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DYK queue status There are currently 4 filled queues. Humans, please consider promoting a prep to queue if you have the time! v t e Earliest time for next DYK update: 00:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC) Current time: 15:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC) Update frequency: once every 12 hours Last updated: 3 hours ago( verify reset purge )

• WT:DYK

This is where the Did you know section on the main page, its policies and the featured items can be discussed.

Get the facts straight

Just an idea. For future credits, should the fact they nominated and appeared on the front page also begiven to them as a reminder as part of the template? I.e.

instead of (taking one of my DYKs)

On August 3, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article New henge at Stonehenge, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

It is something like

On August 3, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article New henge at Stonehenge, which you created or substantially expanded. The fact was "... that archaeologists have detected what they believe is a wooden henge underground near to Stonehenge?" You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Simply south (talk) 12:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to the credits you get on your talkpage? The tags on the article talkpages already do include the fact. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea: it won't be much extra work for the bot programmer to add this as a setting, I assume, and it has a small housekeeping advantage for those like me who keep a list of their hooks as displayed on the main page, in that we won't have to check the article talk page or the Recent Additions archives to see the final wording used. Bencherlite 14:49, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Bencherlite, this would make my DYK housekeeping easier. Sasata (talk) 15:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Sounds sensible enough. Alzarian16 (talk) 15:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

According to Shubinator, someone needs to add a parameter the {{UpdatedDYK}} template before he can implement the bot. Simply south (talk) 23:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Seeing as i don't know what to do, could someone else add it? Simply south (talk) 10:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

And we're updating. Simply south (talk) 00:38, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't like this proposal - I preferred it when it was 'short and sweet' back in the first half of 2009 - but that's just my opinion. I sometimes tl;dr :) Arctic Night 16:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Question

I know we've had GAs on DYK before, but I wonder what list of 1936 Winter Olympics medal winners will make it to first, FL status or the Main Page? :) On a more serious note, in the unlikely event that it is promoted to FL before approval here, it wouldn't affect its eligibility, I hope. StrPby (talk) 06:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't think so. — Rlevse • Talk • 09:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

All right, thanks. Strange Passerby (talk • c • status) 12:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Heh - Tillson Harrison was made a GA four days before it was DYKed :) Arctic Night 06:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem: Malta Test Station

Hello, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Malta Test Station, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to be a copy from {{{url}}}, and therefore a copyright violation. The copyrighted text has been or will soon be deleted. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Misplaced Pages takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators are liable to be blocked from editing.

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Not a very good stock template, but apprently I was expected to notify, so I'm doing it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:41, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

See thread at ANI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:33, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Sandy, I'm starting to feel that it's a tad bit more than grating that you appear to attack DYK at every chance you get (at Utahraptor's RFA, and then this thread at ANI). How about trying to help instead of randomly accusing us of not doing enough on X, Y or Z, or that we're too lax on A, B or C? For what it's worth, when I review DYK nominations I do check for close paraphrasing and possible copyvios; as can be seen from the talk page archives of one of our more prominent copyright-dealing admins, I've approached her before for advice when reviewing DYKs. StrPby (talk) 23:29, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be dificult to know where to start, and a waste of effort anyway given the resistance to change everywhere on wikipedia. I've looked at a significant percentage of main page DYKs over the last six months or so, and too many of them are absolutely dreadful. Malleus Fatuorum 23:37, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

(ecx3) Given our turnover rate (we have 140–200 nominations at any one time), DYK (correctly imo) works well on WP:AGF (including WP:AGFC). Those that do slip through can be brought up as Sandy did, albeit not in the "the world is ending, DYK is the problem" manner that she did. StrPby (talk) 23:41, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

MF-No article starts as an FA. The FA you helped so much with, Grace Sherwood, was a stub when I expanded it 5x, made DYK, and then FA and will be the TFA in less than three days. If we required new articles to be at FA level, hardly any would get written. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:43, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Well blow me down, I never knew that; is this "patronise Malleus week"? Believe it or not, despite what Camelbinky says and others appear to believe, I've created articles and taken them all the way to FA, more than just the one. Who knows, I may even do it again one day if I can be arsed. Malleus Fatuorum 00:14, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

You should remember that a little more often. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I should remember what a little more often? So far as I recall I didn't drop any of them off at kiddies corner, aka DYK, didn't see any point. Malleus Fatuorum 00:33, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

StrPby, try reading through Sandy's comments at the ANI rather than just looking at the header. She specifically said she's not out to bash DYK and that the problem is not with the reviewers but with award-collecting editors who abuse it. There's no reason for everyone to start fighting here. In fact, I'm not sure I see any reason to be having a discussion here at all—is there an issue that needs to be discussed? rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:45, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, she did say that. But coming right after Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/The Utahraptor 2#Oppose, it's a little hard to buy. It's probably unfortunate that my last two interactions with her have seen her taking a very negative view against DYK. StrPby (talk) 23:50, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Strange Passerby, if you will read critically and adjust your AGFometer, you will detect that I am trying to help. At FAC, we had to change the instructions to put the brakes on the effect the reward culture was having on production. We're a smaller community, so we were able to do that. DYKs are a much bigger part of the reward culture, and those people are demanding their DYK prize, while turning out shoddy content and overwhelming your review process. But we can't blame it all on the reward culture, the wikicup, RFA, whatever, because long-time participants who have come and gone from here tell me it has always been a haven for plagiarists. You need a change in process here, or for a light to be shone on the problem so the reward seekers will stop, and we can have "real" DYKs. You're welcome for the help. And drop the Utah RFA biz-- it's not my fault y'all passed a DYK that was not only plagiarism but didn't even use a reliable source. Address the problem, not the person who pointed it out. Unless you really think Utah needs to be an admin, in which case ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

But here's where you're missing the point, Sandy. There is no "y'all". More often than not it's just one reviewer on each nomination, and the people compiling the hook sets simply AGF and take the reviewer's word that there's nothing wrong. My point all along has been that you seem to be tarring all of DYK with the same brush when in reality it's likely only one or two reviewers who aren't getting caught. StrPby (talk) 00:03, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

That's not true; it's been happening for a very very long time. Detecting plagiarism is not part of your process. DYK is being gamed by the reward culture and RFA-- I don't pretend to know how to tell you to solve the problem, but I know you can't solve it by ignoring it, you will solve it by recognizing it and by shining a light on the abuse that has been hoised upon you, and the mainpage shouldn't display plagiarism and non-reliable sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:06, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

At least we agree on something. :) No, ignoring it isn't going to work, but simply complaining about it isn't either. Maybe a good place to start would be to require each nominated hook to have two reviewers pass it before it gets approved. Just throwing an idea out, might not be feasible but it's a starting point. StrPby (talk) 00:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I think we should reduce the number of DYKs and make them of higher quality. Maybe change to 8-hour intervals and increase min number of characters. Christopher Connor (talk) 00:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

That won't necessarily solve the problem of copyright issues or non-RS. With our 160-200 article backlog at all times 8-hour sets with less hooks in each is going to result in a growing backlog. 8-hour, 8-hook sets do happen, simply not at the current time. StrPby (talk) 00:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Christopher: how would increasing the minimum number of characters increase quality? Do you think someone who is willing to plagiarize 1500 characters (or write 1500 characters of junk) wouldn't be willing to plagiarize 2500 characters?

The problem is not in how DYK is handled, but in how people use it and what people think it means. There will always be a problem with award-seeking editors flooding the project, as long as people believe that having DYKs is a ticket to RfA success or something like that. Get the word out at RfA that having DYKs doesn't automatically get you the bit (and back up that word by actually rejecting candidates who have a lot of DYK but wouldn't make good admins) and you would much of what motivates bad writers to submit DYKs. (I suppose WikiCup is also one of the big problems, so something would have to be done about that too.) But increasing the length requirement is certainly not going to change anything. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Get the word out at RfA that having DYKs doesn't automatically get you the bit (and back up that word by actually rejecting candidates who have a lot of DYK but wouldn't make good admins) and you would much of what motivates bad writers to submit DYKs. That's the ticket :) DYK is being abused by incompetent editors who want to climb the ladder at RFA, so shine a light on it. It is embarrassing to have plagiarism on the main page, and there are many competent editors who run their articles through DYK-- let them have more time again :) That may slow things down here, and give you all more opportunity for scrutiny. Anyway, I'm unwatching now, and I do hope this turns out to have been helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

(redent) I can't see any way round the problem while DYK is seen as some sort of a right for articles, judged solely on supposedly objective standards. There are enough nominations and enough editors to choose the best eight articles/hooks a day and keep them up for 24 hours, but that would obviously be a very radical change and one for which I've never seen any real support around here. Physchim62 (talk) 00:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you in spirit, Physchim, and I too have often told people that I don't think DYK should be an entitlement and that uninteresting or poorly-written articles shouldn't get promoted. But, as you suggest, I don't think any of the ideas I've ever had along those lines are workable. In particular, interestingness criteria would be prone to gaming ("i'll review yours and you review mine") and this page would quickly get filled up with people throwing fits about how their article wasn't promoted. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:24, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not so much the idea I see as unworkable as the change it would involve. DYK isn't starting from scratch but from where it is today, with the accumulated expectations of editors (both those who write the articles and those who review them). Any change that would address the problems you mention (and that are mentioned above) would have to be stepwise. Either that, or we just shut down DYK altogether and replace it with something else. Physchim62 (talk) 00:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

A higher character limit would mean less submissions and so more time for reviewers to check articles properly. It'll also make it harder for hat collectors to get articles through. Christopher Connor (talk) 00:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

DYK isn't a hat.... those are crats, and meaningless job titles by people who are actually inactive. But on that note, I bet if you gave out silly titles, "Inspector-General of DYK", "Sub-editor", "section-editor" of DYK, then more politicians would join in. Whether they would bother to actually check anything or just claim membership of some steering party on their worthless CV.... well... YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 01:26, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a higher character limit on its own is the answer. For a start, number of characters is a fairly poor measure of article quality, especially when DYK discounts things like lists, infoboxes, picture captions... Nor do I think that reviewers would automagically spend more time on each submission if there were fewer in the queue: I think that many reviewers would just review in the same way as before and use the time saved for something else. One possible first step would be to get every article reviewed by two separate editors before it is posted. Physchim62 (talk) 01:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Increasing the minimum article length definitely wouldn't prevent plagiarism/copy-pasting in DYK nominations. Indeed, I believe it could encourage more plagiarism, because contributors would be eager to pad their articles. I just checked the history of a particularly egregious piece of plagiarism that I encountered as a DYK reviewer back in 2008, and I find that it was over 28,000 characters of readable text (much of which was complete paragraphs copied verbatim from copyrighted sources -- not individual sentences copied primarily from public domain US-government sources, as is the case with the Malta Test Station article). --Orlady (talk) 02:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

When I review a DYK and check the refs, I do look for plagiarism, as I am sure do many other reviewers. When I saw a borderline case, I raised it and other editors expressed a view. So, I hope that we can avoid tarring all reviewers with the actions of (what I hope is only) a few. I believe that most editors here would support avoiding putting plagiarism being posted to the main page. As a suggestion for detecting plagiarism, could a bot that works on this problem (such as CorenSearchBot, for example) be adapted to check a single article on request? That way, reviewers would have a test they could add to their standard review practice. Alternatively, maybe a check could by added to the DYKcheck script? EdChem (talk) 01:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The truth is that most reviewers don't even check for basic spelling and grammar. There are some phrases that just jump out as having been copied from somewhere, and it usually only takes a Google search to find out from where. Hardly rocket science. Malleus Fatuorum 01:43, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

He he, WP:FAC has shown itself incapable of detecting blatantly ungrammatical sentences in the opening paragraphs of articles before now, as well as many other obvious article problems. It also recently promoted an article which was heavily "plagiarized" from a PD U.S. government source, not that I consider that anything like as much of a problem as some other editors seem to. So I shouldn't take those high falutin' Southern manners too much to heart, but rather concentrate on trying to improve the service we provide to our readers. Physchim62 (talk) 01:55, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of spelling, I managed to mis-spell plagiarism three times in one post... embarrassing. :( Now corrected.

Malleus, I can assure you that I wouldn't pass an article full of spelling and grammar mistakes. Have a look at the x5 expansion of actinide that is presently in the DYK queue, or my expansion of the Hans Freeman stub or the rhodocene DYK (now a GA)... there is some really good work highlighted by DYK. Please try to recognise that DYK has both wheat and chaff. EdChem (talk) 01:56, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll consider that when you agree to consider the possibility that DYK is overwhelmingly chaff. Malleus Fatuorum 02:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I rather get the impression you would consider the possibility that Misplaced Pages as a whole is overwhelmingly chaff, so the distinction seems meaningless. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

If you don't share my view then I will have to consider you an idiot. Do you really believe that the overwhelming majority of the 3 million or so articles on the English wikipedia alone are worth spit? Malleus Fatuorum 02:14, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Now, now, children... Physchim62 (talk) 02:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I do (think they're worth something). And somebody who says "If you don't share my view you're an idiot" is somebody I will speak no longer to or with. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 02:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Your loss, not mine. Blocking your ears to what you don't want to hear can hardly be considered to be the response of an adult though. Malleus Fatuorum 02:29, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I certainly accept that there is good stuff featured on DYK – and not just in chemistry ;) So why is it only featured for six hours? So that DYK can also feature the "chaff" as Malleus puts it, or the "Did you care?" hooks as I tend to put it? Surely not. So DYK needs a better wheat–chaff separation procedure. In my mind, the process should be more focussed on throwing out the chaff than on not risking to throw out a bit of wheat with it. And, of course, no process is perfect, nor can it please all the people all of the time. Physchim62 (talk) 02:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

My three cents: DYK is not overwhelmingly chaff, however there are too many editors who are RfAming the system with chaff, alas; raising the character limit wouldn't help (as it is, sometimes a article on an obscure subject at 1000 characters is better than other articles at 3000); and I for one make a point of not plagaraising, never want to be an admin, and submit every article I possibly can to DYK. Why? Becasuse it's fun, and because it helps people learn things about things. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 02:22, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

<-I just gave a cursory read to the rules and additional rules. Apologies if I missed something, but I didn't see any admonitions to check for copyvios. I fully understand that all article submitted for DYK must meet all policy requirements for articles, and it is not feasible to repeat all those requirements in the rules for evaluating a DYK. However, given the strong allegations, and the prominence of the DYK articles, perhaps it would be good to remind DYK evaluators that checking for plagiarism should be one of the steps. I confess I've evaluated a number of suggestions, concentrating on length, timing, hook, verifiability of hook, general readability, and only pursued copyvio possibilities if it reads too good to be true. I plan to check more carefully in the future; does it make sense to encourage others to do the same?--SPhilbrickT 17:59, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Halloween queues - wording

Should "From Misplaced Pages's newest articles:" be rephrased for Halloween to something else? They aren't technically our "newest articles"... StrPby (talk) 02:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

"From recent spooky articles on Misplaced Pages:"  ? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:08, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

DYK as it currently operates makes no real sense if you think about, not for any day of the year. Malleus Fatuorum 02:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Object, "my" Bach cantata among them - intentionally so - is new and not spooky. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, Bach is long dead, so he is now arguably a spook, in some sense. :P EdChem (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Did my October 23 nom get lost?

Hi folks. I nominated United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, created on October 23. It was approved and then in this edit and this edit yesterday moved to the prep 4 area. Then in this edit later yesterday it was replaced by a set of Halloween items. But I've looked at all the queues and other prep areas and I don't see it anywhere now, unless I've missed it. Did it get lost in the shuffle? Thanks! Wasted Time R (talk) 10:57, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Did you know/Halloween 2010/After Halloween. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 11:04, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok, that's fine. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Hook with Oct 28 request date

As those who follow this page would be aware, Paralympiakos and I had a six-article hook in the time-specific section with a request for an Oct 28 date. It was not reviewed in time and cannot be used in its present form on any other date, so we have been considering what to do now. I had intended to do a small redraft of the hook, but events have made that impossible (one fight was postponed, and hence two articles no longer fit in the hook). So, I am posting here to outline our suggestions / requests in the hope they will be found satisfactory. Our intentions are as follows:

1. Move the existing hook to the regular queue, with a 24 October nomination date (the date the articles were moved to article space).
2. Recast the hook to take account of the now-known results of the championship bouts, and remove the two articles relating to the bout that was postponed.
3. Move those two articles to a nomination for the date of the new bout (10 December) - we would ask that these not be disqualified later on timing grounds, as they were nominated on the day they reached article space, but the nomination has since been overtaken by events.
4. Hold off on reviewing the hook in the regular queue for 24 hours, as I think a x5 expansion of an existing article may allow us to make that hook back into a 5 article hook, and hence eligible for the DYK Hall of Fame. With the Halloween hooks being added to the queues presently, we hope there is time for this period of grace to be allowed.
5. It is our intent that the 11 December nomination will be expanded closer to the date, as there are Championship bouts in two other weight divisions to be included at that event. This would make the 11 Decemeber nomination potentially a 6-article hook.

Is this an acceptable way for dealing with the existing Oct 28 request? Paralympiakos and I thank you for considering our suggestions / requests. EdChem (talk) 12:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Some feedback / comment on this proposal would be very much appreciated, or should we just go ahead? EdChem (talk) 01:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're willing to wait six weeks, yes, otherwise tweak the hook as necessary and it can go into a queue now. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:23, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you - I will start making the changes now. Paralympiakos and I are happy for two of the articles to wait until 10 December, as outlined above. EdChem (talk) 02:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

1366 Technologies hook presently on the main page

There is a discussion at talk:Main page about the hook for 1366 Technologies. It contains a claim reliably sourced to the New York Times, but if you read the article the 40% saving stated in the hook as definitively occurring is actually just a claim / prediction from the management. We should either take this hook down and re-assess / re-draft it, or at least change it on the main page to show that the saving is a prediction, not a fact. Someone please intervene quickly, this looks like a really dubious hook to me.

Details: The hook presently on the main page is:

• ... that 1366 Technologies has created a technique to cast solar cells directly from molten silicon, cutting costs for such cells by 40% and making the power generated from the cells cheaper than from coal?

1366 Technologies article:

"The company's management predicts that the new approach will be able to produce wafers at costs 40% below current methods" (followed by NYT reference)

and

"Company president Frank van Mierlo estimated that solar power generated using wafers from 1366 Technologies would be cheaper than power generated using coal" (followed by NYT reference)

These statements do not support the hook, in my opinion. EdChem (talk) 12:42, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I pointed this out at T:TDYK and further up this page yesterday. Materialscientist has removed the "cheaper than coal" but I think that the 40% should also go. Smartse (talk) 12:51, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to Materialscientist for making a change, but I suggest the following:

• ... that 1366 Technologies has created a technique to cast solar cells directly from molten silicon which they predict will cut the costs for such cells by 40%?

would be a reasonable and accurate new version of the hook. EdChem (talk) 12:58, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

That looks ok to me. Smartse (talk) 13:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Immediate problem resolved - Materialscientist has changed the hook to:

• ... that 1366 Technologies has created a technique to cast silicon wafers from the melt rather than sawing them from an ingot?"

which addresses my concerns. Smartse's point that we dropped the ball in passing the hook in the first place remains, however. EdChem (talk) 13:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

i (newspaper)-Very bad call

I'd like to know who approved this one. The article is made up almost entirely of quotes from persons whose job it is to promote this paper. It's a terrible article that borders on being speedy delete-able as blatant spam and should never have been allowed to be featured on the main page in it's current state. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:48, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

• The "dyk" part is funny, it basically boils down to "did you know that this publication uses a format of summary followed by expansion on its inside pages that has been commonly used by print publications since the early 20th century?" At any rate, as some here may know, i've been criticizing DYK a little lately. Here's a simple idea for reform. Change the "dyk" template slapped onto talk pages to include text like "reviewed by____" which would lead to more transparency and accountability.Bali ultimate (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
  • The article has now been edited to remove all the spam quotes. The article's creator did this themselves and acknowledged the problems. If he can see and I can see it why couldn't the user reviewing the submission see it? It is also now about 300 characters too short to be a DYK. Is there any way to remove it? I'm frankly embarrassed that this is linked on the main page. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:37, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Looks like DYK just rolled over so at least it is no longer linked to the main page. I would still like to know how this got through the DYK process without anyone noticing the obvious flaws. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:40, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
      • Hook was approved by Yoninah and moved to prep by Rlevse here --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
        • Same editor who added non-reliable sources to Black Eyed Kids, which as far as I can tell from Google, does not meet notability (and is still in the queue). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:47, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
          • With the small size of the article and prevalent use of quotes, the nominator should have been asked to expand it as well. Quotes shouldn't, but are sometimes used to put an article barely above 1500. I won't knock Yoninah (not saying anyone is), the reviewer works hard and often takes the extra and unnecessary step of improving an article instead of asking the nominator too.--NortyNort (Holla) 06:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
            • I apologize for not telling the nominator of i (newspaper) about the above problems. I, too, noticed that an oft-quoted citation was self-advertising. But it was late at night and I was trying to work my way through many hooks that no one else seemed to be looking at (there were almost no verifications in the older nominations section on the queue statistics chart), and I didn't pay close attention to that point. Now I have added it to my mental list of "things to do when checking nominations".

              Regarding Black Eyed Kids, I did try to beef it up since it lacked secondary sources. In researching it on Google, I noticed that the topic wasn't receiving coverage in the mainstream press, but I found some sources that had been accepted in other "supernatural" topics that I've reviewed for DYK, so I used those. If it were up to me, I'd send the whole article to AfD, but I didn't think that was the role of a DYK reviewer.

              Regarding taking "extra and unnecessary steps", I find that it often takes too long for a nominator to respond to my query — after all, I'm working on nominations that are 7-9 days old, and non-regular nominators can reply 2 or more days later. And once s/he does respond, the page still remains in less-than-perfect shape. The editor in me just goes ahead and edits it before approving it. Even after several months here, I still haven't figured out all the dance steps around here. Yoninah (talk) 18:18, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

              • Here's something to learn, then. It's a lesson that everyone who thinks that they are "reviewers" (and I'm not talking about just DYK, or even just Misplaced Pages, here) have to learn. You're not. You're not a passive observer with a checklist on a clipboard. If you really think that something should be sent to AFD and not passed through DYK, then send it to AFD and reject it from DYK. After all, the reverse is done at AFD, where we sometimes (but not often) decide that not only is an article keepable, but it is worth a DYK nomination.

