Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 39

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Did you know. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 35

←

Archive 37

Archive 38

Archive 39

Archive 40

Archive 41

→

Archive 45

I was wondering if we'd want to consider a permanent holiday holding bay, similar to what we did for Halloween and Xmas. Looking at the next month, there are several possibilities. You have the Super Bowl, Lincoln's Birthday, and Groundhog Day. It could also serve as a place for admin building the queue's to find any date-specific hooks, so they don't overlook it. I'd suggest it can hold date specific ones up to 14-21 days. Just something to ponder.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 11:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I would recommend limiting the list of holidays DYK advertises for to those holidays which have widespread international recognition and which provide a large enough variety of candidate topics to support an annual effort. The reasons for restraint are that these efforts tend to disrupt the normal flow of submissions, taking a week or more to return to a normal backlog level, and that encouraging large clusters of articles for events with limited geographical recognition and appeal makes balancing DYK harder to perform.

In recent years the holidays that have received special treatment are April Fools' Day, Halloween, and Christmas. All three of these provide a large scope of potential articles and are celebrated in a variety of countries and cultures. With the possible exception of the Super Bowl, your list of candidates does not have wide spread international support. Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, Earth Day, Ramadan, and Yom Kippur are better candidates for special treatment than Presidents Day or the Queen's Birthday. For those contributors looking have an entry fall on a specific day, I would recommend planning ahead and submitting the candidate article several days before the desired date. This is the course of action I have planned for an article with a DYK hook that would work best on Tax Day. --Allen3 ^talk 14:27, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Then how about nominating hook as normal, but have a shortcut shortlist at the bottom that have an optimal date for use; just article and date, and clicking it on takes you straight to the hook in question, so it does not get overlooked.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 14:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Except in that case the request could easily be overlooked, and the article published on the wrong day. This happened to me a while back when I asked to have the article on the official song for the UEFA Euro 2008 published on the day of the final, but someone by mistake put it up five days too early. Why not just overpass the shortcut and have a date-specific section at the bottom? This is different from what Allen rightly discourages: having an article drive for specific holidays or events. Lampman (talk) 19:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please move the hooks from the next update to queue one. I'd like to put together another set. Thanks.Nrswanson (talk) 00:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a sandbox in your userspace where you could do it (copying the text from Template:Did you know/Next update/Clear); I think that's what people have done in the past when they need it. And, of course, there's always Template:Did you know/Next next update.

I would help with moving Next to the queue, but I'm not an admin. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Done Thanks for your help! Royalbroil 01:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much!Nrswanson (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

My nomination was rejected and removed today (diff) because the reviewer didn't think it was expanded 5x. Not including the list, the actual expansion was 14.6x. Is it possible to have someone re-review the hook? Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 05:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Sorry I should have done a prose count. I am going to add your hook to the next next update.Nrswanson (talk) 06:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

With the bot down and the number of admins working in DYK at the moment lower that would be ideal, quite a number of routine six-hours updates are not taking place on schedule. This slower rotation is only exacerbating the current backlog so, per earlier discussions, I have edited {{DYK-Refresh}} to start warning at five hours instead of six. I am hopeful that this small change will allow us to better keep our four-queues-a-day schedule (with the slight possibility of one extra queue every couple of days) until the bot returns. - Dravecky (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I set it back to 6 just now so folks don't think the bot is lagging by an hour when its really not. —— nixeagle 13:07, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Again can we *not* update again? I'm going to attempt to run the bot again... I think I've isolated the bug that caused it to run while logged out (which is the reason why I had to halt its operations). In short, please do not manually update the DYK! and make sure the bot knows which queue to pull from. —— nixeagle 12:32, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The bot ran today, as it should. Therefor... DO NOT MANUALLY UPDATE the DYK! for the foreseeable future. If the bot fails to update the DYK, please email me by the email this user function!. Sorry for bolding, but lets not make anymore work then we need ;) —— nixeagle 17:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The bot ran as intended again, so I think we are out of the woods. 64.255.180.74 (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Has anyone bothered to check the DYK archives? I've noticed that they are quite disorganized and that most articles don't have DYK templates. Is something being done about this? (I made a few efforts myself, but I would probably need some spare help.) Deucalionite (talk) 16:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Does the bot normally add the templates to the article? If it does, that might explain why recent articles don't have templates as the bot has been down as of late. —— nixeagle 16:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It didn't seem to be a problem when we were doing credits by hand before the bot. Have people been forgetting to do credits? If the user credits are getting done in a hurry, then the article talkpage tags might be getting missed, I dunno. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

As it was before the bot went away, for some reason the bot is not tagging articles with a parenthetical remark in their names. In the last queue, none of the articles with "(play)" in their names got a credit tag although it appears the other did. I've late for a meeting but if somebody else could give those few articles their credit tags, that would be great. - Dravecky (talk) 17:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Check the articles that are on the main page now. Are the contributors credited and the articles tagged? The bot ran this one. —— nixeagle 17:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems to have done most everything fine *except* that for some reason it isn't tagging with a credit any articles with parentheses () in the name. I noticed it also doesn't handle parenthesis properly in the tags themselves - just substitutes code for the parenthesis.

Also, it seems to have done something a bit odd with the picture link in the archive as follows:

... that VIP and TV Now magazines give their names to the VIP Style Awards ([[:|venue pictured]]) and TV Now Awards respectively, the latter of which regularly features Lorraine Keane? Gatoclass (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

BTW I'm logging off now, so I won't be able to assist any more until tomorrow. Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, even back in mid-December, it was sometimes putting %28 and &29 instead of ( and ). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:47, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Another oddity: Can you tell me why the bot keeps adding the weird dollar symbol, which I removed? The bot loves money, eh? --BorgQueen (talk) 17:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually yeah, I've finally found it! You do know that php code is covered in dollar signs >.> so this was a pain to find. The offending line of code is:

$create_content = preg_replace("/$/","$",$create_content);

This snippet basically takes the page, looks for the end of it and sticks a "$" at the end... I'm going to comment it out as I have no clue why its there to start with, but if something breaks, please email me and block the bot. —— nixeagle^{email me} 18:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so the only other bug we have right now is the () issue? I suspect that one is the bot encoding the () as it would in a url. I'll try to isolate it on monday as I have to go shortly :). —— nixeagle^{email me} 18:56, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually you know what, the bot did do one of the "(play)" ones (here)... can someone tell me exactly what the wrong behavior is? I'm confused and as long as I'm confused this is not getting fixed ;) —— nixeagle^{email me} 19:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It tags the user pages fine. It's the article pages it doesn't tag when there are brackets in the name. Gatoclass (talk) 03:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

How many of those are still active and what are the requirements? I'm can probably take a crack at one or two. —— nixeagle^{email me} 19:07, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about most of these requests. But I think DYK Purge Bot is pretty much a lost cause...it was an attempt to clear up some of the problems that happen with section editing at T:TDYK (if you open T:TDYK, then someone else adds or removes a section near the top, then you click a section edit link lower down, you'll get the wrong section, because of how section editing works) but no discussions have come up with a way to get around that, I think it's just something we'll have to live with. (The only alternative I can think of is to have each DYK nom be its own page, transcluded into T:TDYK, like they do at AFD, but that would probably be crazy.) As for the other requests, I don't know what the status of them is. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Should the previously unwritten rules be moved to a subpage of the guidelines? Should i also add this to WP:RM to make it more official? (btw, move not merge) Simply south not SS, sorry 02:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we have previously agreed that the unwritten rules should be merged or moved to a subpage. I could move it now if we agreed on a new name; "Unwritten Rules" refers to when the rules were unwritten, and is therefore an obsolete name. Someone suggested "General Guidelines". Other ideas? Art LaPella (talk) 04:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, they aren't "general guidelines", because they are mostly about the fine details rather than general rules. I can't think of a suitable name offhand - however, I am inclined to think that the "Unwritten Rules" page should probably be split into two separate pages, one covering the unwritten rules themselves and the other covering the "rules of thumb for preparing updates", which is really a different topic. I just put them there originally for want of a better place. Gatoclass (talk) 05:55, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

If i make this more official (with an adaptation of {{moveoptions}}) we can all vote and decide on the name. Simply south not SS, sorry 13:39, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, let's have a discussion then. Chamal ^talk 13:55, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Umm.. wait. Why does it say we are going to move WT:DYK? Chamal ^talk 14:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I had to subst it (i have done something like this before). The links are corrected now. Simply south not SS, sorry 14:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

How should we go about this?

Just be bold and do the split. As long as you don't change the "unwritten rules" while doing so, it should be fairly uncontroversial. —— nixeagle 14:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggested by someone

1. Oppose I don't see a problem with the current naming scheme; my suggestion below. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggested by Gatoclass (talk · contribs) (Copied from above discussion) the "Unwritten Rules" page should probably be split into two separate pages, one covering the unwritten rules themselves and the other covering the "rules of thumb for preparing updates", which is really a different topic.

