Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines

Did you know?
Introduction and rules
Introduction	WP:DYK
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To ping the DYK admins	{{DYK admins}}

These are the supplementary rules (formerly called additional rules or unwritten rules) of Did You Know, that is, they are supplementary to Wikipedia:Did you know#DYK rules and Template talk:Did you know#Instructions for nominators. These rules provide detailed explanations for commonly asked questions regarding the basic rules. It is not necessary to be thoroughly familiar with every one of these rules, but if you have a question regarding interpretation of the basic rules, you will probably find the answer here.

These rules are meant (as said in G4 below) to describe consensus that has been reached among the DYK community through previous discussions of issues that have come up repeatedly.

Supplementary article length rules

• A1: 1500 characters means including spaces.
• A2: The prose portion of the article, which must be 1500 characters, excludes (in addition to categories listed in the rules) block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, the references section, Table of Contents, edit buttons and all superscript like [6] and [citation needed].
• A3: DYK qualifying characters: To count the number of characters in a piece of text, you will need to use a JavaScript extension like User:Dr pda/prosesize.js (instructions on the talk page), a free website like this, or an external software program that has a character-counting feature. Prosesize.js is the preferred counting method, and usually carries the most weight at DYK, because it counts only the prose as defined by Did You Know rules, thus avoiding mistakes and providing an impartial settlement of disputed counting. Note: The character counts indicated on "Revision history" pages are not accurate for DYK purposes as they include categories, infoboxes and similar text in articles, and comments and signatures in hooks on this page.
• A4: Fivefold expansion is calculated from the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was (copyvios are an exception), no matter whether you kept any of it and no matter if it were up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article. Twofold expansion for newly sourced BLPs similarly means from the version prior to the expansion and addition of sources.
• A5: If some of the text were copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate article.

Supplementary article link rules

• B1: The hook must link to a qualifying article. "Qualifying" refers to the many rules (including these supplementary guidelines) regulating the quality of that article.
• B2: Don't capitalize your article as it appears in the hook, just because that's how it appears in the article. Capitalize it only if the word would normally be capitalized, even if you weren't linking it.
• B3: Piping the article link is sometimes discouraged, but many hooks are better when the link is piped, and show on the Main Page that way. Disambiguated article titles like Gene Green (baseball) are always piped like this: '''[[Gene Green (baseball)|Gene Green]]'''.

Other supplementary rules for the hook

• C1: No redlinks in the hook.
• C2: Don't wrongly assume that everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about.
• C3: A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule. If your hook introduces more than one article, you can do a basic calculation by subtracting the number of characters in the bolded character string for each additional new article beyond the first. After having done that, if the hook length is still 200 characters or fewer, it is probably an acceptable length. If it is over 200 characters after the subtractions, it may still be considered eligible if the hook is reasonably compact and readable, but such hooks will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• C4: No space before the question mark.
• C5: No external links in the hook.
• C6: If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way.
• C7: If the hook uses a possessive apostrophe after the qualifying article, use {{`}} or {{`s}} to keep the bold text and the apostrophe distinct e.g. "... that John's house (etc)?" If the article is in italics (e.g. a ship's name), use the slightly different templates {{'}} or {{'s}} e.g. "... that HMS Hood's anchor (etc)?"
• C8: The three ellipsis points and the space before "that" do not count towards the hook length.