                All too often "reviewers" of various stripes see themselves as impotent, uninvolved, or steamrollered by the process. Before now, I've seen "reviewers" decide that in order to preserve some loopy idea of impartiality, they would write a whole sentence on a review page, complete with ticks and crosses and rules numbers, rather than correct a two letter spelling error. It's good that you don't do that, and are prepared to roll up your sleeves and muck in. But don't see yourself so constrained by a rôle as "reviewer of last resort" that you feel unable to chuck things out of the process. Indeed, if more things in DYK failed because of inattention when fairly basic problems (like no good sources seem to exist for the subject) are pointed out, people would start paying more attention to the basics.

                You do have my sympathies to an extent. Learning from existing practice, rather than from the ideals being aspired to, does tend to cause an accumulation of bad practice as the years go by. And the whole DYK process is in some ways driven from the wrong end, with everyone worrying that they won't have enough items to fill a timeslot that's only a few hours long and so rushing things through, rather than the timeslots being driven by how much DYK material actually makes it through. Really, it shouldn't be like one of those television game shows where the contestants have to do things at the end of a conveyor belt that is deliberately run too fast for them to manage. Uncle G (talk) 08:48, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Reference formatting

Are we now applying stricter standards for reference formatting? If so, that must be fully disclosed in the rules. I don't think we should, as that would have the effect of excluding newer users who may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with fancier techniques such as citation templates.

The review for the General Union of Ecuadorian Workers hook stated that "the bare URLs need to be formatted per WP:Citation templates before this nomination can be approved." I pointed out that there were no bare URLs. But the hook was removed with the edit summary "yes they are bare urls, disapproved".

Am I missing something? http://abareurl.com is a bare URL. Not a bare URL isn't. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 17:52, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that we should not demand citation templates at DYK for the reasons you said. I don't understand the decision to reject General Union of Ecuadorian Workers. Perhaps it needs to be discussed and reconsidered. Offliner (talk) 17:57, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

While we should not require use of citation templates, we can and do require citations contain enough information to locate the cited source. Vital information missing from the majority of this articles citations includes who authored the source, who published the source, and when was the source written/created. These are vital because titles are not guaranteed to be unique and there could be multiple sources with the same name, author and publisher are required for Interlibrary loan requests and many other forms of library searches, including them in the citation allows an article reader/reviewer to determine the nature of the source before obtaining access to the actual source. --Allen3  18:11, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm with Allen3. Templates aren't required, but proper formatting and basic info are. Furthermore, while we don't need to require GA/FA level of standards, we do need to set a certain level of standard to ensure quality new articles are on the main page. Look at all threads on this page right now about junk that made it through. DYK has enough reputation problems without us adding fuel to the fire. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be missing my main point. The author of the article was told that they had to add citation templates, which is not true, to fix the bare URLs, of which there were none. Then the hook was removed with a reason of "bare urls", which, again, is not the case. It is extremely unfair that the hook was disapproved after the author was told to fix a specific problem which doesn't exist, without being informed of or given the opportunity to correct the true concerns. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:54, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Yoninah also said there were bare URLs and I agree with her that there were. So there's a difference in the definition of bare URL. Also, the author's last edit was 24 Oct and he/she made no attempt to answer the concerns, including not asking questions if there was confusion, and we disapprove hooks all the time for that. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:04, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

There were bare URLs in the article and while it doesn't need citation templates, at least the title of the reference and the publisher should be present. Per the recent concerns of using reliable sources, having the publisher easily seen for reviewers and readers should be required.--NortyNort (Holla) 06:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Mandarax, I make a special effort to format the references on most articles that I review. Too many first-time nominators have simply never read WP:Citation templates. I spend a lot of time tracking down ISBN numbers, too, for people who cite "Google Books" as the publisher. When it came to this article, however, I was stuck: All the references were in Spanish. That's why I asked the nominator to format them himself. I've been monitoring the suggestions page ever since to see if he answered me, but received no reply. I wasn't online when the nomination was removed from the page. Yoninah (talk) 18:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Your efforts are greatly appreciated. (I, too, format refs when I see the need.) As mentioned in my post at the end of this thread, I felt that the author may have believed that they had already fixed the problem when they edited the article to convert the barest of bare URLs into their current form. But their lack of responsiveness was problematic. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

One of the five that I looked at Jameela Jamil (BLP) had no article title on the third source, just a publisher. I'd be less worried about how pretty the article looks (in terms of formatting the citations) then whether the information meets WP:V if we don't even have an article name. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:V example: information has to be published and verifiable, whether that involves a trip to a library, it has to be something in print somewhere accessible somehow. Where the heck does one find this source at Acheron class torpedo boat?

• Naval Historical Society of Australia

That is all of the information given. No title, no date, nothing to indicate anything was published. Are we expected to call Australia to verify this article's content? This doesn't meet the barest policy requirements of WP:V, and it's on the mainpage now, I think. I'm worried that you all are verifying only the hooks, but passing on articles that shouldn't even be ... well ... articles yet, because they don't meet core policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:09, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Sandy, I googled "Naval Historical Society of Australia" and this first hit was their website (www.navyhistory.org.au). I could also have found their website from the wikipedia article Naval Historical Society of Australia. I went to their website and searched "Acheron class torpedo boat", and found this:

"Australia's First Warship - The Torpedo Boat Acheron". navyhistory.org.au. Retrieved October 30, 2010.

I am guessing that will give you more than enough information to go on with, and it has taken longer to type this post than it did to find the information.

Maybe you will take some friendly advice... if you want to try and improve the situation with DYK referencing, you might consider an approach that is less likely to put everyone on the defensive. I think you have some relevant points, but I am also finding some of your comments irritating, and I suspect I am not alone. Telling us that everything DYK does is awful without recognising the efforts of the editors here (both in content development and in reviewing) is not helping you towards your stated goal (at least, not efficiently). EdChem (talk) 08:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It was nice of you to do that editor's work for him, but teaching 'em to fish before giving out prizes rather than giving them the fish might be more beneficial to them and the Wiki in the long run. And, the editor who adds the content has to say where they got it, and neither of us has any idea if his source was a website or a hard-print publication. Nothing here is about my stated goals; it's about Wiki policy and how it's being undermined by the reward culture. If DYK wants to further that (and plagiarism), I'm really not inclined to be offended if we don't see eye to eye on the overall goal. Editors should be here for common goals-- don't shoot the messenger. I ended up peeking in here because of plagiarism, and that's a serious matter, not to be taken lightly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:44, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I actually sent you a post on your user talk already, but for the record here, the entire citation regarding the Acheron class link in question was present originally, just below the inline cite in the next sub-section below, with a link to the article. The inline cites using the {{reflist}} showing were in "Notes" under "References", while the link was just below in "Bibliography" under "References". - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

← Getting back to the original article in question, I'd like to apologize for some assumptions which I made. I took the term "bare URL" literally and assumed that it referred only to links which look like unadorned URLs. Because of the crude ref formatting, I assumed that the author was an inexperienced user submitting their first DYK and that they were thus in need of a little extra support and nurturing, when in fact, according to their user page, they've created over 3000 articles and received 244 DYKs. Because the author originally used unambiguously bare URLs by anybody's definition and then changed them to their present form after nominating the article, I assumed that they thought they had already fixed the bare URL issue, perhaps thinking that the comment in the review was based on the earlier version. It is regrettable that they never responded. And finally, I'd like to apologize for inadvertently adding links to a porn site! When I provided an example URL (which I've now modified), I should have realized that anything beginning with "bare" would be trouble. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 10:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

BLP

Y'all can't be putting BLPs sourced to "guampedia" on the main page-- I just blanked most of José Sisto, which is on the mainpage now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:08, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I removed it from the mainpage. It's negative, but it's actually not about a living person... I transposed the numbers when reading it. Whoops. Courcelles 19:15, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Nor can Sandy go blanking large parts of content linked from the main page with out the most basic of research or discussion. A little bit of research would show that Guampedia entries are peer-reviewed under the auspices of the University of Guam, and so just as acceptible as any other webpage. But no, Sandy thinks she's above all that sort of hard work... off to WP:ANI, blanking, anything to get her way without ever considering she might actually be mistaken. All of that while claiming that this is a BLP issue, for someone who was in political office in 1899! If this editor were not so troublesome, the whole thing would be laughable. A newbie would be blocked for this sort of stuff. Physchim62 (talk) 19:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

WHOA José Sisto is DEAD, he was in office over a hundred years ago. This is NOT a BLP. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:19, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict), I put it back, with the date added to make clear this isn't a current issue or a living person. Courcelles 19:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I have responded to SandyGeorgia's concerns at the article's talk page; even though the article was removed as a mistake (the man, though I could find no date of death anywhere, has most certainly been dead for awhile given his time spent in office) it is still nice to see what was thought of as a negative BLP on the main page removed so quickly. A mistake made in the interest protecting the encyclopedia and its rules to protect BLPs is a mistake made in the best of faith for sure. And I say that as the creator and nominator; I suppose what I'm saying is that removing the entry and THEN the inquiry happening AFTER was the right thing to do given what Courcelles believed the issue was. かんぱい！ Scapler (talk) 19:29, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

First, my apologies for the BLP misunderstanding and the resulting kerfuffle-- I wasn't aware we put up bios of dead persons without dates in the lead-- I thought that was standard. Second, my first click led me to one of those horrid webcitation links, which don't take you to the original source, so I thought I was at archive.org. Third, Pyschim, get over a wayward "s" that no one but you saw years ago on a FAC (or donate to my new eyeglasses fund) and lay off of the personal attacks like telling me to Shut the Fuck Up-- we have WP:NPA and WP:AGF for reasons. At Talk:Sisto, though, what makes Guampedia not a tertiary source? Wiki articles should be built around mostly secondary sources, but we can resolve that at Talk:Sisto. Courcelles, my apology for putting you through extra work ... and Scapler, too! Phsychim, get over yourself. PS, why do y'all put up DYKs without the dates in the lead? Isn't it good practice ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

There are many things that are good practice. DYKs are not supposed to be perfect (the mythicial "mini-GA"). We'd rather use our reviewing manpower checking for things like copyvios. You're welcome to help out. Shubinator (talk) 22:05, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, missed this (specifically the last sentence). Thank you; we appreciate it. Shubinator (talk) 22:47, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

By the way, you can also screen articles up to 2.5 days before they get to the Main Page here. Shubinator (talk) 22:56, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Shubinator, but that (very long) page isn't helpful for screening for plagiarism, sourcing, BLP issues, etc., because it doesn't show editor name-- I'd have to click to the article and then to the history to see who wrote it. When I check the DYKBot's contribs and see accomplished writers whose work I'm very familiar with, I don't have to check those, so it's faster. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:53, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Clicking any of the headings for a queue will show a list of authors below the hooks. 28bytes (talk) 00:32, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ha ... I see! So, if I always check Queue 6, is that the farthest away, so there is plenty of time if I find a problem? And if so, would it be helpful if others checked Queue 6 ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:39, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The farthest will be whichever of the Prep queues is at the bottom of T:DYK/Q (Prep 1 as of now). Those get rotated as the queues go live. But yes, the more eyes the better! 28bytes (talk) 00:44, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to keep troubling you, but I'd like to have one place to click for the farthest away to look at-- are you saying the number of the next Queue up constantly changes? Sorry, I've never followed how DYK works-- is there any way I can one-click check the farthest away? Just looked at Black Eyed Kids, and it is doesn't meet WP:V; this is a volunteer community contributor site (with a misleading name of "Sacramento Press") and this is certainly not a reliable source. So, more than half of the article isn't reliably sourced. It's in Queue6-- when does it go up? Should I tag the non-RS now? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Queue 6 will go live just over 24 hours from now (there's a little chart at the top showing the schedule), so fortunately there's a little time to look into that one. There are really two sets of queues: the "main" queues (Queue 1 goes live, then Queue 2, through Queue 6 and then back to Queue 1), and the "prep" queues that populate the main queues as their contents are transferred to the live T:DYK template. 28bytes (talk) 01:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

If the queue numbers change, it sounds like there's no way for me routinely look at these way in advance with one click, unless I follow all of DYK, which I really don't have time to do. I was using the BYKbot contribs, because it gives me one click to look them over, but by then, they're already live. Don't know what I can do except periodically peek in at the different queues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:07, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It'd be 4 clicks, not 1, but checking the 4 prep queues on a regular basis would show all the hooks that would eventually appear on the front page. Some template could probably be worked up to always point to the "further back" prep queue, but since each prep hook is refreshed every 24 hours that might be overkill. 28bytes (talk) 01:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, in the future, I'll try to work in advance, but Jameela Jamil is a BLP on the mainpage now, and it's sourced to online blogs and gossip rags. Nothing highly derogatory, but I think it still needs to go per BLP. But I'll let Psychim62 the expert handle how to solve the problem, since he has such a good faithometer, and I wouldn't want to cross him by, um, actually engaging our BLP policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:30, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Not BLP but WP:RS. Thank-you for raising your concerns about the reliablity of the following sources: Sky (UK & Ireland) and the Internet Movie Database. At least you didn't just do a drive-by tagging of an article on the Main Page. By my estimation, the sources you tagged as possibly unreliable are actually reliable (in the Misplaced Pages sense): they are certainly at least as reliable (in the general sense) as other sources we would accept for this type of article. Hence, disagreeing with your tagging, I have reverted it. Physchim62 (talk) 01:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)2

Not BLP? Drive-by? Physchim, you are one exceptionally fine fellow. OK, we put BLPs with piss poor sourcing and plagiarism on the main page; I guess my work is done here, and rather than trying to collaborate with y'all in advance, I'll just deal with the egregious issues as I see them, come what may. Phsychim62 already assured that a POV article ran on the mainpage of ITN, told me to STFU rather than use high quality sources, and reverted due weight sourcing there, resulting in POV and the article being removed, and now he's assuring piss poor citations on BLPs here. Ok, carry on then, but the criticism I've seen of DYK is most certainly valid, and y'all need to clean up the process here to check sourcing and copyvio. Bye. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:52, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Did you know/Queue/LocalUpdateTimes shows the full ordering of the sets. Here's a 1-click link for the queue set furthest from going live: queue 2 (you have to copy the wikitext since the link changes as the sets go live). Shubinator (talk) 01:32, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Neat! I didn't know about that. Is there an analogous template for the prep queues? 28bytes (talk) 01:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

@SG Pulled for discussion. It's borderline; the article is well-referenced for a DYK. The sources aren't the best, but they aren't terrible either.

@28B Prep area 4. They're both helper templates for the local update times table. Shubinator (talk) 01:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Shubinator. Sandy, I think that's what you were looking for: the farthest back queue. Catching bad hooks/articles in a prep queue is the optimal approach since it allows the most time for fixing the problem, and more editors can fix/demote a problem hook since the preps aren't fully-protected like the main queues are. 28bytes (talk) 01:50, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Shu and 28-- I posted above before reading this, but I can't work collaboratively in any area where Psychim62 is present and gets to tell me STFU and revert my work when I'm trying to help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I'm AGFing too much, but have you two tried to have a calm discussion about this? Shubinator (talk) 02:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Yup :) Physchim62 has an eons-old beef with FAC because he once found a wayward "s" after a word (making it plural rather than singular) in a featured article that no one else saw. The horror! After telling me to STFU, he's now decided I'm "traipsing around Misplaced Pages like a little diva", and it's unlikely that further conversation with him will improve anything. At any rate, regardless of his behavior towards me and that I won't be collaborating here, y'all do have some issues to clean up here. You put content on the mainpage, so it should be BLP- plagiarism, and copyvio-clean. Standards for DYK should at least conform with core policies, since the articles go on the mainpage. If the "reward culture" is affecting you all too much, then I hope you can find a way to slow down the turnaround to allow better scrutiny of what you do put up. Or, discourage participation here of abrasive editors so that others will want to help. I've been hearing about the bad rap DYK has for a long time; it's unfortunate that when I came over to see if it was true and how I could help, I found Physchim62, but the BLP and copyright problems do need cleaning up anyway, as the DYK reward culture is fueling the grease pole at RFA and WIKICUP. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Sandy, I hate to revive an age-old discussion, but I'd suggest it's the WikiCup's "reward culture" that's affected DYK negatively, rather than us fuelling them. But I digress here. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 02:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

We don't disagree-- I thought/think we were saying the same thing. Unfortunately, DYK is the easiest place for "reward culture" adherents to get their points, so you all may need to figure out how to account for that. FAC had to put procedures in place to lower the effect they were having on us. But Wikicup is subsiding now, yet the DYK issues are continuing. Recent cases I've found aren't related to Wikicup, and Physchim62 is assuring that progress won't be made here. RFA candidates are also using DYK as evidence of their writing ability so the "reward culture" effect goes beyond Wikicup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I hope Sandy and I have been able to smooth off some of the sharp edges on my User talk page so I shaln't reply to those comments directly. I do think that many of the problems with DYK are caused by the fact that it "promotes" too many articles without sufficient oversight (in practice). Physchim62 (talk) 04:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree. And it can't be entirely blamed on the reward culture or Wikicup, because RFA candidates also seek the DYK prize. I hope you all can find a way to slow it down and get better review; I don't understand why editors think they're entitled to their day on the mainpage. BLP vios, plagiarism and copyvios are serious, and if I've only been looking at this for a few days and have found five problems, it's a problem. (User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox#Identified DYK problems) Non-notability and non-reliable sources is another problem; why reward for article expansion if the expansion is based on a non-RS? I got interested in this is because I'm concerned about the decline in the admin corp and the lack of adequate scrutiny of candidates at RFA, and I kept seeing DYK being evidenced for writing ability and offered up as "prizes", and finding big problems in those DYKs. Standards were raised at GA by shining a lot on some of the one-editor passes years ago, GA is now respected, and standards are always increasing at FAC. Methinks y'all need to turn some people away, focus on screening in the truly worthy content, and slow down the turnover. FAC changed to address the effect of the reward culture and the increasing number of children on Wiki-- so can DYK. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:12, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I am just getting caught up with these discussions - I became an uncle yesterday. I have reviewed a bunch of nominations on DYK and have been active here since July. I have seen some blatant instances of copyvio (cut/paste), not an enormous amount though. I address them within the review but it is surely difficult to catch every one. I used to c/p then reword/format some text with my first few article starts but I stopped because it was too easy to mess it up. Normally when I review, aside from the basics (1500+, etc), I check to see if the article looks sound, has formatted citations, grammar, spelling, etc. Note: I am not perfect. The only references I open and really look at are those pertaining to the hook. I do look through the list of references and if I see a wiki, forum, social network or blog, I bring that up in the review. Aside form that, I sometimes cannot tell what is/is not a reliable source. If the source is in my area of interest, yes I can pick out the good and bad. Otherwise, it is difficult.