1. Support: I think this is the better option. The unwritten rules clearly have two types of things; the actual unwritten rules and the more informal suggestions on making hooks. These should be separated. But if we are doing this, we'll have to decide again on two names :) Chamal ^talk 14:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

1. Oppose split While I　agree with Gato that the Unwritten Rules have rules covering two different issues (writing hooks, and preparing updates), I don't see that as a problem; it's nice to have a centralized location for all description of DYK community consensus (which is basically what the unwritten rules are—guidelines that rose out of describing de facto consensus). If I go there to look at a rule on hook length, no one is forcing me to read the rules on preparing updates; if I go there to look at a rule on how many US hooks to put in an update, no one is forcing me to read about what qualifies as article expansion. Having all those rules in one place makes it easy to find all of them; I fear that splitting them into two pages, even if the split is logical, will create another level of complexity in the DYK guidelines and be similar to instruction creep. One of the things I liked about DYK in the beginning was that I came in not knowing a thing, and within a couple hours of reading Art's rules and participating at T:TDYK I felt like an expert; splitting up the rules into multiple levels would just increase the amount of time for a newcomer to figure out how things work. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:12, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggested by Simply south (talk · contribs)

1. Oppose I don't see a problem with the current naming scheme; my suggestion below. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't really like any of the other current proposals...personally, I think the current naming scheme isn't a huge problem (if people want to nitpick, we can always change it to "[Previously] unwritten rules") except for people who come in and misunderstand what's going on, which is clearly what happened a few months ago the last time there was a big battle over this; it's not our fault if people misunderstand what the rules are, especially when it's so clearly written that the rules are a description of consensus. Anyway, many people chiming in during that discussion seemed to want to move the rules into project space rather than Art's user space, and I don't have a problem with that (although it could keep a note saying something like "these guidelines were originally complied by Art LaPella"), but I don't see a pressing need for the name itself to be changed. Moving it into project space would be enough to dispel the crazy idea that these rules are Art's fabrications (not to mention that giving them a shortcut, such as WP:DYK/UR, would add an air of "community-ness" to people who have complained about them before), and calling them "unwritten" even though they're written isn't killing anyone, it's just a historical nicety (for example, the village pump is called a village pump even though it's actually a webpage). So my suggestion is to move rules to project space without making a new name. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

1. Support as suggester. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

You can see this thread to view some of the previous iteration of this discussion, for background info. There was also some discussion in the thread higher up in that archive, Alleged inconsistency (formerly entitled "Politizer's deception"...haha...that was just a laugh a minute, wasn't it?). Just so everyone can have an idea what has been said already. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Look, before we start making formal proposals, wouldn't it be an idea to try and come up with a few names first? When we've got it down to two or three preferred options, then we can start a poll. Otherwise, this seems premature to me. Gatoclass (talk) 17:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. That's fine with me. I was just trying to go with the flow because it looked like it was turning into a poll; if we need more discussion first, feel free to remove the poll-ish stuff. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

How about, just Additional Rules? "General rules" is simply not accurate, because there is nothing general about these rules, they are rules that cover quite specific topics. "Additional Rules" makes it clear that these are not the full set of rules, nor the basic rules, but just an additional set of rules that users don't have to be intimately familiar with in order to participate. Gatoclass (talk) 17:27, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I like Gato's suggestion "Additional Rules", so I move that it gets included in the suggestions. Royalbroil 00:13, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done Moved to Wikipedia:Did you know/Additional rules. Art LaPella (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Could an admin please update the mainpage. It has been five hours and we really need to try and update every 5 in order to get rid of the back log. Thanks.Nrswanson (talk) 23:59, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Never mind. I see the bot is back in action. It would be helpful though to move the next update to the queue. Nrswanson (talk) 00:01, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I would like to request that Mozart in Italy to have its chance at DYK, despite its submission half-a-day over the 5-day guideline.[1][2] Brianboulton is not familiar with DYK,[3] and I only came to know of the new article near the end of its 5th day.[4] The article is an amazing work of Brianboulton, and deserves a nod for its creation. The associated subject (Mozart) is readily recognizable by most, if not all, of the world, and it would help the project's cause by highlighting this article to the general public. Jappalang (talk) 00:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Given that this is not a self nom, it's an exceptional article (well on its way to GA or FA status), and it missed the deadline for submission by only a mere 10 hours I am inclined to support the application of WP:IAR in this case. (FYI I am the one who declined it in the first place) I hope the rest of you will agree with me.Nrswanson (talk) 00:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I endorse the motion for IAR in this case, due to the reasons stated by Nrswanson and Jappalang. Terrakyte (talk) 01:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I endorse the motion so much, I promoted it to a pending queue. - Dravecky (talk) 20:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Endorse after the fact. —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 20:45, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you nominate articles for DYK that you yourself created? Jonathan321 (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. --IvoShandor (talk) 22:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I just updated the DYKsug template (the difference is that now it auto-generates credit templates for everything....in the past, if there were more than 2 articles, it would just produce a message saying "you'll have to do the credit templates by hand").

I believe I have tested the new version pretty thoroughly before updating. But just in case, please be wary at T:TDYK, and if any problems are popping up with new nominations notify me and (if it's urgent) feel free to undo the most recent edit at Template:DYKsug to get it back to the last version. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:10, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I've started working on a new template that, if I get get the kinks ironed out, might supersede {{DYKsug}} and {{DYKsuggestion}} and replace the current system we have. The reasons are as follows (you can find a lot of the discussion surrounding these points summed up at User talk:Politizer#DYKsuggestion format):

• Current system, with two separate templates working together, is confusing to people (esp. new people); there is a discussion at Template talk:DYKsuggestion about changing the names to make things clearer, but being able to get the job done with a single template would be even better
• Some users have noted that the DYKsuggestion template takes up a lot of space on T:TDYK, and most of it is usually empty fields (like expander3= and yada yada, which are rarely used)
• Some users have noted that arranging the article contributors in the current format, ie

creator   = Politizer
creator2  = 
creator3  = 
creator4  = 
expander  = 
expander2 =

etc., isn't necessary anymore...in the past it was nice to have the article contributors listed prominently like that (made it easier to do the credits), but now the credit templates are generated automatically (thanks to, I believe, Hassocks, who I think was the one to suggest that) so we don't really need this

• Gatoclass has suggested to me that the distinction between creator= and expander= is still unclear to some users and causing confusion

So, with that in mind, I'm working on a new template that just places in the hook, nominator info, and credits, pretty much like this:

====Example====
* ... that this is an '''[[example]]'''?
<small>Created by [[User:Politizer|]]. Self nom at ~~~~~</small>
<!--
*{{DYKmake|Example|Politizer}}
-->

So the output looks pretty similar to how things were before we had the templates, I guess. My hope, though, is that it won't be a step backwards—the main idea is it would standardize things, it would auto-generate the credits templates (people seem to like that?), and hopefully be a lot simpler to use than what we have now (fewer parameters to worry about, not having to keep DYKsug and DYKsuggestion straight, etc.) and ideally be more compact at T:TDYK (personally, I think the way things are now, what you get in the edit window isn't messy, but it does take up a lot of space). Obviously, there's some stuff that still needs to be fixed: specifically, getting the credits templates to be commented out (it seems to be more complicated than it looks; see the indented part of User talk:Gatoclass#DYKsug template update for why).

For some examples with some more doodads, see here (and what it looks like in the edit window, here).

Anyway, I just thought I would throw this out there, so people can give input and feedback if they want. And, of course, it would be good for me to know what people want, or if this is totally unwelcome, before I go too far ahead with it. (And even if everyone thinks this is an improvement, I recognize that it's still sort of rocking the boat, especially since it's been a relatively short time since we implemented the current system and this might be too early to shake everything up again.) Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:39, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the "auto-generate the credits templates", sometimes I add another highlighted article to the hook, but the new article doesn't get credited in the queue. Anyway to correct for this, or will it need to be done manually?--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 02:43, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm... Unfortunately, I think that's impossible, since the credits are created by substing the template, and after the template has been subst'ed it can't do anything anymore. I think you just have to add the extra credit templates manually when you add the extra article. Of course, this means that there's the chance of missing credits in the queue (if someone adds a new article to the nom and doesn't know to add the credits), but only if the editor promoting to Next doesn't check closely...and any time there's more than one article in the nom the editor should be checking and should be wary of the auto-generated templates anyway. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

A new feature I think that would be very helpful would be an auto-generated line for the image. I'm thinking that we need a field for the image file name, and for the image caption, which can both be generated and used in much the same way as the credits. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 01:50, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Both the current version and the template in development automatically do the image if you put something in the |image= field when you call the template. They don't put in a caption, though; it wouldn't be hard to add a |caption= parameter if everyone want. I didn't do that before because I just assumed it was the promoter's responsibility to write the caption, but if everyone wants it automated I can add it very easily. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Old news now, but substantial chunks of Breastfeeding in public - a DYK on 3 January - were copied from History_of_breastfeeding#Breastfeeding_in_public. I'm sure it was inadvertant - the author did not nominate it - but could nominators/reviewers watch out for this sort of thing please. -- Testing times (talk) 20:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I nommed this one. I had a look at the history and compared the content at History of breastfeeding with the content of the new article, and at the time I felt there was sufficiemt "new" content in the new (Breastfeeding in public) article to justify nominating. Apologies for the mishap. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 22:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's not totally your fault; it's just as much the fault of whoever verified it (it could have been me, for all I know) and whoever promoted it. We're all human. No worries! Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I tried to take a shot at organizing all the stuff in Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates by making some subcategories (ie, templates used for preparing the next update, templates for user talk, etc.). Most importantly, you might want to take a look at the subcategory Category:Deprecated DYK templates, where I put the templates that (as far as I know) no one is really using, and thus might be worth deleting if we ever decide to get organized. I don't really know everything about all of these, so I might have put some templates in that category erroneously. Also, there were a few templates that I wasn't able to move into the proper subcategory because they're protected (the queues, etc.). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:49, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

separated into new section by User:Politizer

I hate it already after sometime off of DYK. I deleted one other DYK nomination due to....I guess an edit link had the wrong whatever and instead of going for a date, I got to a nomination two edit link above it and deleted my nom for that thinking it was a "stupid" example coughed up by someone. Whatever happened to just doing it manually instead of having some script do the job? Can we at least have that option for people who aren't that lazy and are willing to do the work without help of a script?? I am an experienced editor on Wikipedia, I ain't THAT freaking lazy!!! --293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 23:12, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

This section is meant to look for feedback about the proposed new template, not the current one. But anyway, as for your comments...that is a common thing that happens with section editing and is unavoidable—it happens when you open the page and then someone else removes or adds a section before you click edit—; when that happens you can just go back to T:TDYK (without editing) and edit again.

