number of DYKs a person could get (maybe 5 or so). Also, honestly, even as a new submitter, it was the personal touch of people notifying me of the reviews that meant more to me, than that I got the DYK. I would have been happy with having to "compete my baby" in order to gain a day of exposure instead of 6 hours. And don't be revengeful when this thing comes into the DYK queue: [9].
I don't think of trying to fix DYK cause it is some awful copyvio mess. I just want to up the quality of articles overall on wiki. that is our problem now. I certainly don't expect GA standards. But let's just compete the things and see what we get. We are still talking about 4000 DYKs per year (at 11 hooks per day). I just honestly see a way that DYK can help Wiki. And am concerned now that it is not so much for helping Wiki, for helping READERS, than a sort of self-justifying production line run amok.
And I love that Metallurgist cares about this thing he administers. And I love that all of you have found something to love. And I don't want to be a drag. But still...I don't have ANY sympathy of complaints about the pace here, given people just to operate it about 4 times faster than what makes sense. And I can go back for years and see these comments about "let's just work harder at review". It doesn't make sense. It's like that horse in Animal Farm, that said, I'll just work harder. No. We need a systemic change that allows more care. And I really don't even care that much for the copyvio issue. It's more that I care that our readers get something valuable. And that we have a gentle, but little bit stronger emphasis on quality, and much less emphasis on quantity. TCO ( talk) 18:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I think that three sets a day would be better than four. And, yes, I think it is not unreasonable to have a small proportion of otherwise eligible new articles rejected over "space" concerns, although I wouldn't want to see that happen to very many submissions. It does seem sometimes like the DYKs are all basically the same things, and this would tend to reduce the "ten articles about ____ in ten days" feel. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Support a drastic reduction in the number of DYKs run daily on the mainpage to hopefully allow for better review and a reduction in the extensive copyvio, plagiarism, and faulty sourcing issues routinely found at DYK. Experienced reviewers are needed at DYK, since the content (often faulty or plagiarized) goes on the mainpage. Having a DYK appear on the mainpage is assumed as a right, when it should be a priviledge that serves our readers. Since DYK has amply demonstrated over a long number of years that they are overworked, reducing the number of hooks run should allow experienced reviewers to choose those that warrant mainpage exposure over those that are quickly thrown together by adherents of the reward culture with plagiarism, copyvio, misrepresentation of sources, and non-reliable sources. And please, some of the hooks that are run are just downright embarrassing-- try to clean it up. What was the one the other day about some restaurant not charging more to serve minorities? Sheesh, please clean it up here. Reduce the number of DYKs daily, get experienced editors to review them, and remove the rule that nominators must review-- content that goes on the mainpage should be vetted by experienced editors, not whomever happens to show up seeking a reward. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 60 | ← | Archive 65 | Archive 66 | Archive 67 | Archive 68 | Archive 69 | Archive 70 |
Is it just me or has this happened to others. Yesterday I tried to review John Arthur (philosopher), but when I hit submit, I realized my comments were placed under Jaime Areizaga-Soto. I moved the comments to the correct hook and then for good measure, I also reviewed the Soto article as I assumed it was my mistake and I should have been more aware of what I clicked. Then today, I tried to edit Bullskin Creek Site, and I noticed when I clicked the "Edit" link, it actually took me to the section below it, "Special occasion holding area". I tried it a couple times with the same results. I found that clicking edit next to "Henryk Kuna" actually brought me to the Bullskin Creek Site hook. It appears as if the "Edit" link for any section actually brings you to the section below it. Has anyone else experienced this?--v/r - T P 19:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Everyone seems to agree that there is no problem with creating lots of DYK about Bach or bugs or other non-controversial items. We have often had questions raised about people (allegedly) using DYK to "promote" political POV or book sales, etc. If the articles and hooks are neutral, do we need policy to prevent "promotion"? And if so, what further policy? Would spacing hooks out in time make things better or worse? The policy issues that have been raised by recent discussions should be considered in a neutral, hypothetical way. Could we start such a neutral discussion here? Sharktopus talk 15:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
That's what I understand reading in Prep1: "... that an apprentice who served on board Empire Deben was the captain of Canberra during the Falklands War?" I am also surprised how different the new name of the ship is from the former, and wonder if the old name should be mentioned somehow, in brackets, or "formerly"? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 09:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Reviewing Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI), I gave it a ?no because it was unsourced except to BRRI's own website, and because many parts were entirely unsourced. In response to my concerns, the nominator has added two citations from other websites ( first and second citations) and used the BRRI website to cite what was missing. Technically, I suppose that our requirements have been passed, but I'm concerned about promoting an article to the Main Page that lacks both substantial coverage in a print source and substantial coverage in an online source independent of the subject, especially since the hook itself comes from BRRI's website. What say you to the idea of promoting this article as-is versus requiring more work first? Aside from sourcing issues, the article doesn't seem to have much of any problems: it's long enough and new enough, and I suspect that it's notable because it's apparently both a major part of Ghana's academic world and a player on the international West African academic scene. Nyttend ( talk) 22:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Q4 has three hooks related to Europe - to appear when Europe sleeps. Yes, one is mine, Paulinerkirche, with dynamite, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 23:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Two hooks waiting in Special occasions, sorry to be boring, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 12:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