The problem posed at DYK is the amount of hooks, reviewers and time. At GAN, some nominations can sit for a month or longer while here at DYK, they can become a problem or even eye sore as queues are rolling through the main page. This occurs well within a month. In regards to reviewers, there are not enough to double-check every hook. With that, DYK assumes a calculated risk, just like this entire encyclopedia does. The goal of DYK is intended to encourage new content, so there is a level of courtesy one has to use when reviewing hooks and articles. The review has to occur in a relatively short period of time and there are a lot of nominations to go through. The only real solution would be to slow everything down and increase the standards or recruit reviewers. Some people abuse the system and often here at DYK, it is highlighted and handled accordingly. Other users create great content deserving of a main page appearance. DYK is reward-based and users have made great content and deserve a pat on the back for their effort. Using DYKs in an RFA can be the same as highlighting one's edit count, it can mean absolutely nothing little. Only the users that work with the potential admin know the quality of their work and can attest to it. DYK isn't perfect but users are also invited to review nominations and the queue as well.--NortyNort (Holla) 06:13, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations on the new nephew! Your post makes a good argument for slowing the process down. One thing confuses me: it is my understanding (I helped on the DYK Dispatch years ago) that to qualify for a DYK, certain word count or expansion is required. Well, if that expansion is based on non-reliable sources, how can it count towards meeting the rules? How can you verify that a DYK meets the criteria if you don't check that the expansion is based on reliable sources? If it's not based on RS, it's just garbage anyone can put up. I looked at one that is still in the queue, and unless someone has some offline sources, it needs to go to AFD-- there are only a few sentences based on reliable sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, it is was my niece. Boys are better though, right? In the few cases where I noted a non-RS that wasn't cited in addition to an RS, I asked the nominator to provide an another reference. I personally haven't come across an instance where a good portion of an article was cited to a non-RS. I would assume the information could be challenged and removed, taking away from the character count. I remember some instances were nominations were refused because of this but I was not involved in them. Then again, it takes someone to recognize the validity of the source and flag the nomination. Not every reviewer can do that every time. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a short and basic check-list accompany every nomination (like GAN) to make the standards more clear to nominators and reviewers. Such a checklist can be fit into the nomination template.--NortyNort (Holla) 06:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Basics (if you've never heard of a source) are just to go to the source and dig around for a page that looks something like an "About Us" page to determine if they have any info there that addresses WP:V (fact checking, journalistic oversight, etc); if not, query the editor to provide that-- if not, send them away ! Somewhere at Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)'s subpages, you will find a list she uses for sources that have already been challenged at FAC, but sourcing always depends on the statement being sourced, and sourcing requirements at FAC are much more stringent than they will be for DYK, so you won't be able to directly use her list, but it may be a helpful starting place. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

This type of verification for every reference is hard with limited reviewers and time. The obvious non-RSs and implausible statements are one thing. I remember one time an editor used a blacklisted site as a reference but altered the URL so it couldn't be filtered out. I think the only way for such attention would be to slow everything down. I am grateful that the articles at least do have references, when compared to other material on Misplaced Pages without references that can be equally dubious.--NortyNort (Holla) 09:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

• As an intermittent regular nominator and reviewer/toucher-up both at DYK and FAC I have a lot of sympathy with both positions here. One thing that I have hardly ever seen before is Sandy's brutally effective raising at Rfa of specific new concerns over the content created by two editors. I think Rfa is much too prone to examine interactions with other editors minutely & take a record of content creation at face value. I'm not sure how much DYK is being used as a launch pad for RFA, but if it is these sort of challenges to actual RFAs are probably a much more effective way of stifling this. On another point, quite a large % of DYKs (like FAs) are by a small number of regular contributors, nearly all I think to be found at Misplaced Pages:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs (headed by Alansohn at 813). If someone were to audit random contributions by people on the list, and pursue concerns, it would over time be likely to improve quality, perhaps more effectively and easily than trying to search the traffic flashing by on the suggestions page. Regulars will recognise that this has been done in the past with some people near the top of the list, with varying degrees of eventual success. Johnbod (talk) 07:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

• <eeek> Brutal :/ But Johnbod, you've got my number on the ultimate issue I'm trying to address, which is the reward seeking path that ends at RFA or WIKICUP. I'm trying to help stop the flooding of marginal content here by reward seeking editors who don't know diddly about Wiki policy, but use DYKs to pass RFA. (And the poor article writers who do know policy get the crap beat out of them at RFA because they have actually, ummmm, engaged and maybe even lost their temper.) GA used to have huge issues, and when lights got shone on the problems there, it turned around and became a very respectable process, and editors realized they couldn't game it on the path to RFA. I've been hearing for years that the DYK rules reward editors who plagiarize and doesn't detect plagiarism, but I don't read the mainpage and never even checked for myself; I've been surprised to find WP:V and WP:BLP breaches here as well, but I also believe there are some great editors working here, who simply are turning the queue too fast and being overwhelmed by the reward seekers, so if they recognize the problems here, they may get solved. Also, the reason I'd rather check the DYKbot contribs than the six queues is that I know who most of the quality editors are whose articles don't need review-- it's much faster for me to follow the bot and watch for names I don't know and BLPs in particular. But, that's not fair to DYK, because by the time they show up on the bot, they're on the mainpage already, which doesn't do these folk much good; checking 'em days before would be better, but this queue business is labor intensive! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:53, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Hook in Q3

A hook in Q3 caught my eye on two points. It reads "...that Indian badminton player P. V. Sindhu reported on time at the coaching camps despite traveling 56 kilometres (35 mi) on a daily basis?" 1) "the coaching camps" seems vague, and 2) is a 56-km (35 mi) commute interesting? Perhaps he walked it or jumped it on a pogo stick, but if this is the case, it needs to be explicitly stated. Cheers. Haus 00:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It's the sort of hook I'd like to see phased out. There's nothing wrong with the article (that I can see), but the hook might as well be "...that P. V. Sindhu is a promising young Indian badminton player." I sort of leaves me thinking "so what?" (although all credit to the 15-year old girl in question). Physchim62 (talk) 00:59, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

That is pretty mundane. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to eliminate these "pretty mundane" hooks from DYK? I think this would be a start to addressing the concerns raised in the last couple of days, and it would certainly be a start to addressing my well-known concerns about the section. I accept that it has to be done progressively, starting from where DYK is now (not some imaginary perfect DYK), and that not everyone is going to agree about what is "mundane" and what is not. Physchim62 (talk) 01:33, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a problem with something along the lines of "...that Indian badminton player P. V. Sindhu began training at age eight?" Haus 01:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Mundane too, not uncommon at all with all the youth leagues around. And I agree we need to tighten up the "boring factor" and the article quality standards, though we don't need to go to the mini-GA level. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:30, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Removing article info clash with hook

This claim – "... that the Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster has included Allens, Bateses, Covingtons, Delahantys, Ennises, Fultzes, Greens, Hamiltons, Jacksons, Kennedys, Lees, Morgans, Nicholsons, Powells, Robertses, Schmidts, Thompsons, Vukoviches, Watts, and Youngs, but never a player whose surname begins with X?" – is obviously WP:OR synthesis, as the fact can be gathered from the source although it is not specifically mentioned as a fact in the source. If I were to remove the para containing this synthesis from the article while the DYK is on the main page then the DYK fact would not be supported by the article. How to proceed? Ericoides (talk) 07:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I recall commenting on this "so what?...X is not a common last name letter at all." I'll find it and remove it from the queue. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually I can't find it, was it already on the main page? If so, just rm the material, if not, where is it now? — Rlevse • Talk • 12:33, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

A quick check of Misplaced Pages:Recent additions shows that hook was in the update that rotated off at 12:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC). --Allen3  12:41, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Then just go repair the article. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:47, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

My point has been missed; it was, is it OK to alter the article while the hook is up, such that the article and the hook no longer correspond? (Now the hook is down the article can be altered with a clear conscience.) Ericoides (talk) 12:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Other than the limitations imposed by Misplaced Pages:Speedy keep on WP:AFD nominations of articles link to from the Main page, the same rules apply to current DYK articles as to any other article on Misplaced Pages. Thus, yes it is permitted and would not be the first time it occurred. --Allen3  13:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

As a general rule, any article linked from the Main Page should be editable by anyone. That's not an absolute rule: occasionally we link to semi-protected and even full-protected articles, but I think the consensus is that that should be exceptional (especially in the latter case). So yes, your good-faith edits to an article linked from the Main Page are something that the project welcomes and encourages. If your edits lead you to remove the basis for a DYK hook, I would think that's a problem with quality control at DYK rather than a problem with the editor. Physchim62 (talk) 18:41, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Formatting screwed for Oct 27 noms

The entries at October 27, starting at PC Ramakrishna and below, no longer correspond to their edit section buttons. I am afraid that I would cause more problems with page by monkeying with it myself. Could someone with more experience with the Suggestions page maybe try to fix? Thanks, The Interior(Talk) 19:39, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Try refreshing the page and if necessary Misplaced Pages:Bypass your cache. The usual cause of what you describe is someone adding or removing an item above the section where you are working. The edit tab passes a numeric parameter telling the Misplaced Pages servers based upon section locations at the time your browser loaded the page. An added or removed section changes the needed values but your browser will not know this until it obtains a new copy of the page. Reloading the page allows the browser to obtain the updated information. --Allen3  19:59, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Allen3. Will remember this for the future. The Interior(Talk) 20:02, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The large page can take a while to reload, so what I usually do instead is use the edit link for a nearby section, determined by the relative position of the section I was "erroneously" taken to. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I do the same, there's no point in waiting 20 seconds for the whole thing to reload if you can just figure it out where it is :-) Ed  20:28, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. I also am of the impatient sort. Thanks for the feedback. The Interior(Talk) 20:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining how this happens - I've been wondering how I seemed to keep pressing the wrong 'edit' link, I was thinking I was losing my mind! Good to know it's a software thing, which is easily addressed. EdChem (talk) 02:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Somebody REALLY screwed up with an alt hook

I'm referring to Acheron class torpedo boat, where there was a virtually incomprehensible originally-suggested hook, and a much better (and rather intriguing) Alt1 hook. The Alt1 hook was the one that was stated as being approved. But somehow, the original, steaming-pile-of-crap hook was put into the queue and ran on the Main Page. We need to start striking out non-approved hooks when an Alt is selected (or Alts if the original is preferred) so that this doesn't happen - and yes, I need to do that too, as I was the editor who approved the Alt1 for this article in the first place. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:10, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

What I sometimes do is I put next to the failed hook and next to the approved alt. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 22:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Good ideas, not the first time this has happened. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

DYK raised at AN/I again (or rather, the thread just hasn't died yet)

I know many people here have already looked and given up, but just a brief note that the long rambling thread about DYK at AN/I now has a new section suggesting the removal of DYK and characterising its output as "lots of new content of shit quality that is mostly plagiarized" amongst other things.

Calmness and a recognition that there are issues that need addressing, might be advisable :)

--Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:24, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm just sick of all the people who think they know what's best when I don't see them doing any DYK reviewing themselves. I think roundly ignoring the thread (whilst not ignoring the problems) is best. StrPby (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I know you guys have a lot on your plate, and I readily admit I don't work in this area, however if you don't do speedy deletions that doesn't mean you aren't qualified to comment when you see someone screwing one up. I certainly don't favor scrapping DYK, but what about lowering the number of articles per day and tightening the requirements a bit? This may discourage the more marginal candidates and will make it easier for reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff more thoroughly. Again, I am not really an expert in this area but maybe some of the regulars have suggestions as to how the qualifications might be made slightly more stringent. DYK is a great motivator and a great way of showcasing the project's newest content, but we need to make sure it is showing off our newest good content. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed on ignoring the AN/I thread (or at least not getting baited into arguing on it), and on the need for "calmness and a recognition that there are issues that need addressing." I'm not sure where the idea that all the notable subjects have been covered is coming from. Never mind WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, is the thinking that there aren't going to be any new or newly-notable things or people in the future? Odd. 28bytes (talk) 00:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I just told the jaw flapping malcontent exactly what I think. Now I'm ignoring them. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:50, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for trial

Taking into account everything that's been said in the past two to three days here and at ANI, I think we should probably put some checks in place. Regarding BLPs and plagiarism, I propose that each nominated hook require two reviewers to approve before making it into a prep area. Furthermore, in light of what has been said about "boring hooks", maybe if two-three reviewers agree that a hook is "boring" or "dull", a new hook is to be found. We could, like the reverse timing trial, run this for a week. StrPby (talk) 00:34, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Talk about slowing things down to the point of constipation. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:43, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't like it myself but we have to start somewhere if we want the complaints to stop. StrPby (talk) 00:44, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

We simply don't have the manpower for 2 reviewer approvals on each hook. But if we get 2 people to agree a hook is too boring, I can go with that one. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I liked EdChem's idea of wrapping some sort of copyvio audit into DYKCheck. Is that technically feasible? 28bytes (talk) 00:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, CorenBot checks for copyvios. Shub and Coren could get together on it. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:02, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that would help out a lot. I'd rather have a boring hook about a boring article appear on the mainpage than an interesting hook about a plagiarized article. 28bytes (talk) 01:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm neutral on the "two reviews" concept; I can see how it would improve quality, but as noted, there isn't the manpower. I strongly oppose the "Boring Hooks" proposal though. First, boring is subjective, even with multiple people required to comment on it; second, it's far too open to abuse. As for copyvio check, that's a good idea, but where does that leave us who don't use DYKcheck? I assume CorenBot would be able to check independently of the non-bot approval process? I agree with 28bytes here too - some "boring" hooks have led me to "huh, I didn't know that" moments. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 01:05, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

DYKcheck can't check for plagiarism since javascript scripts can't access information on a different server (in this case, a search engine). Shubinator (talk) 01:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Then how about CorenBot scanning DYK/Q twice a day? — Rlevse • Talk • 01:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

That's more feasible. But the best solution is for reviewers to do a quick copyvio check. When I was regularly reviewing, it didn't take long; you quickly learn to spot unnatural wording. Also, I don't think the bot checks for copyvios against, for example, books on Google Books. Adding a bot should be seen as simply adding another layer, not relegating the task of copyvio detection to a non-human. Shubinator (talk) 01:35, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

First, thanks to 28bytes for noticing my comment / suggestion - I thought it had been lost under the side-discussion that followed. To elaborate on the idea slghtly, if DYKcheck isn't feasible, how about CorenBot (or another bot) being asked to check an article on request. I'll invite Coren to comment, he'll know best whether his bot is suited to working in such a way. If it doesn't check Google Books, maybe it can check the references given more rigorously (in a way that would be too resource-intensive for checking every article, perhaps) on request. Of course, bot assistance will not replace human responsibility to look for copy-vio / plagiarism issues, but any help can be useful. EdChem (talk) 03:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

If there were a lot of reviewers, two would be great. I think the only solution, unless we have an army of bots, is to slow the whole process down and increase the acceptance standards. Something like 18 hooks a day, 2500 character minimum, a 5x expansion where the article is greater than 2500 characters afterward. Also, one nom per editor per day. The less hooks and the slower clock we have, the more time for them to be reviewed better.--NortyNort (Holla) 01:19, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I can support a "one nomination per author per day" standard. However I strongly oppose upping the character count required. As I've mentioned before, I've seen ~1000 character articles on obscure subjects that are more complete and interesting than some ~10,000 character articles. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 01:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

(ce) I concur with slowing down and increasing standards. In light of the ongoing brouhaha, I'm being deliberately more careful now checking articles for copyvio & plagiarism, but it takes time to wade through the article text and compare with sources. Sasata (talk) 01:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

As an occasional DYK contributor, I think the quality standards should be increased and the number of DYKs reduced. I agree with The Bushranger—increasing the minimum size would not increase the quality. I haven't seen any correlation between DYK length and quality. What would increase the quality is having only 18 DYK articles a day (to pick a number) and using only the "best" 18 articles. That means many articles that technically qualified wouldn't make it to the front page. If some of my own DYK submissions didn't make the cut, that would be fine, I would simply start working on the quality and interest of my submissions. The tricky issue would be how to choose the "best" ones. Consensus? Trusted DYK regulars? We successfully make such choices in other areas, such as GA, Featured Pictures, etc., so that wouldn't be impossible. First Light (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• I think all these ideas are well worth following up, except for demanding 2 reviewers, which just isn't practical at the moment. Plus a GA only needs one (unfortunately - the main reason why I still don't give that process much respect). Although in fact it is completely untrue that all the subjects worth having already have articles - our coverage of the decorative arts is abysmal for example, not to mention Africa - I think it is also true that from an overall perspective of what is best for the project an excessive proportion of DYKs come from areas that are very well covered already. I also agree with the ANI thread that the lack of improvement of existing articles is one of WPs most glaring problems. How about a few batches a week that are 5x expansions only? Or some other way of encouraging these. I would also favour changing "5x" to a mixed formula such as say "5x or +30,000 chars". We have loads of fairly important articles that are much too short, but still too long for a 5x expansion to be doable by most, certainly within 5 days. Relaxing "5 days" for such very big expansions would also help. But an automated way, or easy tool, to pick up plagiarism, may be becoming essential. Johnbod (talk) 04:55, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• If the most mundane hooks are refused early in the process (perhaps even without a need to look at the article) then there would be the resources available for more eyes on the articles which actually head towards the MP. The corollary is that if mundane hooks aren't removed, then as I see it there's not the resources available for any signficant extension of article reviewing. So the challenge seems to me to be to find an acceptible way of weeding out the boring hooks, the ones that really aren't providing much of a service to Main Page readers and the ones that cause DYK to be by far the least read of the MP sections. Physchim62 (talk) 09:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Is it "by far the least read of the MP sections"? I very much doubt that. Of course each article gets relatively few readers, but add them all up over 24 hrs or longer & I think they compare well to the other sections. Johnbod (talk) 09:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Actaully, yes, I've just checked the stats again and, if you add up all the hooks over the day, DYK gets slightly more click-throughs than TFA (44.3k vs. 40.6k), but still a lot less than Selected anniversaries (64.9k) and less than a quarter of the click-throughs for ITN (197.6k). If you compare the click through rates for individual hooks, even after correcting for the fact that DYK hooks are only posted for six hours, they still have only about half the click-through rate of Selected anniversaries hooks. I completely accept that this is not the only criterion but, in terms of readership, the current model for DYK is a complete disaster. Physchim62 (talk) 12:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

But slightly less of a complete disaster than TFA, which is fully visible to on all screens and has the best position? Johnbod (talk) 12:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not really a like-for-like comparison with TFA. The TFA section already contains a susbtantial amount of information about the subject, whereas a DYK hook is a single sentence. The stats only measure click-throughs, not the people who read the section and found it contained all they wished to know about the subject. What is interesting when you look at the TFA viewing stats is that about a third of the people who click through to a featured article while it is linked from the Main Page do so during the three days after it was actually "featured" (when the link still appears at the bottom of the TFA section). You see the same effect in viewing figures for articles featured on ITN: not everyone who is interested in the subject clicks through during the first 24 hours, let alone in the six hours that a hook appears on DYK. That's why I think it makes sense from a readership point-of-view to be more selective with the DYK hooks that go up and leave them up for longer. At present the system is using lots of reviewer resources to churn out 32 (or 36) hooks a day and (again, I stress, solely from the criterion of readership) most of that effort is wasted because the readers don't even get the chance to see them. Physchim62 (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that updating DYK less frequently would give more time to check DYK's well and the increase in backlog could be attempted to be off set by introducing restrictions on numbers of DYK's entered simultaneously by single editors, by raising the quality bar for nomination and by requiring nominators to also participate in the review process. These strategies worked well at GAN. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I had suggested above "Something like 18 hooks a day, 2500 character minimum, a 5x expansion where the article is greater than 2500 characters afterward. Also, one nom per editor per day." Some editors disagreed with 2500 but the main reason I suggested that was because it could help lower the amount of nominations. I can't think of many other standards that can be easily verified, and help reduce nominations. Maybe nominating within 3 days? Any ideas?--NortyNort (Holla) 09:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

A practical proposal

One proposal that should be easy to implement:

• For every DYK submission, look for edits by User:CorenSearchBot.
• For every DYK submission, use Wikistalk to look for suspicious overlap of "interest" between CorenSearchBot and the article's main authors.
• Submissions cannot reach the main page before an editor has confirmed that they made the above checks and either they found no edits by CorenSearchBot, or they have followed all steps of a rigorously defined process that ensures that the suspicious material is examined appropriately, rather than inappropriately by an editor who thinks close rephrasing is just fine.

E.g., the editor who was credited for Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, which just had to be pulled from the main page because of a copyvio problem, was previously credited for three DYKs in which CorenSearchBot had correctly identified copyvios (Pons Neronianus, William Lugg, Sybil Grey) before they appeared on the main page. At least these copyvios would have been easy to spot, and if they had been addressed the most recent problem might not have occurred. Hans Adler 10:55, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• Cut the rate of promotions in half
• Every time plagiarism is found, add the authors name to a sub-page to keep track of which submitters are more problematic.
• Set minimum skill and experience standards for reviewers.
• Remover reviewer status for those who have promoted multiple bad articles.Bali ultimate (talk) 11:56, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

On CSBot involvment

I don't know that CSBot can be that helpful, but there's nothing that prevents you from using it as much as it's able to.

1. CSBot cannot generally find copies in Google Books because it can't search for candidates with Google at all (the Google TOS does not allow it, and they have never responded to requests for permission — though last couple of attempts were a while ago and I should probably try again); and
2. it normally only checks new articles at creation, and would not even know to check a stub being extended.

The latter point can be "circumvented" by making a manual check request as part of the DYK approval process, though, simply by adding a wikilink to the page to User:CorenSearchBot/manual and check the result (that will be posted there on a subpage). There is one big caveat with manual checks, however: the likelihood of a false positive increases with age as the page gets spidered and copied around; so possible matches have to be examined with care. — Coren  12:19, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• Coren, thanks forf that information.

  Everyone, I am putting in a request for Coren's bot to look at Black Eyed Kids, Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, Seven Gates of Hell, and Rhodocene. The first three have all been mentioned here recently. The last is an old DYK of mine which I am utterly certain is not a copy-vio or plagiarism case, but which I fully expect to trigger a false positive, so we can all see how useful the bot might be. EdChem (talk) 12:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

  • All four came back as clean. EdChem (talk) 12:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Now try Charles Fitzroy Doll. Uncle G (talk) 15:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
      • OK, done - it came back clean - see User:CorenSearchBot/manual EdChem (talk) 17:15, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Earwig's tool searches Google ; maybe that's OK because it's manually invoked? Google's Terms of Service seems mostly concerned with automated processes. If a manual invocation is OK, then it could be modified to search Gbooks too . Novickas (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

You may also wish to try the plagiarism checker. → ROUX ₪ 21:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I've tried it before; it has some problems - doesn't exclude WP or its mirrors; doesn't strip out Wiki markup, infoboxes, all that for you, so you have to copy and paste text sections; doesn't generate output; you need a subscrption to the premium version to make it ignore quotes; for me, on second and successive entries, a 'Possible plagiarism' link shows but clicking the link only works if it's opened in a new tab. Surely WP can afford to develop a one-step in-house tool that eliminates those obstacles - if it's acceptable under Google usage terms. Novickas (talk) 22:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Black Eyed Kids for deletion

A discussion has begun about whether the article Black Eyed Kids, which you created or to which you contributed, should be deleted. While contributions are welcome, an article may be deleted if it is inconsistent with Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines for inclusion, explained in the deletion policy.