As for having an option to do it manually: there is an option. No one is required to use the template to make their nom, and there are numerous regulars who nominate by hand, as you are suggesting. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It's driving me nuts. I think we have to move as much as possible off that page and put it somewhere else. We could start by moving the seven subst'ed queue and update templates, and also the hook count template if possible. Maybe there's some other stuff we could move too, I'm not sure, but I'd like the page to contain as little as possible other than the suggestions themselves. Gatoclass (talk) 16:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not surprised. Back in July it was often between 85,000-90,000 bytes; the last version was at 277,685 bytes. Quite an increase. The new templating is probably behind a lot of it.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 16:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

From what I remember, the transcluded queues were added to the bottom to respond to the problem of people's re-nominating their own hooks after they were promoted. If we remove those transclusions, how will we deal with that other issue?

As for the nominations templates...if people decide to go ahead with implementing the new template (described above), I believe that would significantly cut down on the number of bytes in the current page—the byte count would become comparable (although still a bit higher, because of the subsection headings and the auto-generated credits) to the byte count before we implemented the {{DYKsug}}/{{DYKsuggestion}} templates. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, do we need the DYK criteria section there? I think most of the stuff there is already in the rules (DYK rules and/or Additional Rules) and what isn't could be merged to them (for example, the information about using prosesize.js and other things could be included in Additional Rules). Then the section could be nothing but a link to DYK Rules and Additional Rules...that might cut down the byte count a little. As long as we don't run into people wanting to stir up a fuss about us "changing the rules" by doing a merge. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I think we could move a lot of this stuff. We really want to keep the page as bare as practicable of everything except the suggestions themselves. As for people re-nomming their own hooks, I did add a section some time ago called "where is my hook" which could be left in a prominent position as a substitute for the queue list. Gatoclass (talk) 17:32, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

That could help...of course, people are human and don't always read the stuff, so the "where is my hook" section might not ward off all re-nominations, but re-nominations probably happen so infrequently that it may not be worth the trade-off in page load time (ie, transcluding all those queues might be a system-resource-heavy solution for an insignificant problem). I suppose there's no way to know unless we try [removing the transcluded queues, that is].

As for moving the "DYK criteria" into the regular rules, I'm done with classes for today and don't really feel like doing anything constructive in real life, so maybe this afternoon I can draft up a version of the DYK rules and Additional rules with that other stuff merged into them and post it here...it should be almost identical to the current pages, but there would probably be some additions (a couple details here and there that are in T:TDYK#DYK criteria and not in the regular rules) so I should probably run it by everyone else rather than just changing it. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I have removed the transcluded queues from T:TDYK; I've also drafted versions of the DYK rules from WP:DYK (draft here; specific changes visible here) and Additional Rules (draft here; specific changes visible here) with the stuff from T:TDYK#DYK criteria merged into them; for the most part it's just pasted in directly as is (although I might have made little additions here and there...I remember adding something about how material in an expansion must be new, not split), which is why I'm putting those diffs here for everyone's review. If no one has any problems with the way those are written, then sometime today I will update WP:DYK and WP:DYKA, and remove the "DYK criteria" stuff from T:TDYK.

And, again, if you guys are concerned that the large templates on T:TDYK are increasing the page's load time, I have the new template (described above) that would probably help with that, but I am still awaiting input/feedback from everyone on whether or not people like that new template and, if so, how we would go about switching over to it. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:DYKbox (which is protected and therefore can only be added by admins) needs to be edited to add Template:Did you know/Queue to the list of navigation targets. I think it probably would fit best after "Next Update" and ahead of "Archive." --Orlady (talk) 03:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

While we're on that subject...Do we need that many links in the DYK nav box? It's getting a little much. Personally, I don't know if LIST and STATS are necessary there... I never use the Archive link but maybe other people do, so I'm not sure about that one. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:35, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I could easily live without the LIST link, which points to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs. That's primarily a platform for boasting by contributors, which isn't something that needs to be prominently promoted. However, I think the ARCHIVE link is very useful in helping to find details of DYK hooks that are no longer on the main page. I use it periodically. I am sure it is particularly helpful for users who are notified that their article "was" featured on a recent main page, and want to see what the hook said and when it was displayed. As for STATS, if it is removed from this box, how will people remember where to find it? --Orlady (talk) 04:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. You're probably right; I often forget that not everyone has the shortcuts memorized like I do (some people actually have lives...), and ARCHIVE and STATS might be good to keep. (Full disclosure, though: I just added one of my doodads to STATS, so of course I wouldn't mind having it easier for people to see...but still, I'm not sure if it's something that needs to be that prominent.) I agree that LIST isn't really necessary. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 04:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've added "Queues" and created a shortcut link for it. Don't know if it should be called "queue" or "queues": I mean, is it a queue of queues, or what? - Mark 03:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

"Queues" should be fine. It's not really anything, just a list of the queues. I left a suggestion at User talk:Gatoclass#DYK queue listings for making it better, but you don't have to worry about it if you don't want. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thx. --Orlady (talk) 04:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

However, for that link to useful, the contents of the queues need to be transcluded onto Template:Did you know/Queue. The idea is to be able to quickly see what's in each queue, not to see an index page from which it is necessary to click separately on each of the entries. Also, it would be helpful to transclude Next Update and Next Next Update onto that same page, for similar reasons. I would try to fix this template myself, but it's another template that's fully protected and can only be edited by admins. --Orlady (talk) 04:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, that's the suggestion I left at Gato's talk page this morning. I don't think he has been online, though...if anyone who's an admin is watching, you can find the code at User talk:Gatoclass#DYK queue listings...I believe that should do it, if you update the queue page with it. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 04:16, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

...that the hook which reads that John Ryan, the co-creator with Derek O'Connor of blogorrah.com and the former co-owner with Michael O'Doherty (the founder of Kiss and Stellar) of the unsuccessful New York Dog and Stars on Sunday publications and the successful VIP and TV Now magazines—which give their names to the VIP Style Awards (venue pictured) and TV Now Awards respectively and the latter of which regularly features Lorraine Keane amongst others—was so fearful of criticism for his 2009 television series This is Nightlive that he was reported as intending to go travelling for an "unspecified time" has to be one of worst constructed sentences in the English language? What does it even mean, with all of these parenthetical asides and a clause set off by hyphens? I am the first one to acknowledge that I have tried for a multiple-article hook, but we have to be careful that we don't leave readers far more confused than they could ever be informed by a sentence such as this one on the main page. 200 characters is a tight restriction, but it ought to be enough to get a decent hook across to readers. Even with extra characters allowed (I count 580), I don't think that this sentence makes any meaningful sense, either as a sentence or as a representation of what DYK should be offering. I think DYK would be better served by chopping these into separate hooks if a comprehensible single hook cannot be written. By contrast, that John Ryan was so fearful of criticism for his 2009 television series This is Nightlive that he was reported as intending to go travelling for an "unspecified time" would be a readable double hook, as a start. Alansohn (talk) 04:19, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. While it's nice to add a lot of hooks together, the one has gone too far. How do you suggest we chop it up? Royalbroil 04:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Dump the phrase between the hyphens, for a start. Gatoclass (talk) 04:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I've broken it up into three different hooks, as follows:

• ... that VIP and TV Now magazines give their names to the VIP Style Awards (venue pictured) and TV Now Awards respectively, the latter of which regularly features Lorraine Keane?
• ... that John Ryan was so fearful of criticism for his 2009 television series This is Nightlive that he was reported as intending to go travelling for an "unspecified time"?
• ... that John Ryan was co-creator with Derek O'Connor of blogorrah.com, and a former co-owner with Michael O'Doherty (the founder of Kiss and Stellar) of the unsuccessful New York Dog and Stars on Sunday publications?

Candlewicke will no doubt be disappointed he didn't get "the record" but he will still get two hooks into the "five or more" list. Gatoclass (talk) 05:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Update: I've managed to squeeze it into two hooks, as follows:

• ... that VIP and TV Now magazines give their names to the VIP Style Awards (venue pictured) and TV Now Awards respectively, the latter of which regularly features Lorraine Keane?
• ... that before starring in This is Nightlive, John Ryan was co-creator with Derek O'Connor of blogorrah.com, and a former co-owner of the unsuccessful New York Dog and Stars on Sunday publications in partnership with Kiss and Stellar founder Michael O'Doherty?

This will at least allow Candlewicke to equal the current record with the second hook. Gatoclass (talk) 05:53, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I hope my former English teachers aren't reading ... I was responsible for the weirdly punctuated version of that hook. I can console myself with the fact it wasn't a sentence from a Featured Article Candidate...! Gato's two-hook version looks much better. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 09:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I hop no one took offense at my raising this issue, none was intended. The two hook solution is still a bit challenging but a substantial improvement over the initial mega-hook. Readability and intelligibility should stand as primary goals, something that I will try to work on in future hooks myself. Alansohn (talk) 04:47, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget though that multi-hooks are an excellent way of reducing the total number of hooks. If the articles above were featured individually, they would take up two full updates! Multi-hooks help keep the backlog manageable, and that is an important function. Gatoclass (talk) 06:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, luckey me eh? My 11-article hook might be next record holder lol [tongue in cheek] YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Umm... this has morphed into a completely different "game" than in the "olden days" when I felt joy in contributing. Well, life moves on. (I must admit I never look at the DYKs anymore - strains the brain too much, but that is my failing.) —Mattisse (Talk) 04:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I put them together now so that it wouldn't backlog the place. In the old days I think splitting them would have resulted in more "air time" on the main page. I think others group their hooks for that reason too. I don't see my hook as being opportunistic for the purposes of DYKcountitis, as all of the articles are 30k or longer, and such a long article would not be conducive to racking up numbers. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, YM...these days it seems like people get accused of DYKcountitis and careerism just for trying to help out. Suntag got his RfA ruined for nominating articles for us when we were low on hooks, and I've been accused of "wanting to be an admin" because I deigned to volunteer some of my time vetting nominations. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

No I'm not worried about any ramifications. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

(He doesn't know who you are!) —Mattisse (Talk) 04:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I do! he's Kind Of A Big Deal around here ;). I was just grumpy and whining at the time I posted that message. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 04:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually I'm not important or impregnable, I just meant that I'm not interested in getting votes and what not. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that I've gotten counts of former DYKs that are currently good/featured content, just for fun I threw together a table that displays what we have so far. Here's what it looks like:

Good/featured content from DYK

Status	Number of articles
Featured article	2,463
Featured list	895
Good article	8,089
These may be slight underestimates (learn more) refresh this table

Want me to put it anywhere? I was thinking DYKSTATS might have a home for it (just with a minor introductory sentence, such as "Some articles that were featured on DYK have gone on to become some of Wikipedia's featured or good content; bla bla bla").

And by the way, since these questions will probably be raised by someone... first of all, this is all automated (it doesn't use a bot, it just happens magically because Gimmetrow is a genius and because we have great magic words such as {{PAGESINCATEGORY}}), so no human will need to do a thing to update it (other than me maybe null-editing it when I feel like it—but even that might not be necessary) and it won't increase the responsibilities of anyone here or anywhere else. Secondly, it's not meant to illustrate anything, make any point, or cause a change in policy or how stuff works; it's just there for fun and for your viewing pleasure, if you want to look at it. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:35, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The other thing I was considering was adding a third column that shows an example of an article from that category (preferably by somehow grabbing a random article from the category). But that might not be technically possible (I don't know if there's any magic word that can do that), and plus it would make the table bigger, and I kind of like how it's small and cute right now. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I like. And what large numbers ... I expected much lower totals, especially for FAs. Very encouraging! WP:DYKSTATS looks like the best place, although of course the description in the lead would have to be edited to reflect the page's change in scope. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 21:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Since there hasn't been much input, I BOLDly put it into DYKSTATS, and did some minor rewording of the lead-in to redefine what that page is about. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that the additional ("unwritten") rules are binding, the main WP:DYK page should contain just an overview of the detailed rules. As far as I could learn, this is common practice here for other policy stuff ("in a nutshell" etc.) A few things may need to move between the two pages to optimize the presentation. But before we bother with details, let's see if the general organization has support. The simplest naming scheme that came to my mind is:

Summary on WP:DYK#Overview of rules and details on WP:DYK/Rules

As starting point the WP:Did you know/Additional rules should just be moved to WP:DYK/Rules. Then WP:DYK should be trimmed of advice like "Use {*mp} to get bullet points on the Main Page", which belong in the detailed rules. Those that need to know this usually do already :-)

1. Proposed. Xasodfuih (talk) 01:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

1. No, I don't want to merge the basic rules and the additional rules. We've been through this before, the idea is to keep the basic ruleset simple so it doesn't overwhelm beginners. The additional rules deal mostly with nuances that novices do not need to be familiar with in order to participate. Gatoclass (talk) 09:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

   The only difference between what I proposed and your preference is whether the basic rules are mentioned (or not) in the "additional rules page". You can keep it the way you like. Less work for me. Bye. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The need to reorganize the rules together has been discussed as long ago as Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 29#5x expansion. We all support somebody else doing it, but nobody feels they know the details well enough to produce a coherent description. Art LaPella (talk) 02:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll start by making a copy of the additional rules to WP:DYK/Rules, and I fill in in anything missing from the WP:DYK. Then we can decide what should be trimmed from the overview. Xasodfuih (talk) 02:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've started working on this. Just so we don't have big surprises at the end, could the interested parties review each section after it's completed? As a "pilot" I've merged the full rules on article length Wikipedia:DYK/Rules#Article_length. I'll proceed with the rest over time and announce completed sections here. But I'd like to know how I'm doing quality-wise. Xasodfuih (talk) 03:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Xasodfuih, you do not have consensus to make such sweeping changes. Please stop. If you want to alter the organization of the rules, I suggest you do so on one of your own sandbox pages and then ask other users to take a look at what you've done and comment on it. Gatoclass (talk) 09:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I think he is making the changes at a sandbox-like/workpage-like subpage, not the actual rules page. I can see why doing it in a user sandbox would be preferable, though, to avoid giving anyone the wrong impression. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you know Politizer has been working on the same project and changing the actual rules? Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't made any real attempt to reorganize the rules, though; I was just getting rid of the list of rules that used to be on T:TDYK#DYK criteria. They are almost all rules that were also listed in WP:DYK, so it was really more cleanup than anything else. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 05:18, 21 January 2009 (UTC) I also posted the changes above and solicited feedback before making the update (I didn't really get any feedback, though). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Not really going to !vote on this since it seems a little premature to make a formal poll already (I've made the same mistake very recently, though, so I'm not perfect...some things have to be learned the hard way, I guess). But I would say, I support the general idea of making the main rules at WP:DYK as simple and welcoming as possible for newcomers, while leaving the details to WP:DYKAL. In practice, though, it looks to me like we've already got that division established pretty well; there's not much in the main rules that I think is detailed enough to warrant moving to WP:DYKAL. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I have now added the queue and next update page templates to the Template:Did you know/Queue page as suggested by other users above, so that's done. I also moved the hook count template to the same page, for want of a better place to put it. I just want it off the Suggestions page because it's not very useful there, and can only slow down the page load times. I suggest renaming the Queue page to the "Queue overview" page or something similar as it now contains more info than just the queues. I have also deleted some other templates from Suggestions that were serving no practical purpose. Gatoclass (talk) 10:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Things look a lot better now. I was thinking, though, should {{DYK-Refresh}} still be at that page? I don't update the template or queues, so I don't know how often you admins make use of that template to know when updates should be posted, but it should probably go somewhere (and somewhere where it's also visible to non-regulars, so that other people can see if an update is running late or whatever and then notify DYK people). I guess having it on T:DYK as it is now is probably good enough (it might also be nice to have it on WP:DYK#Updating the DYK template... I imagine T:DYK and WP:DYK are the first places new people go), but I just wanted to check. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Believe me, I never go to the Suggestions page to check the DYK time! It takes far too long to load. I just go straight to the next update page, and I'd be very suprised if any of the other updaters ever referred to the time template on the Suggestions page either. Gatoclass (talk) 16:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I found the hook count template to be very useful for both navigation and in assembling queues. As large as the suggestions page is, I doubt one tiny transcluded template could add that much to the load time. I'm also concerned that the DYKRefresh has been removed to a place where few non-regulars will see it. Given the experience of the last month with the bot and oft-delayed manual updates, I think it's critical that as many eyes as possible are watching the timer. - Dravecky (talk) 18:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Is it such a big deal having to click an additional link to check the hook count? One really only needs to check the count occasionally - once a day, if that. I can't see any compelling reason why such an item needs to be on the Suggestions page.

As for DYKRefresh - it appears on next update, next next update, all five queue pages, and the main DYK page. Even when it was on the Suggestions page, we still had constant time overruns when the bot wasn't working, which shows that most contributors just ignore it.

DYKRefresh is really just for the benefit of the regular updaters who keep track of it, and they can already check it on any of the other pages. Gatoclass (talk) 06:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the current arrangement of the Queues page. Thanks! However, I now have one more item on my wish list for the page: a "purge" (?action=purge) link would make it easier to update the page display. --Orlady (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that moving the queues to a separate page has made them a lot more accessible - for me, at least.

I also agree about the "purge" button - I've been thinking the same myself - but I don't know how to make one :) Gatoclass (talk) 06:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I copied the "purge" code from T:DYK so hopefully that will do the job. Gatoclass (talk) 06:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Current box

Did you know? Introduction and rules Introduction WP:DYK General discussion WT:DYK Guidelines WP:DYKCRIT Reviewer instructions WP:DYKRI Nominations Nominate an article WP:DYKCNN Awaiting approval WP:DYKN Approved WP:DYKNA April 1 hooks WP:DYKAPRIL Holding area WP:SOHA Preparation Preps and queues T:DYK/Q Prepper instructions WP:DYKPBI Admin instructions WP:DYKAI Main Page errors WP:ERRORS History Statistics WP:DYKSTATS Archived sets WP:DYKA Just for fun Monthly wraps WP:DYKW Awards WP:DYKAWARDS Userboxes WP:DYKUBX Hall of Fame WP:DYK/HoF List of users ... ... by nominations WP:DYKNC ... by promotions WP:DYKPC Administrative Scripts and bots WP:DYKSB On the Main Page T:DYK Main Page errors WP:ERRORS To ping the DYK admins {{DYK admins}} v t e

One proposal

User:Politizer/DYKbox

Picking up on yesterday's discussion about the growing length of the Nav Box, if people think it's getting too long, we could shorten it in the following ways:
(1) merge Next Update and Queues into a single page (they really are focused on the same general topic of monitoring what's coming up next in line)
(2) merge "Rules" and "Additional Rules" on a single page. I agree with Gato's point above, but putting the two on a single page can be done without confusing the new users. The main rules can be listed at the top as Rules and the "additional rules" can be set forth in a separate section below the main rules as a guide to how the rules have been interpreted and applied. Even as an experienced DYK participant, I do find it confusing to see "Rules" and "Additional Rules" on the Nav Box.
(3) If that's not enough to shorten the navbox, I'd consider eliminating "List" as it really is a page of interest principally to those on the list (and those folks can bookmark it)
I'm probably biased, but I think Stats is a useful feature to keep in the Nav Box. Unlike "list", it's not a vanity page and is intended to be of general interest, and it focuses on particular hooks that have worked effectively rather than on personal medal count. Cbl62 (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Rather than actually merging the Rules and Additional Rules, what about formatting the box more like this (right, generated from User:Politizer/DYKbox)? Still needs a little formatting to make it prettier, of course, but the basic idea is there. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:09, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, as much as it would be nice to shorten the box by merging Next and Queues, I imagine having a direct link to Next is useful for people who prepare updates regularly; having a link only to Queues would require two clicks to get to Next. (Personally, I just type in T:DYK/N, but, as I mentioned above, I can't expect everyone to have memorized all the shortcuts like me...different people like to get around in different ways.) Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Disagree with (1), it will just add clutter to the next update page and make it more difficult to copy and paste next update to the queue pages. It really isn't practical.

Rather than merging the rules and the additional rules, one could just leave the additional rules out of the navbox altogether, I don't see any need to have them in there anyway. As long as there is a link to them with the other rules that's all that's required.

As for merging the two sets of rules, I'm not implacably opposed to it as long as it's made absolutely clear that users do not need to be familiar with them. DYK can be a pretty daunting process for beginners - I know it was for me - and I want to be very sure that the front end of DYK is accessible and doesn't intimidate people.

"List" and "Stats" could probably have a link to one another on their own pages, I don't think we need both in the navbox. Gatoclass (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the box proposed by Politizer is an improvement. And we could add a link to "list" on "stats" if there's a consensus to go with the above suggestions. Cbl62 (talk) 16:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I just added the links to each other on DYKLIST and DYKSTATS. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see this suggestion of P's as an improvement at all, it still takes up just as much space but it looks more cluttered. I don't think that will be a satisfactory solution. Gatoclass (talk) 16:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

No offense taken; I just threw it together in about 45 seconds, so I'm not married to it! :) By the way, I've transcluded the current DYK navbox right here so it will be easier to look at in this discussion. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

If merging Queues and Next Update creates a clutter issue, then how about this -- Drop Queues from the Box and link to the Queues page from the Next Update page, in the same way Politizer has created a link to "List" on the "Stats" page? Similarly, we could create a link to the "Additional Rules" on the "Rules" page. By doing all of the above, we eliminate three line items from the box: "List", "Additional Rules," and "Queues." The "Stats" page had 1,841 hits in Dec. 2008, so it does appear that people are finding it useful. This compares favorably to 475 hits for "List" Cbl62 (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the "Queue" page needs to stay because it needs to be in a prominent position, that's why it was created in the first place, to stop people renomming their hooks. "Additional rules" can probably be removed, with a link left at the Rules page. Is there some compelling reason why the "List" and "Stats" pages could not be merged? Gatoclass (talk) 05:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think a full-on merger of "List" and "Stats" is a good idea. As you get on into a year, the "Stats" page gets quite large. Adding the content of "List" on top of that will make it too big. Also, they really do serve different purposes. "Stats" has both a "fun" value and an "educational" value. "List" is more of an individaul vanity medal count thing. Cbl62 (talk) 13:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm for removing Additional and List from the navbox. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:04, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Well I guess what we could do is remove the Additional Rules and then just leave a link to DYLList at the top of the Stats page. Gatoclass (talk) 17:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems that I believe is in the process of killing the Wiki is the enormous number of rules that don't actually improve anything except for the ability of administrators to argue with each other. The rules lists continue to grow without bound, and become more opaque and self-contradictory with every edit. Yet they do little or nothing to improve the Wikipedia itself, while at the same time driving off users.

The DYK rules are a perfect example of this. For "fun", I copied the text from the DYK rules into a text editor, in order to remove all the formatting and thus make it smaller. The main rules and "additionals" are... you read for this? EIGHT PRINTED PAGES.

Many of these rules are confusing, new or repetitive, but are nevertheless being used to silently fail articles from the list. The problem is so widespread that it's even mentioned as a "rule", G1. Yet in spite of it being mentioned as a problem, there is no attempt to fix it. The process places all of the onus on the nominator, and none on the objectors - even if the objection is obviously wrong.

In particular, there is a new rule that is widely being applied in this fashion- "must have an inline for the hook". Apparently many reviewers have decided this means that the hook must appear in that form in the body of the article, and that its appearance must have an inline. This obviously conflicts with the fact that the hook is often adapted from the article intro statement, and it is generally accepted that intros do not need inlines unless they introduced new facts that are not covered in the body of the article (which is itself considered bad form).

This (IMHO) mis-applied rule means that DYK is actually more restrictive than FA! For a system that is, as the "rules" state "meant to be something that is motivating to editors creating new content", let me assure you that being victimized by a mechanized process is not exactly motivating.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I have said this at Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Additional rules as well, but anyway.... all these "rules" came about because they were issues that came up repeatedly, and people argued over them repeatedly and [almost] always came to the same conclusions, so the common consensuses were listed as a convenient shorthand, under the name "unwritten rules," to avoid rehashing the same arguments over and over again. Getting rid of the rules won't get rid of the problems that caused those rules to exist; we'll just no longer have any precedent by which to judge those problems when they [inevitably] crop up again.

Furthermore, you don't have to read the whole rules document if you don't want to. They're more for regulars; if you nominate a hook that breaks one of the unwritten/Additional rules, you won't be automatically rejected...rather, one of the regulars will give you a link to that particular rule and then will help you fix the problem. In other words, you don't need prior knowledge of the rules; you can just pick up the relevant ones as you go. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't mean the rules can't change. I would support a change that simply states the hook must be cited, whether at the end of the sentence, multiple sentences or paragraphs. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 23:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, but I don't think it needs to be changed, nor do I think rules about citation should be couched in such superficial terms as sentences/paragraphs. Everyone knows that I am more hard-line than most about inline citations, and some people like to criticize me for demanding a footnote at the end of every sentence [which I don't]—but I am uninvolved with whatever nom Maury is currently talking about, so I think it's safe for me to speak up here. My metric is not that footnotes should be right after the sentence or whatever, but that footnotes should be in places where they make it clear where the information came from. Sometimes that means after a single sentence; sometimes several sentences can get jammed in there. It all comes down to how stuff is written. When the writing is such that one sentence logically flows into another and it's clear that the several sentences all came from the same place, I think it's fine to have a single footnote at the end, as you've suggested. But when there's a possibility that the information could have come from different sources, even if it actually didn't, I usually demand footnotes after each bit, even if it looks redundant. (The last time this issue came up for me at T:TDYK was with the first paragraph of Yes-no question#How such questions are posed, which is basically a list of sentences giving examples that support a claim...all the items came from the same source, but it's just as easily imaginable that they could be examples collected from different sources. Ultimately, I asked for more footnotes—since the hook itself came from that paragraph—and rather than working with me and other reviewers to get that done, the nominator chose to throw a temper tantrum.)

Also, while I agree with Maury that there should be leeway for nominators to have hooks worded differently than they appear in the article, that only works up to a point. No nomination should get rejected just because the hook is worded a bit differently in the main article, but at the same time the nominators should do their best, when possible, to make the reviewer's job easy in finding the hook. There's no clear cutoff...but there are cases where the information for the hook is difficult to find in the article. In a perfect world the reviewers would be able to scour every article looking for everything, but unfortunately most of the reviewers are very busy (when I was active at T:TDYK, on a given day I might review 20-30 hooks in one sitting) and don't have time to look super-carefully; I often just did a once-over to make sure the writing and POV were ok, and a ctrl+F search to find the stuff relevant to the hook and read that. Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that 9 times out of 10 your hook is getting reviewed by someone who knows far less on the subject than you do and might not be able to connect all the ideas as easily as you did, so anything you can do to help the reviewers in that respect is welcome. Some nominators leave comments to the effect of "the relevent information is in paragraph ___, reference number ___" or whatever. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:45, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

• Eight pages of rules? The last several times I tried to "help" at DYK it happened that I could not find the hook in the article, and if I found something resembling the hook, it was not cited. Back in the days when I did rewrite hooks and submitted my own article hooks to DYK, I always made sure the hook was cited in the article. That is not hard to do, even if it seems unnecessary. I also made sure the hook was from information in the lead and easy to spot. That way it was always clear where the hook came from and that it was cited. None of this seemed particularly hard then, but it seems it has all grown more complex. It seemed like there were only a few rules, surely not even a page. The rules were the under 200 characters size of hook, from an article size of 1500 char, or 5X expansion in last (was it 8?) days, hook had to be cited. That was basically it. —Mattisse (Talk) 02:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
  • AFAIK, those still basically are the rules. The rest are corrolaries of those rules, and came about through various discussions when people questioned decisions (for example, the rule that length/expansion is determined by prose size rather than bytes, the rule that expansion is calculated from the previously existing article no matter how bad it was, yada yada...these are just elaborations on the basic length rule, but they're around because someone (or some several people) in the past nominated articles that had problems with those things and big discussions started over that. Again, we could "get rid of" the detailed rules about where article size is calculated from and yada yada, but then what happens when someone makes a nom that brings that issue up all over again? Wikidrama, I imagine. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
    • But are there not various Wikipedia policies/guidelines against this very thing—trying to come up with "rules" that will cover every conceivable situation? WP:IAR, Exceptions should leave the rule intact and others that I can't remember: WP:KISS, WP:CREEP, and WP:BURO etc. —Mattisse (Talk) 04:12, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
      • True...and there's also BEANS. But these rules (as far as I know; I wasn't around when they were first written, so take all this with a grain of salt) weren't made to pre-empt things that have never come up; rather, they were made as a shorthand to cover issues that were coming up over and over again, so to avoid having to have the same arguments repeated they became a convenient thing to point at and tell people "here's what's been decided." That's why they were originally the "unwritten" rules (personally, I preferred that naming, because it made it not look so much like we had tons of rules...I wonder if that perception is changing now). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 04:44, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking that maybe we should drop the "Additional rules" from the navbox. It's probably giving them too high a profile, given that they are only the fine print which most users don't need to be familiar with. By putting them in the navbox, they might be giving the impression there's a huge body of rules which users need to know in order to play. Of course, we've also had the opposite complaint - that they were not prominent enough - but I think a link from the Basic Rules would probably suffice. We might have to think about changing the name too. My suggestion of "Additional rules" was only tentative, and I was suprised it was so quickly adopted, but perhaps someone could come up with a more user-friendly title. Gatoclass (talk) 06:16, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

How about we title it "Applying the rules" since the page is really about the application of the basic rules.Nrswanson (talk) 07:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Not that keen. Anyone got some other suggestions? Gatoclass (talk) 08:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favor of removing them from the navbox (and maybe changing the name...although we just did change the name)—I haven't been here long so I might be wrong on this, but it seems to me that complaints about the number of rules have risen in the couple days since we changed the name and gave the rules more prominence by putting them in the navbox. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 11:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I hope the ultimate goal is to separate the Additional Rules into subpages like Additional Rules for Article Length, and linking them only from the appropriate section of the main Rules page. There should also be similar subpages for proofreading/commenting, for approval, and for updating. They should be linked from a WP:HATNOTE that says "This article is about suggesting a new hook and article. For other ways you can help at Did You Know, see Proofreading/Commenting, Approval, and Updating." If the Additional Rules are linked only from the appropriate section of the rules, then it wouldn't matter what we call them except when citing them as "according to Additional Rule xx", which could be shortened to just "Rule xx" or "Guideline xx", or even "xx". Art LaPella (talk) 14:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC) And maybe some Additional Rules should become references/footnotes to the main rule page. Art LaPella (talk) 16:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

That sounds a little excessive to me, at least for the moment. I did think of another possible alternative name while taking forty winks - "Rules clarifications", which IMO is a nice descriptive title that avoids the impression that there are two sets of rules. Gatoclass (talk) 16:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't gotten any feedback yet (and there are several other things being discussed above, so this might not be the best time, but oh well), but anyway, the new template and possible alternative for {{DYKsug}} is finished and available at Template:NewDYKnomination (the name can always be changed, I just couldn't think of anything better; {{NewDYKnom}} also works). Everyone free to experiment with it in sandboxes or whatever to see if you like it or not; you can also see the prepared examples I made a few days ago here (and what it looks like in the edit window, here)—there have just been a couple minor changes since then. There is more information about this template and the reasons for it above.

If you do want to test it out anywhere, just be aware that in that template there is no longer |creator= and |expander=; they have been merged to one parameter called |writer=, so you'll have to use "writer=" rather than "creator=." Also, there is a parameter called |rollover= to set the image's rollover text.

If you guys all think this isn't an improvement then I won't mind, I just need to know so that I can start focusing on other things (such as improving the system that we already have). If you do think it is an improvement, then I'll need to know that too, so we can start thinking about how to go about switching over. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 22:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks good! Gatoclass (talk) 06:04, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems great to me!Nrswanson (talk) 07:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

It appears the Next update page has been protected by cascading protection. Any particular reason? Or is this an error? :) » \ / (⁂ | ※) 15:16, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I tried to unprotect but it didn't work. I think I will leave a message at AN/I so someone with more experience of unprotection can figure out how to unprotect it. Gatoclass (talk) 16:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Can some other non-admin try editing it again to see whether or not it is protected? I removed the cascading protection from DYLLock and then tried to remove the protection from Next update again but I'm not sure if it worked. Gatoclass (talk) 17:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I was able to edit just now (I didn't, but I could have if I wanted to). Unless I became an admin this afternoon without realizing it, I think we've got the problem solved for now. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

... and now the bot is 20 minutes overdue. I hope changing the protection hasn't made it dysfunctional again. Quite frankly I'm getting tired of troubleshooting the bot. Gatoclass (talk) 19:03, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, it's back. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 00:47, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Lately, the bot has been updating anywhere from 2 to 53 minutes past the scheduled update time. - Dravecky (talk) 04:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's not good. I guess we're going to have to ask nixeagle to do some more troubleshooting, but I'm reluctant to do so ATM as I don't feel like going back to manual updates again right now. Gatoclass (talk) 05:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to leave a note that 3 people, including myself, are working on a 2 - 15 part DYK. They deal with 28 plays, 14 per half of a career, divided by an important historical event in the author's life. There is no way to subdivide them further instead of having individual pages. The first set will be put out coming soon, and will include all new pages, few redundancies, and all of the criteria met. If there are any problems or concerns, please contact me. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:29, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Nota bene to DYK reviewers (assuming any of you see this): Last time I remember that someone tried to contact this user about "any problems or concerns," he shat all over them and threatened to take at least two DYK contributors to AN/I or other places for topic bans, desysopping, or whatever. Approach at your own risk :-D Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:40, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

That is really overly hostile Politizer. I have dug into Ottava's history after two different instances with him and I see nothing that merits this response. Can you please alter that post so it better fulfills nota bene please? NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 01:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

You'd have to dig back to around December 8-16 or that general area. Anyway, this was not intended to be hostile, but just to let reviewers know what they're getting themselves into if they decide to review these hooks. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it was you raking over old ground. It wasn't a warning to other reviewers, it was an attempt to poison the nomination. --Malleus Fatuorum 01:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I hope it is the Fielding stuff you have in your userspace, about time he got some coverage; I have redlinks to his stuff all over the place. Do you mean you are intending to cram 15 DYK links into a hook? That will be plain ugly from a presentational point of view and if you can write a hook that actually hooks while including 15 articles I will be very surprised. What's the point of that? 4 or 5 shorter hooks over a week or so would get more attention for the topic anyway. I might have got the wrong end of the stick mind. Yomangani^talk 02:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

There are 30 pages. I can't think of another way to have them all linked that wont result in them coming one at a time. That will just clog up DYK by a lot. The only pattern between any of them would be the "Scriblerus" plays, which would have 5. Then that would leave 23 without any connection. Any suggestions would be helpful. I would throw out the whole DYK except that Fielding will only hand three chances beyond the plays to make it to the DYK section, and it would be nice to get some more interest diverted to his way. The first would be: DYK that the novelist Henry Fielding finished many plays before the 1733 Actors Rebellion began: ___ (short hand named list). The second would be: DYK that Henry Fielding wrote many plays during his later career before the Licensing Act forced him into writing novels, including: ____ (short hand named list). The sheer volume of plays would probably get more attention to the topic than the individual plays would piecemeal, as it would show that he was prolific in an area that few people know about. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:21, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I see your point but I'm not sure connecting a few of them in batches is an insurmountable problem. When are you planning on starting submitting them? Yomangani^talk 02:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm mostly building part of the content right now from various sources. The other two will work on minor content, formatting, discussing the summarizing, etc, so we can turn it all into actual pages. I will have the major content sections build this weekend for the early plays. The trend as of late has been to push through large DYKs left and right, so I thought, eh, what the hell. People never think of Fielding anymore as a major anything, so size would definitely surprise people enough for them to look. The series of titles combined together might help. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 03:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Just a thought, but if you leave these to simmer in userspace for a bit longer, these could be spread across six or seven queues on or around April 22, the anniversary of his birth. Sort of an unofficial Henry Fielding roadblock of consecutive hooks as a belated (by two years) bicentennial birthday present. Just a thought. - Dravecky (talk) 04:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. Last time I did that there were some problems (see above). Perhaps, what we could do is possibly put them forward now, have the community pass them with a close review and then decide how to fit them in on April 22? It would be waiting somewhat like the Christmas DYKs. How much time in advance would be acceptable? What would be more appropriate, two large sets now, or 4/5 sets that are on hold? When would such pages be acceptable to be placed into article space? Ottava Rima (talk) 05:31, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we can possibly allow a hook with 15 noms, unless perhaps they were very, very short links and even then it's highly unlikely. We just had someone nominate a hook with 15 noms a few days ago and the consensus was that it had to be broken up into two or more hooks. Gatoclass (talk) 05:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

As I stated before, this can be broken up into one set easily (of five), but there will be 23 other plays that cannot be broken up into sets. So, it would mean cramming DYK with 23 individual pages. So far, the first entry would be a total of 324 characters. Lambert had 268, service cutters had 243 and USS Meriwether is listed at 283 (found here). This would be less than 10 characters over per nomination listed. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:54, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

So someone can recheck: ... that the novelist Henry Fielding finished many plays before the 1733 Actors Rebellion began: Love in Several Masques, Temple Beau, Author's Farce, Tom Thumb, Rape upon Rape, Tragedy of Tragedies, Letter Writers, Welsh Opera, Grub Street Opera, Lottery, Modern Husband, Old Debauchees, Covent Garden Tragedy, and Mock Doctor?

A bare bones version (300 char) ... that Henry Fielding produced many plays before the Actors Rebellion: Love in Several Masques, Temple Beau, Author's Farce, Tom Thumb, Rape upon Rape, Tragedy of Tragedies, Letter Writers, Welsh Opera, Grub Street Opera, Lottery, Modern Husband, Old Debauchees, Covent Garden Tragedy, and Mock Doctor?

Note - USS Meriwether, a six part nom, was listed at 283 including "pictured". The skimmed down version would have only 17 more characters, which places it as only a tiny bit larger as the overall nomination. Ottava Rima (talk) 06:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking back at the Meriwether hook the other day, I couldn't help but think that it was too long! I'd have trimmed it if I was submitting it today.

Your hook suggestion is at least compact. I might be prepared to accept it providing it doesn't look too long when loaded into an update. I'm simply trying to warn you that as there is no current consensus as to maximum allowable length of a hook or maximum number of links, there is a possibility that it may be failed. Gatoclass (talk) 06:21, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I should add that I personally would be more inclined to accept a long multi if the articles therein are of a reasonable quality. Some of the articles in your previous multi-subs have been very basic. Gatoclass (talk) 06:30, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm confused as to what you mean by "basic". Rarely have I produced a page that is less than 5k without multiple scholarly citations, which is far more than enough for a standard DYK, especially seeing as how this is the beginning, and not the end, of a page's development. As you can see here (the pages are all condensed and the bolding replaces where headings would be). There are still 7 more sources to go through before the set is complete, and I am working with two others on it that would be co-noms. As you can see, I have reduced the plot to independent verifiable sources instead of going through, quoting the productions, etc, in order to remove the possibility for that being a center of conflict as it was in the past. There are four books devoted to the topic that will be used and 5 biographies for additional information. Ottava Rima (talk) 06:58, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

If all the articles end up being as comprehensive as the first one in the list, I don't think you will have anything to worry about on the quality score. Gatoclass (talk) 07:02, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, okay. They will also be categorized, wikilinked, have a well developed lead, etc (this time the people helping me aren't sick and/or dying and no big deadline :) ). Ottava Rima (talk) 16:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

Former redirects, stubs, or other short articles in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the last five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. Existing articles that have been expanded to only twice or three times their previous length are not eligible for DYK. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles.

Isn't it at the very least redundant to state that articles have to be expanded fivefold or more to be eligible, and then in the following sentence to "clarify" that by saying that those expanded to only two or three times their previous lengths (what about four times?) are not? --Malleus Fatuorum 00:52, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, I guess it is. I wasn't around when the rules were first written, but I presume it came up because some users were trying to pass 2x or 3x expanded articles thinking it would be "close enough"...AFAIK, most of the criteria there came up because of debates that were becoming common at T:TDYK. But a user who has been here longer than me might be able to give you a straighter answer. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:54, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

We can all guess, but why not just change it to something that makes more sense? Or at least some sense? --Malleus Fatuorum 01:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that, if no one else raises a reason not to. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:07, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

What could that reason possibly be? They can't count? --Malleus Fatuorum 01:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know any reasons; I was just saying that so that people with more experience than me might have a moment to comment. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

More experience than you of counting? --Malleus Fatuorum 01:42, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Remind me not to leave a friendly response to your questions in the future. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll be happy to. Have a nice day. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:30, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Given the number of hooks nominated in the last month or so that did not meet the 5x minimum, a little simple clarification hardly seems like overkill. - Dravecky (talk) 02:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

← So why not repeat the message again, just to be on the safe side?

Former redirects, stubs, or other short articles in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the last five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. Existing articles that have been expanded to only twice or three times their previous length are not eligible for DYK. Articles which have been expanded to only four times their previous length are also not eligible. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles.

--Malleus Fatuorum 03:09, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. A little clarification is helpful; sarcasm would not appear to be as helpful. If you have an actual suggestion for a cleaner, more easily understood instruction then I'm sure we'd all be interested in your input. - Dravecky (talk) 04:33, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Previous practice was to often approve articles in the fourfold to fivefold range, saying the article was good enough to bend the rules. So clarifying that 2 or 3 wasn't enough, was not redundant at that time. Present practice is to enforce the fivefold rule more strictly, so perhaps the "twice or three times" sentence is obsolete. In any case, we don't need a separate sentence for fourfold, since a shorter alternative would be to simply add the words "or four times" to the previous sentence. Art LaPella (talk) 04:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Sarcasm is sometimes necessary, to make some people see sense. Just drop the redundant sentence. --Malleus Fatuorum 05:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the sarcasm was helpful, but I agree that the sentence in question is redundant. If someone thinks that the point needs to be emphasized, there ought to be a more elegant way of doing so IMO. Gatoclass (talk) 05:46, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: Former redirects, stubs, or other short articles in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the last five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles. Exceptions have been made for existing articles expanded more than four times, but those expanded less than four times their previous length are not eligible for DYK. - Ottava Rima (talk) 06:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

That's even worse. It starts by saying the article has to be expanded fivefold and ends by saying in effect you only need a x4 expansion. The bit about copyvio is also redundant. Gatoclass (talk) 06:23, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, do we want the exception mentioned or not? I think the exceptions are unnecessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

The last proposal to include specific wording about 4.5x expansions in the rules seemed to be more or less !voted down, so I don't think it's necessary to add wording about exceptions in this case. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:23, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

So which is it? Does an article need to be expanded fourfold or fivefold? --Malleus Fatuorum 14:26, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Fivefold. —the master counter (talk) 15:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Then why does criteria one still contain the redundant sentence "Existing articles that have been expanded to only twice or three times their previous length are not eligible for DYK."? --Malleus Fatuorum 20:13, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Because the discussion is still going on here and we haven't agreed to a suitable rephrasing? Chamal ^talk 02:22, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Bumped back from Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 39 to try and get a response.

I tried to take a shot at organizing all the stuff in Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates by making some subcategories (ie, templates used for preparing the next update, templates for user talk, etc.). Most importantly, you might want to take a look at the subcategory Category:Deprecated DYK templates, where I put the templates that (as far as I know) no one is really using, and thus might be worth deleting if we ever decide to get organized. I don't really know everything about all of these, so I might have put some templates in that category erroneously. Also, there were a few templates that I wasn't able to move into the proper subcategory because they're protected (the queues, etc.). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:49, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Queue 1 does not take into account that the lead hook has two highlighted articles. Someone needs to add Kentucky in the War of 1812 as mine.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 14:17, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

You mean for the credits? Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes; the credits need the Kentucky 1812 article added.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 15:24, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I can't do it (since it's protected), I just wanted to make sure I was understanding what you meant. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:40, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Whoops. It's fixed now. - Dravecky (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Except that it first credited me for Indiana, and then when the credit for Kentucky happened, Indiana's was wiped out. SNAFU, anyone?--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 19:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

How odd. I just checked and I did remember the extra space after your username on the second credits hook so I have no answer for what the bot did. - Dravecky (talk) 03:32, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Wait, there has to be an extra space somewhere in the credits when there's more than one article? Have you guys been having to modify the credits templates by hand when you take them off of T:TDYK? If so, let me know what needs to be done, and I can update {{DYKsug}} so that it will automatically format the credits the way they're supposed to be formatted (although I can't vouch for anything the bot does with them; once they're produced by the template at T:TDYK they're out of my hands). Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

That really isn't workable because users often get more than one nom/hook into a single update. Best to leave to it be done manually IMO. I am eventually going to ask nixeagle to fix this for us because it's a very kludgy feature of the bot as it is, but I thought I'd let the bot run for a week or two before imposing on him again. Gatoclass (talk) 13:53, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Que 5, hook #3 starts with "that that". Aboutmovies (talk) 08:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• Fixed, thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 10:48, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I strongly believe we need to increase the rotation of queues to every 5 hours or perhaps every 4 hours to try to work through the backlog. There are currently 6 complete queues lined up ready to go and enough verified hooks to construct at least another 5 queues. At the present rate, that's almost 3 days worth of hooks... and ignores the 150+ unverified hooks and the fact that at least another 75-90 new hooks will get nominated in those three days.

On a related note, we need more folks to do some thoughtful reviewing of the existing hooks. Some of these have been sitting untouched for more than a week since they were nominated. The more well-written, properly verified hooks there are, the easier it is to create a solid queue. Thanks! - Dravecky (talk) 11:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Things aren't too bad really, since the bot came back we've caught up on about 30 hooks IMO, however if you want to speed it up to five hours for a few days it probably won't do any harm. Gatoclass (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I think we should get more picky. A lot of noms just say "that something...di something" without it being obvious whther the acheivement was notable at all. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

We'll be fine just speeding up the bot a bit, it's worked very well before. Disqualifying user hooks on the basis they are not interesting enough is just going to create a lot of Wikidrama that I'd prefer not to deal with. Gatoclass (talk) 10:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed...I used to challenge hooks more often for not being interested, but in the interest of fairness I don't do it a lot anymore. In theory, I still try to challenge hooks that are totally mundane and say nothing interesting about the subject (like "so-and-so was a poet from the 18th century"), but in practice I don't often see people nominating hooks that boring anyway. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right about the drama. Long gone are the days of Petaholmes standing firm. To be honest I've gone soft too. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 00:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, per this discussion and previous practice, I've sped up the timer to 18000 seconds (aka 5 hours) but we should keep a weather eye on the bot to make sure it behaves as expected. - Dravecky (talk) 15:59, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I feel silly for asking this question, especially given that I've added a few hundred DYK nominations, including using the new templates which I feel are starting to become pretty usable. When I want to add a nomination for the 25th, I go to that section and edit the section that includes the first nomination only, adding my new nomination above the old one. I don't want to edit the whole article or even the whole day for fear of edit conflicts and other potential screwups. Am I doing this correctly and might there be a better way to use the templates to just add an entry for a specified day? Alansohn (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I might be misunderstanding you... but the best way to do it is not to edit the section for the first nom, but the section for the date. For example, if the first nom under January 25 is Foo, then don't edit the Foo section, but the Jan 25 section... then add the template above Foo and below the January 25 section header. Unfortunately, there are sometimes edit conflicts, but as far as I can tell there's no way to avoid them (other than possibly drafting your nom in Notepad or something beforehand). When they come up, I just paste the stuff back in as fast as I can...it's annoying but I don't think there's any way around it :S.

By the way, I'm currently finishing up the development of a new template that will be less messy (the way you use it to add entries will be the same; it just produces a cleaner output); since you're such a prolific contributor, any suggestions you have (on things that you find confusing or annoying now, things that can be improved, things that you'd like to see, etc.) wouuld be much welcome! Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Using your example, I do edit the Foo section, not the January 25 section, as the Foo section is smaller and far less likely to result in edit conflicts. When I do a preview, I don't have to look at a whole day's nominations. I'm pretty happy with the current set up, now that I'm past the learning curve, but I would love to see a way to add a new entry to a specified date that gave me a blank page, rather than having to edit a portion of the whole list to add one entry. My appreciation for all you and the other templatizers have done to take this into the modern era. Alansohn (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you're right, editing that way is fine too, as long as you put your new entry either below the entire Foo entry (including comments/discussion), or above the entire entry (including the ====Foo==== header). I think I was imagining something different in your earlier message.

As per your other suggestion, I agree that would be nice, and in the past I played with the idea of trying to make some kind of add nomination in this section link or whatnot, in addition to the regular section edit links...but so far I haven't figured out a way to get that to work yet. The problem is that section editing works by ID number—when you click the "edit" button for section January 25, for example, it doesn't just edit a section named "January 25," but rather it edits the nth section of the page...for example, if January 25 is the 6th section on the page, the url you'll see in the navigation bar on your browser will be something like "...&action=edit&section=6". (This is also the reason that sometimes, when you're vetting noms ,you might go to edit one section and what opens up is the section above or below it...if someone added or removed a section higher in the page before you clicked "edit," it changes the numbering.) Basically that means, since the numbering of sections is always changing (today "January 25" might be the 20th section, and tomorrow it might be the 40th), I don't know of any way to set up a static link that will always allow you to put your nomination in the date you intend to...the only option would be to have all new nominations be made at the top of the page, but that would get rid of the obvious benefits of having nominations grouped by date. If anyone else reading this knows of a way to set up a static link that will always edit a particular section (ie, a link to "add a new nomination under January 25" no matter where January 25 is on the page) I would definitely be open to suggestions. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a trivial error in the National Bridge Inventory. I pointed this out, but apparently that's interesting? Do people really find that interesting? --NE2 14:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

See above for one admin's brief comments on problems with disqualifying hooks based on how interesting or uninteresting we feel they are.

Basically, for some topics (like roads) there's not much interesting to be said, but we still recognize that someone has put in the work to make a new article, properly reference it, etc., so we're willing to give them a few hours on DYK, especially if they've made the extra effort to find the most interesting thing possible (even if you don't think it's interesting) in an otherwise dry article. There have been occasions where an otherwise fine article has been disqualified on account of having nothing interesting to say, but those are very rare, and the hooks that have been disqualified for that have been considerably less interesting than even this one.

Also, I see that you have already argued this point at length on T:TDYK with the reviewers there (as shown in the diff you gave above), so why are you bringing it here...just to stir up trouble? Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm bringing it here to get more attention to the problem. This is not something that even belongs in the article, but trying to get it out is probably a non-starter. --NE2 14:56, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Lack of interesting hooks is a perennial complaint around here, and has been for a very long time. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Politizer (talk · contribs) - this seems a bit like forum shopping. Cirt (talk) 16:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, what forum should I have taken it to? The hook is no longer on Template talk:Did you know, so I can't discuss it there. --NE2 16:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It shouldn't be done anywhere. You, NE2 have continuously fought over my hooks and yet, very few others, with Warren 35, this is the 6th straight. Out of those 6, 2 have made it to the main page. Every time that it does, you make sure, somehow that it gets ruined. Stop coming to DYK, or get off my case, because you are making my time miserable.Mitch32^{(Go Syracuse)} 16:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I try to look at all highway-related hooks; I found this one by searching for "route". If I have disproportionately objected to your hooks, it's because yours are problematic, not because I follow you. --NE2 16:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yet, other than two which were errors, you just continuously go on - "not interesting", "not interesting", "not interesting". Its ridiculous.Mitch32^{(Go Syracuse)} 16:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Some articles just don't have anything interesting. That's a fact of life. --NE2 16:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Alternate hook idea - I know this is on the Main Page now, but I thought that something like

DYK ... that the use of salt to melt ice on County Route 35 in Warren County, New York is adversely affecting the health of Lake George?

would be a more interesting hook. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:24, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

See County Route 11 (Warren County, New York) - which would match that hook, as there is more info there.Mitch32^{(Go Syracuse)} 16:29, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Saltwater runoff causing environmental problems is a common problem, hardly unique to any one road, so that wouldn't be any more "interesting" to many people. Infrastructure articles are notoriously difficult to wring for a universally fascinating hook. - Dravecky (talk) 16:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It's a question of whether we want a hook for any article, or just interesting hooks. --NE2 16:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I just got around to looking at Mitchazenia's contributions, and found this. He's playing a game in which getting an article on DYK gives him points. --NE2 16:57, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, many of them are. See User:Garden/WikiCup. My view is that these "games", just like the (now deleted) Sharkey's Award Center before it, contribute to the number of low quality DYKs and the drive toward multi-hook DYKs. Editors are doing this for points. FAC and GA suffered from the Sharkey's Award Center and can only combat the User:Garden/WikiCup by maintaining some form of quality control. As far as I can tell, DYK has no explicit form of quality control, other than the requirements of recentness, new and expanded article size and referencing. And even those are constantly challenged. —Mattisse (Talk) 17:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Multi-article hook DYK should be to condense subject matters and clean up the hook problems (since DYK is supposed to represent all areas and subjects proportionally, having a lot of hooks from one page continuously causes problems). Ottava Rima (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

*The problem is how do you fairly apply an "interesting" standard? Considering the global worldwide audience of the main page, defining what is interesting is highly subjective. If we try to limit the scope to what the few regulars here at DYK find interesting they we are going to pre-install (albeit subconsciously) a fair amount of systematic bias into the main page. We already have a difficult time trying to pull from a broad spectrum of articles as it is. Not only is this a recipe for Wiki drama, as noted earlier, I think the type of subconscious bias that will be introduce will be far more detrimental to the quality of the mainpage than the occasional "boring" hook. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's quite possible to fairly apply a standard. However, one has to be a little flexible, in that some subjects that have been deemed to be noteworthy by the community are nevertheless very mundane. Roads and highways are one such subject, and I apply a lower standard of inclusion for such topic areas, because one is unlikely to get much of a hook out of them. That doesn't mean however, that we shouldn't look for the best possible hook, nor does it mean we can't disqualify articles about which nothing interesting can be said. In practice though, most of the time a passable hook can be found, even for the most mundane topics. Gatoclass (talk) 05:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Where do we stop? I abhor lists of opening day starting pitchers for random amateur baseball teams, can we stop those too? » \ / (⁂) 05:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is BF. Are you saying we shouldn't disqualify even the dullest of hooks/articles? In practice we have always done so. However, in the case of a particular genre of article, I think it would be quite unfair to disqualify them outright on the grounds that the topic area itself is intrinsically uninteresting. Part of what DYK is there for, after all, is to demonstrate the range of different topics that people write about, and some of these topics are inevitably going to be of little interest to the general population. Gatoclass (talk) 07:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm saying that most, if not all of the articles that pass through here are as boring as watching paint dry. Looking at the current batch, we have the seat layout of an obscure church, an article about an antimicrobial protein, a diesel powered ship and a college football player. All of these probably have very limited appeal. Only once or twice a day are there actually hooks that are truly interesting. We can't bar certain types of articles from being too boring because we will forever be drawing a line between equally uninteresting hooks. » \ / (⁂) 10:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure I entirely agree with your assessment, but on the question to hand it sounds like we're more or less on the same page :) Gatoclass (talk) 12:18, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I would agree too. The thing is, here, that I am one of the people that finds roads interesting, and yet this database error is just so trivial as to not belong in the article. --NE2 12:25, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to suggest an alt hook if you can think of one. Gatoclass (talk) 14:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Not every article has an interesting hook, but anything that actually belongs in the article is better than this. --NE2 15:54, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Everyone has their pet interest. As a matter of fact, the Y-Bridge (Galena, Missouri) is pretty neat. :P » \ / (⁂) 12:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I personally prefer the Pulaski Skyway, though the Historic Columbia River Highway is also cool. --NE2 13:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm personally drawn to Texas State Highway Loop 12 with its access to so much of Dallas, its astounding views of Texas Stadium, and interconnectedness with so many other major highways but must confess a hometown pride in Interstate 565. - Dravecky (talk) 15:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)