This hook is presently at T:DYK/P4: "... that William Hopkinson Cox, who was Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky from 1907 to 1911, was believed to be a descendent of William the Conqueror?" But we're all descended from Charlemagne, so by the same reasoning, we're almost as surely descended from William the Conqueror. We might change it to "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror", but including the weasel word "believed" would be difficult, and the claim still isn't unusual; my wife's ancestry has also been traced back to William the Conqueror. That much genealogy was less common in 1911 than it is with the Internet, but "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror, even though there wasn't any Internet yet" sounds too much like "Gee whiz, Batman!" Art LaPella ( talk) 21:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Earlier tonight, I created an article on Ron Bruder. Not long after I finished the bulk of the work, I ran a more intensive Wikipedia search to see what other articles were referring to him so I could add wikilinks in them and found that there was an article already on him at Ronald B. Bruder (what it looked like prior to redirection). Somehow, it hadn't popped up when I ran a Wikipedia search before making my article in the first place. I started a discussion at the Help Desk here to ask what should be done, since the other article was mostly unreferenced and written like a resume and also seemed to have a COI problem based on who the creator was. I was directed to merge any relevant content. After looking it over and snagging any references that were different from what I had, I ended up just redirecting it, as the information was either already covered in the one I had made or it was unsourced and, thus, shouldn't be copied. Therefore, none of the content from that article was actually merged. Because of this, it's pretty much like i've written an entirely new article, since the content is practically entirely different from the other one and written entirely by me without having looked at (or known about) the other one. Therefore, is it out of line for me to ask whether this can be counted as a new article and thus qualify for DYK? Silver seren C 07:41, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
5x expansion, fine, but unsourced information, as almost the entirety of that other version was, shouldn't count towards prose. If you take away all of the unsourced information, you're left with,
"Ronald B. Bruder, a serial entrepreneur and social entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Bruder is the founder of Education for Employment (EFE), a network of locally-run non-profit organizations dedicated to creating economic opportunities for unemployed youth. The network currently operates in the Middle East and North Africa - the region with the world's highest youth unemployment rate. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of The Lighthouse International. Prior to founding EFE, Bruder was a serial entrepreneur mainly focused on real estate development. In 1977, Bruder founded Brookhill. In 1995, Bruder formed Dames & Moore/Brookhill."
That is 655 characters. The article I wrote, which is completely sourced from top to bottom, is more than 5x that. Silver seren C 19:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
The thumb for that queue will be the same in the OTD section so that'll have to be changed (either the hook or the picture, the main article has some nice pics). – HTD ( ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 17:03, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
The thumbnail for prep 2 was a nice side view of a
decim periodical cicada but I am thinking this head-on headshot would be more dramatic. I have made the change but in case I should not have done so, I'm asking for feedback.
Sharktopus
talk
21:48, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
In the body of an article, to italicize something, you just surround it with ''italics''. But how do you italicize the actual title of the article? I mean the part that shows up above "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" at the very top? See The Legend of Lizzie Borden for reference. Tks. BarkingMoon ( talk) 23:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
Italic title}}
or {{
DISPLAYTITLE}}
. The latter is more flexible, e.g. when you need to italicize only one word, but you'll need to add the coded article name into the template.
Materialscientist (
talk)
23:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
After a concern was raised at my user talk page, I voluntarily took the initiative to remove a few self-noms from consideration at the suggestions page T:TDYK — please see diff. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Request: I respectfully request that the DYK submission currently in Template:Did you know/Queue/1 which is credited to myself, please be removed from consideration. Thank you, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Request: I have removed my self-noms from T:TDYK a 2nd time, diff. I respectfully request that they not be considered. Thank you, -- Cirt ( talk) 06:59, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
OCNative asked a few good questions that only SlimVirgin can answer. If such a reply is not forthcoming, or if the reply is unsatisfactory, then taking this further from us a group of concerned editors could well be considered. Schwede 66 08:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
Khazar asked me to comment here. First, let me make clear: I have zero interest in Dan Savage or Rick Santorum, and without meaning any disrespect to them, wouldn't know them or their views if I fell over them in the street. My only view in this matter is about how Wikipedia should approach contentious issues about living persons; and in the Savage/Santorum situation I think we're getting it wrong. I haven't been involved in editing the articles in question. My involvement is that I recently opened an RfC to help settle the issue.
As for the DYKs, the background was an AN/I report on May 26 in which several editors said Cirt appeared to be engaged in promotion. Dan Savage and other issues were mentioned. Note: I assume good faith of Cirt's intentions. But promotion or advocacy can occur inadvertently, regardless of intention. I think we are all at risk of that when we're intensely interested in something.
In response to the AN/I, I asked the people complaining about Cirt to give Cirt some space, and I asked Cirt in return to take on board their criticism that some of his edits could be interpreted as promotional. He agreed on May 27: "I will take your advice and try to make efforts to avoid editing in the manner you describe." [1]
I found out days later that he had continued to propose six or seven DYKs about Dan Savage. Two appeared on the main page on June 5; another was at the front of the queue; and I believe another four had been suggested. This seemed inappropriate by any standard, but especially so in light of Cirt's assurances. I therefore asked him to remove the ones that hadn't already been on the main page. That struck me as a reasonable request in the circumstances. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 14:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, I have no horse in this fight race, but I was considering raising the sudden surge of Dan Savage related DYK's on the nominations page - not for any political or other reasons, but only because there were an awful lot of them one after another, and the subjecxt risked getting a bit stale. I don't know if Cirt is watching this page (a shame if he is not) but I was going to suggest he userspace draft a set of the articles, shift them across, and do it all in one hook. That would be a really great way to do it. Unfortunate that the matter was resolved like this, but I am happy to see less Savage (ahem) content on the DYK page for the moment. --
Errant (
chat!)
18:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
I also thought we had a rough consensus between SlimVirgin and other concerned editors, but it seems that's no longer standing. Jayen, Off2riorob, and myself are all involved in Savage/Cirt debates happening elsewhere, and the last thing I think anybody wants to see is a third (fourth? eighth?) front opening up here. I remain uncomfortable with editors involved with debating Cirt's material elsewhere to come here to block his nominations once they've been passed and approved by the normal process, and when no content issues are involved; I'm also uncomfortable with the fact that they seem to see this rule as applying only to Savage-related content, and not the examples cited above such as Bach, the International Press Freedom Awards, Stanford University, or the Paralympics. But I've become an involved party over there myself at this point, so I realize my own judgment is becoming clouded. Let me propose a few options and then try to leave:
Jayen, Rob, Slim, do any of these sound fair to you? Khazar ( talk) 16:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
There is an arbitration request related to this thread, filed by User:Coren: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Political_activism. -- J N 466 00:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
The original hook appears, but the approval was given (only) for ALT2, something like ... that the cargo ship Empire Defender was seized by Britain twice, – in World War I under a German flag, and again in World War II under an Italian flag? (or was it the other way round?) - Please, Tony, strike out overlinked etc alternatives. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Changed to a tweaked version of ALT2. Materialscientist ( talk) 22:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
The hook was changed from "Jersey City boasts ..." to "Lincoln Park boasts ...". Learning English: Can a park really boast? - Please consider Prep1, above. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 16:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm becoming concerned that subjects like quiz shows, fruit producers, fossil dentition, and Bach cantatas might be appearing too often. I remember a thread somewhere that discussed this; what was the outcome? Editors who start multiple articles on similar topics should not expect them all to be given main-page exposure. The main page is more important than the local efforts of individual editors. Tony (talk) 10:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
<--Bach cantatas? How could we possibly have too many articles about Bach cantatas? ... But srsly, if you want to thin out DYK, thin out bad articles, don't discourage good ones. Sharktopus talk 11:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) I have to agree with many of the responses above. I suspect the perception of preponderance of certain topics is affected by one's level of interest - someone said not long ago that we had an awful lot of lead hooks about English churches, and I've noticed a certain fondness for US college sports, but fossil dentition over-represented?! But I think Tony is thinking of the "COI" thread above, and its predecessor, and in both of those the point has been made that many people write articles in clusters on a particular (group of) topic(s). Whatever. The solution is not discouragement, it's encouragement of more articles on a greater variety of topics, to dilute the concentrations and offer something for the widest possible variety of interests. And in fact DYK works extremely well in fostering and drawing attention to a variety of articles. It also demonstrates over and over again how diverse readers', as well as editors', interests are. To compare 2 articles from my own list of DYKs: both Jelling stone ship and Techno Viking are in the hall of fame, but the former is the one with over 13k hits. You just never know what people will be interested in :-) (I also wanted to set another powerful example beside Sharktopus '-).) Yngvadottir ( talk) 19:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
No doubt I'll be mauled for saying this. DYK is being used by a lot of editors who have expertise in a certain field to gain publicity and attract editors at the initial stages. The problem arises when too many start-up articles on the same narrow set of topics are nominated here too fast, and when editors are allowed just to drag out a sentence from their post-stub that is patently not hooky. Both practices are mutually supportive: I can see this from having intensively reviewed over the past few weeks. I mean no offence to the Ghana expert, who I strongly encourage to keep churning out those articles and improving them—and to selectively nominate the odd one that contains hook interest; just not every one of them.
These are just not hooky, yet are currently nominated. I believe they should be rejected:
This next one is getting there: I wouldn't oppose it, and I'd comb through the article to identify anything to make it the required "punchy". I fixed a few glaring issues in the article, which were for some reason missed by the nominator-reviewer. Why?
This next one might have balls, but not yet: the hook is all too bureaucratic in its theme. There might be more interesting things in the article, which desperately needs more than my quick-fix copy-edits. Such articles are not yet suitable for main-page exposure, and it is idle to suggest that nominators who tick off other nominations have done more than a 10-second flick through and word count:
You know, what is SPOPCL, and who cares? (To be brutallly honest.) I'm seeing things from the perspective of visitors to our showcase page. Tony (talk) 05:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, my feeling is also that temporal balance/variety is only going to be noticed by very regular DYK readers. I think it's most useful to show as much new content on the main page as we can (given that it fulfills our requirements), in order to promote and encourage further editing/integration of as many articles as possible. If much of Wikipedia's newest content for a week happens to be about Ghana, I'm fine with DYK reflecting that; ditto Bach, paralympics, etc. I've found that when my own DYK articles go to the main page, they always come back improved--additional sources I wouldn't have thought of, minor proofreading that I missed, foreign language help, etc. For example, when my DYK on journalist Muhammad al-Saqr went to the main page, another editor helped find a second article on the same person at Mohammad al-Sager, which I hadn't found as the latter happened to focus on his banking career. I had searched high and low through my sources, and even brought in an Arabic-speaking editor, without finding this alternative transliteration, but once properly merged, it made for a much better article. In click terms, my nomination was a dismal failure (less than 400, I think), but in terms of improving Wikipedia, that front page appearance was a big win. (Al-Saqr/Al-Sager has won international awards for his reporting and also served as chairman of the Arab Parliament for three years, so he's not exactly a minor figure, either). So while I can see where Tony's coming from, I think this potential good--giving as many qualified new articles a showcase as possible, and encouraging the creation of as many new quality articles as possible--clearly outweighs the potential harm--a four-times-a-day DYK reader being frustrated by the number of Ghana articles. Khazar ( talk) 17:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
Now in prep2, the Culture Centre (pictured) has a comma after New Caledonia which separates the subject from the rest of the sentence, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:25, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I need a second pair of eyes to look over this nomination please. Technically ALT2 seems ok, but I'm not sure whether the citations are suitable. — Bruce1ee talk 11:02, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