The article will be discussed at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Black Eyed Kids (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and you are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

You may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:55, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

You know, you could've nominated this for deletion before it hit the Main Page, but only chose to do so after. Why? That's a bit WP:POINTy. It would have been pulled from the queue had you done so, too. StrPby (talk) 08:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

You know, I didn't think you all were going to run it after I let you know of the problems. Please read the page: I DID let you know. No one pulled it, and it was run with maintenance tags in place. I was going to hold off until it was off the main page, but it was already AFD'd once before, and this is getting ridiculous. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Having read the nomination which takes a gratuitous swipe at the DYK project (last time I checked, not a basis for deletion at AfD), and noting the timing of the AfD nomination when the article is on the main page, I consider "a bit WP:POINTy" to be a bit understated. Sandy, I read the article and noted that it was a Halloween hook (and clearly worded as such), and thought it was tolerable for that reason. The way you are presenting these issues makes me inclined to disregard your opinions as anti-DYK rants rather than constructive criticisms worth investigating. Try to tone things down a bit, ok? I think the Black Eyed Kids article has serious issues, so you do have a case, but it is being lost in the way you are carrying on. EdChem (talk) 09:16, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Knock off the sanctimony. Pointy my arse-- we talked about it more than a day ago, and you all said you would deal with it. You can disregard me all you want; that won't clean up the problem, and the attitude a few of you (not all of you) have shown is what is shedding more heat than light. You're welcome for the help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:19, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I give up. I think you should stop characterising this as "help". It's disruptive editing, not anything else. StrPby (talk) 09:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

And I have to agree with you, Ed and Strange. I was willing to AGF before, but after awhile even my good-natured, see-the-best-side nature has to draw a line. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 00:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

Blatant plagiarism, tagged, on the main page now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• From the same editor's last DYK: You all do know here that answers.com is a Wiki mirror, right ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:03, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Sandy, the article is still over 1500 characters. The hook is still reliably referenced. There are still references throughout the article. The fact that there is a bad reference that don't change any of these things is not a reason for disqualification at DYK. EdChem (talk) 09:20, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
    • You're not getting it. Wiki is not all about hooks; we have this little policy called WP:V. Point being, I didn't check the rest of his articles for plagiarism, but it's probably there, too, considering how extensive it was on the first article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
      • You're not getting it. An article appearing in DYK is not being endorsed as free from errors or of mini-GA or FA standard. Expecting a reviewer to check every reference for possible plagiarism is unrealistic, especially if there are a lot of references (have a look at actinides). You are criticising individual references that do not disqualify an article from a DYK appearance under any DYK rule, and seeking to apply a ridiculous standard to DYK reviewers. Picking up plagiarism in the hook reference is a reasonable expectation. Picking up plagiarism where it is obvious (changes in language style, etc) is a reasonable expectation. Picking up every single case of plagiarism is unrealistic. Do you want to have a discussion of what is possible and what reasonable reviewing standards might be, or would you rather sit on the sideline and throw mud? EdChem (talk) 09:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Tut! Tut! That's more shoot-DYK-first-ask-questions-afterwards, I'm afraid. This, which you didn't read properly, is not a Misplaced Pages mirror. It contains a bibliographic citation at the bottom of the page telling the world what it is a mirror of, as well as another clue to the same in the middle of the page. I've corrected the citation to point to the original for you. Uncle G (talk) 09:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• And before that: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:07, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Again, what is disqualifying from a DYK view here? Yes, it would have been good if the reviewer said something about this, but all referencing perfect is not a requirement or a reasonable expectation for DYK articles. EdChem (talk) 09:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

We've long had a policy here that IMDB is not a reliable source. I guess some of our newer reviewers are not aware of that. Articles which are substantially sourced to IMDB or other wiki-like websites should not be getting promoted. We need to identify who has been verifying/promoting these articles and ensure they are aware of this. Gatoclass (talk) 04:04, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Seven Gates of Hell

On the main page now, source that is closely paraphrased is not even a reliable source (uses Misplaced Pages as a reference), and there is probably more close paraphrasing, but the first source is not available on line. That's three of the current DYKs on the main page now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:56, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The allegation of close paraphrasing from the article talk page is:

• "Others say that, completely unrelated to the asylum story, an eccentric physician who lived on the property built several gates along a path deep into the forest."

vs.

• "... to an eccentric local doctor who erected a large gate at the entrance to his property, and rumors sprang up that there was a series of gates beyond that one along a road leading deep into the woods"

Now, "others say" begs a "who?", but this does not strike me as a copy vio or even as close paraphrasing that violates plagiarism rules. What do others think?

Aside: I am not surprised that Coren's bot did not flag this. EdChem (talk) 12:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, the source does not use WP as a source, it notes the source and comments the story is also found on-wiki. NOT the same thing. EdChem (talk) 12:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I agree the source is unreliable, because it's not clear how much of the information in it is sourced to the wiki article and how much is not. I think the "close paraphrasing" charge is a bit of a stretch. Yes, a couple of phrases in one sentence bear a resemblance to one another, but that's not much of a reason to start slapping tags on the article. Gatoclass (talk) 04:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

My point remains that some of the criticisms contain rather too much heat, and insufficient light. EdChem (talk) 05:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the above example is not an example of close paraphrasing. Since this appears to be a general sentiment, I have removed the template from the article. Hans Adler 06:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

FYI the source is reliable, as it only mentions that there is a wikipedia article on the matter. Since the source was already there before I wrote the article, it references the deleted article on the matter, Seven gates of hell. The source is a township website, and I believe it is a fair assumption to say that they heard of the legend and did some fact checking themselves. ~EDDY ~ 19:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Deep breath time: a plea

Okay, everyone, deep breath time. On both sides. Here's what I figure:

• Credible problems have been found on DYK approved articles regarding WP:V and copyvio/close paraphrasing/plagiarism
• At the current time, every time a new set goes on the Main Page, we just get inundated with new sections regarding the new set of articles
• This is unhelpful when we've already identified the problem and are still discussing how to best deal with it (#Proposal for trial). There needs to be a buffer or this mess will not sort itself out.
• With every new complaint on every new set the same issues are getting rehashed every six hours. It's going to be non-stop.
• Words and accusations have been exchanged here and at ANI by both sides, which has gone as far as to lead to a warning for NPA against an arbitrator. This is not the right atmosphere to continue.

Therefore I ask that SandyGeorgia refrain from any further interaction regarding tagging problem articles on the Main Page until after they've been taken off and that she stop bringing the issues here or DYK - just do the tagging and notification which is needed, no need to generate more heat.

And I ask those of us DYK regulars take all that has been pointed out by Sandy and others at ANI and here - constructively or not, POINT-ily or not, civilly or not - in stride and figure out where to go from here.

Sandy, as I said at ANI - (at least for now) ignore DYK and let us sort our mess out. You've identified a problem but are giving us absolutely zero time to do anything about it by just heaping fuel onto the fire every time a new set goes on the Main Page.

Please, people, we can reach a conclusion here but neither side is doing anything which will let us get there. StrPby (talk) 09:43, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Loss of Rlevse

As many of you would be aware, Rlevse retired from Misplaced Pages today. A post from arbitrator SirFozzie at user talk:Rlevse confirms that Rlevse has turned in his advanced permissions and scrambled his password. His departure is a great loss for the DYK project as he devoted considerable time and effort here. He was very active in preparing new sets of updates, in organising the queue, in reviewing, and also as a content contributor. I have no doubt that he will be sorely missed.

Being pragmatic, we are going to need administrators to fill the roles that Rlevse's departure leaves open in queue management and preparing updates. Already we have two empty queue slots. I fear that we are about to discover just how much work Rlevse was doing here. EdChem (talk) 19:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

No offense to Rlevse, but the DYK project did work for years before he got involved. It is a shame that he's retired, but I'm sure it will continue to work; DYK tends to cycle through active users and administrators anyway. Perhaps I shouldn't be the one saying that (since I'm not going to be the one stepping in to do the work right now). Like you said, what happened is a shame, but I don't think any special effort needs to be made to find some kind of replacement. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:34, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I'm happy to help with some of the easy stuff that requires an admin. Just let me know how I can help or ping my talk page when something needs doing. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:41, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you missed the point. Will someone step in to take up the slack? Probably, but partly because of specific requests such as the one above. It doesn't happen by magic, it happens because dedicated editors step up when asked.--SPhilbrickT 20:34, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Meh. He's done it before . Odds are, he'll be back shortly. Not that that will fix any of the structural issues here (some reviewers who don't know what they're doing, a throughput rate that's it least twice as fast as it should be and probably far more than that, a tolerance of apple-polishing, etc...) What's needed is structural reform.Bali ultimate (talk) 21:10, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's a shock. One minute he's the most prolific contributor here, and next minute he's retired? That's about the last thing I would have predicted. Maybe he just suddenly got burnt out - he was certainly working hard enough for it.

In any case, as rjanag said, people come and go from this project all the time, Rlevse lasted longer than most, and kept DYK running with a great degree of efficiency, but the project got along before he started contributing here and it will continue to muddle along without him. Gatoclass (talk) 03:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Part of my point was to recognise Rlevse, who contributed a lot to DYK. The other part was in the hope more admins could join in the admin maintenance tasks. At this moment there are two empty queue slots, and when they are filled all four prep areas will be empty. The number of reviewed hooks available is also not that large. I am fairly new to DYK and don't consider myself experienced enough yet to try prep area work, but I have done a couple of reviews in the last couple of days. I don't think we realised as a project just how much Rlevse was doing, and we need qualified editors to contribute some more time if they are willing, or we are going to fall far behind. EdChem (talk) 12:51, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure many people would be willing to step up and help, but there's only so much work that non-admins can do in this area. Admins really need to step up to help with this project, or else it'll be hurt further. Paralympiakos (talk) 13:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Loss

Can I point out that if evertime we have an error we stop only to try and identify who did it then statistically it will always be the same people on average. Those who do most. There is a lot of hindsight now available, can some of it be reapplied to how we ensure that a system allows people to operate so safely so that when a mistake is made we don't have to sacrifice a good editor. If we use the analogy of surgery then our system needs to ensure that we do keep some surgeons who do operate (without hindsight) - an imperfect editor Victuallers (talk) 21:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. -- Cirt (talk) 00:36, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree absolutely. None of the Main Page sections are perfect, not because they are "staffed" by volunteers but because they are staffed by humans. Nothing useful at all will come of attempts to pretend that WP editors could ever be perfect, whether they contribute at DYK, FAC or elsewhere. Physchim62 (talk) 00:46, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree that humans make mistakes. Strongly agree that not every mistake is cause for recriminations. However, disagree that "statistically it will always be the same people on average" because this presumes everyone is equally likely to make a mistake. In fact, the inexperienced and incompetent (not the same thing) are much more likely to make mistakes. AGFing, the advantage of identifying mistakes is that they provide opportunities for us to help the editor involved to learn and grow as a competent and valued contributor. Sometimes there is nothing to learn from a mistake, sometimes a lot can be done to avoid the mistake being repeated. Making mistakes is human, no doubt, but making the same mistake repeatedly is something we should be helping editors to avoid. I totally agree that expecting perfection is unrealistic and foolish, but that doesn't mean that striving towards perfection is a desirable "gold standard". EdChem (talk) 05:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Non-admins can help

Non-admins are helpful and always appreciated to do some DYK hook reviewing, and filling the prep pages. :) -- Cirt (talk) 19:44, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

One thing we can't do is to protect images though, so if non-admins fill a prep area we would need to be careful to make sure the image gets dealt with by an admin. SmartSE (talk) 15:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Admins should be checking image protection when they load up the queue, so non-admins, don't worry about that. Shubinator (talk) 03:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Hook move

I saw that a time-sensitive hook was in the wrong place, and I swapped it, but I accidentally swapped it to the wrong place. As I was correcting my error, the Prep was moved to Queue. Would someone please swap the hook for American Samoa constitutional referendum, 2010, which is currently in Queue 1? I'm pretty sure it should appear on November 2 at 6 pm UTC, which would be Prep 2. (Note that the Prep order has changed. Prep 2, where the hook was before my move, was originally scheduled for Nov. 3, 6 am, but it's now Nov. 2, 6 pm.) But maybe we should check with Strange Passerby to confirm that this is correct. I sincerely apologize for my mistake. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:58, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, could I get it back in Prep 2 please? I've noticed the calendar on the queue page only updates once a prep or queue has been cleared, and thus if a set is in both a queue and a set the time displays wrongly. StrPby (talk) 22:49, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Doing. Courcelles 22:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Swapped around. Check my work, please. Courcelles 22:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Tidied up. Shubinator (talk) 22:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Shoot, I do that one time in three (Copy, not cut, the credit templates.) Courcelles 23:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and again I apologize for the inconvenience. And thanks, Strange Passerby, for the info about the calendar. I had no idea that it sometimes displayed incorrect update times. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 23:12, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

And thanks to Shubinator for fixing {{Did you know/Queue/LocalUpdateTimes}} so that it no longer shows Prep update times when they're incorrect. That should prevent incidents such as this from happening again. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 06:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Any idea why the current Tokyo time for queue 5 is displaying as "3 November 09:00 AM 4"? It's the "4" I am confused about. EdChem (talk) 12:44, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks. Shubinator (talk) 04:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Changing DYK

It seems, from discussions all over the place, that there are two proposals to be (re-)made. So here they are. Discuss. Uncle G (talk) 12:12, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal 1: Slowing down the output rate

DYK is largely output driven. One of the ironies of the recent discussions was that partway through a robot interrupted to nag people that the output end was in danger of emptying. That seems to be causing a rush for reviewers. Can we make it more input-driven? If not, can we slow down the output rate?

Discussion (Prop. 1)

• I think slowing the output rate is a Good Thing in itself, and also a necessary part of any move to "improve" checking, accountability, etc. The Devil, as always, is in the details! Slowing down the output at the current rate of input involves refusing a lot more submissions than at present, preferably as early as possible in the procedure to avoid wasting reviewer resources (always in short supply all across WP). I've noticed two proposals for how to do this (apologies if I've missed any):

• Refuse hooks that are too mundane (only the hook, not the whole article, needs checking in order to refuse, but probably needs multiple reviewers on the hook to be fair)
• Increase the length requirement (can be done automagically, but length is a poor indicator of quality and no indicator at all for the sort of problems that have arisen recently)

Both ideas have their supporters and opponents: my strong preference is for the first. Physchim62 (talk) 13:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

If we slowed down the output rate, what would you have the new figure as?

Mundane hooks are somewhat subjective really. I've seen instances of hooks being labelled as boring by others, yet they'd drawn me in. Multiple reviewers for one hook would be nice, but it's not practical. There are simply too few reviewers at present. Paralympiakos (talk) 14:06, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that refusing boring hooks is a good idea in principle, but for reasons I have expressed many times here (see my comment dated 00:24, 29 October 2010 (UTC) above) I don't think it's a workable proposal under the current system. If we're going to do it, someone needs to come up with a much more specific proposal about how exactly DYK will select or reject hooks. Otherwise it's just going to be a drama fest. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

My ideal output rate would be a single DYK section (7–10 hooks) every 24 hours. I guess that that's probably too big a change to make all at once, because we also need to address the expectations that editors have when they submit to DYK. But I think once it becomes clear that hooks are being rejected for being simply too mundane, submitter attitudes would also quickly change: editors would have to consider "is this really 'Main Page interesting'?" before submitting hooks. Physchim62 (talk) 14:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Maximum of 10 in a 24 hour period. People's expectations will adjust very quickly. It will free up multiple reviewers to work on the best submissions, and lead to better, more interesting articles being featured. The only argument against this is "but we've always done it this way." Which is a poor argument indeed. Bali ultimate (talk) 14:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Statements like "the only argument against this is 'but we've always done it this way'" shows how carefully you've read the preceding discussions. Actually participating in constructive discussion and weighing the pros and cons of all options would be more useful than repeatedly making strong demands about how you want DYK to be changed, like a broken record. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:10, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There's a big problem here. If one cares about quality then reducing throughput is the single simplest, lowest cost change that could be made to improve this place. You have an insufficient number of competent reviewers and the competent ones you have are strapped for time. That's a fact. The question then becomes, how do you fix it? All i see are hidebound status quo defenses. If the argument is a philosophical one -- that you want to encourage new article creation, irrespective of quality, then we'll just have to disagree (and lots of new articles are created completely outside of people interested in this process). I happen to agree with Edward Abbey that growth for its own sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. There's a further problem that so many of the hooks don't work with a "Did you know?" format (which promises something enlightening or surprising and counter-intuitive.) I saw one today that was of the nature of "did you know that a very obscure so and so was a nephew of an equally obscure so and so?" If you really want to feature such new articles, then just create a "new on wikipedia" and just include the most interesting possible one-sentence summary of the content. But i digress.Bali ultimate (talk) 16:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

As for how it would work, let's keep it simple! A reviewer scannig the nominations page comes across a hook that he or she feels is just too mundane for a section entitled "Did you know?", so they add something like:

• The hook seems just too mundane to me. ~~~~

at the top of the discussion. After, say, three reviewers have found the hook too mundane, the nomination automatically fails. Physchim62 (talk) 14:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a sensible idea to trial. I was looking over at WP:ITN yesterday and noticed that this is basically what they do when selecting articles. If this leads to too much discussion on whether a hook is interesting, rather than people reviewing the articles, it may have the opposite effect to what is intended though. I agree with Physchim62 and that hope nominators will start to adapt accordingly, if we up the standard for hooks. This would be a major change from what I thought the function of DYK was (to encourage new content) rather than it being especially interesting, but I guess maybe the project has reached a stage where it is becoming more mature and that we should be trying to improve the quality of DYK. As for how many articles we should feature, I think that cutting it down to two sets a day is probably a good idea to start with, numbers above seem to be plucked out of the air, rather than based on any reasoning. I'm not sure about increasing the length requirement, because sometimes you can have a really interesting hook about something that little is known about. Generally speaking, of the articles I review, most are way over >1500 at the moment anyway, so I'm not sure this would change anything. If someone could run some stats on that though it might be helpful. SmartSE (talk) 15:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

(e/c, in fact my edit was deleted for some reason, probably by the wiki-software) The selection of articles going to the front page should be based on the quality of the article rather than the cleverness or mundaneness of the hook. Hooks can easily be rewritten, even by a reviewer. Badly written or poorly referenced articles on the other hand shouldn't be on the main page, even if they have an awesome hook. If there is anything this discussion should be reaching for, it should be to encourage reviewers to review the article, first and foremost.First Light (talk) 15:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

_{::::Sorry don't know how that happened. SmartSE (talk) 18:16, 1 November 2010 (UTC)}

If you see DYK as a showcase for articles (which I don't, I see it as a service to our readers) then it's failing, because the readership of articles on DYK is far below that which would be expected given its position on the Main Page. You can't have higher readership or better reviewing at the current throughput rate. If we want to give Smarties to good little editors, fair enough, but there's no need to squat a Main Page section to do that. Physchim62 (talk) 16:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I also see DYK as a service to our readers, first and foremost. Any content on the main page should be putting the readers first. For that reason, it's incumbent that the articles featured there at least meet minimum standards of quality, referencing, and freedom from copyright violations. A clever little hook leading to a poorly written or referenced article is a disservice to our readers, in my opinion. It's also a disservice to new editors to reward them for a clever hook and a poor article. First Light (talk) 17:26, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

No one is suggesting that poor articles are put up. All that's being suggested is that some nominations are refused because reviewers don't think the hooks will interest the readers. The idea is to have fewer articles to check for quality. Physchim62 (talk) 18:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There are two problems with removing "boring" hooks. One is that someone who is bored by science, for example, will probably find many of the science related hooks boring. Someone who thinks pop culture articles are mundane will find those hooks to be mundane and boring. I'm actually arguing for the sake of others, since I find interesting hooks somewhat easy to come up with. I think you'll find that the vast majority of boring hooks could be rewritten to be less boring. Now, if the article were mundane, boring, badly written, poorly referenced, plagiarized, or a copyvio, then the reader will be let down by the clever hook. To make a long story short, I think we're putting the cart before the horse by basing accepting or rejecting an article on the hook alone. A reviewer should be reviewing the article first, since this DYK is about highlighting new articles and not new hooks. First Light (talk) 20:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I think that going to 3 updates of 9-10 might be viable, taking out the hooks / articles that really aren't worthy. "Boring" is unbelievably subjective, and if you want to use it to cut by 60+ % is asking for major fights. It is also changing the function of DYK from encouraging new content creation to - well, I'm not sure what it is changing the function to. I understand that highlighting new GAs has some appeal (for example), but DYK is supposed to be encouraging readers to start contributing, and for editors early in their careers as Wikipedians. New articles that are headed for GA and FA are great too, but early career Wikipedians deserve some encouragement, IMO. We have a nomination page of 200 to 250 articles at present - which are the 120 to 150 of those nominations that are unworthy? EdChem (talk) 15:42, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how this proposal is going to reduce the workload of reviewers, which is the real problem. Someone will still have to go through the noms to decide which are the most viable - that alone could turn out to be a nightmare. Then every ref. in every remaining article will have to be thoroughly vetted to see there is no plagiarism. And what is going to be the net benefit of all this? I would suggest, minimal. This will completely destroy the object of DYK as it currently exists, if we are going to do this, we may as well dump DYK altogether and just promote GAs. Gatoclass (talk) 16:51, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your criticism here. Surely it is quicker and simpler to answer the question "would this hook interest a significant number of our readers, and so lead them to read the full article" than to answer the question "does the entire article satisfy all the DYK criteria for posting". The smaller number of nominations that get through to the second stage of checking would more than make up for the effort on the first stage of "checking" (really just expressing an opinion). Either you cut down the number of article, going onto the full article checking or you find more reviewers, there's no other option for improving reviews. Physchim62 (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There is a way that "boring" could be used as a criterion to reduce workload: if nominations die after a set time without review. It may be assumed that reviewers are at least partly choosing what to review based on what looks interesting to them. A bot can move, say, week-old nominations without any review comments to a subpage, where they get another week for someone to rescue them by moving back to the main page (not the original nominator). Then they just die for lack of interest (bot deletes nom from subpage). Besides workload, other advantages of this approach are flexibility and avoiding arbitrary standards: if we run short on noms, then noms which would otherwise be judged too boring will be get sufficient attention to get through anyway. Rd232 17:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how simply ignoring a nomination is any improvement on stating an opinion that it's not DYK material. At least if someone states an opinion, there can be discussion about it; simply ignoring things is no solution at all. Physchim62 (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Sure its a solution. If no-one can be found to express an interest, it's uninteresting by definition. Rd232 20:34, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Not really. There's a big difference between "I don't think this hook will interest a significant number of our readers" and "I don't want to review this article". In any case, ignoring nominations has always happened, and DYK is still churning out 32–36 hooks a day: ergo something new has to be done if DYK output is to be limited. Physchim62 (talk) 20:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The 'ignoring' strategy has been discussed before, I myself have suggested it in the past. One problem is that people could easily game it by making i-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine arrangements with other editors. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

That's true of just about anything, including both the status quo and more complex attempts at voting. I'm mostly inclined to say it doesn't matter that much, at least in terms of the dimensions introduced by the ignoring approach. In terms of reviewing, there's an argument to require at least two reviewers to sign off, which would limit these issues a bit. Rd232 20:34, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree. It needs to be more than one editor to be fair to nominators, but it would still be multiple editors making much quicker judgement calls than reviewing for an entire article. Physchim62 (talk) 20:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Neutral - but see my comments on proposal 3 below. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I support reducing the output, but strongly oppose the criteria be based on "Is it boring?". As a lot of other users have mentioned, boredom is ridiculously subjective and can be easily gamed. I like the simpler solution: Increase requirements for DYK size and the amount of citations needed. Upping the requirements would reduce the flood of DYKs quickly cobbled together and force users to work on the quality of their articles.--hkr Laozi speak 22:12, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the idea of "Is it boring?" is ridiculously subjective: the idea that quality can be measured by character count is equally subjective, if not more so. And where are these DYKs that are "quickly cobbled together" coming from? A DYK nomination has to come within five days of article creation. Ah yes, of course, all the people who are preparing articles offline, posting them fully made and immediately nominating for DYK! Hardly the sort of "new users" that we're supposed to be encouraging, IMHO. In any case, increasing article length increases the workload for reviewers, which is not exactly what we're trying to do at the moment. Physchim62 (talk) 22:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

You're implying that editors spend all five days working on their articles, when there's nothing stopping a user for doing the bare minimum in an hour, before placing their article up for DYK. In fact, I would argue that having any kind of deadline, less than a month, actually encourages users to rush their articles. Very few people have five straight days of free time to work writing and improving an article, for most people Misplaced Pages's a hobby, not a job. Also, I think the smaller workload created by reducing the output would more than make up for the slight amount of extra work required to check up on a few more citations.--hkr Laozi speak 23:14, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

And when I said "up the requirements", I wasn't only referring to size, but the amount of citations and reliable sources. Forcing users to check on and use multiple reliable sources can help improve the quality. I'll admit it's debatable by how much, but what other alternatives do we have for improving quality? Judging how interesting the hook is has no reflection on the quality of the article, only on the quality of the hook.--hkr Laozi speak 23:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

What you seem to be implying is that it's already impossible (for the editor with the average amount of spare time for WP) to create a DYK within the five-day deadline unless they prepare it offline... If that's the case, then DYK as it stands is just acting as Smarties for already established editors – who know their way around wikicode – and is already useless for encouraging new contributors. Any increase in the character limit would only make that situation worse: we would be creating a Main Page section just for the regulars.

As for the reviewer workload, the time needed to check an article for points like grammar and copyvio is proportional to the length. So if you increase the character criterion to 2,500 characters (as an example), you are increasing reviewer workload by up to 40%. Doo you really think there would be 40% fewer nominations with a 2,500-character minimum than at present? When so many of the current nominations are from "regulars"? Physchim62 (talk) 23:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it's hard to create a DYK within a 5 day deadline, but it is hard to create a DYK of good quality. Quality takes time, and five days is not enough. I haven't advocated a character criterion, and I never said that size should be the only deciding factor for DYKs. The number reliable sources, I think, is a much better gauge, as it shows that the author has done the research. Having higher requirements for sources also reduces cases of close paraphrasing, which has been a problem on DYK.--hkr Laozi speak 23:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• Very strong oppose to this whole idea. You cannot fairly apply a "too boring" rule: it would be far harder to apply fairly than our least clear speedy deletion criterion. What's more, no good reasons for slowing DYK production have been given: give me a good reason to reduce the number of articles that appear at DYK. Every argument that I see is essentially trying to reduce DYK itself, in the spirit of "DYK is harmful"; no such statement has any worth. Nyttend (talk) 01:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose as unworkable (for reasons discussed above) and contrary to the purpose of DYK, at least as I see it. As I see it, the purpose/benefit of DYK is to bring attention to new articles -- to improve them and to invite addition of relevant links, backlinks, and categories that the article creator might not have been aware of. That purpose is best served by giving a large number of articles a brief period of exposure on the main page.
  Notwithstanding that objection, if there is going to be an effort to deleted nominated hooks, the best way to do that is to be brutal towards nominations that are perceived as having serious problems. I've had some bad experiences here in which I found serious problems with a nomination (such as massive plagiarism in the article or severe misinterpretation of a cited source), but ended up being severely criticized for trying to reject the hook instead of graciously spending 6 hours of my life fixing the problem. I believe that it would be beneficial for DYK to take a harder line on junk. --Orlady (talk) 03:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, agree with these comments by Nyttend (talk · contribs) and Orlady (talk · contribs). Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 03:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose creating a subjective "interesting" standard. As noted below, Physchim62 finds an article on an early 20th century college football team to be boring and unworthy, but it got 8,700 views while on DYK and has had about 20,000 views since March. While we may be a bit twisted, some of us find sports and sport history fascinating. Different strokes. So I oppose a subjective interesting standard. If we are going to cut back on output, as Orlady noted above, take a harder line on the "junk", as determined by objective quality standards (not by subjective views of "interest" level). Cbl62 (talk) 06:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you know... that readers aren't particularly interested in churches (967 readers) or moths (1139), are bored stiff by statesmen (766) unless they're diplomats having a drink (2621), but perk up for computer games (2616) and go wild for nipple tumours (4554) and vandalised genitals (8282)? - Pointillist (talk) 14:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Stop voting, people. This is a discussion. The proposal asks two questions. "Oppose" and "Support" are meaningless answers to either one. Uncle G (talk) 10:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support slowing down the time frame of hook promotion, perhaps require only newly-promoted-GAs, and expand length of time of hooks on Main Page. -- Cirt (talk) 15:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal 2: More transparent logs

It's difficult to track when and by whom a nomination was checked, discussed, and approved. "What links here" from the article is no help. There are no archive pages. There's no permalink in the notice on the article's talk page. And scanning the edit history of such an oft-edited page is inordinately tedious if the discussion was months or years ago, and relies upon people using edit summaries that mention the individual articles. Can we switch to a system where it's easy, after the fact, to locate the DYK discussion and approval?

Discussion (Prop. 2)

More transparent logs are definitely desirable. Repeating some of what I suggested elsewhere:

• On COI: the administrator who promotes a set of updates from the prep area to the queue should be checking the history to see if the editors who prepared the queue match the editors with the DYKnom and DYKmake credits. Adding a DYKrev note would help with detecting COI problems.
• Carrying process information into the template at the article talk page would be good, so that there is a record that is easily found that says something like

"Article nominated for DYK by XXX on XXXDATE, article creation / development credited to user(s) XXX (diff). Nomination reviewed and approved by XXX on XXDATE (diff). Selected hook processed for main page appearance by XXX, and moved into the queue by administrator XXX on XXXDATE (diff)."

If the hook was subsequently moved back to the nominations page, and then re-queued, the DYKrev and admin information could be updated to reflect the final preparation / queueing before the main page appearance.

• This information would not only be very helpful for accountability purposes, but it would also allow us to more easily see if any editor(s) are regularly acting ouutside accepted procedure - they could then be counselled / advised / admonished (as appropriate).
• It would also (on the positive side) allow us to give greater recognition to those who are working hard on the reviewing and administrative tasks that are essential and yet get really no credit or appreciation. We could see who is doing good work, and recognise it.
• Recording this information in a central archives would also be useful, and such an archive could be incorporated into an altered page structure. I couldn't agree more with the criticisms that finding information in the history of T:TDYK at present is (at best) an irritatingly difficult process.
  

EdChem (talk) 12:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Further thought... maybe we need a bot to assist with admin tasks, one that builds the archive at each update. We could mark each nom when it is moved to prep, and the bot would then remove it from T:TDYK and start an archive entry, noting who moved it to prep, etc, adding the DYKrev based on who gave the DYKtick or the AGFtick, etc, etc. EdChem (talk) 12:47, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I haven't read through this whole thing yet. But regarding the COI issue you raise, that is relatively rare already; so far in the whole ANI discussion only one instance has been raised, and that has already been corrected. There are already rules against it, I don't think we need to make a big deal of adding COI checks to the process; . Promoting one's own article is bad, people shouldn't do it, if someone is noticed doing it they get a warning, simple.

As for your list of records that should be kept on the {{dyktalk}} template, personally I think that is too much information and it would be a real pain for editors to have to copy and paste all that into each template for each article every time they promote hooks. As I said at ANI (and I'm not sure, to be honest, why that discussion is now being duplicated here), it would make more sense to set up a transparent archiving system such that, once you know the date of an article, you can find the rest of that information with a single click; that would circumvent all the copy-pasting.

Anyway, for the moment all discussion of this archiving system is moot, because I have been looking at {{dyktalk}} and I'm not even certain it will be technically possible to implement what either of us was (without starting the whole thing again from scratch). Ultimately that question will have to be answered by Shubinator, who best understands how DYKUpdateBot works...whatever DYKUpdateBot does to get the hook it puts on the talk page (like this), it will also need to do that to get whatever other information we add to {{dyktalk}}. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what the question is. If a human can do it (and here I'm just talking about credits, not copyvio screening), it's likely the bot can too. The date would need to be embedded into {{DYKmake}} for the bot to read it though. The dyktalk issue is fairly separate from the bot itself; if dyktalk can't be modified to suit our needs, no human or bot will be able to do it. Shubinator (talk) 04:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Skimming through what has been read it seems you want a WP:TFD like system which would locate all the hook history info for one day at one page, could transclude active nom information through to main suggestion page. Then you'd either close each hook TfD style or move (similar to how you remove them now) to a "Completed hook" section which by includeonly/noinclude tags wouldn't transclude to the active nominations page. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 14:48, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible for nominators to add a template to the talk page of the article, and for these to be transcluded to T:TDYK for discussion? That way there would be a permanent, easily found discussion of the hook, unlike now where they are hidden in the history of T:TDYK. Obviously this would involve some (probably lots) reprogramming of bots, so may not be possible to implement quickly. SmartSE (talk) 15:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how transclusions of that many templates would affect the loading time for those on slower connections or users of older versions of Internet Explorer. Not speaking against the proposal, just pointing out an issue that should be dealt with if we're moving forward on this. GeeJo ⁄_(c) • 15:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Smartse, what you are suggesting is essentially individual subpages for each nom, and that proposal has been shot down every time it was suggested over the past 2 years (at least), partly because of reasons like what GeeJo brings up. The proposal that I made was for subpages by date, like what Rambo's Revenge describes above (my full proposal is at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism_and_copyright_concerns_on_the_main_page#Setting_up_date_subpages_and_archiving). rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:15, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't realise you had made a similar propsal to me. I tend to avoid ANI: it is the historical (and current IMO) definition of WP:DRAMA. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 16:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah ok, nevermind then, just thinking aloud. Your suggestion at ANI sounds like a good one to me, but I'm not sure whether you mean for us to have an archive where every thread can be viewed at once, or whether you'll still have to trawl the history to find the thread. It would be good if all the day's noms could be viewed on one page, but currently removing threads from T:TDYK is an important part of moving hooks to the main page and making sure they are only moved there once. Can anyone think of how we can make a decent archive and solve this problem? SmartSE (talk) 18:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't be a problem. Excluding special holding area there are 10 regular days at present, so that would translate as 10 templates transclude. I've seen FXC pages transcluding over 40 featured candidacies. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 16:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'm wary of this idea, but not completely opposed. My main problem is that I can't see how it would address the concerns that prompted all this discussion. Better "accountability" may well be a good thing in its own right but, on its own, it won't lead to better reviewing: if we assume good faith then all the current reviewers are already doing the best they can, so just making it easier to blame people shouldn't change anything! Physchim62 (talk) 21:05, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
• Weak Support? - I would support a {{DYKrev}} tag being added to DYKmake and DYKnom, but not anything more. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal 3: introduce some GA DYKs

It's been suggested before to introduce some Good Article DYKs, with a generally positive response from those not involved in DYK, and generally negative from those who are (see eg here). The objections there seem to be (i) DYK is about showcasing new articles and (ii) DYK as is couldn't handle the extra workload. The first point I disagree with fundamentally (it's certainly not intrinsic to the concept), and so do plenty of others - it shouldn't be just about promoting new articles; newly improved or newly verified as Good quality should be showcased as well. The second point is non-trivial but I have a suggestion which I think could work well: make the additional workload part of the GA nomination process, so that GA DYKs come here ready to be slotted into the DYK queue. This would require GA structures to figure out their own DYK process as part of GA review, using appropriate criteria that suit everyone. The hooks would be listed under an appropriate separate heading ("from our newest Good Articles"), with as few or as many GA hooks as available (up to a max of 50% of the available DYK slots). GA hooks could be displayed longer than new article hooks, if we end up with a situation of there being many queues with no GA hooks at all.

Why should we do this? a) for the readers: better quality highlighted on Main Page. Quite apart from GA review probably being stronger than DYK review (so copyvio and reliability problems etc less likely), GA articles are generally stronger than DYK articles. It may be argued that Today's Featured Article already showcases Featured Content, but it does so in a very different way from DYK, and has only 1 slot while DYK has 10, of which I'm proposing up to 5 be used for GAs (depending on availability of new GAs). In any case GAs are not FAs, and many never will be, or won't be for a very long time (and presumably previous featuring as DYK would be taken into account in choosing Today's Featured Article, so might never be featured unless we run out of new FAs that haven't been). b) for the editors: the element of intrinsic reward is greater for new articles than GAs, and so the latter should get at least as much recognition. DYK new articles tend to be written by just one person, so they already have some satisfaction from getting their work published. GAs are far more likely to have a collaborative element, improving other people's work; and bringing in DYK recognition would encourage that, so that more articles currently at C or B class would be brought up to GA standard by people not previously involved with them. In any case, Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, and the older and more established it gets, the more over-emphasising new content at the expense of good content seems to be sending the wrong sort of message (devaluing content maintenance and improvement, which becomes ever more important the older Misplaced Pages gets). Rd232 18:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion (Prop. 3)

• We don't have enough people to thoroughly review existing DYKs, so the solution is to add GAs to the mix? Sorry, but this makes no sense at all. Gatoclass (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

GA articles are (by definition) already reviewed - and to a higher standard than new articles. This isn't a problem.--Scott Mac 18:12, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

It may not be "a problem", but it does nothing to resolve the current problem at DYK, which is lack of manpower to review all the submissions. And adding more articles for promotion is inevitably going to create more work, not less. Gatoclass (talk) 18:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you read the proposal properly? Hooks would come ready to slot into the queue, and the structure of the proposal is that GA hooks would expand or contract as available up to 50% of the queue. The additional daily decision-making at DYK will generally be pretty minor. Rd232 18:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• I strongly support this. Incentive for people to improve content as well as create new content or expand stubs. There is not extra work for DYK, just change the criteria to accept hooks from any article awarded GA status in the last month. The hooks then just need checked like any other hooks. Allow 50% of the hooks to be from GA (of course if GA hooks are not available their quota can be made up from extra new article hooks). DYK will be the same for the readers, but will now encourage article improvement (which will increase the number of people participating and, probably, therefore increase scrutiny).--Scott Mac 18:11, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Changing the criteria would be an easy way to introduce GAs, if we didn't have the manpower issue. Sorting out hooks as part of the GA process is something which could work well I think, and not create extra work at DYK. Linking the two processes will also probably be good for both, in terms of enhanced visibility and cross-fertilisation of editors (if you see what I mean...) Rd232 18:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • @Scott: So getting the GA project is not incentive already, but editors can only ever be motivated to improve content by offering them baubles? I still don't see where people started getting the idea that a couple hours on the main page is the only way to make people edit the encyclopedia... rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • A non-argument so absurd as to verge on disruptive. Clearly DYK "baubles" (such a wonderfully dismissive way of putting it) motivate some people; so the question is how best to use the incentives they provide. It is not a requirement for them to be effective that these incentives motivate everyone never mind everything done on Misplaced Pages. Rd232 22:22, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Pointing out that there are other ways to motivate people other than main page time is "disruptive"? Have it your way. But getting this worked up isn't going to be constructive, either. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Re-interpreting an obviously unconstructive and churlish comment as a merely stupefyingly self-evident point is not helping matters. Rd232 22:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'd support this, but it will only work (unless the main page is totally redesigned) once we've resolved the first proposal. I'd also be a bit concerned that it might pressurise GA reviewers to pass articles without enough scrutiny, in the same way that some DYK reviewers might do now. SmartSE (talk) 18:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Proposal 1 would help, since clearly this proposal involves taking some of the slots; but it's not quite essential to the point of saying "it will only work if...". I don't see how it would pressurise GA reviewers, because GA has its own pace and logic, and because the GA hooks are explicitly designed not to have a daily quota which GA might fail to meet. If there are no GA hooks on any given day, that's OK, the process takes as long as it takes. If there are often no GA hooks, they can be displayed longer than new article hooks, so there's at least 1 or 2 a day on average. Rd232 18:32, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'd support this, but I'd go further and scrap the idea of new/expanded articles, and only have GAs, which are generally of higher quality than stubs. We should not be displaying stubs on the main page. Aiken (talk) 18:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • DYK doesn't display stubs. And you just said that DYKs are "generally of higher quality than stubs". So I'm not sure what you're trying to say. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:06, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Some are basically "glorified" stubs, and meet the bare minimum of 1500 characters (which isn't much). Aiken (talk) 11:03, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support in principle, but needs to be aligned with proposal 1. Another thing to consider, if a new article quickly becomes GA, does it "compete" for a "new article slot" or a "GA slot" or both (thereby doubling its chances of mainpage appearance)? Sasata (talk) 18:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • I doubt it would happen that often. I think logically it could be either but would make more sense to showcase as GA. Rd232 20:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, please. The main page content would dramatically improve in quality, and those who spend a great deal of time improving an article to GA level would get equal recognition with those who create the much easier and typically lower quality DYK articles (I know, having done both). I think this idea would need to be discussed in an RfC, rather than solely at Talk:DYK, to get much broader community input. First Light (talk) 20:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support - DYK shouldn't just be "New and greatly improved", it should be truly "Did You Know that...?". This is a way to do it. And there's an easy way to use Proposal 1 and still keep DYKs at their current output rate - slash "New and Improved" DYKs by 1/2, and replace the 1/2 removed with "New GA" DYKs. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:58, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't follow you. By "it should truly be 'Did You Know that...'", are you trying to say that DYK hooks should be interesting? Then how does this proposal help—are you aware that GAs can be just as dull as DYKs? rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:09, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Interesting is subjective. What I mean is, "Did you know this fact". I'm sure as we all know from school 'learning something' doesn't always mean the same thing as 'Wow!'. ;) - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 22:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
      • So you are saying DYK currently isn't "did you know this fact", but if we add GAs then it will be? What makes you say that? rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:26, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
        • I'll answer that because it's a point I haven't made in the proposal, and it's important. The philosophy inherent in "Did you know?" is simply presenting interesting facts to readers; the restriction to new articles or massively expanded articles is artificial and based on encouraging editors (both current and to a lesser extent future, from the "look you can make one too" effect). Expanding the domain to all Misplaced Pages content would be philosophically correct from the reader's point of view but practically unhelpful in incentive terms for editors. Expanding the domain to include newly promoted GAs is therefore a small step towards the practice implied by the underlying philosophy, whilst retaining and indeed enhancing its useful in incentive terms. Rd232 22:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • As it stands, there are not enough GAs being promoted to fill 50% of the DYK slots at current DYK output level (32–36 hooks/day). 50% GAs can only work if the total DYK output is two section (16–20 hooks) per day or less. Physchim62 (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Hmm, fair point - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 22:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • As the proposal stands, the point has been made repeatedly that this does not matter, as 50% is a maximum not a quota. Please pay attention. Rd232 22:17, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Sorry, I only meant to reply to Bushranger's enthusiasm, not the proposal as a whole. It get's a bit confusing to know who's replying to whom here! Physchim62 (talk) 22:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
        • OK :) Rd232 01:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
          • There's no reason that the 50% Good Articles couldn't remain the same for 24 hours, while the regular DYKs could do their usual rotation of every 6-8 hours. First Light (talk) 04:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Rd232: I find it a little strange that in making this proposal you have simply copied and pasted all your statements from Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism_and_copyright_concerns_on_the_main_page#break without including any of the rest of that discussion there. In particular, you're continuing to oversimplify the "oppose" arguments and ignore the ones I that specifically raised in that discussion. Is there any reason you're repeating all your points word-for-word here, other than going to the other parent? rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Rjanag, I find your failure to elaborate your concerns here particularly strange in that at the ANI subpage you had said you weren't elaborating there because it wasn't the correct place (which is true of course). Now, do you have an actual point? If so, are you going to tell us what it is? Rd232 22:17, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I elaborated my concerns rather explicitly at the ANI thread before you restarted the discussion here. My main point is the one I have already said multiple times: GA is a meaningless designation for readers and DYK is not; as far as readers are concerned, putting GAs on the front page just duplicates what TFA is already doing, whereas DYK serves a different purpose that is clear (and its purpose never was to showcase "quality", so the argument that DYK isn't as high quality as GA seems moot). All the proposals I have seen so far to put GAs on the main page are for project-internal reasons and don't necessarily stop to consider whether it would make sense for readers.
    • That's all I'm saying about this for now, as I'm not really interested in wasting space by repeating myself at length when you have already heard my views. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:34, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
      • I took your points on board by explicitly comparing the proposed GA DYK hooks with TFA. It is clearly not duplicative, as argued in the proposal. It is clearly not just for project internal reasons, it is showcasing good content in an interesting way for readers. And GA status is no more meaningless to readers than Featured Article status (and by the by, it's a more intuitive name I think; "Featured" is less obvious, I'd rename it Excellent if it were up to me). You claim I've ignored your points, but in fact you've repeatedly ignored mine. Rd232 22:47, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support - this makes all kinds of sense. → ROUX ₪ 22:30, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. One of the best things about DYK is that it's open to everyone, not just Misplaced Pages insiders/regulars. There are about 250 editors who have each individually contributed 25 or more DYK hooks. It's a way for new editors to get their feet wet with new articles and receive recognition for that. I suspect that the GA process, on the other hand, is for the most part the work of the insiders/regulars. How many editors have contributed 25 or more Good Articles? Probably a handful in comparison to the 250 who have contributed 25 or more DYKs. If I had a suggestion, it would be to try to encourage more DYKs from new and different editors. Even though I've been a heavy DYK contributor, I'd be fine with a rule that imposes a limit of no more than 20 (or pick the appropriate number) DYK hooks by a single editor per month. That would make room for new editors, reduce the submission of repetitive or cookie-cutter articles by insiders/regulars, cut the total output, and promote more variety. Cbl62 (talk) 06:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Hm. You argue that DYK is open for everyone, not just WP regulars and then go on to argue that the fact that 250 editors have contributed 25 or more DYKs (by which time they're hardly new editors) proves something that supports your argument. In any case GAs are obviously not comparable to DYKs in terms of effort. Probably GAs do have fewer newcomers involved than DYK, but I'm not sure the difference is all that great (what proportion of DYK contributors are relatively new?). In any case, the proposal is to introduce some DYKs drawn from GAs, up to a maximum of 50%. We could have a maximum of 10% or 20%, which hardly affects the current DYK quantities drawn from new articles. Rd232 08:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Hm. I maintain my point. In addition to the 250 who have contributed 25 or more DYKs, there are thousands who have contributed smaller numbers. In this way, DYK is a forum for the new editor and editors of all type to have their content featured on the main page. This broad participation is incredibly valuable to encouraging development of editors. By shifting to GA, we move in the opposite direction of giving over DYK to the insiders/regulars (an even smaller number) who are involved in the GA process. Cbl62 (talk) 15:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• I think the main problem with DYK is in the conception and setup. Its open nature, and the loose criteria right now give nominators almost universal right to secure a listing on teh front page if the basic criteria are met. I see this 'every one's a winner' approach as one of the main root causes of our ills today. I think in the interests of quality control, endowing DYK nominations with one or more 'quick fail' criteria is surely the way to go. However, most of thse criteria will need to be qualitative/objective. Thus I think something along the lines of GAN would be the way to go. The shortage of reviewers is another way of "natural selection" – by definition, if the nomination is not interesting enough to secure reviewers within say 14 days, it will die. --Ohconfucius 12:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, the purpose of DYK is to showcase new material. -- Cirt (talk) 12:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • • No, it isn't. The purpose of DYK is i) to provide Interesting Facts to readers ii) to incentivise editors to improve Misplaced Pages. The declaration that this incentive can only be used to generate entirely new articles is arbitrary, as neatly illustrated by the current exception which allows old articles expanded 5x to qualify. Adding content newly verified as Good Quality makes complete sense. We can certainly discuss how they're included (whether separate heading, or what proportion, whether as fixed proportion or maximum as I suggested), but the philosophical claim that the purpose of DYK is to showcase new material is simply wrong. (If that were true, we'd have a random selection drawn from all new articles, with the opening sentence quoted: you can't argue against that if you don't accept my points i and ii.) Rd232 13:47, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • What's wrong with expanding the scope? Particularly when the current scope encourages (if only through inaction) plagiarism and copyright violation? → ROUX ₪ 12:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Because this sort of proposal would change DYK to the point that it is unrecognizable and does not serve its own independent purpose any longer, per comments by Gatoclass (talk · contribs), who had said it could almost be completely scrapped if we were going to do that, unfortunately. -- Cirt (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Ah. All change is bad, gotcha. No point in engaging you further on this until you approach it in good faith. Cheers. → ROUX ₪ 13:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
        • The same could be said in reply. -- Cirt (talk) 13:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• In addition, the move towards needing GA level articles for contribution to DYK is inevitable. The rate of new article creation has slowed and will continue to slow as has been discussed at great length elsewhere on Misplaced Pages. The simple fact is, the longer Misplaced Pages is in existence, the fewer new subjects there are to write about; the focus of the project has been moving slowly from creation in its early phase to maintenance and improvement. The survival of DYK (which as a trivia nerd I personally find a really fascinating way to learn new things) depends on a continual stream of new content. As that new content lessens, other avenues will need to be explored in order to keep DYK relevant and useful. → ROUX ₪ 13:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • The amount of DYK nominations shows this statement to be simply inaccurate. -- Cirt (talk) 13:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • It's not inevitable whatsoever. We still have to wait over a week for noms to hit the queue. There's a steady backlog and that will only increase when the wikicup returns in a few months. There's no shortage whatsoever, to my mind. Paralympiakos (talk) 13:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I will need to dig them up, but there are hard numbers showing that new article creation has been on a steady decline for some time. → ROUX ₪ 13:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Here at DYK, we have increased the number of hooks on the page, from six, to a range of up to 8, to an expected 8, to now 9. There is no shortage of new creation. -- Cirt (talk) 13:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
        • See here. Distinct downward trend in article number for ten years. Image showing Misplaced Pages growth by month, obvious decline. → ROUX ₪ 13:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
          • Not good data for this discussion. How does that compare to number of DYK hook nominations over time? -- Cirt (talk) 13:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
            • Don't know and don't care. The simple fact is, DYK requires new articles or 5x increase in old ones. I would be willing to bet the majority are net new articles in any case. Fewer new articles == fewer possible DYK hooks. This is a pretty simple proposition. → ROUX ₪ 13:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
              • Wrong. As I have said, the amount of DYK hook nominations have increased over time. -- Cirt (talk) 13:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                • Really? Cite please. → ROUX ₪ 13:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                  • Apparently you accepted this at face value, as your prior response called this "irrelevant", lol. -- Cirt (talk) 13:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                    • Also, see Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#8_hooks_or_9.3F. -- Cirt (talk) 13:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                    • No... irrelevant means that your statement doesn't matter, not that I accepted it. Got a cite or not? That link doesn't say noms are increasing, it says lowering the number of slots increased the backlog. → ROUX ₪ 13:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                      • Your admission that the backlog has increased, contradicts your prior statements about a prediction of less hook nominations in the future. -- Cirt (talk) 13:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                        • Um... no. If you have 100mL of liquid and pour it into a 110mL container, you will have no overflow. If you pour it into a 90mL container, you will have 10mL overflow. So, again, have you got any actual proof that nominations are on an increasing trend? → ROUX ₪ 14:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                          • Um... no. There is a backlog. The backlog has increased over time. Compare with . -- Cirt (talk) 14:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                            • I don't think you understand. And since you don't appear to have any sort of actual trend showing increase in noms, whereas I have clearly shown decrease in net new articles as well as concern about declining noms on this very page, it seems more clear than ever that you're simply not arguing in good faith here. When you feel like providing proof to support your assertions, I'll be happy to look at it and change my opinion if it actually shows what you assert. Until then, you're just wasting my time. (Cue snarky comment from you, "The same could be said of you") → ROUX ₪ 14:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

(od)the number of DYK slots was increased because of the backlog, was it not? Roux's point about new articles doesn't quite fit here because the selection of new articles for DYK is such a small proportion of all new articles (the arbitrariness of the tiny selection one of the things I dislike about it). Where the decline in new articles over time fits in is to point to the increasing importance over time of maintenance and improvement of existing content. The latter we have an obvious way to incentivise, by using some DYK hooks from recently promoted GAs. Rd232 14:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It does fit. Fewere new articles = smaller pool of articles to create DYK hooks from. Simple math. → ROUX ₪ 14:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

too simple math: DYKs are not a fixed proportion of new articles. And DYKs are such a small selection of all new articles that I can't see a reduction in new articles having much effect. It's far more up to the relatively few people who choose to be involved in the DYK process, adding nominations and especially reviewing them. Rd232 14:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to featuring hooks from recently promoted GAs. Set a certain time to feature new GAs, give them there own nomination section. Grsz 14:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support changing DYK to showcasing newly-promoted-GAs, and simultaneously increasing time on Main Page of sets of selected DYK hooks. -- Cirt (talk) 15:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose changing DYK to showcase GAs unless they also (somehow) fit the existing 5-days/5x-expansion criteria. DYK is for Misplaced Pages's newest articles, period. If there's a need to create a special section for "Today's Not-Quite-Good-Enough-To-Be-Featured Article" on the mainpage, argue for that, but don't try to hijack DYK because you wish your "good" article got the tiny bit of attention granted to a newly created or expanded article. - Dravecky (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • This territorialism is growing tiresome. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with what people have been saying before you start a) slagging them off, and b) going on about 'hijacking'. → ROUX ₪ 20:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support including GAs as a way to refocus on quality rather than quantity or newness. The fivefold-expansion rule has always seemed rather arbitrary to me. An article could be dramatically improved with no expansion whatsoever; Some rambling pieces of textual rubbish would probably end up shorter after a good rewrite. --Hegvald (talk) 14:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Not that I don't think that GA is an important part of Misplaced Pages, but I generally disagree that GA's deserve special mainpage recognition. The existance of DYK and Featured Articles on the main page provides a nice bookend effect: at DYK you can find the newest articles, and at FA you can find the best articles, in their closests-to-finished state you will get (yes, I know that even FAs aren't finished, but you get my drift). Adding GAs to the main page muddies this nice symmetry. I don't really think we need to place articles on the main page at intermediate stages. The current system works fine, and doesn't need any tweaking in this regard. --Jayron32 04:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support Misplaced Pages is at a point where we should encourage quality over quantity. The amount of GAs will be insignificant, but it's a project that deserves more exposure. Lampman (talk) 12:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• The main argument against this proposal seems to be that DYK is for new articles only. Apart from being circular reasoning, this is patently false: anyone who has followed DYK recently will know that articles are increasingly newly expanded articles, not recently created ones. So by banning recently promoted Gas from entry, we’re basically saying that recently expanded articles are ok on the main page, while recently improved articles are not. This preference for expansion over improvement seems to me a complete perversion of the most basic principles of Misplaced Pages. Lampman (talk) 13:56, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support. DYKs have simply too many issues for this to persist, and I think GAs are more useful to readers as a generally higher-quality resource. I'm not swayed by the various arguments above: DYK is hardly any more "newb-friendly" than GAN, seeing as a few people churn out the lion's share of them. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 14:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Another suggestion

Just before I log off for the day, I might as well throw this out. As I said above, if we are going to start promoting GAs, we might as well just scrap DYK altogether and merge it into GA. We could scrap the "new article" concept, which means we could get rid of perennial niggles like the 5-day nomination window and the x5 expansion. DYK would then become "from Misplaced Pages's most recently promoted articles". We could have a minimum article length of 5,000 characters which would get rid of all the little stubby articles. GA has a more robust (though far from perfect) review process, articles which pass GA could be reviewed a second time for plagiarism issues and so on, then go into a promotion pool. Updates would be made whenever necessary, probably only one or two a day. We would then have the manpower of both the GA and DYK people, we wouldn't have the periodic lobbying from GAers for entry to DYK, and it would put an end to much of the ongoing controversy regarding the robustness of DYK's review process.

I am not saying I would support this myself, but I certainly think it would be more viable than the halfhearted merge that is being suggested here and on many occasions previously. Gatoclass (talk) 19:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

A radical paradigm shift, but maybe the time has come. Sasata (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

If DYK were to be scrapped, then I could think of much better uses for the free space than "featuring" GAs, so no. I'm not opposed to a mixed DYK section of new articles and new GAs, so long as it lives up to it's title of "Did you know?" Physchim62 (talk) 19:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

"much better uses" - like what? Rd232 20:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Well my pet idea is to shift "selected anniversaries" over and use the space for a "Recent deaths" section, as we often get 50k+ readers on the article of someone who has recently died without it being on the Main Page, and there is currently no quality control for such articles unless they make it on to ITN (rare). Other suggestions that have been made include "Recent sports" and "selected portals". But none of this is really relevant to the current discussion. Either we try to improve DYK or we scrap it altogether; but this is not the place to decide what to replace it with if we scrap it altogether. Physchim62 (talk) 20:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Another option would be to have a section where people to nominate popular articles that are in good condition (or recently improved to good condition): there are many possibilities, and I find it slightly presumptuous that it is always "featuring GAs" that comes up. Physchim62 (talk) 20:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I take your points, but I find "nominate popular articles that are in good condition (or recently improved to good condition)" confusing in your contrasting that with GA status. GA status is not synonymous with "good articles" but it's a good way of screening for these purposes. Anyway if you're not incentivising improvements, you're losing some of the power of the Main Page. Rd232 23:02, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

An excellent suggestion. New articles are not what we should publicise on the main page, and GAs deserve more recognition. Aiken (talk) 19:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. I think if it works very well with GAs and that process beds down then later on we could choose to make it all GAs, without the risk of major transition hiccups. But at the same time, there are good reasons that DYK is long established with new articles, and I'm not sure we should get rid of that completely, it does have value as an illustration of Misplaced Pages's constant expansion, planting an idea which can attract new editors. Selection and review processes can be sharpened of course. Rd232 20:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have two separate sections, one for GAs and one for traditional DYKs? However, this won't solve the current DYK problems...--hkr Laozi speak 21:54, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

That's Proposal 3 above. Rd232 22:25, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

No, I mean, as separate sections. Not just mixing in GA DYKs with New Page DYKs, but having a completely different section linking to Good Articles on the front page.--hkr Laozi speak 22:58, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - but see my comments about Proposal 3 above. - The Bushranger _{Return fire} 21:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Please stop voting. Everyone was having a real discussion until you started voting. Uncle G (talk) 22:30, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no universally correct answer for this debate. It's reasonable to define WP's usefulness as breadth*depth; both are important. That said, it makes sense to revisit the question, for example yearly: which is needed more, breadth or depth. If the consensus is depth, we showcase x (around 9) hooks relating to GAs at a time for z hours apiece (where z is chosen to control queue size). If the consensus is breadth, we do what we did for the last year. For the moment, focusing on depth would likely sidestep most plagiarism/copyright/quality issues.

I invite folks to find the actual diffs, but I expect that the genesis of DYK was not surrounded by deep philosophical searchings. Therefore, wondering about what the original purpose of DYK was is less helpful than wondering about the best use of the space and/or click-throughs. I'd say that it is obvious that at some point encouraging depth will be more practical that encouraging breadth. It seems equally obvious that at some point (perhaps when we're getting close to that 5-millionth article) we may want to encourage breadth. In my mind, the usefulness of exploring the breadth depth option combined with flexibility down the road ftw. Cheers. Haus 03:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, DYK should remain a separate and independent process, and not be "merged", in this fashion. -- Cirt (talk) 12:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Explaining why would go a long way to helping this discussion achieve consensus. → ROUX ₪ 12:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • For one thing the whole entire purpose of DYK is to showcase new material. -- Cirt (talk) 13:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

A lot of GAs are already new articles. Merging the two processes would not in any way preclude the nomination of new articles, it would just mean the emphasis would shift from new articles to good articles. Gatoclass (talk) 14:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support changing process to limit to showcasing newly-promoted-GAs, and then also increasing timeframe of selected hook sets on Main Page. -- Cirt (talk) 15:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Support - replacing DYK with a selection of recently-promoted Good Articles would be a far better use of the space on the main page. What should be important is quality, not mere newness (and rapid expansion) and DYK encourages the latter. Robofish (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose for same reasons I cite above. I like that the main page features the new articles; it highlights the fact that we are constantly growing. If the DYK process needs tweaking, that's fine, but scrapping it and replacing it with GA is a bad idea. --Jayron32 04:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Fifth Proposal: No more time deadlines

• Based on the above discussion, I have an idea for another proposal: I think we should scrap the five day deadline entirely, it encourages people to rush out articles, and ignores recent, good articles that have already passed the five day deadline. Quality takes time, after all. Doing so would make the process more like FA and GA nominations, but for shorter articles and with lower quality criteria. Regardless of when they were created, articles with enough support votes end up in DYK, and ones that fail, don't. It could be argued that this would increase the workload, but if we reduce the daily output to 10 DYKs a day, the workload should be about the same as the AfD process.--hkr Laozi speak 23:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
  • The time limit is not much of an issue really; in reality, very few articles are actually passed and shown within 5 days of being created or nominated. Plus, even with longer time, I doubt reviewers would spend more time checking articles more carefully; what happens (in my experience) is you do what is needed to check that an article meets the established criteria, and then you move on. Having twice as much time to review an article doesn't necessarily mean you would spent twice as long doing it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I see your point, but I think having no time limits would allow much older articles, but of good quality (not neccessarily a Good Article), to be nominated. However, this couldn't be implemented without also upping the criteria for DYK nominations, as you've proposed, and I support. I guess what I'm suggesting is a DYK for a third tier of articles, short articles with a quality in the B range to A range (which would include GAs, but not make it exclusive to them).--hkr Laozi speak 00:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, the purpose of DYK is to showcase new material. -- Cirt (talk) 12:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support, insofar as expanding the time horizon of DYK hook sets, while requiring all DYK hooks to come from newly-promoted-GAs. -- Cirt (talk) 15:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Identity crisis

If I've interpreted this situation correctly, it seems the problem is that copyvios and plagiarism are slipping past reviewers. The most-endorsed solution seems to be to reduce DYK output. If you cut from 36 hooks/day to 10 hooks/day, that means at the current rate of submission 72% of hooks must be rejected. It is debatable whether doing this fairly and objectively is even possible, and even if it were implemented, arguments over which hooks deserve to be featured would quite likely mean more work for the reviewers, not less. So, given limited personnel and a serious problem, I think we have to decide what DYK is supposed to be.

• 1) Is it to feature good (not necessarily GA specifically, but some sort of standard) articles? In that case, I think the best solution would be to ditch DYK altogether and work with the GA project completely, or you would still face the problem of rejecting massive numbers of nominations.
• 2) Is it to feature new articles? In that case, the number of DYK nominations have to come down to give reviewers more time to check for copyvio/plagiarism. One possible way to do this would be to make the nomination process much harder. Another possible way would be to disallow self-noms, and only allow reviewers who have gone over the article and can vouch for it to nominate.
• 3) Is it to encourage new editors? In that case, one option would be to make it so that only articles from editors with 25 or fewer DYK credits can enter. Thus, writing articles for DYK wouldn't be any more difficult, but far fewer nominations would be possible.

Just some thoughts. Make of them as you will. -- Yzx (talk) 00:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment. It's never going to be possible to reach a consensus on what should be done with DYK until a consensus is reached about what DYK (or at least its spot on the main page) should be about. But for several years now there has been a wide variety of views about that. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that's true for all of the Main Page sections! Physchim62 (talk) 02:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If the concern is purely plagiarism/copyvios, the simplest solution, simpler than reducing output, is to require more citations and distinct reliable sources as a criteria. Close paraphrasing seems to come from articles that rely primarily on one or two distinct sources as references. Forcing editors to use multiple, different sources per section could prevent that from happening.--hkr Laozi speak 04:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that is feasible; most DYK topics are pretty obscure & often all the online sources available are used. Typically online sources repeat the same basic sort of material on many sites, & forcing editors to include several such sources will only make things harder to control all round. I don't really see that "Close paraphrasing seems to come from articles that rely primarily on one or two distinct sources as references" although of course they often may. The simple fact is that DYK reviewers have not been nagged to check for plagiarism & people following the suggestions page have mostly only seen completely blatent examples (mainly just from ignorance of the policies) rejected for it. If reviewers just add it to their checks, & people see more rejections, the culture will respond pretty quickly without the need for the more drastic solutions outlined above. This is essentially the approach that FAC is taking btw. Has anyone noticed how GA seems to have stayed apart from this hurricane, unlike FA & DYK. This might be because GAs don't share the same problem, but personally I very much doubt that. Bringing GAs on might just be going from the frying pan to the fire. They are after all much longer to check. Johnbod (talk) 04:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

What is the current count of GAs approved per day? I like GAs and think it would be neat to have them linked to the main page but I like the DYK aspect as well and more. DYK hooks are often interesting, obscure (as put above) and I like reading through them; I learn new things. I am an honest believer in slowing the whole process down. Slowing the process down along with increasing the standards in more than one way will change the reputation (as put above as well).--NortyNort (Holla) 12:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the recent history of GAN, it looks like 8-10 approvals per day. Gatoclass (talk) 14:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If the efforts at DYK were moved to GAN, this would be increased. And they could stay on for a full day. Aiken (talk) 14:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Which would be why I made my proposal below. No need to reject anything for 'not enough slots', just throw them into a queue from which a bot will choose randomly each DYK cycle. In terms of not enough GA-class promoted per day, would be quite simple to say 'anything promoted in the month before implementation' to ensure a cushion. → ROUX ₪ 14:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Well I haven't read your proposal closely but I would be opposed to any kind of "bot selection". A bot cannot possibly make judgements about what is and is not appropriate to promote. I just can't see any role for a bot at all. Gatoclass (talk) 14:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

...you should probably read it more closely, then. The bot would simply be responsible for making random selections from already-approved hooks. → ROUX ₪ 14:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

DYK lottery

One more idea: I said above I couldn't think of a way to reject massive numbers of hooks fairly and objectively, but I can think of one. Make subject area categories sorted by day and have hook nominations under them. Have a bot (or random number generator, or reviewer with their eyes closed) pick one from each at random. That hook will be reviewed, and if rejected, another will be randomly picked. Once a day's set of hooks are complete, the other eligible hooks will be discarded. It won't be pretty, but it'll get the job done. -- Yzx (talk) 01:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Any review is subjective, so even your process would not be completely objective. It would be an interesting system for picking TFAs... Physchim62 (talk) 01:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It would not be reviewed for interesting-ness, only for adherence to set criteria (refs, no copyvio/plagiarism, etc). This will mean some boring hooks, yes. But rejecting three-quarters of all hooks based on "interesting-ness" would be much worse. Even ignoring the subjectivity of that judgment, that would turn DYK into a literal competition with winners and losers. If people think sensationalism and "reward culture" is bad now... -- Yzx (talk) 01:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If we could objectively review articles against a set of criteria, we would do it by bot or script, just as DYK already does for the character minimum or 5×-expansion criterion. But you can't, you need subjective human judgement on questions of grammar, sourcing, copyvio, BLP, linking etc. Under my proposal, there would only be "winners and losers" among the editors who feel that it is somehow a right to get an article on the Main Page just because it's new: my personal opinion is that no editor has such a "right" to get an article on the Main Page. Why "reward" the editor who creates a new article on a single early-20th century season of a college football club, destined to be read by half-a-dozen people a month at most, and not the editor who expends an equivalent amount of work cleaning up an article that's read by 2,000 users every day? Or the editors who create a featured topic, adding coherence to Misplaced Pages's coverage? All this to create a section which our readers ignore, presumably because they don't find it as interesting as… Selected anniversaries! We have Freedom of Religion, one can worship at the altar of supposed objectivity, but it sure creates some funny results. Physchim62 (talk) 02:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Why punish those that write about an early 20th century college team? DYK is fine as it is, we don't need to stop these articles from being DYK just because you think they'll only get half a dozen views a week. Paralympiakos (talk) 02:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

? Physchim62 identified a way in which the current system fails to reward important work. Focussing (at least to some extent) limited rewards on important work does not constitute "punishment" of the less important but still valuable work. Rd232 02:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, and I don't have any great ideas as to how to "reward" article cleanup or featured topics. Why should we choose to reward article cleanup over new articles, indeed? The point I was trying to make is that there is an inherent subjectivity in the way we allocate Main Page space as it is, so it is already pointless aiming for a completely objective system later on down the line. It's long been understood that Main Page space is a limited and valuable resource, which is why it is (I think) generally accepted that the readers, and not the editors, should be the priority in its allocation. Physchim62 (talk) 03:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

This would be a horrible idea. Absolutely against it. I'm sorry. Paralympiakos (talk) 01:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Physchim62's comment about the early 20th century college football team demonstrates the "different strokes" issue in trying to select "interesting" hooks. To Physchim, the hook is utterly boring, but it got 8,700 views while on DYK and has had about 20,000 views since March (far higher than the half dozen a day posited by Physchim). (It happens to be one of the most important teams in the history of the sport.) That's quite good in comparison to the typical DYK hook on churches of England or rare species of mushrooms. While Physchim finds sports history deadly dull, others (obviously, myself included) find it quite interesting. Cbl62 (talk) 06:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Lottery: good idea. Your suggested implementation: poor. Why not simply have a queue of DYK hooks that get randomly selected for display? All we would need to do is choose whether X number of hooks will stay on the Main Page for each day, or simply load a random set of three whenever the page is loaded. Every time a new hook is approved, it gets added to the queue and stays there until either: it's appeared on the Main Page once (in the case of the first choice); or it gets bumped off when it's the oldest DYK left and a new one is added to the pool. If this were coupled with bringing in GA-level articles, more editors would reap the reward of knowing that their work was shown on one of the most highly visible sites on the entire internet. (Naturally this presupposes more stringent reviewing of hooks.) → ROUX ₪ 02:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I had in mind fairness and hook balance. If all the DYKs are in a single queue, randomly drawn sets will proportionately favor more popular subject areas (particularly if you get a bad draw, which is always possible), whereas my system guarantees one of each subject per day. Furthermore, an editor can game the system by entering large numbers of hooks for repetitive articles. Under my system, an editor has a hard cap of one DYK credit per subject area per day, and that only with extraordinary luck. -- Yzx (talk) 02:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Fairness is exactly the point. Every DYK hook that gets checked for accuracy and lack of copyvio gets tossed in a pool. Particularly if they're set to simply display a random 5 on every pageload, every checked hook makes it to the Main Page. Keep the pool at a reasonable maximum number (say, 200?); every new DYK that gets approved gets tossed in the pool, and another one removed on the FIFO principle. In a single move we have eradicated the time pressure (no rush to check or approve anything; a couple hundred DYK hooks are rotating on the main page), and increased fairness (everyone with a decent hook will have theirs appear on the Main Page). → ROUX ₪ 03:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That approach is appealing (and rather more workable than Yzx's), but I wonder how much effort it would be to implement. (Incidentally different hook selection on every page load would be right out for caching reasons; selection for display would be about as often as now.) The approach does reduce time pressure on reviewing, which particularly if DYK processes are changed so review takes longer would be helpful. Rd232 08:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too difficult. A bot could handle the adding/removal of hooks fairly simply, I think; it would just need to scan the hook page for approved hooks and drop them into the queue. Then each time the DYK cycle repeats (8 hours, 12 hours, whatever), the bot just grabs X number of hooks from the queue and drops them into whatever subpage transcludes to the Main Page. If we assume for the moment that we are going to start including GA-class articles, we suddenly have a much larger wealth of possible hooks to draw on, especially if to begin with we include as candidates any GA-level articles promoted, say, a month before the implementation date so as to build up a backlog. It would also be trivial to ensure that, much like TFA, GA DYKs with specific date associations get displayed on that date using something like:

{{exists|page=DYK/DYK-GA/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}
|then={{DYK/DYK-GA/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}}}
|else={{DYK/DYK-GA/DYKlist}}…}}

(Note: I used GA for this because new articles are less likely, I think, to be ready in time for a specific date. There's no reason they couldn't be, however, using similar syntax). This process would completely eliminate time pressure by ensuring there is a backlog (with hooks recycled as necessary; if we assume a pool of minimum 100 available hooks at any time, the bot can simply recycle back into the pool from the main page transclusion any time the pool drops below 100. Or 75, or OVER 9000, whatever), and in conjunction with other proposals above, removing the rush from first creation of a new article to DYK hook. This allows for more thoughtful checking of references and plagiarism, and will also allow more editors to see their work end up on the main page, albeit unpredictably in terms of actual timing. The benefit to readers should be obvious: readers will get to see a greater breadth of articles represented on the main page. → ROUX ₪ 12:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, this seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. -- Cirt (talk) 12:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Perhaps you would care to actually explain your positions, instead of just blanket opposing every suggestion? → ROUX ₪ 12:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Perhaps you could stop focusing on me and replying to every single one of my posts with pithy responses. -- Cirt (talk) 12:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Hear hear: please explain, per WP:NOTVOTE. In particular, are you opposing a lottery per se, or Yzx's approach to it, which involves some DYK noms not getting on the Main Page at all? What about Roux's/my approach noted above, which doesn't? Rd232 13:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Arbitrarily throwing out hook nominations is a bad idea. How about applying that to GAN? How about marking as "failed" all GAN reviews on candidates that have not yet been reviewed if the nom is over one month old? How would that go over at GAN? -- Cirt (talk) 13:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • What is with people making obviously unhelpful comments in this discussion?? GA review is not comparable to the review of DYK hooks in the way that you imply. Worse, the suggestion I asked you to respond to was Roux's/my lottery idea, which does not involve throwing out any DYK hooks, it instead involves a lottery to display DYKs from a pool, so there's less time pressure on reviewing due to the constant need to fill a daily quota. Rd232 13:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • I have subheaded my proposal, below, for clarity. → ROUX ₪ 15:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support, this sort of idea of automation as proposed seems reasonable. -- Cirt (talk) 15:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I fail to see how this will solve any problems. DYK reviewers are currently having a hard time as it is getting through all the entries. This suggestion would mean that they'd have a to review a bunch of entries that would not even get featured. That would be a great disincentive for reviewers, who are already in short supply. If we want to reduce the number of DYKs, perhaps to accommodate a certain number of GAs, the best way to do that would be to tighten the requirements. That would have the added benefit of securing better quality DYKs. Lampman (talk) 14:16, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

DYK lottery system, new process proposal

Here is what I have proposed, subheaded and edited for clarity.

1. Bring DYK hooks in from recently (say, past two weeks, and past month for the first two weeks that this process is in place) promoted GA-class articles, hooks to be reviewed for plagiarism and copyvio as part of the GAN process; the only approval needed at DYK will be "Is this a good hook?"
2. Scrap the daily quota of DYK hooks
3. Tweak the approval process to, assuming no problems with copyvio and/or plagiarism, solely evaluate whether a hook is accurate and interesting on its own merits, not 'Is it interesting enough for one of the only available slots?'
4. Move all approved hooks to a queue from which a bot will randomly select as many hooks as there are slots on the mainpage for each DYK cycle (24-27 per day, FIFO principle)
5. The same bot will transfer those hooks to wherever DYKs are transcluded to the main page
6. Repeat 4 and 5 ad infinitum; hooks removed from the front page can then be moved to an archive, perhaps organized by day or month. Should the queue ever drop below an arbitrary minimum (say, 200), the bot will recycle the oldest (or newest, or shortest, or least popular based on pageviews, whatever) DYK(s) from the archive to make up the pool
7. Specific DYK hooks can still be scheduled to run on specific days, either at the request of the nominator or by suggestion from reviewers. Possible code to handle this below

{{exists
|page=DYK/DYK-queue/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}
|then={{DYK/DYK-queue/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}}}
|else={{DYK/DYK-queue/DYKlist}}
}}

This has numerous benefits:

1. Remove the time pressure from DYK, allowing for more careful and thoughtful evaluation of sourcing and plagiarism/copyvio issues in DYK hooks (with the assumption that such sourcing issues in GA-derived hooks would be dealt with before the hook comes to DYK for approval)
2. Give more editors more of a chance to have their work exhibited on the main page
3. Provide a broader exposure of articles on the main page
4. Provide incentive to editors to improve extant articles, as well as create new ones (yes, I am aware of the 5x path to DYK; improving to GA doesn't always include that much straight-up addition of content)
5. Every hook that DYK regulars approve will make it to the main page, removing the competition (and resultant bad feelings) for limited spots

Possible objections:

1. DYK is for showcasing new content - not the case; DYK is for presenting interesting content. The 5x avenue to DYK proves that it is not solely about new articles.
2. This will increase the reviewing backlog - not a problem, as backlog would simply not be a concern, due to lack of pressure in getting DYKs ready for main page
3. This will take more editor time - it won't, as a bot (yet to be coded) will handle all the mundane details of moving things around. In fact, this may well free up editor time, due to automating chunks of the process
4. GA-derived hooks will be rejected by DYK regulars - not a concern; the DYK regulars who oppose including GA content will abide by consensus and come to realize that this proposal is aimed at strengthening DYK and not eliminating it
5. More DYK hooks means waiting longer to get them on the main page - so? They will still get there, providing exposure for the article, and the nominator(s) will still be able to point at a specific date and think "Awesome, my work got seen by a gazillion people on that day!"
6. This is an attempt to take over DYK by GA - Simply not the case. DYK is still the funnel; GA would simply be another avenue towards putting hooks in.

Thoughts? → ROUX ₪ 15:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose, such a large and drastic change to the entire process is not necessary. There are other ways to slow down the time process involved, including increasing number of hours per sets of DYK hook selections, and increasing quality requirements to only showcasing newly-promoted-GAs. -- Cirt (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I haven't altogether got my head around this proposal yet. I can see some merit in the FIFO approach you are proposing, however, I see no need for a bot to do the selection and I think it would be much better for a human to make the selection as occurs with ITN for example. What I don't get is how this is supposed to resolve the problem of too many articles and not enough reviewers. We can't allow the pool of hooks to just go on expanding forever. I'm also a little concerned that a FIFO system will encourage laziness and less reviewing overall. Gatoclass (talk) 15:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The FIFO idea was related to an older version of this proposal which had some flaws, and is no longer relevant; sorry for any muddiness on that point. The bot selection is just to pick randomly from hooks that are already approved, freeing up editor (reviewer!) time from mundane housekeeping tasks. It also ensures truly random selection; if a person is making the selections one can see arguments arising based on which got picked and by whom. The pool of approved hooks won't go on expanding forever; once a given hook has appeared on the main page it gets whisked off to an archive, and only recycled if the pool of available approved hooks drops below an arbitrary benchmark. Maybe I haven't explained properly, perhaps this will help:

Hook nom → review → placed in queue (by bot scraping review page) → randomly appears on main page (FIFO) → archived → recycled into queue if needed.

This would be the process for both standard- and GA-derived hooks, though the latter review would be more streamlined as copyvio/etc will have been handled at the GAN process. The recycling from archive option will ensure that reviews can be more careful, as there won't be any pressure along the lines of "we only have three slots filled for the next cycle." All cycles will always be filled. Have I made things more clear? → ROUX ₪ 15:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

You haven't explained why the pool of approved hooks "won't go on expanding forever", but more importantly, you haven't explained how to deal with the expanding pool of unapproved hooks, and how this system ensures that the better quality articles get approved and the others dropped. Also, hook selection is a relatively minor issue; one doesn't need a bot for that. The problem as I've said is too many submissions and not enough reviewers. Gatoclass (talk) 16:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

For the same reason they don't go on expanding forever now; they get used up. As for unapproved hooks, presumably partly by freeing up editor time from all the housekeeping, and am open to other suggestions. → ROUX ₪ 16:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support, in particular the idea of FIFO sounds most logical. -- Cirt (talk) 15:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Well I was aiming for random, but I suppose FIFO would work just as well, given that there seems to be some support for it. Have amended the proposal and my comment above to reflect this. → ROUX ₪ 15:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• How would you prevent a glut of (for the sake of argument) U.S.-centric hooks from ending up on the Main Page at the same time? GeeJo ⁄_(c) • 20:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't really see a problem with that (and before you say it, I am very much not from the USA and have general issues with americentrism); DYKs just go on the main page in the order they get approved, FIFO. Or go back to my original version, and do the actual appearance totally randomly. → ROUX ₪ 20:03, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal 5

There is a current request at DYK for editors to review as well as nominate. This could be made into a requirement, in the following way: once you have X DYKs to your name (maybe 5?), you need to have reviewed a hook within the last 5 days in order to nominate. As part of the nom, name the hook you reviewed. This should be combined with something along the lines of Proposal 2, both to make it easier to link to the reviewed hook, and so that hooks have reviewers more explicitly named (to prevent cavalier reviewing). Rd232 08:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is not done at WP:GAN. -- Cirt (talk) 09:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • And? → ROUX ₪ 12:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• • GAN does not, to my knowledge, have the same problem of lack of reviewers, and structurally it's much less likely to have issues with some people making lots of nominations and not reviewing much or at all (since a plausible GA nom is so much more work than a plausible DYK nom). If it does, it might help there too. But this is irrelevant at WT:DYK. In other words, Roux's "and?" is succinct and to the point. Rd232 13:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • From prior experience, GAN actually does have a significant issue with lack of reviewers. -- Cirt (talk) 13:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Fine, then we can propose a similar logic there, or work harder to bring in WikiProjects (since depth of knowledge matters more at GA than DYK). It's also a similar problem to lack of comments on RFCs; and I've suggested in the past some kind of lottery system (from a population of editors willing to be selected) to try and bring people in, and not just wait for people to wander by. But one problem at a time, eh? Rd232 13:16, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
        • When I nominate articles I worked on to WP:GAN, I make an effort to review some others, to contribute to the ever-present backlog at GAN of waiting candidates. But try making that a requirement at GAN, and see what happens. -- Cirt (talk) 13:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
          • What, people will oppose because it's not done at DYK or FA? :P Seriously, if it's really necessary, each peer review process ought to be able to sort something out so it doesn't grind to a halt. The proposal I'm making here, at DYK, is more appropriate for DYK than elsewhere, because in general reviewing DYKs is easier than reviewing GAs or FAs. Now can we please stick to talking about DYK here? If you're suddenly keen on improving GA, go propose something there, and drop a link here. Thanks. Rd232 13:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
            • But you are proposing to merge the two processes of DYK and GAN. -- Cirt (talk) 13:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
              • No I'm not! I'm proposing some of the DYK slots be given to DYK hooks constructed by the GA process, to be slotted into the DYK queue as the hooks come available (up to 50% max of queue). That hardly constitutes a merger, does it? Rd232 13:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
                • Firstly, devoting DYK hooks to GA just makes the nomination backlog problem worse, unless you also want to gut the DYK nominations. Secondly, this idea can easily be seen as step one in GA takeover of DYK by stealth. EdChem (talk) 13:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Take over DYK by stealth..? Good Lord, what kind of bizarre behaviour is that? We are trying to propose ideas to make DYK better, less open to abuse due to copyvio and plagiarism, and more open to more editors (why is creating new content automatically better than vastly improving extant content?). → ROUX ₪ 13:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

EdChem, on your substantive point about the backlog: a number of proposals have already been made to improve this which don't involve rejecting any nominations that meet the current standards - most obviously and simply my Proposal 5. More could probably be invented. And the proposal is for GA hooks to take up to 50% of slots, dependent on GA hook availability, a maximum which could be negotiated down. Rd232 14:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• As a general approach, I think a reviewing requirement (or some other project contribution) from more experienced nominators sounds reasonable. It would also help out with some of the problems / load created by the WikiCup. EdChem (talk) 13:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support, this would be made much easier if we restrict DYK nominations to newly-promoted-GAs, and expand time horizon of selected hook sets on the Main Page. -- Cirt (talk) 15:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Seems unnecessary. As far as I know, most people do this anyway, it's just simple common sense and politeness to help offset the extra burden you are creating by nominating an article, and there are selfish reasons to do it too—the more other noms are reviewed, the sooner yours will get some attention. Speaking for myself, pretty much the only time I ever review anymore (not just for DYK, but for GAN or FAC as well) is when I've nominated something myself. Besides, I'm pretty sure there's already something on WP:DYK or WP:DYKAR along the lines of "if you nominate an article, consider also reviewing a couple" (although I can't find it at the moment). (strickn, I'm pretty sure I was thinking of PR) rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • So... there's an undisputed backlog, which would not exist if everyone pitched in their fair share of reviewing, but raising a mild request to the level of a requirement is unnecessary? Huh. Rd232 17:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Your proposal didn't ask for "everyone to pitch in their fair share of reviewing", it asked for certain editors (experienced ones—i.e., those with 5 or more DYKs) to review at least one article within five days of nominating something. If you do the math, you'll see that that still leaves people who might nominate without reviewing, and it leaves people who might review one article and nominate ten. (Much of the backlog comes from precisely these two things: people nominating their first DYK and not aware they can also review, and from the minority of prolific contributors who nominate a ton of articles but rarely review; your proposal doesn't really solve either of those, and if we want to "force" the prolific nominators to review as much as they nominate that could be done just as easily with a friendly message rather than a "rule", given that it's a small number of regular editors.) Not to mention that, as I said, a lot of people are doing what you propose already, so selfish nomination must not be the sole reason for the backlog. And, frankly, most of the people here are mature adults and I think it's a little demeaning to establish a behavioral requirement that essentially says "help out". rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • (note that I have stricken a portion of my message 2 comments above). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Mm, in the flurry of discussion I forgot to clarify something that occurred to me earlier: the proposal was supposed to include an additional criterion, that for each new nomination, the experienced (X successful noms) nominator needs to have a review within the last 5 days; I didn't mean "do 1 review, make 10 noms". In this form, it does help those who are "selfish", and making this requirement suitably prominent will help make everyone more aware of the need for reviewing (which I'm pretty sure is mentioned there somewhere). I discount friendly messages to established contributors because I assume such contributors are already well aware of the backlog, and need additional incentives to change their behaviour. Rd232 17:44, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• In addition to the points I raised above, I'm not sure this proposed rule would ensure good reviews (i.e., reviews that catch copyvio, which is the whole issue that started this discussion). A person being forced to do a review so that he can get his own nomination reviewed is, I expect, likely to just do the bare minimum. Call it not assuming good faith, but that's what I imagine would happen. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

A personal observation and request

I've been watching all that is going on around DYK in the last few days, and frankly I am feeling quite upset and very discouraged. The suggestions that three-quarters of what appears at DYK should be rejected strikes me as incredibly unappreciative of what has been being achieved here. I have five DYK credits, and the sub-text of some of what is being said is that four of them should have been rejected as crap. I've done a few reviews, and I am discouraged that so few comments are willing to recognise that good reviewing, with article-improving constructive comments, is being done here. I feel alot like a lot of people have come from outside the project to tell us how bad what we are doing is, instead of approaching us as valued colleagues making a positive contribution to Misplaced Pages; I hate the feeling of being treated like a child, and I think the work being done here deserves some acknowledgment and respect. It is really hard to feel motivated to contribute when the content generated is evidently considered near-worthless by some and when the project is obviously viewed with disdain. No one is suggesting that DYK can't be improved. I readily admit that improved accountability would be desirable and that we could do better with mentoring reviewers who are missing issues in articles that should be caught. I am quite willing to report copyvios when we see them, and as an academic I am obviously opposed to plagiarism. But, I am also opposed to burning down a project I think has value to deal with relatively isolated problem cases. Perhaps I am alone in how I am feeling, perhaps I am overly sensitive. Even so, I implore everyone to consider more the feelings of the editors whose work you seek to criticise; criticism can be constructive and given with a feeling of mutual respect and collaboration. Please, can we have some more respect for the regular DYK contributors, some recognition for the large amount of good work done, and some appreciation for the collective knowledge and experience of the DYK community? EdChem (talk) 12:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Hear hear. Paralympiakos (talk) 13:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry if anyone's ended up feeling that way (and clearly some have). Any Misplaced Pages process getting a spotlight shined on it will expose flaws, and that's never pleasant. In the heat of that it's easy to feel that the value of the process is being ignored; but aside from a handful of people who would consider getting rid of the current approach altogether, it's really a discussion about improving something acknowledged as worthwhile. Sooner or later, the spotlight will fall somewhere else, but for the moment it's here. Rd232 13:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: Strongly agree with comment in this subsection, by Paralympiakos (talk · contribs). Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 13:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I understand how you feel EdChem, but I have been contributing to this part of the project for three years now and quite frankly I am fed up with the regular attacks on DYK. As a result I'm inclined to the view that it is time to rethink the process. I'm thinking that perhaps it is time to raise the bar substantially and to merge DYK with GA. We just don't have the manpower to thoroughly scrutinize 50 hooks a day or more and if we are going to have more scrutiny the only way to do that is to raise the bar for eligibility and thus reduce the number of submissions. Gatoclass (talk) 14:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't be that defeatist, at least without giving some of the ideas here a go first. Proposal 5, for instance, might work very well to raise reviewing contributions. PS I don't think anyone is "attacking" DYK per se. As I said above, if you put any Misplaced Pages process under the spotlight you'll see flaws. Rd232 14:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Ed, you seem to be implying that everyone calling for change at DYK is actually calling for the abolition of DYK, but that's just not the case. If anyone wants to abolish DYK, this is hardly the page to do it on! Surely DYK should take the current attention as an opportunity to get views from outside its set of committed regulars, to see if the Process could operate better within the constarints that all Misplaced Pages processes must work under. Because if DYK is shown to be totally resistant to change on the grounds that the regulars think there's no problem and they've always done it this way, it will only give ammunition to those who will say that, in that case, DYK should be scrapped altogether as obsolete and replaced with something completely different. Physchim62 (talk) 14:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Summarizing some of the problems

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to point out some of the problems with the current process. Firstly, there is the obvious problem of lack of scrutiny, which is where this entire debate originated. We simply can't parse every article for plagiarism and copyvio problems along with all the other checks, this has been proven time and again. The small number of volunteers is basically just overwhelmed with the approximately 50 hooks a day that are submitted.

The second issue is lack of quality; there are regular complaints about this, and I've always found it difficult to justify promoting crummy new articles to the mainpage when GAs get no exposure whatever. We've just had, for example, another spate of complaints about the "cookie cutter" articles users submit for Wikicup. 1500 chars minimum is setting the bar very low, and for every quality 1500 character article we get, there are probably several not-so-good ones.

Some other perennial issues are the 5-day nomination window and the x5 expansion requirement. DYK is supposed to encourage the creation of new content, but I've become aware for myself at least that involvement in DYK has actually substantially reduced my content creation, because I am constantly finding topics of interest I could write a stub on, but don't because I think maybe one day I will have enough info about that topic to make the 1500 character limit. I'm sure I can't be the only one who has found the DYK rules discouraging to content creation in this way. The x5 expansion rule is another bugbear that comes up on a regular basis.

Taking all these factors into account, it seemed to me it might be better, and a lot more straightforward, to simply raise the bar for submissions, to say, 5000 characters, and just drop all the other restrictions. This would mean a substantial reduction in submissions but an improvement in quality. But we also need a more robust process for reviewing articles. We could achieve most of this of this simply by integrating DYK with GA, which would have the added advantage of giving GA articles a path to main page exposure. I don't think that's such a bad idea, and while there may be a variety of ways to go about implementing that, I'm inclined to think that this is the kind of system we should be moving towards. Gatoclass (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, Gatoclass, thank you, this is the first coherent summary of the present issue yet. How do you propose, and what do you propose, to change? Perhaps an addition that the article must have been created from scratch prior to GA nomination, and that the article must be a newly-promoted-GA? -- Cirt (talk) 15:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting. On the first point about scrutiny there are a number of proposals here that might help; the others are more fundamental. I hadn't myself wanted to challenge the basic model of the existing DYK process, not least because of expected strong resistance from current DYK people (entirely normal response to radical change, I mean). But it turns out the reaction to even relatively small changes, which don't challenge the basic model, are meeting enormous resistance - in which case, we may as well think more broadly about perhaps being more radical. Raising DYK standards to 5000 characters would certainly make a dent in the rate of nominations (and lessen concerns about slots going to GA hooks raising backlog), but I'm not sure in itself if it's a good idea. I'm a bit concerned by your comment about negative incentive effects (not making new articles because of not meeting standards now), which would worsen. Rd232 15:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Well I think there would probably have to be some sort of time limit on when the GA was created, because some of the older ones would not have received the same scrutiny. What I'm really proposing is dumping the "new article" provision altogether, and replacing it with a "recently promoted" one. We'd still be getting plenty of new content because a lot of GA contributors write their articles from scratch in any case. I haven't yet considered what other caveats if any should be placed on submissions - the idea is simply that if an article has passed the GA review process recently, it's eligible. Gatoclass (talk) 15:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. -- Cirt (talk) 15:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I always envisaged GA hooks being from newly promoted GAs. Perhaps that wasn't clear in my proposal. Rd232 15:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I took that for granted as well. I think that's the only way it would work. Lampman (talk) 14:40, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with much of what Gato said, but I am skeptical of using GAs as the solution. There are 250 editors who have each individually contributed 25 or more DYKs and thousands who have contributed smaller numbers. DYK is the only place for the new editor and editors of all types to have their content featured on the main page. This broad participation is incredibly valuable to encouraging development of editors and advancing the interest of the project. FA, on the other hand, provides a forum on the MainPage for the more devoted editors, typically a smaller number of regulars, to feature their content. By merging DYK with GA, we move in the direction of giving over DYK to a smaller number of editors who are involved in the GA process -- a group that likely overlaps with the FA process. While we can improve DYK, we should not lose its main values, which include the promotion of new content AND the encouragement/development of new editors. Shifting to GAs is a radical shift, and one that I think is in the wrong direction. I would, however, favor other ways of incrementally improving quality and diversity, e.g., increasing the size requirement to 2500, reducing the slots from 4 to 3 a day, being more disciplined in rejecting poor quality articles, and, importantly, limiting individual editors to 20 (or some such number) of hooks per month. Cbl62 (talk) 15:37, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

My point is that there is a much wider base of editors involved in DYK than GA. The 250 who have contributed 250 are the tip of the iceberg. There are thousand of editors who have had their work featured on the Main Page as a result of DYK. By allowing the smaller group involved in GA to take over some of the DYK slots, we may reduce the accessibility for the broader base of editors. Cbl62 (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

See above, a proposal which expands the accessibility for everyone, without any silly territorialism about 'taking our slots' or similar. → ROUX ₪ 19:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

You're misunderstanding me. It's not about territorialism (let alone silly territorialism). It's about giving access to the broadest cross-section of editors. If it were about territorialism, I would not be proposing that we limit the number of hooks each editor can have. My intent is to keep DYK open to the broadest number of people, and I simply think that adding GAs is a step in the wrong direction. There are other ways of improving quality without limiting access. Cbl62 (talk) 19:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Apparently I am... because adding more GAs = more editors = more access. How on earth does that limit access? Did you read the proposal above? → ROUX ₪ 19:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Giving some DYK slots to recently promoted GAs is a lot less radical than fidding with size requirements. And I'm mystified by the relevance of the "250 editors with 25 or more DYKs" if your concern is newer editors, since clearly such editors are not new. Raising size requirements substantially is a much bigger deal for new editors I would think than losing a couple of slots. And how is limiting editors to a hard maximum of X hooks per month better than requiring prolific contributors to contribute to reviewing in proportion to their nominations? Rd232 15:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Giving some slots to GA might be "less radical", but it does nothing to resolve the problem which is too many submissions and not enough reviewers. The only way to resolve that issue is to raise the bar on DYK requirements. Cbl has suggested another way of doing so above, which is restricting the number of DYKs per person per month, although this would be likely to affect only a small number of contributors. The bottom line is that we must either choose quantity or quality of review, and if we are going to improve the quality of review the only way to do that is to reduce the number of submissions somehow.

I guess we could make a start by raising the length requirement - I personally think 4k characters would probably be the minimum needed to impact the number of submissions. Then we could think about putting in place a more robust review process, closer to GA. If that works smoothly, we could then start looking at perhaps integrating DYK and GA more closely - but I do agree that trying to do it all in a single step would probably be inappropriate. Gatoclass (talk) 16:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There are alternatives to increasing reviews without raising the length requirement - notably Proposal 5. And adding in a couple of slots for GAs can happen alongside any other DYK changes, since the additional workload is all at the GA end. Rd232 16:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal 5 does nothing to address the quality of reviews, which is the issue here. In fact, by having inexperienced users do reviews, the quality will get worse, not better.

And I really think we should drop the GA discussion for now. We should focus on one thing at a time, and the main issue here is how (or perhaps even "if") we are going to improve the quality of reviews to ensure that plagiarism and copyvios do not make it to the mainpage. And as I've said, the only practical way to do that is reduce the number of submissions, by whatever means. Anyhow, it's late here and I will be logging off shortly, so I guess this discussion will have to be continued at another time. Gatoclass (talk) 16:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, proposal 5 is about quantity of reviews (inexperienced reviewers as an issue is from a separate idea to limit established editor involvement, so let's not cross wires). In terms of quality, other proposals, including better transparency and requiring each hook to be signed off by two reviewers, can address that. Overall, part of the problem with this discussion is requiring each proposal to fix everything; some of them fit together jigsaw-style to be complementary in how they address different issues. I've tried to clarify that a little on the new subpage. Rd232 22:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with Gato's analysis and ideas. Recently promoted GAs are more deserving of the home page than DYKs, but then each of them promote different worthy ideals. WP:GA people could work on approving the GAs for the home page. I'm not sure about changing the size requirements for the new articles. But GAs and what we now call DYKs would look good together under a "DYK?" banner:

Did you know....

From Misplaced Pages's Good Articles:

• ... that the Battle of St. Louis ) was an unsuccessful British-led attack on St. Louis, Missouri on May 26, 1780, during the American Revolutionary War?
  
• ...etc.?
  

From Misplaced Pages's newest articles

• ... that Ogden H. Hammond, the father of New Jersey congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, survived the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, though his wife did not?
  
• ...etc.?
  

First Light (talk) 16:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what I had in mind (except add "newest" in front of Good Articles). Also I imagined newest article hooks being above Good Article hooks, but it's probably better this way (since the TFA will be just above, gives a certain logic). Rd232 16:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think two separate sections is the answer. In any case, the GA question is still very much a secondary concern right now. Gatoclass (talk) 16:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

This is a bit OT, though appropriate to the section heading. Not sure where else to put it. While I would love to see some kind of "most improved" articles featured on the main page, along with newest articles, I'm not so sure that the DYK process really is broken. Sure, because of the volume of nominations and scarcity of reviewers some things will slip through the cracks. But the average DYK article is much much much better than average Misplaced Pages (non-stub, not total crap) article simply because the DYK process enforces SOME kind of quality standard (and yes, I would like that standard to be upped - but we're talking gradual reform here, not revolutionary pyres). Having followed this through for the past few days, I get a sense that this particular article slipped through the cracks of this process PRECISELY because of who the author was. People assumed that an arb would never do such a thing and assumed good faith a little too much. There's no reason to radically change DYK - there is just a reason to remind reviewers that they should scrutinize articles they verify no matter who wrote them. More generally, something like an audit of a random selection of DYKs from the past year or so might not be a bad idea, if someone was willing to put in the work. Otherwise we're just speculating here without real information.radek (talk) 18:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Cbl62's point about DYK representing the only venue for a new or less experienced editor to get their article on the main page. GA and FA are extremely daunting processes; I've been editing Misplaced Pages for more than 5 years and closing in on 8,000 edits, and I don't think I've made any major contributions to a Featured Article, and only to Good Articles as part of collaborations/improvement drives. I think it's important to continue to offer some such venue that's reasonably accessible. cmadler (talk) 19:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • And where are we saying that new articles will no longer be allowed at DYK? Almost everyone here is talking about adding GA. Honestly I am forced to wonder sometimes if anyone ever reads anything before opining. → ROUX ₪ 19:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Perhaps you haven't been reading the discussion. In addition to some -- a few -- people suggesting the replacement of DYK with GADYK, there has been a bunch of discussion, particularly in this section, about significantly raising the DYK requirements. In the very first comment in this section, Gatoclass suggested raising the DYK minimum length from 1500 to 5000 characters of prose. cmadler (talk) 20:30, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
  • The Main Page offers limited incentives because of limited space. Nobody has tried to make a coherent argument why those incentives should be applied solely to FAs (just 1 per day) and to new articles (how many per day now? 30 odd? can't spare a single one of those slots for GAs??). The idea that the new article DYKs are a great thing for new editors is hogwash - it's largely incentivising established editors. No process like that can do much for new editors unless it's really specifically targeted at them (eg in welcome messages and such), and perhaps even excluding established editors. (In fact, if the New Editors thing is such a big deal, why not just put a fixed upper limit on DYKs per editor? i.e. "You've got 5 DYKs? Well done, now make way for a new editor." Somehow I don't see established DYKers jumping on that idea.) As to the minimum length - I've disagreed above with that, partly on Gatoclass's own argument about disincentivisation, which would be worsened by a higher character quota. Rd232 21:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

===Moving the discussion to another page=== So, everyone agrees that DYK has a lot of problems, but there's no consensus on a solution. Regardless, this discussion has been getting too large, and I propose we split it out into: Misplaced Pages talk:Did you know/DYK reform.--hkr Laozi speak 20:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Why move it? It's a long discussion, yes, but it's in the right place. Physchim62 (talk) 22:18, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

A lot of the DYK reform discussions are scattered all over this talk page, and I think it would be better if we separated them from the non-DYK reform topics and centralise them on a subpage. It would make reading and finding the relevant discussions much easier, for both pages.--hkr Laozi speak 22:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

What problems? I've been told that "pushing crap onto main page" is bad. Excellent, I'll leave it to those who don't. The more editors follow this route, the less crap you will have to deal with. Your real or imaginary problem has an easy solution: no nominations = no problem. East of Borschov 22:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Err... my problem? All I've stated is that people have brought up complaints of DYK, and that the discussion should be centralised in a subpage. This section is neither about or addresses the concerns of DYK, it is only a suggestion on having a subpage. I've never said that DYK is "crap", but the plagiarism concerns are real, and need to be addressed, preferably in one location instead of being scattered all around Misplaced Pages.--hkr Laozi speak 22:52, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

You've said "everyone agrees", that's enough. I, for one, never agreed: DYK has absolutely no problems of its own. It reflects the problems of wikipedia as a whole. East of Borschov 23:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

East of Borschov put it well, I was reading to the end of this discussion to say pretty much the same thing. At the DYK ANI discussion, one user discovered and pointed out that the TFA that day (Oct 31) had blatant plagiarism in it. This is a problem throughout Misplaced Pages and I agree that DYK articles are better than the average stub or unreferenced article. Being this is a good place to catch such problems, DYK should slow down a bit and pay attention to the review more. I don't expect ever article to be free of problems though, nor do I expect an FA or GA too. I am for change in DYK but completely merging it with another project isn't necessarily the answer. DYK has a use and a GA can make its way through DYK as well. A GA could be a substitute for 5x expansion. I am not trying to knock other projects, but Misplaced Pages isn't perfect and so aren't reviewers. I am for 18 hooks a day, 1 nom per editor per day and an at least 500 character increase in minimum article size. I do agree as well that some hooks are boring and their interest may not be seen or just found in a small majority.--NortyNort (Holla) 10:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for admin/experienced user check

Hi, I thought I'd step up to help with the prep areas. As prep area 3 was left part-empty for several hours, I've filled it. Could someone please check to see that I've done it all correctly. Thanks. Paralympiakos (talk) 00:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Passing by - not experienced - I noticed that prep 3 is interesting reading. Minor: in "... that the largest ethnic group in Makambako, Tanzania is the Kinga?" I would add a comma after Tanzania. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 00:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps, yes. I copied and pasted the hooks after they had been given the DYKtick. Paralympiakos (talk) 00:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It all looks correct to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Problem with pending Austroplatypus incompertus hook

Eusociality is mentioned twice in one hook: “...that Austroplatypus incompertus forms eusocial colonies in the heartwood of some Eucalyptus trees and was the first beetle to be recognized as being eusocial?” Please change “ eusocial colonies” to “colonies”. --John Stephen Dwyer (talk) 09:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Tweaked (Queue 1). Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 09:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing. --John Stephen Dwyer (talk) 17:13, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Let's put it to a vote

Another personal opinion on the matter

I'm one of the folks who submits articles to DYK, & I'm concerned that there are people who want to radically revise its goals & do away with showcasing new articles entirely. I don't like the idea for a number of reasons.

• Right now it's one of the few ways I have to get some positive to continue to make contributions. I don't participate in the FA process for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that I consider most of them over there to be jerks, & know they consider me a jerk in return. That kind of mutual feeling can only lead to a lot of unpleasant squabbling & even more hard feelings. So I try to stay away from there. As for the GA process, the last time I submitted an article for GA review, it took several weeks for anyone to get around to reviewing it, by which time I had lost interest in it (& my daughter was born, eating significantly into the time I have for Misplaced Pages). I write about Ethiopia; people know little about its related topics, so they are reluctant to comment on articles about Ethiopia.
• There is no lack of subjects worth covering by Misplaced Pages; anyone who seriously thinks that needs to move out of the usual subject areas (the stuff middle-class technological-inclined guys from North America & Europe are interested in), & look at the other areas. Here are some examples related to Ethiopia which I have been trying to work on, I do have enough material to write useful articles between Start & B-class quality on, but due to lack of time haven't gotten to:

• Ethiopian Revolution -- probably the most important event for Ethiopia in the 20th century, & far more complex than a simple coup (have a look at 1974 in Ethiopia), & deserving of more than just a redirect to Derg.
• Biographies on individual members of the Derg, the group which ran Ethiopia for over a decade. There were 109 of them, but less than a dozen have articles. And then there are the current Ministers & other executives of Ethiopia, few of which even have a stub.
• Yekatit 16 -- the date when, during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, someone threw a bomb at the governor. In response, the Fascists executed thousands of people, including everyone with a college education who was still in the country. Set the modernization of Ethiopia back at least a generation.
• Hakim Warqnah, aka Dr Charles Martin, the first Ethiopia trained in western medicine. Thought to be an orphan, a member of the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia took him home to India, where he got a medical education, & while visiting his home country in 1898 was reunited with his family in a romantic, if not fairy-tale, manner of recognition.
• The 1888 - 1892 Ethiopian famine -- in a country known for these disasters, this was the worst. And despite this disaster, Ethiopians still kicked European butt at Adwa.
• Wube Haile Mariam -- a prominent Ethiopian warlord of the early 19th century, & who had numerous interactions with the various European diplomats, explorers & adventurers of the time.
• The vast majority of all battles involving Ethiopia fought before 1900.
• Cusine of Ethiopia. I know nothing about this, & have long hoped someone could do the articles of this topic proper justice. The same for traditional dress, & architecture.
• Everything I have written so far betrays an Ethiopian Highlander bias: there are at least 80 other ethnic groups in this country, most of which only have a scrap of a stub about the people in general. I barely known where to start with topics related to the Oromo, the Somali, & the numerous small to tiny ethnic groups of southern & western Ethiopia.

And these are the ones just for Ethiopia off the top of my head. Articles relating to adjacent countries -- like Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, & Somalia -- are even more lacunose. Because we have enough articles about Harry Potter, Star Wars & the latest Microsoft products you don't think there are any more articles needing to be written? Take a moment to get out of your comfort zone & look at topics you don't know anything about; explore a few red links & consider whether they point to stories & topics needing to be told.

I am honestly troubled by those who think Misplaced Pages is "practically complete"; such comments only show the limits of their knowledge, not what truly still needs to be covered. And turning DYK into a showcase for GA will only serve to discourage work on the areas where Misplaced Pages's coverage truly sucks hard. -- llywrch (talk) 19:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Ditto Llywrch's comments aboug GA, FA, and Misplaced Pages's completeness. cmadler (talk) 19:37, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Have you actually read this page? We are talking about adding GA level articles to DYK (well, most of us are), not replacing new articles with GA. Sigh. → ROUX ₪ 19:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Have you actually read Llywrch's comment? There are at least six proposals floating around up there. Further, adding GA articles into DYK will either require even longer updates (10 hooks per?!), shorter update times, or significantly more stringent requirements for "normal" DYK articles. cmadler (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Shorter update times is the main direction it's going in, by looking at how to get more reviewing done. A couple of GA hooks per day aren't going to make that much of a difference compared to getting more people reviewing. Rd232 20:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

"Shorter update times is the main direction it's going in". I don't think so! Physchim62 (talk) 21:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

That's all very well, Llywrch, and believe me I know WP:CSB projects are full of horrific gaps. But since the vast majority of new articles continue to be on the less "serious" if you will encyclopedic stuff, the DYK status quo isn't helping that much. Now if someone wanted to propose saving (at least some) DYK slots for new articles that can be said to fall into WP:CSB territory, I'd be listening to see if that could be made to work. Rd232 20:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been involved with WP:CSB almost as far back as when it was still called CROSSBOW (Committee Regarding Overcoming Serious Systemic Bias On Misplaced Pages), & that's why I decided to work on Ethiopia-related articles; speaking as someone who's been active on Misplaced Pages for over 8 years now, thanks for showing me how to suck eggs. ;-) But Cmadler has a point: fuck if I know what actually is being discussed here. I came here because from one of the pages related to this discussion, where a bunch of people are eagerly agreeing DYK needs to die, claiming that showcasing new articles is no longer needed. Until I'm guaranteed that proposal is off the table & is no longer under consideration, I'm standing by what I said. Sorry, Rd232, but you're just one person (although one whose opinion I'll listen to), & there are a lot of Wikipedians who want to take advantage of this incident to change things unfavorably & grab a little more power for themselves. I just want to write new articles & improve existing ones, but every couple of days something happens which makes it less fun for me to do. -- llywrch (talk) 21:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I only mentioned the egg, I did assume you knew how to suck it :) I don't think abolition in toto of DYK hooks coming from new articles is seriously on the table; I can't even see in the TLDR discussion where it's seriously proposed. It seems to be mentioned as a possibility mostly by supporters of the status quo in order to scare people (or at least themselves). But I will say that if stonewalling prevents any change at all, then complete abolition of the current approach is more likely to become a realistic proposition at some point in the (longer term) future. Putting off change may protect the status quo exactly as is for the time being, but allowing some change is more likely to preserve it long term. Unreformable things have a tendency to wither and die. Rd232 22:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Any option that says "no more new article hooks on DYK" is effectively a proposal to abolish DYK. The community should at least try to keep DYK before deciding to abolish it, as revolutions are always costly things. If there's stonewalling, well, the only thing the community can impose is abolition. Physchim62 (talk) 23:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

? where is this option getting support? Also I've argued DYK does not in its essence require any input from new articles; it's just been done that way, and there are good reasons for it, but there are also good reasons to mix in other sources. Rd232 00:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Mixing in other sources (apart from new articles) is one thing (I'd say "why not?"). Gatoclass and Cirt seem to be effectively saying 100% GAs, which I think is just shifting the deckchairs. Obviously a section that is called "Did you know?" is linked to hooks that provide facts that make people think "ah no, I didn't know that, let's find out more": it is not necessarily linked to "new articles" except by the machinery. But going to 100% GAs would be a complete change of machinery: it would not be the same DYK section, it would be a bcak-door takeover by GAN. Physchim62 (talk) 01:06, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Well seeing as no GA regulars have expressed any interest in taking over DYK (!) this would be more of a capitulation than a takeover :) