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Template:DYKquestions

Politizer (talk · contribs) created the template, {{DYKquestions}}. It is used for notifying editors who nominated a DYK if a reviewer has left comments or questions that need to be resolved or looked over about a nomination. I'm sure the template would be useful, but I would first like opinions by more editors. I notice quite often that some nominations with comments aren't resolved, and eventually become stale so we can't use those nominations for updating Template:Did you know with any longer. Either people are ignoring those comments and just leaving the nominations there or they never check their nominations. Most users (like me) check their own nominations to see if there are comments they have to resolve in order for the nomination to be qualified for DYK, but how about those who are too busy to check their own nominations? With the template we can fix that by notifying them about it. Some more information can be found at User talk:RyanCross#DYK for Zebda. Thoughts would be appreciated. – RyanCross (talk) 02:01, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey everyone, I'm the user who made the template. I am still learning wiki syntax so there are still things that could be improved (for example, right now the template only links to the top of the section where the article was nominated, rather than linking directly to the nominated article's entry); let me know if there's anything you think is missing from the template or anything that could be done to improve it. Also, after creating the template I realized that its name is very similar to that of {{DYK?}}, which is used commonly, and could cause confusion; so if anyone has suggestions for a better name that would still be easy to remember and type but not likely to be confused with DYK?, please let me know! Thanks, —Politizer talk/contribs 02:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
This appears to duplicate User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem. Art LaPella (talk) 18:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I created and populated Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates to address template dupication issues. -- Suntag ☼ 20:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) You're right, Art LaPella...I also just noticed {{DYKusertalk}}, which How do you turn this on created. I hadn't noticed any of those two before I made this one. I don't know anything about whether or not those other templates are used frequently, but if they aren't used frequently then we could have all three of these template pages redirect to the same place. If one in particular is already used a lot, we could stick to that one.

On a side note, I like that template's name (DYKproblem) better than the name for my template, and I'm going to move mine to that name as well. —Politizer talk/contribs 22:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

I've updated but can anyone do the credits please? Thanks. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:59, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

It seems Victuallers is doing it. --BorgQueen (talk) 16:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

DYK has been updated by Victuallers, but can someone do the credits please? --BorgQueen (talk) 20:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep, will start now. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 20:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC) ~ Done, and ready to start filling with new hooks. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 20:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

I've updated but can someone do the credits please? Thank you! --BorgQueen (talk) 03:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Hook mysteriously dissappeared

I really haven't been hanging around DYK lately, but I am curious as to why my nom of Hubert Maga was rmoved. I submitted it for the 25th, and it met all the requirements. I've been waiting to see it on the main page, but for some reason it never appeared. I know this is discourages, but is it possible that this can be put on the main page? I've expanded it from 1kb to 17, and I'm still not done expanding. I've seen other hooks pass in which the 5 day rule only applies to when the expansion ended, not when it began. What do you think about adding it to the next update? ~one of many editorofthewikis (talk/contribs/editor review)~ 22:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like it was removed in this revision on November 3, a week after it was nominated; it seems no one verified it. —Politizer talk/contribs 22:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Random thought, EOTW: could you shorten your sig? It's long both on the actual screen and in the edit window (more than 41/2 lines!). Per WP:SIG, there is supposed to be a 255 character limit on signatures... Thanks. —Ed 17 (Il Viquipedista)— 22:37, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I thought it was a bit too long anyway. Re to Politizer: I thought that they all have to be verified, not simply removed. ~the editorofthewiki (talk/contribs/editor review)~ 23:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
EOTW, I'm not sure about the specific rules as I am not in charge of removing old entries, but my impression is that once entries go "stale" (over 5 days old and no action, whether verification or rejection, taken) they are usually deleted under the assumption that nothing is going to happen with them. It might have been incorrect of the editor to have removed your entry when there was a discussion beneath it (it looks like he just removed most of the Oct 26 section at once, so it may have been a mistake), but I don't know the formal rules. I think your best bet would be to send a message to one of the admins at DYK and ask if an exception can be made to get your hook listed. —Politizer talk/contribs 00:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure about those rules either. But note that all the hooks removed in that edit, including Hubert Maga, have negative comments that might be considered "rejection", with or without the symbol. Art LaPella (talk) 02:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Basically, what happened is that someone said the hook was not good enough and the author of the article did not supply an alternative. That's why it got deleted. You have to keep an eye on the Suggestions page to make sure you respond to any concerns raised or you risk missing out on the promotion. Gatoclass (talk) 02:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Twas me who Boldly deleted it... Gatoclass is right. I know it seems unfair that the admins who are trying to load the next set don't spend hours working out why and how they can possibly approve hooks with unresolved issues, but basically there is no time. Eventually someone has to go "enough is enough". I expect any hook that it still being watched to resurface... I try and make sure authors have 24 hours to repond to criticism. As it is, the owner didnt spot it had gone until the 6th. We havnt the space to keep this backlog of poor or orphan hooks which may be eventually have the issues resolved. If you feel that this should not happen then I agree. But don't moan... I think it would be a waste of effort.... why not instead spend your time trying to approve hooks? We do like loading good approved hooks and there is rarely enough. I guarentee that there are several duds or orphans at this moment that no one is looking at. Hope that helps. Victuallers (talk) 15:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
(Outdent) I think if a hook that qualifies for DYK is deleted without being on the Main Page and no one has commented on it, it is possible to wave the five day rule if someone request a review of the situation. However, if there is any comment to the subsequently delete hook that has went unresponded to, then it seems unlikely that the five day rule would be waved. -- Suntag ☼ 19:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Obviously I (or others) may delete articles that could be saved. I'm being bold here and making policy by deleting what I call orphan hooks because they just hang around. I woild support resuurecting a hook that had been deleted assuming that there was some argument as to why it had not been supported at the time (eg illness or a dispute template). Good point Suntag Victuallers (talk) 11:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
And thank you for deleting expired, orphan hooks. So long as the hooks are on the suggestion page, there is an obligation to keep going after them until they are green lighted. As the five days tick down, there is more urgency to help the nom get a workable DYK suggestion because no one want's to see someone's hard effort not go rewarded. We spend a lot of time discussing expired noms that may barely meet DYK requirements (see the current expired noms for example) and that time can be better spent on the hundred or so noms waiting for review. Some hooks no one wants to respond to and it is easier to just let time take care of the problem. I've got no problem with someone taking charge and deleting expired noms. -- Suntag ☼ 02:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Standard average range of amount of DYK hooks

I changed the min/max average range of DYK hooks, from 6-8 to 7-9. The pool of submissions on average seems to be getting larger and this range is usually okay anyways for Main Page balance. Actually I think 8-10 would be a good average range (or just 8 min always) but we can move towards that idea later on. Cirt (talk) 12:06, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Another potential response to an increase in the number of submissions would be to shorten the standard time between updates. I notice there are five days worth of expiring noms at present. the skomorokh 12:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer expanding the average number of hooks displayed, instead of shortening the time each set is on the Main Page. Cirt (talk) 12:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I never take any notice of 6-7 or even if it said 16-17. The amount loaded depends on the space available. Its not a coincidence that DYK (usually) neatly fills the gap between the featured article and the featured picture. Thats what we do. Victuallers (talk) 15:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I think that hook number is not a DYK rule but more of background for what DYK puts onto the main page. Victuallers point about filling the gap seems to be what drives the number of hooks selected for the main page. -- Suntag ☼ 19:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Just a general comment: If DYK wants to post more items, we could add another item on ITN. Just throwing that out there, SpencerT♦C 02:09, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
That might help clear the DYK backlog. -- Suntag ☼ 02:13, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
One point ... I think you need to negotiate about this. If I was active on Featured Picture then I wouldnt be happy about being even further off the top. The long term solution is to raise the bar. Go back to 2000 chars and restrict the length of hooks. Some seem to say very little in lots of words, parody follows... "the capital of France, this year, is Paris, a mostly French speaking large city that has won awards for being in France for a long time (south side of large tower pictured)?

Adminbot trial

Just a note that the admin bot is now approved for a 14 day trial however I won't be able to turn it back on until later tonight. I'll post here and leave a note on T:DYK/N when it's running again. I will also write instructions on how it all works, probably at Wikipedia:Did you know/Adminbot (shortcut WP:DYKADMINBOT). I just want to know if anyone has any questions about it or suggestions about changes to streamline its implementation, for example I will add some code to Template:DYK-Refresh to display what the next queue is. It will run from my account until it's fully approved. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 05:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes I think there are still some unresolved issues which I already mentioned, but since they didn't get much response at the approvals page, I'm moving the discussion here. Gatoclass (talk) 06:23, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Admin bot discussion

I added some comments at the bot approval page but they didn't get much discussion so I'm crossposting the discussion here in hopes it can generate more debate:

Comment: I do think we need to think a little more about how to implement this though. For example, all those extra queued pages are not going to be much use for preparing updates ahead of time because there is nowhere to include the credits. I'm now thinking maybe we should just duplicate the "next update" page completely on each queue page and then just get the bot to select the hook section from the page. IMO things would be a lot more straightforward that way. Gatoclass (talk) 09:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

My biggest fear there is that someone will change the formatting of the page for whatever reason, and if they don't know what they're doing it will cause problems (we get this now with the various helper bots that malfunction every time someone changes instructions to not a subst a template or alters the formatting of a page like WP:CHU). The only alternative for credits is that we have a list on the main Next update page for each queue, but I think you are right that it would be better to maintain consistent formatting across the DYK pages. Also, the update would still have to be prepared on the unprotected Next update, it isn't fair to the non-admins who help with the next update occasionally otherwise. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 05:54, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
(New comment) I don't think making it dependent on the next update page is viable. The next update page is essentially the "draft page" on which the new updates are created. If you make the bot dependent on its likeness with the next update page, it means users won't actually be able to use the next update page to create a new update after they've moved the current one to the bot queue. Users also tend to be tweaking the next update page all the time. So I think you should forget about that function. Gatoclass (talk) 06:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, that isn't quite what I meant. It now supports extra formatting on the page, only taking what appears between the <!--Hooks--> and <!--HooksEnd--> tags, previously it copied the entire contents of the page so it had to be bare with no extra formatting. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 06:31, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not following you there. My earlier point is that I think users should just be able to copy the entire next update page to a page in the bot queue, and that the bot should then just be able to lift the hook section out of that page and copy it to the mainpage. If that's what you are describing, I don't think I have any further concerns. Gatoclass (talk) 06:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes that's what I'm describing, even if it is in a language only I understand :p ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 07:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Good, thanks for the clarification :) Gatoclass (talk) 12:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Has someone thought about training? Its frequently what messes up improvements. How many is the minimum number of admins for continued operation? .... because that is the the number of people we need trained before we could go live even if the work load is lighter. Oh and can I suggest we model it for a week wthen Gatoclass and BorgQueen are both on holiday... cos in those weeks others have to bear the strain of their generous contributions. Victuallers (talk) 11:07, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, there is something I'm still not clear about, which is, how does the bot know which queue page to use? I mean, if I use the Queue1 page, can I clear that page and just copy a new update to that page, or do I have to go on to the next Queue page, or what? Gatoclass (talk) 12:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
User:DYKadminBot/count – which it updates itself. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 12:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Couldn't the queue'd pages be named to provide more information. FA uses Wikipedia:Today's featured article/2008 to keep track of its pages. For example, Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 7, 2008 was for November 7, 2008. Couldn't DYK use Wikipedia:Today's DYK articles/November 7, 2008/0000, Wikipedia:Today's DYK articles/November 7, 2008/0600, Wikipedia:Today's DYK articles/November 7, 2008/1200, and Wikipedia:Today's DYK articles/November 7, 2008/1800. This way, the Main Page could be modified with something {{Wikipedia:Today's DYK articles/December 19, 2024/{{time}}}} where {{time}} is restricted to displaying only 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800. As for the credits, those can be backlogged onto a separate page and made once the article appears on the Main Page. -- Suntag ☼ 02:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Adminbot enabled

It is now switched on and ready to use. Instructions are at WP:DYKADMINBOT. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 15:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Verify symbol for images