This is a side topic of the discussion about variety, and is a copy of my comment on the suggestions page where it will disappear soon, so please forgive my personal examples: In general, a link serves(!) many purposes: it is an offer of explanation of a term which may not be known (example canticle), it "defines" a term which doesn't need quotation marks then (example Feast of St. John the Baptist), it provides the long version of something shortened (example Bach). Of course I don't have to link Bach and his cantata to someone who followed the cantatas for a year, - but to a first-time reader I want to provide this little service. - As for Lincoln Park, I agree that it is not good to link New Jersey, but I voted for linking Jersey City as being part of the article name. Now we have Jersey City, New Jersey in the queue, well, why not? -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
I find that I'm having to do a lot of copyedits to DYK-nominated articles. Whether they do it on purpose or not, I wish nominators would not rely so much on DYK contributors to do the copyediting for them. *Sigh*. Drmies ( talk) 16:46, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
If there is a shortage of pictured hooks, one way around is to go through ample articles and suggest a picture (authors often forget that), sometimes from a linked, but non-bolded article. Sometimes just by reading a hook it is clear that some article in it should have nice pictures. This is to avoid putting stubs as leads only because they happened to have a picture at T:TDYK. Materialscientist ( talk) 02:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Intending this in as light-hearted a way as is possible. One thing that might help on both the pictured and quirky front would be if prep loaders tried to avoid unilaterally pissing off literally a dozen editors who have worked together in an attempt to do both. Especially when it comes to articles with dozens of plausible hooks and matching images. — W F C— 01:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
The problem I sometimes have is where the image is of a good quality, but the hook is a bit dull. What is the best thing to do in those circumstances? Should it go as the lead with the good image, or be hidden in the middle of a set without it? Miyagawa (talk) 22:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Hello, my name is Sharktopus and I'm a Novato. I am an enthusiastic reviewer at DYK, a native speaker of English, and etc. But I don't know every line of WP:MOS, I never heard of WP:MEDRS until somebody got blasted today for not applying it, and there are lots of other things that might be wrong in an article I'm reviewing. So I have a suggestion.
How about if the people who are really familiar with all the ins and outs of Wikipedia policy (things all articles including DYK articles are supposed to meet) get excused from general T:DYK and just review articles already in prep, articles that have already been reviewed and improved and passed by less-skilled reviewers. That way our front page is protected from shame, and if we do have careless ok-stampers among us they can be privately cautioned on their talk pages about what they are doing wrong. Maybe there could even be a funny cautionary quiz page somewhere with examples of things like multiplication signs or links in quotes that learners like me could review to help us get better. Sharktopus talk 22:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
Let's discuss the two-tier idea in this section, OK? And if anyone wants to propose an unrelated idea about improving DYK, let's put that into a different section. I don't think any formal change would be required to try out post-reviews-by-DYK-ninjas. For a start, we could just go with people's self-noms if they want to review at prep or at T:DYK. Would others besides me agree that somebody who is checking all the articles in a prep is doing work that counts at least as much as reviewing one article at T:DYK? Sharktopus talk 11:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Special occasions, one more time, please.
On top of what was said above about the quality of the Main page. I am concerned about the quality of articles. I asked a question on the talk of an article which passed by on the Suggestions, creating a lot of attention for its wording, juicy language quoted from the subject's father, the article changing name to the dramatic. It's now under a modest name, the question open. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 06:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
regarding the Noel F. Parrish article. user:BarkingMoon is the editor who created the article. He asked me to do some copy-edit work on it (which I've been doing). I see that it's now in the queue. The editor retired (hopefully not for long). He mentioned that I should follow up on the matter. Ummmm ... I'm just not sure what to do though. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Cheers. — Ched : ? 02:08, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Hey...I'm trying to do a little of the work that was suggested, not just opining. Have reached out to the bot request desk about getting a bot made that would look at DYK statistics. Has this ever been done before?
I think I want to get a scrape of a month (or even a year) of DYKs (article, hook, submitter, co-authors, time and date run). Also some features of the submitters.
Then do some analysis. For instance, what percentage of DYKs are "first DYK", Pareto diagram. Also, maybe look at user tenure (time, edit count, admin status) versus DYKs. I'm also a little curious how decisions are made on which hooks get run at the less desirable times (no biggie, just want to look at the data).
Having all the stuff in one excel file would also allow doing some randomized sampling to then look at article quality, hook wording, etc. So even the non-quantitative data can be helpful.
Anyhoo...I am pretty stupid at this stuff, which is why I'm reaching out to the bot desk.
But just curious...has something approaching this exercise ever been done before? Like to look at it.
TCO ( talk) 19:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
One thing I wondered is, is there a database by name of all the DYK award/ees? Sorta like we have all the FA awardees listed and even a sort of a ladderboard page. TCO ( talk) 21:22, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about doing some analysis of DYKs as well though perhaps coming at it from a different angle. I'd like to know article length, article views after being featured, number of images, and a couple other things. TCO, let me know what kind of data you collect please. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 21:54, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Awesome feedback. Really appreciate the insights. Should be fascinating. Will definitely try to get as much data and do as many analyses as possible. It's not just about answering one question. I'm trying to get a botmaker involved now, and also figure out what Piotr's mail list has to support. TCO ( talk) 02:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The recent proposals made by TCO have made me do quite a bit of thinking about DYK, it's history, and its continued relevance to wikipedia. A recurring theme from TCO's comments seems to be a dislike for the DYK's reward system; specifically the awarding of DYKs to those editors who have either been long time contributors to DYK or to those who practice churning out articles as quickly as possible to get more DYKs. In general, his attitude towards these editors is that they should by now have moved beyond DYK to doing more beneficial work within the encyclopedia, such as writing GA/FA articles. But is this really a fair assessment of DYK and the work produced by its main contributors? In reflecting, I do not think so.
Let's consider TCO's suggestions to stop editors from participating at DYK after they reach the 50 article mark. What is the benefit of stopping such rewards? Why stop incentives which encourage expansion? What does it matter if the article was written by someone who has been on wikipedia for 5 years or 5 days? New content is new content and the whole point of this project is to encourage new content growth, from both old and new users. Encouraging new users is important to this project, but so is encouraging those who have been editing since day 1.
Another concern TCO has is about those who churn out a large number of articles to get more DYKs. But is this really a problem? What is so wrong with those who pump out articles en masse? Are there really major quality issues here? I would say no. DYK policy is to not promote tagged articles, including those tagged as stubs, or for NPOV, orphan, copyediting, referencing, etc. Therefore, if it meets wikipedia's notability guidelines and passes the DYK criteria than those articles are going to be a positive addition to the encyclopedia, even if they are not of GA/FA quality. They will still provide more coverage than what was there before. Additionally, articles with room for improvement are often the best recruiters for new editors to the encyclopedia. How many of us made our first edits expanding or improving pre-existing articles? It is funny to me that TCO is complaining about editors who churn out articles en masse to get DYKs, since this is the exact effect DYK is hoping to achieve. In my opinion, we want DYK to produce editors that want to get DYKs over and over. We want editors to continue to churn out new articles. This was the whole point in creating DYK; to create editors who like to churn out new articles.
Ultimately, the conflict here seems to boil down to the issue of quality versus quantity. It is a fact that DYK has always emphasized quantity over quality and I do not feel we should apologize for this. It is not a coincidence that pretty much every editor that complains about DYK are those who participate in either GA/FA or both. These editors have become obsessed with improving wikipedia's quality, which is the point of the reward system at GA and FA. This is a good thing. We want editors to want to create quality articles. Yet, wikipedia also aims to create the widest coverage possible since our goal is to have a free encyclopedia which contains the sum of all human knowledge. Therefore, expansion (i.e. quantity) is also a goal of the encyclopedia. While GA/FA were created to stimulate quality, DYK was created to stimulate quantity.
The truth is that wikipedia needs both quality and quantity to achieve its purpose and maintain its relevance. With the total knowledge of humanity more than doubling every year according to some sources, there will always be a need to continue creating/expanding articles. The need for more article creation is never going to go away. Likewise the best quality article possible is the most desirable article to the reader, and therefore the need for quality will never go away. Therefore incentives for both quantity and qaulity are needed. DYK is the only award incentive on wikipedia for expansion other than wiki cup (which has only a relatively small number of participants). I despise wiki-cup since I think contests have no business being a part of wikipedia. On the flip side, we have two rewards for quality on wikipedia: GA and FA.
In conclusion, there should be room for programs that inspire article creation in addition to programs that inspire article quality. In an ideal situation, a program can do both. However, as a pragmatist I don't think it's possible to do both at the same time well. We could easily go to FA/GA and complain that their standards are too high and therefore not enough editors are interested in working on improving articles to FA/GA status. Yet, if FA/GA lowers it standards it would be bad for the encyclopedia. Likewise, raising the standards for inclusion too high at DYK would prevent it from doing what it is supposed to do: generate new articles.
I think a fair analysis of DYK is that it is an effective tool for encouraging expansion of wikipedia's coverage; a goal which is central to achieving wikipedia's primary purpose. As DYK is the only award given for new content, it is both a unique and vital program within the encyclopedia's community. While it does often produce articles of lesser quality, the vast majority of DYK articles are not bad articles, merely sufficient ones. One has to only look at any given DYK queue to see they are not articles in a horrible state, but are in general mostly mediocre articles with a few good articles mixed in. There are other award incentives on wikipedia, i.e. GA/FA, which do stimulate the raising of article quality to higher levels. Wikipedia, therefore does not need DYK to become another quality control program. It does, however, need DYK to continue doing what it does: encourage the creation of new content. 4meter4 ( talk) 06:42, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Is it just me who thinks that one of the current main page hooks doesn't make sense?
George Ponderevo ( talk) 17:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
I recently did major work on Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water. The prose word count before I did anything [4] was 237 words; after I merged in a section from another article as a content fork [5] it was 1,792 words. However, most of that text was replaced in my successive edits, until the article's current state [6] of 6,034 words. So, I'm not sure if this meets the "fivefold expansion" requirement. Does it? // ⌘macwhiz ( talk) 19:58, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The current image on the main page has an inadequate alt text, those in Q6 and Q3 are inadequate and that in Q4 is missing completely. I have added alt text or made the existing text descriptive (which is after all the whole purpose) to all three prep area images. Could someone please add descriptive alt text to the images in those three queues and could I ask that people reviewing nominations with images to check this and for those composing sets to check it again - alt text is the only thing that you can't see without viewing the source and therefore gets easily missed. Thanks, Mikenorton ( talk) 18:28, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
The current hook for Civil Harassment Restraining Order in the next prep (prep 4) is not entirely correct according to the source. California Penal Code (646.9) states that the 2 - 4 year imprisonment pertains to those who are first guilty of stalking the victim who has taken out the CHRO. Any suggestions to correct this, as I am having trouble getting it condensed to a manageable length, non-clumsy hook? Calmer Waters 04:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
I just re-read my hook there and decided the comma is not really necessary, but I can no longer remove it. It would be very nice if someone could do that for me. Thanks in advance. Marrante ( talk) 06:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Not sure about the re-write by Tony while it was at Prep 3 ( diff).
The problem is that the new text makes it sound as if Ptolemy, al-Battani and Hermes Trismegistus were the true authors. But they were not. The point the hook is (was) trying to make is that although the texts have names that associate them with these authors, those associations are generally held to be false.
So suggest a re-think on this change. Jheald ( talk) 17:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Please italicize the scientific name for Cephenemyia ulrichii currently at Template:Did you know/Queue#Queue 4.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:43, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
One thing that frustrates me in working on the T:DYK page is its massive structure, which makes it difficult to navigate and track changes. Has it ever been proposed to break the nominations into subpages per AfD, GAN, etc.? While this would slow the ability of editors to skim through multiple nominations, it would make it significantly easier to track individual threads, some of which have been pretty lengthy the past two weeks. It would also remove the burdensome step of notifying nominators/creators/reviewers every time their response is requested, as they could simply track the page for their nom. I find it very tiresome, too, to have to check my nominations on the page every day to make sure no one's added a comment without notifying me, since it's hard to search reliably enough through the history.
I don't know how feasible this plan would be, but I wanted to throw the idea out there and see if more experienced DYKers had any thoughts. Khazar ( talk) 17:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
Before voting, I would ask tech-minded editors to comment on feasibility. We usually have 200+ noms, every nom has a few ticks (dyknom templates are commented out), meaning ~600 transcluded templates on one page. I think this will crash due to WP:Template limits. We can ban ship templates and tick templates though. Materialscientist ( talk) 04:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
*mp}}
is to be banned, preferably by software, or crashes will be hard to debug. I'm not sure what happens if we just transclude 300 nomination templates (with zero templates in them). Maybe this would be enough for a crash (?).
Materialscientist (
talk)
04:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
*mp}}
with a simple * would make sense, since it's already present in the cleared prep queues anyway. I can poke around and see how close to the transclusion limits the page is already.
Template talk:Did you know/Full TOC transcludes the whole page already, so we can play around with a copy of that and drop some more transclusions in it to see what leeway we have.
28bytes (
talk)
04:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)rʨanaɢ ( talk) 04:29, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Here is a quick test of 300 transclusions from User:Materialscientist/Sandbox2. Seems Ok, but maybe I'm missing something. Feel free to experiment. Materialscientist ( talk) 05:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Preprocessor node count: 3003/1000000 Post-expand include size: 933300/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 0/500
I'm a bit too sleepy for deeper analysis at the moment, but my first impression is that a bot isn't necessary and may not even help much. IPs can create talk pages, and any subpage of Template talk:Did you know counts. I'm also curious about the transclusion limits and will play around with MatSci's sandbox sometime this weekend. Also, shifting to transclusion might affect DYKcheck, but as long as T:TDYK looks the same, the script shouldn't need major changes. Shubinator ( talk) 06:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
NewDYKnom}}
will still be usable on subpages, though.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
14:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)I fiddled around with MatSci's sandbox and came up with these numbers after adding more complexity:
Preprocessor node count: 3588/1000000 Post-expand include size: 1195554/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 535/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Looks good to me; we can also probably use {{*mp}} without worrying about the transclusion limits. Shubinator ( talk) 06:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
{{
NewDYKnom}}
(and the various instructions associated with it) for subpages once you guys have decided what the format of the submissions page is going to be. (In fact, as far as I can tell so far, it should be basically possible to use it exactly as is, just on a subpage rather than on T:TDYK itself.) Just let me know.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
16:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
I would invite people to post their own experiences with their own articles as a counterexample to generalizations about people making junk for DYK with no care for quality, demanding a ribbon for every little thing. The "ribbons" motivate me, but they don't motivate me to put garbagy stuff on the front page of Wikipedia. The regulars I know are proud of the work we do here.
I was just doing random occasional edits until I started DYK. I met kind, collegial people here, right from my first DYKs. I have had 11 articles get DYK (that's only 8 hooks, because some were multis) and I have 3 more articles waiting at T:DYK (2 hooks because one is a double) and I am working on another new article now. I specialize in things I made photos of and science news I think Wikipedia should explain. I have created in all 27 new articles, mostly unsuitable for DYK and not nominated for it. I've also expanded a lot of articles I came across. So Wikipedia got a lot of good work out of me in exchange for the DYK "ribbons" I enjoyed so much.
My biggest DYK hit was a 3-article hook this month with a red-eyed cicada head – among the 3 articles, that hook got 20,000 hits. The article Wikipedia needed most got a pitiful number of hits, a bio for Alan B. Slifka. Here are all my DYKs so far. I have contributed way less than most regulars here. Sharktopus talk 03:16, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Harumph. I'm almost getting convinced we should just leave it the way it is. I mean if it makes the people involved happy. And they are willing to run it. I actually don't even begrudge them the spot on the page. When FL came in, they just moved down the page. TCO ( talk) 05:06, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Who approved this hook: Talk:Polytrichum juniperinum? Please read WP:MEDRS, and this business of having nominators review hooks is not working. There is copyvio throughout DYK still, and an ongoing lack of accountability here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 10:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
There is still no accountability here, and worse, now we have ill-prepared nominators reviewing ill-prepared articles. The question was, who approved the hook that breached WP:MEDRS. DYK is set up in such a way that only insiders can answer that question-- please do, and educate the reviewer. I continue to hope that the number of DYK articles run on the main page will be dramatically reduced so that only experienced editors will be reviewing them. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with that person, but if "valuable contributors" are leaving the project over the ongoing DYK issues, DYK should fix itself. But we've been asking for that for years. SO, I did it myself; I gather that User:Kevmin approved the hook and User:OCNative moved it to prep. (What a messy system.) I see no indication at User talk:Kevmin alerting him that he helped Wikipedia run faulty medical information on the mainpage. I 'spose I'll have to alert him myself, as well? [8] And that doesn't even deal with the extensive close paraphrasing in the article-- something DYK has yet to address in almost a year. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:33, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Let's not shoot the messenger. Obviously WP:MEDRS is important. If we need to add some language to the reviewing guides to draw some attention to it, let's do it. 28bytes ( talk) 15:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Right now, this place seems very much oriented to the desires of DYK submitters and not enough to our readers. Feels like we want to make sure every single child gets a ribbon at the relay races.
As it is, readers coming to the main page already have 8 or so hooks in DYK. Plus an FP, an FA, an FL (Mondays). Plus OTD and ITN (each with a slew of hooks in them).
I don't see any good reader reason why they should have new DYK hooks every 6 hours, over and over and over.
If we went to less hooks, this would raise quality (how ever the decision is made...I don't care about perfection...if you HAVE to pick 25%, the selection will be "better"...it doesn't matter if one hook loses that should have won...what matters is the broad quality increase.) It would also allow a bit more review. (And I don't want to slam you all too hard...DYK does have SOME review (think Sandy expects too much for DYKs) and they are clearly better than the average stub or AFD or the like.)
I mean with 10 per day instead of 40 per day, you are still talking about 3650 hooks per year for a reader.
As it is now, I respectfully get the impression that we are favoring editors too much over readers and just having a churn factory.
P.s. And I say this being VERY touched on how kind people here were to help me with my first DYKs and allowing them Swahili rule and all. And please don't take it out on me when I come back with more hooks in the future. TCO ( talk) 22:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
Oppose this and similar ideas which amount to grabbing the DYK spot on the front page for a very different program run by and for a tiny elite group of editors who plan to call their own project DYK. The service DYK provides to readers is motivating people to create content. Lots of people from lots of backgrounds creating lots of different kinds of content--that is what DYK promotes now, what it was created to do, and what it does it remarkably well. Chopping down the number of people who can benefit to 1/4 the number we can benefit now is taking an ax to the root of DYK. Sharktopus talk 00:19, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Thus, I agree in principle with TCO's proposal for a 24-hour cycle, but I think it's too radical. A 12-hour cycle would be more reasonable. "Clogging" will result only if articles and hooks haven't been well-enough prepped. This longer cycle would bring four advantages:
(1) a less speed-obsessed process, with less stressful deadline pressure, particularly for the admins at the sharp end of the process who have to fill and verify so many slots;
(2) a better basis for making the hooks more generally "punchy" and "interesting" for our readers, as required by DYK rules—at the moment, some hooks are excellent in this respect, while others are a let-down (except you're not allowed to say this ... they'll bring out the old "that's your taste" argument);
(3) a greater emphasis on reviewing noms, and on nominator–reviewer and nominator–nominator collaboration to improve articles and hooks ("clogging" should be managed by rejecting more noms, in a more competitive process);
(4) greater prestige in having a DYK on the main page, and a higher reputation for DYK process in the community. Tony (talk) 06:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Malleus, DYK is constructed quite differently from the featured content sections on the main page, which emphasise quality over all else (within the rules), not newness in creation or expansion. DYK has been conceived as having a distinct function piggybacked on top of hooks that are "short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article". These hooks are a great idea for the main page, and so is the emphasis on newness and/or recent expansion. (There certainly is a continuous tsunami of these articles—too many to accommodate realistically in the review process, and too many to avoid eye-blinkingly quick turn-arounds.)
But just because an article is new or recently expanded doesn't mean quality and other standards can go out the window. To me, it's a matter of getting the balance right, so where Malleus might throw the baby out with the bathwater, I say improve the review process by slowing down the production line, raising expectations of quality in these showcased new/expanded articles, and be more selective. No one is suggesting GA or FA standards, but let's send a message to our keen editors (and visitors who can be recruited) that we'll work with them in a more orderly, organised way to shape their babies so their minimum quality is higher. I am, perish the thought, suggesting a move towards a more competitive environment for these babies.
We need to adjust the framework so engagement between reviewers and nominators (and nominators with each other) is more collegial. It is the essence of a wiki, and DYK should be taking the opportunity to be a competitive powerhouse for promising, interesting articles at the start of their lives. Tony (talk) 14:33, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
An honest question or two ignoring any of this oppose/support crap and without expressing my tastes - To those of you who don't know me I'll introduce myself as an editor who has contributed a decent amount (50+) of self-written articles to DYK and an editor who has tried to apply an above average level of diligence to their reviews of other DYK suggestions (others may disagree...).
I have, as things stand, lost any and all interest in contributing to DYK on the back of these half-arsed, semi-informed squabbles.
People claim to know what DYK is supposed to represent and proceed to divulge their views accordingly. People claim to know what readers of the main page want and proceed to divulge their views accordingly. It seems to me DYK has reached a cross-roads. We can carry straight on as the process stands. We can turn in one direction and apply a group of overlords who can on a whim decide what is worthy. We can turn in the other and expel the editors who come along saying nay to most of what is presented to them (that may be the same as continuing straight on to some). Or we can do what any sensible person would do when confronted with such a selection of courses and stop to thoroughly evaluate the options. A discussion here, whilst valuable in assessing the opinions of regular contributors, fails to address the key question - What, at this stage of Wikipedia's development, is the point of DYK? Is it to highlight the newest brilliant/mediocre/suggested work of established Wikipedia editors? Is it an incentive to bring new editors in to the project by offering them an opportunity at main page exposure? Is it an incentive to stop the creation of endless stubs by encouraging creation of longer (1500+ character) articles? Is it a chance to expose lesser known subjects/topics to a wider audience to educate or inspire further contributions to the Wiki? Is it merely a chance to accumulate credit for a run at adminship? Without this fundamental question being answered by the wider community I don't see how we can establish any policy going forward. Let's hope at least some of that made sense. - Basement12 (T. C) 00:52, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
1) encouraging the creation of new articles and the expansion of stubs 2) providing an early, low-level filter for those articles and expansions The more we seek to quota-fy or reduce the number of hooks going to the main page for fear the public will catch us in some bad prose or a dull hook, the more it interferes with the above goals by raising the bar for recognition of new content, discouraging editors from pursuing this process, and reducing the exposure (and thus chances for editing) of new content. We've all seen the process fail and the occasional truly bad hook get to the main page--an article with unreliable sources, copyvio, etc. But even this can be seen, in a way, as for the best: the momentary platform of the main page appearance allows these problems to be caught, rather than persisting for years in a low-exposure article. More importantly, though, I'd say for every "fail", 50-100 articles are minorly or majorly improved either pre-main-page appearance or because of their main page appearance, often by new or IP-address editors. The result is a significant net gain for our content. Personally, I say we shouldn't be afraid to let the public see the sausage being made--at least not at the expense of forwarding content growth. Khazar ( talk) 04:33, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
The unevenness of both hooks and articles is why editors have come here to discuss improvements. DYK is widely regarded as problematic, and it's a pity that regular editors who have justifiably taken on a sense of ownership through their tenure (we all do that, inevitably) have dismissed what others see as obvious measures to improve the system. This is the case even when such editors admit there are serious problems, such as Orlady has done. Still, they dismiss with a wave of the hand the input of others who have at heart only the quality of the main page and the effectiveness of the DYK process in achieving its stated aims. I've not yet seen a well-framed argument against change; bullying and personalising has been typically, which is a pity because it shoos away editors who would be critical in collaborative improvement.
I say again, six hours is a breathtakingly short period to allow a good hook and DYK article exposure on the main page. DYK's aims are better served by raising the standards, increasing the exposure time of the good ones, and reducing the break-neck churning speed.
In view of what Basement has said, and the views of others who want change, I'm surprised Khazar is putting him/herself down as an opposer. Tony (talk) 04:49, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
A gentler attempt at persuasion. Look, I totally HEART that this place can be good for the newbie article writer. I was very proud of my first DYK and felt that you all were genuinely KIND to me in applying the Swahili rule. Also, I remember Motennen being a young writer very proud of his DYK. That said...when we talk about people with 50 (see upthread), I don't buy so much the argument of be nice to newbies. If we really felt that this should be newbie friendly we would limit total number of DYKs a person could get (maybe 5 or so). Also, honestly, even as a new submitter, it was the personal touch of people notifying me of the reviews that meant more to me, than that I got the DYK. I would have been happy with having to "compete my baby" in order to gain a day of exposure instead of 6 hours. And don't be revengeful when this thing comes into the DYK queue: [9].
I don't think of trying to fix DYK cause it is some awful copyvio mess. I just want to up the quality of articles overall on wiki. that is our problem now. I certainly don't expect GA standards. But let's just compete the things and see what we get. We are still talking about 4000 DYKs per year (at 11 hooks per day). I just honestly see a way that DYK can help Wiki. And am concerned now that it is not so much for helping Wiki, for helping READERS, than a sort of self-justifying production line run amok.
And I love that Metallurgist cares about this thing he administers. And I love that all of you have found something to love. And I don't want to be a drag. But still...I don't have ANY sympathy of complaints about the pace here, given people just to operate it about 4 times faster than what makes sense. And I can go back for years and see these comments about "let's just work harder at review". It doesn't make sense. It's like that horse in Animal Farm, that said, I'll just work harder. No. We need a systemic change that allows more care. And I really don't even care that much for the copyvio issue. It's more that I care that our readers get something valuable. And that we have a gentle, but little bit stronger emphasis on quality, and much less emphasis on quantity. TCO ( talk) 18:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I think that three sets a day would be better than four. And, yes, I think it is not unreasonable to have a small proportion of otherwise eligible new articles rejected over "space" concerns, although I wouldn't want to see that happen to very many submissions. It does seem sometimes like the DYKs are all basically the same things, and this would tend to reduce the "ten articles about ____ in ten days" feel. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Support a drastic reduction in the number of DYKs run daily on the mainpage to hopefully allow for better review and a reduction in the extensive copyvio, plagiarism, and faulty sourcing issues routinely found at DYK. Experienced reviewers are needed at DYK, since the content (often faulty or plagiarized) goes on the mainpage. Having a DYK appear on the mainpage is assumed as a right, when it should be a priviledge that serves our readers. Since DYK has amply demonstrated over a long number of years that they are overworked, reducing the number of hooks run should allow experienced reviewers to choose those that warrant mainpage exposure over those that are quickly thrown together by adherents of the reward culture with plagiarism, copyvio, misrepresentation of sources, and non-reliable sources. And please, some of the hooks that are run are just downright embarrassing-- try to clean it up. What was the one the other day about some restaurant not charging more to serve minorities? Sheesh, please clean it up here. Reduce the number of DYKs daily, get experienced editors to review them, and remove the rule that nominators must review-- content that goes on the mainpage should be vetted by experienced editors, not whomever happens to show up seeking a reward. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)