Other supplementary rules for the article

• D1: Items that have been on DYK before (pre-expansion, for example) are ineligible.
• D2: The article in general should use inline, cited sources. A rule of thumb is one inline citation per paragraph, excluding the intro, plot summaries, and paragraphs which summarize other cited content.
• D3: Sources should be properly labelled; that is, not under an "External links" header. References in the article must not be bare URLs (e.g., http://example.com or [1]), but can be automatically completed with the Reflinks tool.
• D4: Wikipedia, including Wikipedia in other languages, is not considered a reliable source.
• D5: Articles nominated for deletion will not be used unless they have survived the deletion process.
• D6: The article is likely to be rejected for unresolved edit-warring or the presence of dispute tags. (Removing the tags without consensus does not count.)
• D7: There is a reasonable expectation that an article—even a short one—that is to appear on the front page should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress. Therefore, articles which include unexpanded headers are likely to be rejected. Articles that fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected. For example, an article about a book that fails to summarize the book's contents, but contains only a bio of the author and some critics' views, is likely to be rejected as insufficiently comprehensive.
• D8: "Seven days old" means seven days old in article space. You may write your article on a user subpage and perfect it for months. The seven days start when you move it into article space. Such moves are often overlooked when enforcing the seven-day rule, so we may need a reminder. But if you merge the edit history when you move, we might not believe you moved it. For newly sourced BLPs, the seven days starts with the first edit adding new content or references.
• D9: "Seven days old" limit should be strictly enforced only if there is a large backlog of hooks. Otherwise nominated article may still be approved if it were created or expanded after the oldest date listed in Template talk:Did you know#Older nominations.
• D10: If your article contradicts an existing article, the contradiction should be resolved one way or the other before your article is approved. Do not expect DYK regulars to resolve the contradiction for you.
• D11: If there is a stub tag, it should normally be removed if the article is long enough for DYK.
• D12: Multiple sources are generally preferred, though more leeway may be given for more obscure topics. For newly sourced BLPs that have been expanded twofold, thorough sourcing of the article is expected.
• D13: To some extent, DYK approval is a subjective process. No amount of studying rules, almost-rules, and precedents will guarantee approval, nor will violating any rule guarantee disapproval. Just because an unfamiliar criterion is not listed does not mean a nomination cannot be disqualified. The subjective decision might depend on an attempt to circumvent the details of the rules, especially if the attempt does not address the underlying purpose of improving the hook and article.

"Rules" sometimes invoked but lacking a consensus

• E1: Does the first word always have to be "that"?
• E2: Can there be multiple sentences in a hook?
• E3: Is IMDb a reliable source? Previous discussion here.
• E4: Occasionally someone objects to linking an unfamiliar word to Wiktionary on the front page, but such objections have always been overruled.
• E5: Do the 11 characters in " (pictured)" or the 27 characters in " (specific object pictured)" (i.e. including an introductory space) count towards the 200 character limit?

Rules listed elsewhere but often overlooked

• F1: Space after the ellipsis.
• F2: The link to your article should be in bold type.
• F3: The first sentence should end with a question mark.
• F4: For a hook with an accompanying picture, the string (pictured) is all in italics, including the brackets.
• F5: WP:DASH.
• F6: MOS:NUM#Numbers as figures or words.
• F7: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
• F8: "a 'new' article is no more than seven days old. This does not include articles split from older articles", although an article sufficiently expanded from a section of an older article can be a fivefold expansion. The word "fork" is sometimes used to mean Wikipedia:Splitting.
• F9: The piped redirect guideline WP:R2D, as clarified by Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 4#Link here. This guideline and its applicability to the Main Page are controversial, but if you disagree, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Redirect so those who wrote the guideline can have their say.
• F10: WP:NOTADVERTISING

Other recurring issues

• G1: Authors often complain that requests for changes don't come until the time for responses is about to expire. However, most reviewers prefer to review the beginning of the list, because the oldest hooks are the first priority, and they can't keep up with the volume of submissions. That isn't the ideal situation, but it explains what happens. Similarly, authors wonder if their submissions are rejected or forgotten. But as the submission is still on the page, it will stay there until it is either approved and accepted, or until there is an for rejection, or until there are other negative comments, which should be promptly answered to preserve the hook's eligibility. Hooks for the updates are usually chosen from near the top, even though they are marked as "Older nominations". Some relevant statistics here.
• G2: To calculate fivefold expansion since a specific day, using July 18, 2008 for this example: (1) Count the characters in the prose-only portion of the current version. (2) On the history screen, click the latest time stamp before July 18, not the first time stamp for July 18. (3) Divide by the prose-only characters on that screen.

To explain Step 2, which might seem counter-intuitive, the difference between an edit's change, which you see by clicking "last" on the history page, and an edit's result, which you see by clicking the time stamp on the history page. Although an edit's change and result are listed on the same line, the change really comes between that result and the previous edit's result. Similarly, a result comes between that edit's change and the next edit's change, even though a change and a result are shown on the same line.

Example. On January 1, 2006 a 100 character stub is created. At 1:00 on July 18, 2008, the 100 characters are expanded to 1000 characters. An hour later at 2:00 July 18, 2008, the article is further expanded to 2000 characters. Putting it that way, the expansion is clearly 20× and qualifies for DYK. But to count the 100 characters, they wouldn't be listed as 1:00 July 18. The 100 characters existed on July 18 before 1:00, but the 100 characters were the result of the previous edit. So you would have to click the 2006 edit to count the 100 characters, even though 2006 is much too old for DYK. If you made the mistake of clicking the first edit for July 18, you would get the result of that first edit and therefore miss the change of that edit, and count 1000 characters, resulting in 2× expansion and an unjust disqualification.

• G3: So why don't the supplementary guidelines combine with the other rules? (1) They're combined with the other rules with a link. (2) There's no consensus on what to put into the integrated rules. See Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 29#5x expansion.
• G4: These supplementary guidelines are intended to describe the consensus, not to prescribe it.

Rules for evaluating other people's hooks and articles

• H1: You don't have to be an administrator or a DYK regular to comment on a hook, to use a symbol such as or , or even to edit Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1. However, the judgments of regulars are less likely to be challenged.
• H2: You're not allowed to approve your own hook or article, nor (in the case of an article that qualifies for recently become a GA) should an editor who either nominated or reviewed the GA be the DYK reviewer (though it's OK for these people to nominate for DYK). DYK novices are strongly discouraged from confirming articles that are subject to active arbitration remedies, as are editors active in those areas. Use common sense here, and avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. A valid DYK nomination will readily be confirmed by a neutral editor.
• H3: If the article is sourced entirely to offline or foreign-language sources in such a way that you cannot verify that the subject of the article actually exists or that contentious material is accurate, don't verify the article; instead, leave a note explaining your difficulty below the hook. This will alert other users to the fact that the article lacks basic verifiability and a discussion can then be had as to whether or not to promote it.
• H4: Where a hook has more than one new or expanded article in it, an article-for-article quid pro quo (QPQ) is required: one article reviewed for each bolded article in the hook. The consensus is that hook-for-hook reviewing is not acceptable in case of multiple nominations. As soon as a new nominator's hook includes articles beyond their fifth DYK credit, each of those require a separate QPQ review.

Rules of thumb for preparing updates

Users are encouraged to help out by preparing updates on the preparation areas. Promoting your own articles is generally discouraged, and promoting your own articles before they have been independently verified is not allowed.

Here are a few rules of thumb for preparing updates:

• J1: Currently the accepted standard length of an update is six hooks; this is not an absolute rule, but should be considered a minimum.
• J2: Make sure you choose a varied selection – don't choose half a dozen biography hooks, for example, or a bunch of hooks about one particular country or topic. Variety is the spice of life. (However, see the following clause for an important qualification).
• J3: Because of the preponderance of submissions on US topics and biography hooks, it is usually appropriate to have roughly 50% of hooks in a given update on both US and biography topics. That is, in an eight-hook update you should have roughly four hooks per update on US topics, and four on biography. These are not mutually exclusive, for example if you have two US bio hooks that would count as both two US hooks and two bio hooks. Note that "roughly 50%" means just that – this is not an absolute; you can have fewer of either if there are not many currently available such hooks to choose from on the Suggestions page. However, as a general rule you should never have more than 50% of hooks on US-related topics, biographical topics, or any other topic, except when it seems unavoidable.
• J4: Mix your hooks up. Try to avoid having two hooks of the same general type next to one another in the update (for example, two US hooks or two bio hooks together). Putting several US hooks next to one another in an update makes the update look US-centric; this appearance is reduced if you interleave the US hooks with hooks about different countries. In the same spirit, try to avoid putting two bio hooks together, or two hooks on any other subject.
• J5: Try to avoid putting inappropriate hooks next to one another. For example, don't put a sad hook next to a funny one; it looks incongruous and jerks the reader uncomfortably from one emotion to another.
• J6: Hooks on the Suggestions page that include images often get verified first. Users sometimes then just go and grab a bunch of the nearest verified hooks for the next update, which can often include several of these verified picture hooks. Not every submitted picture can be featured in the picture slot of course, but since only one picture can be featured per update, try to leave the good picture hooks behind for another update if possible.
• J7: Consider picking at least one funny or quirky hook if there is one available and putting it in the last (bottom) slot of the update. Just as serious news programs end on an upbeat note to bring viewers back next time, ending on an upbeat or quirky note rounds an update off nicely and encourages readers to come back next time for more.
• J8: Don't be afraid to ruthlessly trim hooks of extraneous information and clauses. A lot of people who submit hooks tend to overestimate the amount of information required, but the end result is a hook that has too much information and is difficult to process. We don't want our readers to work hard, we want to make reading the DYK section as accessible and enjoyable an experience as possible! In general, the shorter and punchier the hook, the more impact it has. As it says on the Suggestions page, the 200 character limit is an outside limit not a recommended length—the ideal length is probably no more than about 150–160 chars. However, some hooks cannot be reduced in length without losing essential information, so don't assume that every hook that is 200 characters long requires trimming.