The DYK image noms require a review separate from the DYK hook. It would help to have a symbol to confirm free use of the image so that the DYK selecting admin can quickly see which images have been verified. Perhaps some sort of photograph in a small round frame would help distinguish the image reivew from the hook check mark symbol. Please add the new symbol to Template talk:Did you know#Symbols. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 19:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I like adding a comment along with the regular DYK check. I don't think it's a big deal if it isn't checked – it's very easy to click on an image to see if it's on Commons (which is 90% of the time). Royalbroil 13:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I've been adding a comment as well. DYK is such a labor intensive process, that I thought it would be quicker for the next update fillers to visually see a symbol approving an image rather than scanning for comments. If there is a need, there are images at Category:Vote symbols. Personally, I like . -- Suntag ☼ 17:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

DYK templates and other DYK Categories

I just created and populated Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates. If you have the time, go through each template and see whether the DYK project still needs them. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 21:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Suntag. Does anyone but me regularly use User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem? If so I'll move it into template space. Also my other user-space template, User:Olaf Davis/DYKTemplate, was basically an experiment with a proposal which never got taken up – but is there anyone out there using it? Olaf Davis | Talk 22:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I use Olaf's DYKproblem, but if the consensus is to change the template then that is fine with me. Art LaPella (talk) 02:19, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Hey Olaf, I just recently made {{DYKproblem}} which is very similar to yours...I hadn't noticed your template until Art LaPella pointed it out to me. (There is also {{DYKusertalk}}, by How do you turn this on.) I think it's definitely good to have a template like this, and personally I use mine all the time (again, only because I hadn't noticed you had already made one)...if you want, you can check it out and see if it would be beneficial to merge them or have one redirect to the other or something like that. —Politizer talk/contribs 22:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
That is pretty similar – even down to the name! Yours does basically everything mine does and has some added features in the parameter usage, so there's probably nothing worth merging. I guess mine could be redirected or deleted. Olaf Davis | Talk 23:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
The name was different before...I just saw your name and liked it better! As for redirecting/deleting, I guess it would be better to redirect yours, so that anyone who is using it doesn't try sometime and think "wtf" when it doesn't work. But I don't want to step on your toes.—Politizer talk/contribs 23:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

DYK notify bot

In view of the new Template:DYKproblem, User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem, and the Adminbot, I was thinking that we would benefit from a DYK notification bot. Since we substitute , , and on the suggestion page when making comments, we can include a timestamp in the substitution and add a |user= parameter. If the |user= parameter is filled out, the DYK notify bot will grab User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem or Template:DYKproblem and post it on the user's talk page. The timestamp can be used by the bot to keep track of which comments it responded to. If we want to get fancy, we could add an |article= parameter that would be used by the bot to identify the troubled DYK suggestion. We also could code the substitution of and to let the editor know that the article is ready for DYK. -- Suntag ☼ 01:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey, that is some idea. A lot of hooks with problems or questions go unanswered till the last moment, so it would be great if we can have something like this. We can use it if there's any problem with the hook. I don't think it'd be much use telling people that their hooks are OK though :) Chamal talk 02:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
If we created a DYK nomination template with parameters such as |nominate=, |created=, and |expanded=, then the bot could use those parameters to determine where to deliver the message. This would save those reviewing the DYK noms a step or two. -- Suntag ☼ 03:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Except that those who require messages such as User:Art LaPella/No qualifying article (for instance) don't even know they need a new article, so how would they know about the nomination template, if it's buried in the same rules they haven't read? Art LaPella (talk) 03:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I think the user who is reviewing the hook is supposed to place the template, not the nominator. This shouldn't be a problem, since all of us are more or less familiar with the rules. Only thing is, it might require some extra work on our part. This might have an effect on the backlog though. The extra work might reduce the number of hooks that people review. Chamal talk 04:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
This is something I thought about only much better (my idea was to have the bot find the template and then work out where the hook was which would have been prone to errors). What we really need is a more stable format for hooks. For example a template like {{dykhook|... that ''[[this]]''' is just an example?|authorsname|nomsname|articlename}} to make it more bot readable, then if the template is subst'd it can insert the other templates into the code inside HTML comments, for example <!--{{DYK?|user=authorsname|article=articlename}} {{DYKno|user=authorsname|article=articlename}}-->. So it is something I would like to do but not until the adminbot is fully approved, as after that I was planning on starting a topic about what people would like to see a bot doing. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 04:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Trying to make nominators use a template would confuse them, but if we succeeded it would be much easier to automate some basic proofreading such as the parts of User:Art LaPella/Proposed Main Page proofreading bot that are relevant to Did You Know. Art LaPella (talk) 00:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

error in dyk timing clock

The credits need doing now and it needs loading and putting on the front page. Despite what the template says. Can you help? Victuallers (talk) 00:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I can start doing the credits that are on Next Update. —Politizer talk/contribs 01:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Did you know/Next next update

Are we using Template:Did you know/Next next update? Right now, the Template:Did you know/Next update page is completed and I think it would help to create a backlog of Next updates so we don't have to scramble around. -- Suntag ☼ 14:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I didn't even know that page existed, but there is nothing to stop you using it, or using the next unused bot page in the queue if you like. I suggest that you just copy the next update/clear page onto whatever page you use first as your starting point.
I used to create next next update pages in my sandbox, you can do it anywhere really. Gatoclass (talk) 15:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
  • The Queue system sounds like a better approach. Template:Did you know/Next next update seems like it could be CDSG6 deleted. So if I understand how things now are to work, once Template:Did you know/Next update is completed by admins and non admins, that material is moved by an admin to the next Queue at Template:Did you know/Queue. That will free up the Template:Did you know/Next update to be filled. And once filled, that can be moved to the next next queue. In this way, we can have five Queues of DYKs ready in advance for the bot to pick up. Correct? -- Suntag ☼ 15:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, we are still refining the system (see the discussion on Ameliorate's talk page). I'm currently leaning toward deleting the next update page altogether and just having the bot pages, so long as we can find a way to notify users which bot page is the current one. Gatoclass (talk) 15:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I read somewhere that the bot uses a counter to keep track of which page it's on in the queue, so could we just prominently translude that counter onto some page where users can see it (such as T:TDYK)? (sorry in advance if this suggestion is mind-numbingly stupid...I haven't been paying super-close attention to the bot discussions, so I may have missed something obvious.) —Politizer talk/contribs 15:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
(In answer to my own statement, see Wikipedia:Did you know/Adminbot). Perhaps move Template:Did you know/Next update to Template:Did you know/Queue/1 or Template:Did you know/Queue to preserve the history. If non admin help is desired in filling the Queues, then you may need to have the bot implement a rolling protection/unprotection scheme were the queue from which the next update will be produced is protected and perhaps the other completed queues are protected as well. A note at the top of the queue page such as Please add suggestions from Template talk:Did you know to queue 5 (or whatever number would fit best). -- Suntag ☼ 18:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Are the queue pages protected? I didn't realize that. Maybe instead of protecting the pages, the bot could just check whether or not a user is an admin, and revert any non-admin edit that attempts to activate the bot? Gatoclass (talk) 04:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't really want to do that as it could be open to abuse. Perhaps it would be better to unprotect the queues and then prepare the update on there, once it is ready to go an admin adds {{DYKbotdo}} and fully protects it? The bot could be changed to check if the page is fully protected before it updates as well. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 04:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, that sounds like it would work. I think that will probably be the most straightforward way to go ahead. Gatoclass (talk) 05:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
The alternative being that we just make it part of the routine to clear the next update page as soon as the update has been copied to a bot page (which is what I've just done for the current update). I'm thinking that maybe we should try this first. It's closer to what we are currently doing now and it would leave a central page that everyone knows is the "scratch" page. It might be worth at least trying it that way first, what do you think? Gatoclass (talk) 05:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea, if it doesn't work we'll try just unprotecting and reprotecting the queues. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 06:19, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've added the additional step to the Wikipedia:Did you know/Adminbot page. Gatoclass (talk) 06:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdenting) I think that's going to work, although we might eventually need to add some extra info to the next update page etc. to ensure that everyone knows what the procedure is.

Now, how do you feel about adding a function to auto-update the archive page? :p Gatoclass (talk) 06:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Next on my to-do list. It will be done by a different bot though, with no admin powers. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 07:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, you can't add it to the same bot? That's a shame, IMO it would be more straightforward that way.
It also occurs to me we need some way to navigate easily from one bot page to another. A little navbox of some sort perhaps? Gatoclass (talk) 07:32, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I'll create a navbox in a moment. And current community consensus is that adminbot's powers should be segregated where practical and it wouldn't be too difficult to make a different bot archive the hooks before DYKadminBot updates. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 08:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
As long as they can co-ordinate with one another, that'll be fine. I just thought it would be easier to tag a function like that onto the existing bot, but you're the coder :) Gatoclass (talk) 10:50, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

I've updated but can someone do the credits, please? Thanks. --BorgQueen (talk) 02:34, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everyone!

Just a word of thanks to everyone who pitched in to help clear the backlog. Those four hour turnarounds really did the job! Gatoclass (talk) 02:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thank you for suggesting it. Royalbroil 05:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Radical suggestion

It was suggested above that new GAs be included in DYK. The main objection seemed to be that this would swamp the DYK nomination list. To solve this problem, I suggest we scrap the current "new articles/recently expanded articles" criteria for "new articles/recently GA-promoted articles". The 5-fold expansion criterion is a ridiculous emphasis on bulk over quality, that goes against the basic principles of Wikipedia, and leads to endless quibbles over counting methods. Asking instead that the article be recently promoted to GA will be a wonderful incentive for editors to – not simply expand articles – but improve them. Lampman (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, very good idea...but there are not enough new GA's to accomplish this! —Ed 17 (Il Viquipedista)— 17:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Let me clarify: new GAs would only be featured in addition to newly created articles – the vast majority of DYKs. Lampman (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I very much prefer to keep DYK for new and newly expanded articles. I would strongly suggest that if something like this were ever implemented, that thought be given to whether or not an article can be in the DYK section twice or not. If an article were in DYK when new, and then made GA, could it be in DYK again? I would say no, but this would need to be clearly in the rules if a change like this were made. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 17:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we follow D1 of the unwritten rules: "No items that have already appeared on the Main Page[...]" Lampman (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with this proposal, I think this might discourage editors. Most of my work at DYK has been in articles expanded from stubs or poor-quality start-class articles, and I don't think the articles I've expanded are low-quality just because I didn't nominate them for GA; a lot of people take a stub or very bad article and improve it up to something moderately useful and well-written but still too short or superficial to be GA. If anything, the best way to respond to your concerns would be to change the strict "5-fold expansion" guideline to a guideline more focused on expansion and improvement of content (rather than bigger length or character count). Even that, though, is probably not necessary, as people working at DYK should exercise good judgment in verifying submissions (in other words, if an article has been expanded five-fold but still has major problems with sourcing, point of view, writing style, etc., or is just plain bad, it's easy enough for an editor to mark it with something like This article's hook is unsourced or too long or there are other content issues and leave a comment saying it meets the length requirement but has other insurmountable problems).
Also, the whole idea of including GA-promoted articles would ruin what I understand to be one of the main purposes of DYK (and correct me if I'm wrong on this), which is to feature content that most readers have probably not seen before on Wikipedia. The GA review process often takes a week or two, or longer (I'm sure it varies by reviewer, but in all GA reviews I have been involved with, from either side of the table, it's taken one to two weeks), the article often sits at GAN for several weeks before being reviewed (again, this might vary by topic), and there's no telling how long and how gradual the article expansion was before the article was submitted to GAN. So if you featured new GAs on the front page, you'd be featuring content that has probably been on Wikipedia for one or more months. Sure, if the article is somewhat obscure (as many GAs are) then it probably has only been seen by a small proportion of readers, but it's still not "new" in the sense that DYKs under the current criteria are. —Politizer talk/contribs 17:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The specific issue of "a guideline more focused on expansion and improvement of content (rather than bigger length or character count)" is a perennial, oft-rejected suggestion, whose usual response resembles this quote from "Unwritten" Rule A3: "... we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article." Art LaPella (talk) 18:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I see...thanks for the clarification. What I was mainly trying to get at was just that it seems like most "endless quibbles over counting methods," which Lampman cited as one of the main arguments in favor of allowing GAs instead of recent expansions, could probably be avoided by using some common sense and not worrying about adhering exactly to the 5x limit (i.e., an article that was only expanded 4.5x but has some really nice stuff could maybe be accepted, and an article expanded 10x but full of junk would probably be rejected). That's probably more feasible than a new guideline. Anyway, I just think that disagreements over how to measure expansion shouldn't be enough to get rid of all recently expanded articles from DYK. Regardless of whether or not we want to have GAs in DYK, I think there's also a lot of good content in recently expanded non-GAs and they shouldn't be gotten rid of in favor of GAs. —Politizer talk/contribs 18:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The quibbles are not the main concern, the main issue here is quality over quantity, a central goal for Wikipedia since around 2006. As for A3 above, my suggestion would solve that problem, by shifting the vetting process over to GAN. Lampman (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you that we should be going for quality. But there are a lot of quality expansions that don't meet GA criteria; that doesn't mean they're bad articles, it just means that they're not the GA kind of article—especially if they were expanded from near-nothing (take, for example, Zebda, which was recently expanded from about 800b to about 4800b; it's not comprehensive enough for GA, but the information that is there is still good information and relatively interesting). Just because an article hasn't been nominated for GA doesn't mean it's bad.
Also, if we excluded "recent expansions" from DYK and only allowed GA-promoted expansions, might that cause GAN to get flooded with articles that people want featured on DYK—and possibly are not very good articles and wouldn't have been nominated if it weren't for DYK? We might just be moving our backlog over to GAN, rather than actually eliminating the backlog. —Politizer talk/contribs 18:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't want to discourage the expansion of articles, quite the opposite. But the GA criteria aren't all that scary; it's basically just about covering the main issues, sourcing throughout and using reasonably good language. This should be the goal also when an article is expanded for DYK. The purpose of DYK is "thanking the editors who create new content and to encourage other editors to contribute to and improve that article and the encyclopedia." It is true that the GAN process will slow this down a bit, but the exposure the article gets during a couple of weeks of GAN is negligible compared to what it gets when it's featured on the Main Page. Lampman (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I do not like the idea of adding GAs. Leave DYK alone as it is.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 18:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Change is scary, but this is change we can believe in! Lampman (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I also don't like the thought of mixing GAs with DYKs, but I do think, now we have succesfully got minimum referencing accepted, there could be a bit more emphasis on quality of prose for example. You very rarely see a reviewer saying "criteria ok, but lots of prose mistakes" or similar, when this, or "needs basic prose copyedit" could & maybe should be said of quite a few, mainly by non-native speakers. At least at typical DYK length this doesn't take too long & a number of people, sometimes including me, do it anyway, but it could be made more systematic. Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
As noted above, this would add too great a workload on an already struggling DYK project. The good news is that there's a project that's happy to take on this job, and it's called Good article nominations. Lampman (talk) 19:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying reviewers should have to "approve" the prose, but that more articles should be put on hold or rejected when it is noticeably deficient. Lampman, haven't you noticed that (as usual) no one is interested in having GAs on DYK? Johnbod (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

So everyone who has already got an article to GA status is just going to lie down while new GAs are featured and there articles never will be? And we're removing a motivation factor of encouraging people to expand previously existing articles. Terrible idea. Possibly one of the worst I have ever seen suggested. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 00:57, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Truly one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen. Is this a problem with regular DYKs? Also we would be adding a motivation factor of encouraging people to improve previously existing articles. I thought that was what it was all about. Lampman (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree, and consensus clearly is opposed to this idea. --BorgQueen (talk) 02:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I would call it a consensus in a true WP sense, since the arguments range from Bedford's WP:IDONTLIKEIT to Ameliorate, who doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the word "new". But I see that there's a majority vote against it, and I'll just leave it at that. Lampman (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
What exactly do you mean that I don't understand the meaning of "new"? My argument is, if we allow 'new' GAs will everyone who has previously had an article promoted to GA status be okay with new GAs featuring on the main page even though there is no chance that there GA ever will be? The answer is, of course, no. DYK is about encouraging people to spend an hour or two to expand or write a new article. Removing the 5x expansion criteria is the worst idea ever presented here, the criteria exists so people will still spend a little while working on an article that has already been created, rather than having people essentially punished because someone got to creating an article before them. As it stands right now the 5x expansion criteria is responsible for numerous articles being expanded from stubs or redirects, without it, people will check an article find it exists and go and write something else. I know that I won't spend the amount of time required to write a GA on any random subject, but I'll still spend a few hours expanding an article like Cerberus or Snuppy. Regardless this proposal falls victim to the perennial "lets allow new GAs" suggestion, but with the added twist of eliminating another criteria, we could accept new GAs without it adding too much pressure the problem is that it would be punishing people for having their GA promoted before the idea was implemented which previous GA authors are not going to accept, and the problem with allowing GAs in general is it will create a backlog of 5000 articles. In short, there is no possible way that GAs can be added to DYK, the main page redesign will have to account for GAs getting exposure on the main page. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 14:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I still don’t understand this argument. New content is the very essence of DYK, that is the reason why it’s there. Where does this apocalyptic vision come from, where thousands of GA-editors from the past descend on DYK to protest a perfectly reasonable requirement? It sounds like clairvoyance, but it has no background in reality. Is anyone today complaining that DYK only highlights recently created content, not content created years ago?
Anyway, I’m not hell-bent on killing the 5x expansion-rule, I just thought it was a good way to accommodate GAs on the Main Page, keep the DYK-project manageable and promote the “quality over quantity”-principle all at the same time. But if there’s such strong feelings against it, then forget about it. My main issue was trying to get GAs on the Main Page, and Geometry guy has made a different suggestion about this below. Lampman (talk) 02:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Ameliorate expressed this all before I was able to jump in, but I just wanted to agree that the 5x expansion guideline is a good motivator for people to expand many articles, including articles on areas that the editor doesn't know much about but can easily find basic information online or at the library; expanding an article to GA is a much bigger commitment and requires a large amount of time and (I assume) some more expertise or at least familiarity with the subject. Requiring articles to be expanded to GA-class before adding them wouldn't motivate people to write better articles, it would deter them from writing most of those articles at all. —Politizer talk/contribs 14:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Further on BorgQueen's post, I don't think that DYK can unilaterally change the scope of what it puts on the Main Page. To add GAs, As, and FAs that don't make it to the FA Main Page space to the DYK Main Page space, I think it would require a widely participated discussion. Talk:Main Page is a place to launch a request to add GAs to the Main Page. -- Suntag ☼ 19:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I am interested in the idea of a possible link-up between GA and DYK, but from a different angle. DYK currently presents to readers (and hence provides recognition for) articles in an early stage of development, while TFA showcases (and hence provides recognition for) our very best work. There is nothing for articles between these extremes. This is particularly an issue for short articles, which face a challenge to become FAs, and a further challenge to become TFAs. There has been much discussion about this at WT:FAC (check the archives), which was how I became interested. I am very open minded about how to do this, but using DYK is one possible route. I quite like the fact that DYKs can be unusual or quirky, and think that there are plenty of short GAs that fit such a model.

I would only want to see one or two GAs presented on the main page at the time, but I think it would be clearer to readers if they were presented separately (e.g. at the bottom of DYK after a sentence like "And here are some facts from a couple of less recent articles"). To compensate, perhaps the blurb for (say) the two articles could be three lines instead of two, and the updates could be less frequent (twice a day? I'm not very familiar with DYK processes). I don't think it is helpful to focus on recently promoted GAs: that could be damaging to the GA process and to the encyclopedia. We need to encourage good work by editors who love contributing content without creating new battlegrounds.

Other criteria than recentness are better in this respect: I have suggested shortness as one. Another is novelty: has something similar been featured before, or recently? DYK has an important role in countering systemic bias, by encouraging work on atypical articles rather than the typical ones. The point of view I have on GAs is that although they contain a large number of typical articles, they also are a good place to look for atypical ones of reasonable quality. As far as the main page is concerned, this is an unexploited resource. Can we find some way to exploit it? Geometry guy 19:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Requests to expand the Main Page to include GA articles should be made at Talk:Main Page. -- Suntag ☼ 20:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Which you already did. Never mind. -- Suntag ☼ 20:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Sandy's recent post about the importance of verifiability reminded me of a couple of issues that were on my mind, but I forgot to include in my comments. GAs (especially recent ones) have typically only been checked by one independent editor. Hence they need to be checked again before appearing on the main page. This is why I think DYK could play a useful role: a check for verifiability and a copyedit for prose quality would be extremely helpful for almost all GAs. It is with this proviso that I think it is unhelpful to focus only on recent GAs: recent GAs may not have received adequate scrutiny, and older GAs may have deteriorated (just as FAs can); they cannot be presented to readers without checks. Geometry guy 21:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I wish I had a nickel for every time I've read (at FAC, no less!!) a statement from a nominator along the lines of, "well, I'm not really sure what makes a source reliable". We need to get on this, earlier, throughout all processes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Do any of the proposed mainpage designs include new showcase space? I could imagine a section which including two or three blurbs (between DYK and TFA length) from a FL, FPo, or FS – and this might include GAs. Gimmetrow 22:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
If GAs were to be featured as part of DYK, then I believe these would have to be only new ones – as I’ve tried to explain above – because the creation of new content is the very essence of DYK. If, however, they were relegated to a separate section, then they could be picked from past ones, like TFAs are today. Also like TFAs, there could then be a selection process based on certain criteria, like Geometry guy mentions above. As for using DYK to check the quality of older GAs, I think this would be an unreasonable burden on an already struggling project. The sweeps project is already working on this, though admittedly they’re facing a sisyphean task. None of the five main page redesign-finalists have a GA section. It could be brought up, though it might be a bit late to suggest a radical redesign now. Lampman (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong support for adding GAs into the DYK space. Two GAs at a time seems sensible, and populating the rest with new articles as at present. There's obviously a need to demarcate the two (perhaps by putting from wikipedia's newest articles in between them). I'm ambivalent as to how these could be selected – newly promoted or a similar system the FAs are both good suggestions. If anyone is concerned that this would reduce the number of new articles featured, they should consider tightening the current requirements, which mean almost every new article that avoids being deleted can be featured in DYK. Modest Genius talk 23:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

About the whole idea of recognition for GAs...I don't remember exactly where this discussion happened, but I seem to remember a consensus being made not to give GAs external recognition because it could confuse readers. Specifically, people were talking about the little stars that FAs get on the top of the article, and the fact that GAs don't get that and only get a template at the top of the talk page (which casual readers don't see). Again, I don't remember all the details, but I remember people decided that GA should remain an internal classification, not something Wikipedia presents to the outside world, partly because of the fact that if there are 2,615,205 WP articles and only 5,386 designated as "good" (these numbers from WP:GA) then what does that say to casual readers about the quality of our work? Or, in other words, if a reader comes across an article and is like, "Ah, they say this is a good article," then what will that reader think about the rest of the articles he comes across?
I'm just saying, should we be seeking front-page recognition for GAs at all? And if we do seek that, is DYK the way to do it? The answer to the first question might be no (I will try to find a link to the actual discussion); and there is a clear consensus here that the answer to the second question is no, especially when it comes to this particular incarnation of it (ie, the proposal above that a GA requirement kick out the newly expanded article guideline). —Politizer talk/contribs 23:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
There was a big GA-symbol discussion last spring. Lampman (talk) 02:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
The recent Main Page survey indicated, admittedly with a small sample size, that many editors felt that DYK was currently the poorest content section on the Main Page. The idea of including GAs in the DYK section received broad support, from even more people than wanted DYK to remain as-is, despite only appearing after the survey had been live for some time. The relevant discussion is at Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Survey#Including or expanding Did You Know? Modest Genius talk 15:35, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for linking to a discussion in which a whole three people agreed DYK is the least useful but are completely ignorant as to DYKs purpose; DYK is to encourage people to create new content, look at the suggestions page and see how many articles DYK is responsible for. Also, five people agreed that it is good how it is and five think that GAs should be included but didn't offer any ideas as to how we deal with a) an instant 5000 page backlog or b) 5000 articles automatically disqualified because they were promoted before a certain date. That is why straw polls are a terrible waste of space and are not binding to anything we do. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
The discussion makes the exact same point that has been made here: there should be more of a focus on quality over quantity, and including GAs would be a good way to achieve this. The idea of argument made from ignorance is entirely in your head; I saw little evidence of this. There seems to be a tendency among some contributors here to be very protective of their own turf, to value the exposure of their own work over the improvement of the encyclopaedia, and to not even bother listening to how the project is seen from the outside. Lampman (talk) 04:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Lampman, I'm sorry but I don't think you're getting anywhere like this. All you say is that "there should be quality over quantity" and this could be done by adding GAs to DYK. How about giving some points about why this is essential and why DYK should be the place to get GAs recognised? Ameliorate and Politizer have made very valid arguments, but you (or anyone else) have not answered them properly but keep more or less repeating the above statement. I don't think this is going to convince anyone.
My opinion is that exposure of new articles and expansions shouldn't be sacrificed for GAs. My only problem is that GAs will be "replacing" these. Other than that, I have no problem with GAs getting recognition. A lot of new editors contribute to DYK, and it's a good chance for them to get some recognition within the Wikipedia community. I mean, everyone can't build GAs can they? It provides these new contributors with some "glory" on a small scale and encourages them to contribute more to Wikipedia. I think it kind of helps to keep them interested. Featuring GAs on the main page will have pretty much the same effect (but mostly on established & experienced editors, since they are the ones who are mostly involved with GA). So obviously it's good if we can do it. But why in the world do we have to kick out that first category to accommodate them? As I mentioned in an earlier section, the best thing would be to have a separate section for GAs (newly promoted or otherwise) and have it alongside DYK, as part of DYK or as an independent section on the main page. If we are going to do it as part of DYK, then the original DYK process should be maintained without any "trimming", and also add the hooks from GAs. If that can't be done, then it's not the DYK contributors' fault and they don't have to be kicked out to allow for GAs. Chamal talk 05:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I still don’t understand Ameliorate’s argument, so I can’t really take issue with that. I’m not sure if he imagines 5,000 GAs on the MP at the same time, or exactly what catastrophe he fears. I can, however, explain why DYK has to change.
When DYK was initiated early in 2004 there were about 200,000 articles, and WP’s goal was to create as many articles in as short a time as possible. DYK was a tool towards achieving this goal. Today, with 2,6 million articles, the main goal of WP is not the unbridled creation of new articles, but the improvement of the ones that exist (this idea was in fact expressed by Jimmy Wales as early as 2006, when the project passed 1 million).[1] Much of WP has geared in this direction, but DYK has changed little. There is normally agreement in the general community that DYK is in need of reform, but within the project the attitude is conservative. Allowing GAs in DYK would improve quality in two ways: it would encourage the creation of more GAs, and as we would have to tighten the criteria for inclusion of new articles, these would get better as well. There was strong opposition against my suggestion to replace 5x expansions with GAs, and while I admit that this might not be the perfect option, I didn’t see many alternative suggestions to how the project could be improved. The general attitude was summed up by Gen. Bedford with his "I do not like the idea of adding GAs. Leave DYK alone as it is." I think that’s what they said about the steam engine and the horse. Lampman (talk) 06:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Stop being dense and get to the point. How do you propose we check 5000 articles? How do you propose we add a pool of 5000 articles to the main page when we can barely keep up with the current backlog? Where is this agreement that DYK needs to reform – the three people at the main page redesign survey? The reason for the conservativeness within DYK is we know what it involves, we know how time consuming it is to check one articles (not to mention 5000) and we know that we won't be able to cope with a massive backlog. So cut the rhetoric, explain how you propose we do it and we will listen. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 06:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I never suggested 5,000 articles, my suggestion has always been to include new GAs. There are about 7 or 8 of these created on an average day, but I suspect not all would be nominated for the MP. These articles have already been vetted much better than any DYK article, so that wouldn’t be a problem. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a project dedicated to new content should feature only GAs that are newly created, so why anyone should rebel against this is beyond me. I certainly wouldn’t push any of the GAs from my back catalogue to get into DYK. I may be engaging in rhetoric, but at least I'm not making crazy doomsday predictions about the future!
Space would have to be made by tightening the criteria for new articles, which is not unreasonable seeing how you can get on the main page with 1,500 words of bad prose and one inline citation. As for the idea of featuring old GAs on the MP, you would have to ask those who brought this up, I think it’s a bad idea as it doesn’t encourage creation of new content.
In addition to the eight people in the straw poll, the idea of GAs in the DYK was recently brought up at the Main Page redesign debate, independently of this discussion. The reaction went about as follows: “Why not just make DYK include good articles instead of new ones?”, “I think that's a great idea”, “I love that idea”, “with the context of DYK, I will support GAs”. But then you seem to be of the opinion that anyone who’s not heavily involved in the DYK project is not entitled to an opinion, so you’ve got me in a bit of a Catch-22 there. I think perhaps those not heavily invested in DYK, who can see it from the outside, are in many ways better equipped to say what’s wrong with it. Lampman (talk) 07:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
And those who aren't really into GA don't understand the number and magnitude of hardship we faced when we are stuck in the middle between DYK and FA. Attention was always focused on DYK and FA, and most don't give a damn towards GA. I remember some well-respected editor (forgot the username) mentioned that he only contributes to FA and DYK but never GA is simply because the first 2 appear on main page while the last item doesn't. Has anyone cared about our feelings? OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Ameliorate that you should try to get at least basic idea of how DYK functions and its purpose. As you say, those who are not heavily invested in DYK are probably better equipped to say what's wrong with it, but only after properly understanding what it's about. Imagine someone going to a RFA and putting in a strong oppose saying that "user has an ugly picture on his userpage". Since you're talking about getting on the main page "with 1,500 words of bad prose and one inline citation", can you show us one article that has made it on to the main page with these criteria through DYK? The prose is checked before passing; if there are minor errors the reviewer will most probably perform a basic copyedit or mention that the article needs some improving before baing passed. If the prose is as terrible as you say, then it will definitely be rejected. The quality of the articles obviously will not be as high as a GA, but they are not rubbish. Check Template talk:Did you know, all the nominations there don't get onto the main page. Chamal talk 09:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

One problem with disregarding newly expanded articles is that many existing articles are very stubby, and expansions shouldn't be discouraged. The best examples I can think of, incidentally, are the stubs created by User:Eixo, apparently an alias of the user who started this discussion. I don't see why expansions such as this shouldn't be allowed at DYK. It's practically a new article. Punkmorten (talk) 10:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

It’s not an alias, but a defunct username. The article in question was part of a project to cover all Norwegian government ministers, and by all means, it’s great that it’s been expanded. But I can’t for the life of me see how it’s a human right that anyone who knows how to use a keyboard should have their work exposed to millions of people on one of the world’s most popular web sites. I don’t want to single out individual editors for criticism (I already mentioned one example above), but what I describe are the minimum requirements, and articles that comply with these normally get featured.
Anyway, all the arguments I’ve heard so far have been about how great DYK is, and that nothing should be done to change it. If this is the universal attitude on this forum, then I’m simply tilting at windmills, but it should be pointed out that the attitude of the community at large is a different one. Lampman (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more with Punkmorten's statement. Not even stopping to consider what Ameliorate has brought up about introducing thousands of new articles into DYK's backlog, the main point is that DYK encourages people to turn horrible stubs into half-decent articles (not shining examples of quality research, but at least something that a user can look at and not think they wasted their time). Replacing recent expansions with GAs (when people already have plenty of motivation to work on making GAs) would get rid of that.
As far as I can tell, there are different kinds of editors around here, and we need each kind to keep things working: some people like taking a half-decent article and nursing it into excellency, while others like creating a half-decent article where there was previously nothing (and some people, like me and probably most of the others in this discussion, like doing a bit of both); both those kinds of editors are extremely valuable to the project. Right now, stuff like GA and FA reward the first kinds of editors, and stuff like DYK rewards the second. By taking DYK away from the article-expanders, it seems like you're punishing them and just giving more to the GA people.
I should also mention that the diff Punkmorten gave is an excellent example of how an expansion is often tantamount to a creation, and your plan of allowing new creations but disallowing expansions would put us in the messy situation of having to decide what constitutes a "new" article (sure, the creation log is easy, but that's a pretty arbitrary measure, given what Punkmorten pointed out). —Politizer talk/contribs 15:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
From someone who contributes and reviews articles regularly at DYK I would oppose any move to replace the five fold expansion criteria with GA articles. It has been my experience that DYK's best articles tend to come from our five fold expansion policy. These articles typically take poor quality stubs and turn them into, if not GA quality articles, good articles of value to the encyclopedia. The DYKs that I am personally most proud of are not the new articles I have created, but the articles I have expanded and improved. In contrast, our newer articles can be barely more than stubs as the criteria is frankly not that stringent. Replacing the five fold expansion rule with GAs would therefore remove the incentive that currently produces the best fruit at DYK. Furthermore, I don't think adding GA in this way to DYK would encourage improvement encyclopedia wide. I personally find the GA process intimidating, as do many other editors, and am not interested in submitting articles for review at GA. However, I am more than willing to work on expanding and improving articles for DYK. If the five fold expansion was removed, rather than try for GA status, I would just simply no longer focus my efforts on improving already existing articles and merely write new ones. I think my response would be the typical one by the average editor and ultimately dropping the five fold expansion policy would result in a marked drop in the effort to improve articles; the opposite effect of what Lampman intended. Nrswanson (talk) 19:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
A further comment to Lampman, I do not agree with your assertion that the wiki community at large is somehow unhappy with DYK. Not that there isn't room for improvement, but in my experience most editors across the encyclopedia like what we do here. I would venture to say that we have more editors involved here in one way or another than any other project, a fact which should speak for itself.Nrswanson (talk) 20:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
i support this idea. (being the one who sort of suggested it in the first place) I think the DYK's should include GA's and not five fold expansions. - -' The Spook (TALK) (Share the Love with Barnstars) 23:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Can we have your reasons, Spook? As for the idea of the majority of the Wikipedia community being unhappy with DYK, I don't agree with that. DYK is a section where almost every editor can participate, while GA is something reserved for the experienced & skilled ones. I don't see how the community dislikes DYK, since a larger number participates in it than at WP:GAN. We still didn't get any proof on the terrible quality of articles passing DYK (as you guys claimed) or on this "community cosensus". Chamal talk 04:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Egyptian Communist Organisation sounds like one of those marginal DYK articles. It's very short, not broad enough (didn't even mention the specific individual as party leader nor founder), and no lead section (the article only have the body and references). Of course, just like GA and FA, it's possible that I am just lucky enough to come across a bad one so I will admit what I am doing is a bit cherry-picking, but same cherry-picking phenomenon happens when FA or DYK crowd points out that some GA are in bad shape. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This might have been a feasible idea if not for the fact the timing for this proposal is way off. We are suffering a backlog that forces us to run four-hour cycles. Preparation of Main Page content is still rather labour-intensive (though helped by the semi-auto process that is implemented rather recently). If the backlog eases up we might be able to reconsider it.

If the day would come where DYK is short of hooks, GA might be able to provide some hooks to fill in. There are two possible ways to go around it. First is that GA hooks are prepared way in advance and would be considered as a "pool of last resort" when there are no more DYK hooks to fill up. The other way is that GA hooks run on a weekend schedule that FP used to share DYK with. The former would create tensions on whether priority should be given for DYK or GA hooks (editors would feel that DYK has slowly ceded power to GA). For the latter, DYK might suffer from another worse pileup that all of us can't envisage, though all hooks for GA could be featured and cleared easily in a year. (capacity of ~4,800 hooks) Even so, someone will have to prepare the hooks (is the GA community willing to help?). - Mailer Diablo 17:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not the first time DYK has been faced with a great backlog, and the problem is unlikely to magically go away at any point; rather it will get worse. The problem is that the criteria have not kept up with the development in article creation. I was asked to provide examples of poor DYKs, one such was the recent Li Zhengji. It has only one inline citation, and a poor one at that, as it is an ancient source not supported by modern scholarship. I made this point on the suggestions page, and someone (don’t remember who) said he’d raise the issue at the appropriate forum. Nothing happened, and this article – along with several like it – was featured. The problem is that the DYK project is swamped, and participants don’t have the time to carry out endless discussions with editors based on vague policy issues.
If the criteria were sharpened, the selection process would be much easier, as low-quality entries could be quickly dismissed. Everyone seems hung up on vehemently defending the 5x expansion rule, but this was just one suggestion I made to help with the selection process, and I have seen no suggestions to alternative changes. Other options could include changing requirements on article length, sourcing, WP:MOS etc. Personally I can easily create an eligible DYK in about an hour, but I don’t think it’s fair that it should be this easy to get an article to a prominence almost on par with an FA, which can take months to make. DYK’s criteria have to keep up with WP’s development, otherwise we’ll get in a situation with a permanent backlog, and DYK won’t be displaying the best of WP’s new work, as intended. Lampman (talk) 18:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Well here is where I agree with you Lampman. I have been advocating for some time that we raise the standards here at DYK but if you look through the archives you will see that any proposed changes to the criteria have been vehemently opposed by most of the editors involved here, most of whom are of the philosophy that DYK is under a mandate to encourage new editors to the encyclopedia who would be dettered by stricter policies. It's a valid perspective but one that I personally don't share. The other arguement against is that stricter policies make the review process more time consuming for editors, something that we just don't have the man power for. This objection is reality based and any changes in policies would therefore need to be practical from an administrative point of view. I personally feel inline citations throughout an article as well as a small increase of length to either 2,000 or 2,500 characters would be a welcome change here at DYK. But good luck convincing other editors of that. As for GA, my personal feeling is that GA needs a voice on the mainpage. However, merging GA with DYK is not the answer to that problem. GA needs their own section on the main page. Merging the two is just going to create conflict between the two projects that isn't likely to resolve. The goals of the two projects are so divergent that it isn't likely for a merger to work well and satisfy either party.Nrswanson (talk) 18:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you, Nrswanson. I think the minimum length should be increased, but guess what, some editors think even 1,500-character length is not short! The backlog is gone now temporarily but it is only matter of time we get swamped again. --BorgQueen (talk) 06:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I like Nrswanson's suggestion regarding GA having its own section. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I think Lampman's suggestion of increasing requirements for sourcing and MOS is a good idea. After all, we are putting up articles on Wikipedia's first page and it would be weird if some of them were not compliant with Wikipedia's basic manual of style. As for GA having its own section, I think it's too late for that now. It should have been done when the redesign proposals were brought up. Chamal talk 03:48, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I oppose "increased requirements for sourcing" if that means more citations. Something that does bother me about DYK, however, are the number of articles on subjects of dubious or borderline notability, or referenced to dubious sources. Gatoclass (talk) 04:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
It isn't "late". We had that discussion going on for over 10 days already. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) Do we really need new "rules" about MoS and every imaginable thing, when we can just all agree on a some principle along the lines of "Articles getting put on the main page should not suck" and exercise judgment in interpreting that? So far, it's been clear that all of the reviewers I've worked with at DYK are very intelligent people who are able to make judgment calls about these sorts of things; as for myself, even though there aren't specific rules about writing style and things like that in DYK articles, I know I've left my share of mean and nasty messages telling nominators to clean up their stuff (or I have gone there myself and cleaned up what I can, generally in as cantankerous and disgruntled a manner as possible, but hey, whatever gets the job done). Sure, there will always be people who whine and say "show me the specific rule that says X" but, in general, I think people are willing to listen to input from reviewers and reviewers are able to make judgment calls about article quality without having hard-and-fast rules telling them what to do.
No matter how many rules Lampman proposes about MoS, article length, and what have you, there are always going to be articles that suck in some way that's not covered by the rules, and so there is always going to be a need for reviewers to exercise some judgment. So if we're admitting that reviewers need to exercise judgment sometimes, why not just do the whole shebang and admit that most of the reviewing that gets done is essentially a judgment call?—Politizer talk/contribs 04:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Yep, I agree that there will always be some kind of loophole. As for the sources, how do we check those sources without more effort on the part of the reveiwers? I saw many hooks being rejected recently because of having only sources from sites such as IMDB, but those are the really obvious ones. I'm not saying that there should be a rule about MOS, but it'd be better if we paid some attention to MOS without just putting out a few passages of text as an article on the main page. It wouldn't be that hard, you only come across such an article once in a while and even then it wouldn't take too much work. BTW I couldn't comment on the examples given per my request. Well, they are not exactly badly written, in fact the prose is fairly good (nowhere near GA quality of course, but still...). Several sources are also there, although some are not given as inline cites. Not exactly articles with bad prose and one inline cite but no doubt they are borderline articles. As Politizer said, I think articles like that need to be "judged" by the reveiver without just looking at the rules. Chamal talk 05:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Some updates have been omitted

At least one of the updates has been omitted. I've inserted the 06:30, 10 November 2008 update for two reasons, namely a) to greater further the accuracy and integrity of the 'pedia, and b) one of them thar DYKs was my nom, dagnabbit! If I've got the time wrong or messed up the bot, major apols, regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 20:34, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. It's all a bit messy while we have a bot doing the update because normally the admin who updated the template would archive the hooks, but since the bot is doing the update the archive is getting neglected. So I'll have to start coding the archive bot, have some stuff to do first though ... ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 21:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I could see this problem arising, which is why I suggested you might like to look at auto-archiving next – when you're ready of course ;)
I'm also beginning to think that it would be better to have complete automation of the credits too, it would eliminate human error and ensure that credit pages aren't forgotten. I don't think that's such an urgent priority though, and it's something that probably needs more discussion anyhow. Gatoclass (talk) 02:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Archiving bot is done and approved for trial – WP:Bots/Requests for approval/DYKBot. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 04:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Gee, that was quick, I had no idea you would get it running so fast! If I'd known, I could have made a few suggestions.
So just for the record – in case you're not aware of it – the archiving admin also has to delete the pic from the previous archive, if DL'ed from commons, or remove the m-protect tag if from Wikipedia. And a string from the pic is inserted as a link to the (pictured) tag.
I'm not sure if your bot does the above already, but if not, for the sake of completion I think it should. Gatoclass (talk) 08:48, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
This edit was made by the bot script, I think I should test it a bit more in my local wiki though. Unfortunately it didn't do the last update because WP:Recent additions was semi-protected and the bot account isn't autoconfirmed, and since it's only on trial it doesn't have the bot flag so it wasn't able to edit the page. Lacking other options I've removed the protection. I can keep an eye on the c-uploaded images category and delete them as needed. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 09:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
That looks good! Are you saying though that it's not possible to autodelete the images, or just that you haven't had time to implement it? Gatoclass (talk) 09:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I have a thought how to keep personalized DYK crediting. Could you design the bot to read a certain location in the queue? The approving admin who moves the next update to the queue would sign this spot with 3 tildes so that their signature is added without date. Then the bot could append that text to the end of its credit along with the current date and time. Is this feasible? Royalbroil 05:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I like that idea, especially since the person promoting the update to the bot queue is usually the one who prepared it, which means that the person who most deserves the thanks would be getting it. Quite frankly I often feel a bit embarrassed when someone sends me a thankyou note for leaving a credit template on their talk page when I know I didn't do a darned thing to get it promoted in the first place (and conversely, I sometimes feel a bit annoyed when I did work hard to promote someone's hook and they go and thank someone else!). So I think this is a fine suggestion, which would still retain the personal touch, but eliminate the element of human error and also cut down substantially on the manhours needed to keep things running smoothly. Gatoclass (talk) 08:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I am still unsure if there are missing steps that the bot does not do, that admins will have to do – other than the credits. We still have to add the old batches to WP:Recent additions? A bot should really be able to do the archiving of the old most recent sets of hooks, and the credits. Then I think the process would be seamlessly auto updated, save for admins moving hooks to the queues as appropriate. Cirt (talk) 07:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe we now have a bot to update the archive. Don't have a bot yet to delete the images dl'ed from commons or to do the credits, so those things still have to be done manually for now. Gatoclass (talk) 10:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring rule

"Wheel warring prohibits one admin from undoing one another's administrative actions. In particular, wheel warring prohibits one admin from reinserting a DYK hook onto the Main Page that was removed by another admin." Not exactly. Literally speaking, that link doesn't prohibit "one admin from undoing one another's administrative actions". Instead, it prohibits the next move: reinstating the reverted action. That's what the rule says, although that interpretation is probably too literal: I presume it's intended more to discourage such combat in general, not to prescribe precise limits. I suggest the less specific "The wheel warring policy discourages one admin from undoing one another's administrative actions without consensus, such as one admin reinserting a DYK hook onto the Main Page that was removed by another admin." followed by the existing sentence "In one example, aggressive wheel warring over a Main Page DYK hook led to desysopping by Jimbo Wales." Art LaPella (talk) 23:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, the wrong admin got desysopped. The desysopped admin defended consensus, but when he needed support, the others threw him under the bus.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 05:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I personally don't believe drive-by admins should be removing hooks that are not copyright violations or proven to be factually inaccurate. It would be the equivalent of undeleting an article that was deleted via AFD. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 05:45, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps DYK could limit removing hooks from the Main Page ((and/or adding hooks to the Main Page) to admins listed at DYK Participation list. I'm not sure how that could be enforced, but it does provide a fair standard since any admin can eventually make it onto the DYK list merely by participating at DYK. -- Suntag ☼ 20:47, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing a change to the sentence about Bedford. But since I haven't commented before, here's the point that others were too politically correct to make, grossly exaggerated for clarity: A traditionalist says "Oh my, that course language is the foulest I've heard in all my born days! Oh dear, I'm going to blush! Oh heavens, I'm going to faint!" A feminazi says: "THAT *@#$%& SEXIST PATRIARCHAL PARADIGM EXPLOITS WOMEN, YOU #@%!$##% ##@$$@@##*& #@!#$%&!!!!!" See the difference? Art LaPella (talk) 14:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

After this recent discussion about articles with a strong resemblance to entries in the ODNB, and a parallel debate at WT:CP, I note that another article written by User:Ironholds based heavily on a OBND entry has just appeared as a DYK on the Main Page: Terence Fox. Unfortunatlely, I missed the DYK nomination of this one, and only spotted it when the DYK notification appeared on User talk:Ironholds, three sections down from a discussion about copyright. All I can really do is point you to Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Another one, and the examples of the substantial similarity between this article (and other ones) and the relevant ODNB entries. -- Testing times (talk) 11:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated this article, and the one discussed earlier, at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2008 November 10 -- Testing times (talk) 14:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It looks like it was a mistake. The article did not have the usual signs of copyvio see in a DYK review, such as peculiar wording and large chunks of uncited text. Also, Ironholds seems to be a regular contributor to DYK. -- Suntag ☼ 01:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
That's a problem... I'll be sure to look closely at his DYK nominations from now on. I don't remember clearly reviewing this particular hook, but I do remember only looking at the hook and the source verifying the hook, and didn't bother looking for copyvio. The text looks the same, just ordered differently with different punctuation points. Sneaky... but it passed my eyes. – RyanCross (talk) 02:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
The source that it could possibly be a copyvio of is subscription only anyway. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 02:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

That User:Ironholds is a regular contributor to DYK is a matter that causes me further concern, given that many of his DYK nominations are biographical articles sourced from ODNB in a similar way. It is unfortunate that the ODNB is is subscription only, which makes it harder for reviewers to check; however, many public libraries have a subscription, and make it available remotely to their members.

I would be interested in hearing further views on the underlying question – does the thin rewriting of the source material in these cases amount to a copyvio? The answer from User:Moonriddengirl there, on another article, is that it does where there is a "substantial similarity" between the text: has there been a "substantial taking" from the original which does not amount to fair use. There are some examples from Terence Fox and its ODNB entry at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Another one. -- Testing times (talk) 11:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Kind thanks to User:Testing Times for taking time out to inform me that this thread is here. "Sneaky" isn't it; I am not trying to riddle wikipedia with copyvio's. The problem is that the ODNB is written as an encyclopedia; the biographical format (broadly chronological, linked topics) is the same as that used in wikipedia, and there are only so many ways you can word something.Ironholds (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me for not notifying you of this particular thread, but it was intended to be a simple pointer to the discussions going on in parallel at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems and Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2008 November 10 (and indeed on your own talk page). I was trying not to have another discussion over here, separate from the ones over there, but I can't stop people replying here if they want to.

I was rather troubled after the discussions here and here and here (and here and here) to find that you were adding more articles using essentially the same procedure, sourced solely or principally from the ODNB, and indeed that one of them ended up on the Main Page at a time when we were having a discussion about it on your talk page. It is probably my fault – I should have just added Alan Garrett Anderson at Wikipedia:Copyright problems last time around rather than trying to talk about it.

Perhaps the best place to continue this would be Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Another one, where I have already given some examples of the text in these particular articles which causes me concern, and an example (as you requested) using entirely different text to report essentially the same facts. There are lots of different ways of reporting the same facts in an encyclopedic manner, but the textual similarities in these cases are very clear indeed. -- Testing times (talk) 22:04, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Heads up

The credits for the DYK hooks currently on the main page (starting w/ charles curtis) were never done, and it's about 1.5 hours until next update. Can someone do them quickly? I would but I'm just catching this on a short break. Wizardman 19:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

 Done. Any word on a bot or one-click-script to get the credits done faster? I believe this is the last part of the DYK-admin-update process that is not yet automated or semi-automated. Cirt (talk) 20:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Ameliorate is our resident coder and according to his talk page, he basically does not contribute to wikipedia between Wednesday and Friday. So I guess we'll have to wait until next week for more goodies :) Gatoclass (talk) 23:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

How did this become a DYK??

... that professional wrestler Bret Hart is the only person that has won the King of the Ring tournament more than once?

List of King of the Ring winners automatically redirects to King of the Ring. I thought DYK only should be used for articles that are new, and I'm not sure that the article has been greatly increased 5 fold....--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The list was a newly created article, but just yesterday, a user erased the content and turned it into a redirect. I don't have any more information (like why it was turned into a redirect or if there was consensus for the move), but as is, I don't believe the redirected article is appropriate for DYK.-Andrew c [talk] 20:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Looks like the article King of the Ring has a better list than the one that was redirected. Anyway, shouldn't we do something to avoid situations like this in the future? Maybe protect the pages, like featured picture section... I guess that would be a bit too harsh, and probably unnecessary so how about at least placing a message on the talk page saying that it is going to be featured on the main page soon? (something like the messages saying that an article is currently a FA candidate) If any major changes are made, this will encourage editors to notify DYK about it, so that we can reassess it and decide if it will still be featured or not. Chamal talk 00:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree that protecting DYKs is probably not a good idea; personally, one of my favorite things about when one of my articles makes DYK is that people come in and clean up all my silly typos, add some nice sources, and stuff like that. If we protected articles to keep them from getting messed with, we'd also miss out on the improvement that comes from having a couple thousand new sets of eyes on each article.
As for placing a message on the talk page of a DYK that's in line to go to the main page...I don't have any problems with that, except who will do it? Doing the credits is already a pain sometimes, and people are talking about trying to get a bot for it, so if we add another template that needs to be posted to 8 talk pages every time Next gets updated, will that just be too much work? —Politizer talk/contribs 03:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Woops, I redirected it because I saw there was a list in the main KOR article but then after it got a DYK, I decided to unredirect it.--SRX 03:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

How about a one-day moveprotection at least? It wont stop the redirecting problem, but it will prevent other...<censored per WP:BEANS>. the skomorokh 04:20, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Has this happened very often before? I haven't noticed it being much of a problem to be honest, and if it's just a few isolated cases we're probably fine just trying to correct them when they come up rather than adding an extra step to the process. Other people may have better data than me, though. Olaf Davis | Talk 20:49, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Question: Was the KOR DYK listed on the main page, because I checked the archive and it wasn't there.--SRX 21:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
The italics at the beginning of the thread is the exact (sans hotlinking stuff; too lazy to transfer that) that appeared on the front page of Wikipedia in the DYK box. As for before, this is the first time i've encountered such a dilemma.--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 08:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Did we lose a bunch of hooks somewhere?

As far as I can tell none of these hooks ever made it to the Main Page (granted, I'm interested because St. Paul's Episcopal Church (Troy, New York) was one of mine which apparently generated a great deal of discussion over its verifiability while I was sleeping a long day off). I cannot find where these were added to the main template. Daniel Case (talk) 21:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree we lost the hooks, probably because the new software or its human component has some bugs to be worked out. The link above shows the hooks deleted from Next Update at 12:58 11/13. But the history of Template:Did you know shows this update at 9:45 11/13, with no more edits until this update at 15:50 11/13. Neither edit shows the hooks in question, so they must have moved on to the bit bucket. Art LaPella (talk) 22:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Nothing here is ever in the bit bucket. We could easily fish those out and put them back in as the next update. We owe the people who submitted those hooks and reviewed them (in addition to myself, of course) a chance for the Main Page. We cannot blame it on the software. Daniel Case (talk) 23:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see, it's Queue 3 now. Daniel Case (talk) 23:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Yep. Just to reiterate, those hooks are all in Queue 3 and will probably be up around 8:00 UTC. —Politizer talk/contribs 23:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Now that we are loading up to 5 queues with hooks, that gap between a hook being selected from the Suggestions Page and appearing on the Main Page can be over 24 hours. This does appear to be confusing some nominators and some have even put their hooks back on the Suggestions Page. Perhaps a way to make the process more transparent is instead of deleting hooks from the Suggestions Page when they are selected, rather move them to a new "Selected" section at the bottom of the page. This section can be boxed and labelled with something like "Selected, please do not modify". Hooks will remain in this section until they have appeared on the Main Page. Any thoughts? --Bruce1eetalk 06:39, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a good suggestion, although it does take away (or delay) some of that cathartic feeling you get when you can finally remove a nom that's been sitting there forever...but I guess we'll have to deal. Another suggestion that I just made to Otolemur crassicaudatus (one of the users who put his nom back on the page) was that for a week or so we put a prominent notice at the top of T:TDYK explaining to users that the promotion process has changed and that they should check queues before assuming their noms got deleted...I thought this might be helpful since I assume lots of regular DYK nominators don't necessarily check this discussion page and might be confused at how things have changed from what they're used to. —Politizer talk/contribs 16:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to transclude all of the queue subpages onto the same page (perhaps Template:Did you know/Next update or Template:Did you know/Queue, or a new subpage) so it is easy to see at a glance where a hook has ended up, without having to check each one individually? Like this (collapsed to avoid swamping this page):
Someone will have to play with includeonly, etc.
Oh, and "Next Update" is a bit of a misnomer now: that page is really the draft update to which non-admins can contribute; the next queue in rotation is the real next update. -- Testing times (talk) 11:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
I like your idea of transcluding the next- and queue-templates. --Bruce1eetalk 11:52, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As long as it doesn't slow down the page load. Might be an idea to have it on a separate page. Gatoclass (talk) 12:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Gatoclass (talk · contribs) - having it on a separate page would be best, with a link and explanatory line or two about it on the other related pages. Cirt (talk) 12:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Why not have a bot scan the DYK queues and send out a "Your DYK hook is in line to be posted on the Main Page November 16, 2008 between 06:00 and 12:00". I know I always get a kick of seeing my hooks on the Main Page. Also, this would allow the persons receiving credit for the DYK to take a snap shot for their scrap album. And it would avoid having to provide more handling for each hook. -- Suntag ☼ 16:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

DYK credits in queue 4 need fixed

I just got this message from Grk1011:

The DYK credits for Queue 4 have one incorrect article. It should be Portugal in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008, not Vânia Fernandes. I would fix it myself, but its protected. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 23:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

So either an admin will have to fix it, or whoever does the credits will have to remember to manually put the credit in the right article (and to change the parameter in the credit template that he/she gives to the creator of that article). I'm about to go so I won't be the one doing the credits :S. —Politizer talk/contribs 23:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

New system

I recently nominated a few articles for DYK, and I'm not ecstatic about the new system. First of all not many know about the several queues now, I know that when my hook was selected, I couldn't find it anywhere, not on next update, not in the main page, and not in the archives, so I re-added it to the list and it was almost put on the queue for a second time. I noticed several other editors doing the same thing. Also, since it is updated automatically, no one is there to do the credits, my hook went on almost 12 hrs ago and I still haven't been credited. I also think there is a problem with people not knowing there are queues. As or right now all queues are empty and the regular old next update is being used, shouldn't only the queues be used? the regular next update doesn't work right for the bot I think. Right now everything is very disorganized if you ask me because there seems to be a lack of communication. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 01:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

We're trying to persuade our botbuilder to automate the creds, hopefully we might see this next week.
There are always going to be teething troubles with a new system. Personally I think it's working extremely well, much better than I anticipated, but there are going to be a few kinks here and there that need to be ironed out. If you read further up this page you will see that the problem of users being uninformed about the location of their hooks is already the subject of discussion. Gatoclass (talk) 02:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I see, the other thing I wanted to mention was that it now takes a longer amount of time for a hook to be on the DYK. Before, when it was put on the next update, it would be on the main page within 6 hrs, now with the multiple queues it could be almost 30 hours. Does the 5 days rule just mean a hook has to be on the suggestion page within 5 days? Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 03:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Updates are automated except the credits; we would still want to keep a certain degree of human touch by crediting editors manually. I've just finished up the credits, having just woken up. Next Update at the old section is just a Sandbox, where it is copied over to the queues. The order is predictable going by the queues in ascending order (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, ...) It takes time to word to go out that we're on a new procedure given that this is still on trial. - Mailer Diablo 02:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Speak for yourself please, I certainly don't want to continue crediting editors manually! Royalbroil above has proposed that users loading the queue should have their sig automatically added to the credits to retain the human touch, a proposal I strongly support, especially since it will recognize the person who is probably most responsible for actually promoting the article rather than the guy who just posted the credit. Gatoclass (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
I didn't notice the discussion above. That sounds good to me as well. - Mailer Diablo 03:57, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Minimum article length proposition

Propose to create a blanket rule of minimum 300 words to DYK articles. It is extremely hard to judge exactly how much text comprises "1.5 kb" (The current mandatory minimum).

This entry is an example of an article that fulfills all DYK requirements, but it seems a little short (at 255 words). Setting a minimum word count will make it easier for reviewers to judge whether or an article is acceptable. Occasionally "borderline stubs" do make it onto the main page. Instating this requirement would eliminate any further length-related problems. --Flewis(talk) 09:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

1500 characters is 1.5kb. 1500 characters is the current minimum; the 1.5kb is an arbitrary figure that we decided to remove but no one got around to actually removing. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 09:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
How about a straw poll (1500 characters or 300 words). That way the guideline will be decided by the community. --Flewis(talk) 10:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
A word can be of any length, so if there are a lot of long words in the article it may go well above the 1500 character limit but still fail to come within the 300 word limit. But the quality of the article may still be good. On the other hand, if a lot of short words are used, then again it may pass the 300 word limit, but the context of the article may be rubbish (BTW, I'm not saying that quality of an article depends on the length of the words, just trying to point this out). Either way, there seems to be a problem. How about we discuss this rather than go for a straw poll straight away? Then we might be able to spot any problems with the help of others, and hopefully it'll help us to come to some conclusion. Chamal talk 10:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I suggest "300 words or 1,500 characters of text". -- Philcha (talk) 10:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
While we are talking about it, here's another one: This page, expanded on 25th October is a 5x expansion if you count the words. But it is not if you count the characters, it is short by about 40. Unless we decide on one method to do this, 'borderline' hooks like this are going to be in trouble. Chamal talk 10:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) How about: The article itself must contain 300 words (regardless of whether a new article, or one that has been expanded). Other than that, I agree with Philcha: "300 words or 1,500 characters of text" --Flewis(talk) 10:40, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The article given as an example is fine. I have submitted articles of similar length, e.g. Clipping the church. I don't see what use a word limit would do, to be honest. – How do you turn this on (talk) 10:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Would that article pass as a stub? Possibly. Adding a definitive word minimum, will ensure that no definitive stubs will appear on the main page. --Flewis(talk) 11:13, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
The question here is practically one of what exactly DYK represents. Quality: A well written article that just misses out on GA status? or Quantity: Hundreds of interesting hooks which link to a paragraph of information? --Flewis(talk) 11:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Dyk also does two other things: it publicises short articles that the creator has expanded to the limit and others could expand further; and it rewards creators of articles with a little fame and therefore encourages editors to keep working hard for the little buzz that gives them. Both of these reasons are of benefit to WP and therefore too onerous a word/byte limit is undesirable. Malick78 (talk) 11:50, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Did You Know is for new, or recent expanded articles. NOT Good Articles. They're there not to showcase our best work, but our newest work. A one-line stub is out, but 1500 characters isn't short. – How do you turn this on (talk) 12:21, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Just "our newest work?" I wish it was as simple as that – because the DYK will easily be automated then. The Main Page is a sensitive place in many ways. (Did you know that even some FAs will never get featured on Main Page? User:Raul654 made this clear himself.) *Any* link that gets bolded on Main Page will have to have certain degree of quality, be it DYK, OTD, or ITN. 1,500 characters isn't short? Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more; actually the minimum length requirement used to be a bit higher than that a while ago. Besides, we already have more entries than we can handle easily – as a result we almost always struggle with backlog. I've never seen any shortage of entries since I started the DYK maintenance; it's been rather quite the opposite. As soon as we eliminate the length requirement we will be overwhelmed with flood of submissions. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
No, not just our newest work, as I said, recently expanded articles too. Obviously ones that don't meet criteria aren't included, but what is DYK's purpose, other than to showcase new articles? Adding a length requirement seems a bad idea when articles can still be high quality, but have just 1,499 characters. – How do you turn this on (talk) 13:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) it is also a great way of destubbing and improving the quality of the profusion of short stubs – anything under 150 words for a semi-notable subject is often pretty straightforward to expand. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:47, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

FLewis, it's actually very easy to count 1500 chars, there's a little program you can add to your monobook.js page called prosesize, I think you just have to add the string {{subst:js|User:Dr pda/prosesize.js} . It gives you a link in the left hand column you can click which instantly counts the number of characters in the currently displayed article. You can find the full code for the program here. Gatoclass (talk) 13:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Lots of word processors can do it like Microsoft Word. I'd be happy to give you directions – just ask on my talk page if this works for you. Royalbroil 00:02, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

1.5kb has been removed from the rules. Good riddence. -- Suntag ☼ 07:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm still unclear why a 300 word minimum would be inherently superior to a 1500 character minimum. Unless there is a clear benefit to changing, I think we should retain the current approach. That said, one rule I think could be tweaked is the 5x minimum. I think that works well in most situations, but a moderately long article (say 4000-5000 characters) would generally be very difficult to increase 5x, and so editors may have less incentive to improve those. Sometimes leeway is given to these articles and an increase close to 5x gets accepted. But I would suggest formalizing this, as a 5x increase or a 10,000 character increase. That way, any article 2,500 characters or less would still need to meet the 5x rule, but a 5,000 character article could be DYK eligible if increased to 15,000 characters (3x). I think this would have several advantages:

  1. It would encourage improvements to moderately sized articles
  2. A 10,000 character increase is pretty substantial, so it would not dramatically increase the number of articles eligible for DYK
  3. A 10,000 character increase would insure that a substantial amount of new content has been added, and so the pre-existing article is therefore worth being showcased in DYK. Rlendog (talk) 03:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I tend to favor Rlendog's idea. I am not certain how many others will like it though. --BorgQueen (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
My worry would be the extra work. However if a tool could be written then we might be able to do more than just check a simple 1500 character limit. Note when I say "simple", I do realise that the 1500 char limit is checked by the tool with some very clever programming ... (as our rules are not as simple as they appear at first reading). In summary. Yes it would be good to also recognise other substantial improvements, but it could get complex. What if we have a 20,000 character entry with the low amount of reffing of some of our 1500 character entries? Who is going to read all this? So .... Yes ....but Victuallers (talk) 16:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Queue 2 credits done

I just did the credits for Queue 2 (starting with Montigny mitrailleuse), so someone can clear it. I forgot that they're protected and have to be cleared by admins. My bad. —Politizer talk/contribs 23:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Done, thanks for your help. It didn't occur to me that non-admins won't be able to do the credits. We may have to do something to rectify that. Gatoclass (talk) 11:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Or have a bot or script for a more automated or semi-automated process for the credits. Cirt (talk) 11:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
What about having a separate, unprotected Credits page that the credits get dumped into after the bot flips the template, and then anyone can do the credits from there and then clear it? I don't know how Wikipedia bots work but I assume regex (or even something easier than that, if all the credits get included in some sort of tag that tells the bot they're credits) could handle it? —Politizer talk/contribs 16:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, until the credit bot is developed, the credits-to-be-done can be moved to a common, non protected page so that the DYK clerks can post them. -- Suntag ☼ 16:54, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
That isn't necessary, the credits can still be done from the queue page, the problem is just that a non-admin cannot clear the credits after he's finished. Gatoclass (talk) 01:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, but then my worry is that someone might, in a hurry, go through and do credits again after a non-admin has done them. When I did the credits earlier I posted a message here to let you guys know, but I don't know if you always check this page before doing credits (I know I don't). —Politizer talk/contribs 05:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Very little chance of that happening. As soon as you post a credit, you can see whether the same credit has already been given, or you can check the preview page first if you're not sure. Duplicated credits actually happened quite a bit with the old system too, because crediters often didn't bother resetting the next update page after doing the credits. Gatoclass (talk) 10:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Credit bot

My current idea is to change the format that DYKbotdo appears on the queue, to have two optional parameters; eg. {{DYKbotdo|An optional comment|~~~}}, this way the bot picks up the signature and the optional comment from the DYKbotdo template when its going to do the credits. Would this be alright or is there a better way to do it? ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 00:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds OK to me. Chamal talk 04:25, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Strong Support. Sounds excellent to me. Cirt (talk) 05:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
But that method would only give you a boilerplate optional comment which would go to every user. It's better than nothing perhaps, but if you put the optional parameter into the DYKmake/DYKnom bots instead, crediters could leave messages for individual users. I do support the autosigning parameter in the DYKbotdo bot though. Gatoclass (talk) 08:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I can change that. DYKmake would become {{DYKmake|Article|Editor|Comment}}. It's mostly done except for the article talkpage tagging. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 08:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
And can an option be defaulted so that it is okay for the Comment field to be left blank? Cirt (talk) 08:43, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
This sounds good to me. - Mailer Diablo 10:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Yip, the bot doesn't care if there's a comment or not. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 12:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't really want to have to sign my name to every DYKmake/DYKnom though. I think it would be better to leave the sig in the DYKbotdo so that you autosign the lot with just one signature, and then just have an optional comment field in the individual make/nom functions. Gatoclass (talk) 15:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Gatoclass (talk · contribs), actually, this is a much better idea. Cirt (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
That's how it's going to work. {{DYKbotdo}} becomes {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} and DYKmake becomes {{DYKmake|Article|Editor|Comment}}. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 02:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
So the individual sigs will override the DYKbotdo sig? I guess that would be okay, as long as the individual sig/comment fields are optional not mandatory. Gatoclass (talk) 04:14, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

November 11 hook review

Please take a look at my self-nom for the article List of people deported from the United States. It is a list, but excluding the formatting, there is 2,973 characters of cited text. The page was created on November 11. The page is over 1,500 of cited WP:V text. The hook information is cited to multiple WP:V inline-cites. I would respectfully request that it be considered for T:DYK. Thank you. Cirt (talk) 07:02, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

But as the reviewers have mentioned, isn't it necessary for the main body text (in the case of a list article, only the lead) should have 1500 chars? This has only 106 chars. Here are some of the recently passed lists. They all have the min. 1500 characters.
We have rejected several lists that didn't have this minimum character requirement. The selection criteria 2 clearly mentions that lists are not counted as part of this. Chamal talk 07:18, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand that consensus is against considering this page at this point in time. Thank you for taking a look. Cirt (talk) 07:21, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, has since been expanded, thanks. Cirt (talk) 08:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Miki Mizuasa Hook

The Miki Mizuasa hook is still up in the air. The alt hook version proposed by Politizer (which I think is better than my original hook) is:

After several days of discussion, and as I read the comments, four persons have spoken up against allowing hooks mentionining someone who is in the adult film business (Nrswanson, Royalbroil, Johnbod, and Malick), six persons have spoken up in favor of the hook (cbl62, 97198, Mark, Politizer, David Shankbone, and David Levy), and two others appeared to be somewhat neutral (Gatoclass and Suntag). One thing on which there does appear to be consensus is that there can and should be no absolute policy against allowing hooks on DYK based on the subject's involvement with the adult film business. Rather, it should be a matter of good judgment and discretion for each individual to decide whether to approve the hook and move it to Next Update, and then to the Main Page. If that is correct, personal moral/religious opinions should not dictate, and I suggest the Mizuasa hook, which does not contain crude or offensive language and focuses on an extraordinary accomplishment by a transsexual, should be promoted. Cbl62 (talk) 16:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If you want to do it, then do. I think the article (in this case) concentrates on the person and not the sensational aspect. We do need to make sure that we do not get banned by those who would judge a book by its cover. But protect it! Victuallers (talk) 18:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC) I would hide the film titles and the word "pre-opertive" from the hook Victuallers (talk) 18:28, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
One caveat: If an objection is raised by another admin and it's removed from the Main Page, please do not wheel war about it, as that was the source of a desysop action not that long ago. howcheng {chat} 20:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I cannot promote it, as I nominated the article. I will leave that decision to others.Cbl62 (talk) 22:17, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Looks like Mrswanson removed it from the NU page, so i guess that's the last word. Wizardman 05:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Not sure about this one

Hi all. I'm not sure whether or not this article, Mike Davis, is notable. However, the length and the sources are verified. The hook is about to expire and don't want to promote it on without getting some consensus. Thanks.Nrswanson (talk) 03:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Your link goes to a disambig page... does the hook go there too? Sorry for being confused, but if they nommed a dab page, no it's not eligible. Too many dudes to check each one out, sorry :) ++Lar: t/c 03:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
It looks notable enough to me; go with it.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 03:47, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Increasing the minimum length requirement

It seems some editors here share the same opinion that DYK should tighten its requirements. The dreaded backlog is gone now but it is only matter of time we get swamped again. I believe that we should increase the minimum length as one of possible solutions. --BorgQueen (talk) 07:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Really not in favour of this. I thought we dealt with the backlog pretty well, we went from 85 hooks to virtually none in the space of a few days, and now everyone's getting the hang of the bot queue things seem to be proceeding nicely.
But if backlogs do become overwhelming, then rather than just increasing the length requirement, which really doesn't guarantee better quality at all, I think we should just be prepared to discard hooks after x number of days. So if your hook hasn't been chosen by day x, too bad. Doesn't mean there was anything wrong with it, just that nobody picked it. If we do this though, I think we will have to outlaw choosing one's own hooks, to make it fair for everyone.
One thing I've been thinking about more and more that I would like to see however, is a requirement that nominators state the total size of their article on the suggestions page (not the prose size, the size as recorded in the edit history). I think this would be a useful thumbnail guide for updaters to be able to quickly identify the more substantial articles and to give them priority, backlog or not. Gatoclass (talk) 08:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
By enabling "Navigation popups" in your preferences, you can preview such things as article size by hovering over links. Lampman (talk) 14:52, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Increasing the length would just encourage bloviating on the article page. 1500+ works pretty well. During the holidays we may need to extend the limit to 2000+, but until then, let's see how the bots work.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 08:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it's just an inducement to bloviating. We have people bloviating just to get to 1500 chars even now! Gatoclass (talk) 08:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I personally support an increase in article length. The backlog is a recurring problem and if current trends continue (article submissions are continuing to rise in numbers) things are only going to get worse. We were only able to get through this last backload by cutting the time on the mainpage significantly, a measure that I wouldn't like to see become the norm. It's also required more time from us reviewers than we can keep up with on a regular basis. Something needs to be done. I personally would oppose the laissez-faire approach suggested by Gatoclass (the 'if we don't get to it than too bad' approach). That adds a level of subjectivity to the process which is only likely to result in wikidrama here at DYK (accusations of bias, cencorship, etc). Anything we do needs to be above board and impartial. As for bloviating, that is already a problem as you have pointed out. People do it with the five fold expansion as well as with new articles. Since its already a problem than we're not really any worse off are we? Chances are that for as many people who bloviate there will be an equal or even greater ammount who choose not to by either accepting a no to a DYK or finding more quality content to add the articles. We have more to gain than we do to lose. Nrswanson (talk) 09:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Good point about the wikidrama. I'm still not convinced that increasing the minimum size is the way to go however. A temporary increase might do the job when we actually have a backlog, but I'm not keen on the idea of a permanent increase. Gatoclass (talk) 09:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm indifferent really, leaning towards weakly supporting an increase to say 2000-2500. I would rather we avoid instruction creep, and judge articles on their merits, ie. reviewers can request an article be wikified or copy-edited before being accepted but of course 1) we don't have the man-power man/woman/borg-power to do that and 2) it is nice to keep DYK simple for new(er) editors. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 09:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I am not hugely in favour as some mushroom articles are hard to expand, but one benefit of an expanded prerequisite size is that it may make expanding some slightly larger stubs relatively more attractive. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • We could just not put up the more boring hooks/articles? Johnbod (talk) 12:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
    • I think we need to be more discerning about which hooks we accept – we should only be ticking the "interesting" ones. Of course this will be a very subjective process because what's interesting to one reviewer may be boring to another, but perhaps a way around it is for more than one reviewer to "vote" on how interesting they believe each verified nomination is, and then let consensus decide. I know this implies more work, but maybe others can refine it. --Bruce1eetalk 13:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
In this case, the main thing is notifying someone preemptively if you think the hook is boring, so the nominator has time to ferret out some more interesting one(s). Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Consistently hitting 6 hourly updates would help (and the new bot may help there) but there is nothing magic about that length of time. 4 hours is also fine: any main page exposure is a privilege, not a right. Why not see how 1,500 characters does for the time being with the new system in place. The character count (which is really a rough proxy for "not a stub") can always be ratcheted up later if the backlog lengthens again, or the time on the main page can be temporarily decreased again.

To put it in context, 1.5k is still pretty good. According to [2] (which is very out of date – October 2006!), the mean article length was 3317 bytes, but presumably that was skewed by a long tail of lengthy articles, as only 34% of articles were longer than 2k. Both statistics had been drifting upwards, although the percentage was reasonably stable for the previous 2 years. Are there any more recent statistics on the average length of an article? -- Testing times (talk) 13:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the new bot should help, because updates have often been left ready but with no-one to post them. Also, I'm thinking we should probably adopt eight hooks as a standard minimum length for updates, because four groups of six articles which we have often had is only 24 hooks in 24 hours and I don't think that's enough.
I don't like the idea of discarding hooks because they are not interesting enough though. Sometimes there is an excellent article with no outstanding hook, and sometimes there is a lousy article with a terrific hook. IMO, the good articles should get priority, not the good hooks.
Nrswanson made a good point earlier about wikidrama, but I still find myself leaning toward simply dumping whatever hooks haven't been used at a certain point. It does open the possibility of some wikidrama, but with a number of different updaters, it would be difficult to argue they were all biased, and besides we don't get backlogs that often. Gatoclass (talk) 13:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
A higher limit would lead to contributors bloating articles. I like the idea of decreasing the time on the main page when backlogged. I don't like the time limit because it would bias against the people who are spending the time to approve the hooks and moving them to the queues – us – the ones who are dedicated by doing the work! I don't think an average new DYK contributor could accurately determine the size of the text in the article in the way that we do it. We have historically done an occasional skip on shorter articles near the 1500 characters limit. I've had it happen to me once. Royalbroil 14:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest revisiting this idea in a couple of months to see how the DYKAdminBot thingy is doing at that point. Cirt (talk) 14:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I, too, think that increasing the length requirement would lead to some bloviating, but my main concern would be fewer first-timer qualifying contributions. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:07, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
So basically we are saying don't change anything. Just what I thought would happen. (See my comments under "radical suggestion" discussion above which summarized all your arguements before you even made them lol). To Bruce1ee and others, my comment would be that we should avoid using any subjective criteria as much as possible. My experience has been that subjectivity only leads to wikidrama which in turn causes headaches, burnt out editors, and a lot of time waisted. On a further note, the consensus right now seems to be that the automations to the system are significantly addressing the backload issue, a fact which may or may not be true. I think that we should start a study over the next three months to see if the automated system does in fact solve our backload problem. I'm not sure what that would look like but it would be nice to have some objective data to look at. We could then re-address the backload issue later once we get some perspective on how well the automated system is working. Sound reasonable?Nrswanson (talk) 19:24, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
The bot is I think a big improvement. Given the tool it is possible to load while you sleep/work. I guess we need to find how this settles down. One rule I have been breaking is deleting hooks that appear to be what I call orphans. That is someone has made a suggestion to fix an article or hook but the author has either lost interest/ gone on holiday/ or worse is in denial about the criticism. Gatoclass tell me that we need to allow the author/nominator 5 days to come back with an answer to a criticism. In my mind 24 hours is reasonable and 48 allows authors to have a night off. As one of the people who regularly picks hooks it can take quite a time to sort through the "dead and dying". I propose that if an expired hook has been commented on and no action is apparent after 48 hours then we delete the hook. Victuallers (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Oh yes ... more hooks per hour? Reduce the length of the hooks. Some people seem to be padding them out to make the size. Not pnly do we know that Joe X was picked for Team Z but some include irrelevant (to the hook) facts like the year, month, and day and the name of the league etc. Victuallers (talk) 22:07, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I like your suggestion, Vic; 48 hours sounds reasonable. As for your second suggestion, I agree that a hook normally doesn't need a full date, but I think a bit of context, such as year or place, is often helpful for the reader. I always have been a ruthless trimmer as well but too short hooks may not be as interesting when lacking necessary context. --BorgQueen (talk) 22:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
As far as the backlog discussion goes, I too think it is a little premature when we have just got ourselves some shiny new technology to help us out. I also agree with RB that flipping updates every four hours worked very well this time. So I don't think there's much reason to be contemplating more radical solutions at this point. Vic's suggestion of turfing expired hooks that have had no response after 48 hours might be worth considering though. Gatoclass (talk) 03:51, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
The 48 hour limit will work for us wikipediholics who log in everyday just because we can't live without doing it ;) But for the less er.. "enthusiastic" and active editors it might be a bit harsh, don't you think? They might not be able to constantly monitor the progress. Chamal talk 04:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I would support increasing the minimum length to 2000-2500 characters, especially when things get backlogged. Sure, people will bloviate to get to 2000, but that is just like what happens at 1500, and would also happen at 1000. I'm not sure why that is an issue. If anything, it will be more difficult to pad an article with limited information up to 2000 or 2500 characters than it is to pad an article to 1500, so there may be less bloviation. The only issue I would have with increasing the miniumum length is that some categories of articles (mushrooms, fossils) may be inherently more difficult to expand to such a length than most articles. But if that is an issue, the expanded minimum can be brought into play only when backlogged or, better yet, those categories could be listed and admins would have discretion to use articles between 1500 and 2000 characters within those categories. Still, I agree with Nrswanson that we should minimize any subjectivity, which I agree can only lead to Wikidrama. Rlendog (talk) 04:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) I know I haven't been here very long at all, but it seems to me that in very few articles over the past week or so was the 1500-character limit even an issue...I know most new articles I looked at were long enough at first glance that I didn't even bother checking the page size. So, if raising the minimum length wouldn't rule out many articles anyway (and that is just a speculation, of course) then would it really help with backlogs at all? —Politizer talk/contribs 04:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
It would rule some out. Trouble is, it would also rule out some pretty good short, succinct articles along with the not-so-good ones. Which is one reason I oppose the idea. Gatoclass (talk) 04:50, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
It would probably clear out most of the "borderline" articles. But then, it will create a new borderline and we'll be having the same kind of discussion in a few months. Chamal talk 05:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the easiest way is to ask the veteran DYK contributors, or to otherwise hold them to a higher standard especially wrt the cleanliness of the article, properly formatted refs and things like that. I have prodded some very high DYK-count people present their work more professionally but sometimes in the past someone else put it on anyway even though there wasnt much of an effort to make the article tidier. I think the senioes should be setting a better example sometimes, although I haven't done any processing for a few months and it might have changed. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model!) 01:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I do not favor raising the length requirement. I'd rather see stricter enforcing of things like referencing if we are trying to raise the bar to limit the number of eligible articles. And I'm not sure we SHOULD raise the bar. ++Lar: t/c 03:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Varying how strickly the DYK rules are applyed as a function of the backlog seems the way to go. As the backlog increases, require that more of the 1,500 characters be source to indpendent, secondary sources. Hopefully, the bot will give us a buffer to help us regulate things better. -- Suntag ☼ 12:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There seem to be a lot of people who are arguing for temporary raises of standards during backloads. I think if we are going to do that than we need it in writing so people aren't surprised by it. We would need to define what a backload is and to what extent criteria would be raised. Otherwise I don't think we should raise standards on a whim.Nrswanson (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
During backlogs just let the contributions from the more prolific DYK contributors expire. They should know better than to overload the system when there is a backlog; they are probably only keen to get them on DYK to get higher up a chart; they aren't likely to be demoralized and leave because one article doesn't appear on the main page (if it does upset them, it might even encourage them to work it up to FA in order for it to get out there); and there are probably people tracking the edits of well-known contributors just to correct those typos or add a little snippet, so they won't be losing out in that area. (I lobbied for the change from 1,000 to 2,500 back when we used to count everything,Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 18#Upping the lengthWikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 18#2.5 KB but we settled on 1,500 which I think is just fine. Let the hogs go instead).Yomanganitalk 18:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I think if someone submits an article than the article should be evaluated for itself and not by who contributed it. Besides, how do we decide who is a "longtime contributor". I review articles much more often than I submit them. I haven't received a single DYK award. Would I be a longtime contributor? It's up for debate. Besides, we would be punishing the very people who make DYK work on a day in and day out basis. Not a good idea.Nrswanson (talk) 18:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't class not getting a DYK as a "punishment", though, if you do, the prolific contributors have been amply "rewarded" in the past. Look at the creations section in the chart if you want to know who qualifies. Still, as you say, they are the people who run the system so such a change would never be accepted. Yomanganitalk 19:05, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Most of the people that work here regularly do so because they like DYK and they like having their articles featured at DYK. They give their time here because they contribute here. In my view your policy is a demotivator to the very people we don't want to see getting burnt out, particularly during stressful times like whenwe have a backload. I also find your tone a bit cynical and snide.23:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
What are the benefits of viewing DYK as a competition where you are somehow cheated by having your hook expire? Why do you believe it would be demotivating to let the hooks of prolific contributors expire during times of high supply unless those contributors care only about pushing themselves higher up a chart? (I suppose that I should declare that, much to my chagrin, it was a conversation on my talk page that lead to the creation of the nonsensical DYK ranking chart in the first place). As to your comments on my tone: snide, no; cynical, I'd like to think not, but doesn't the demand for reward rather justify a disbelief in the selflessness of others? Yomanganitalk 12:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
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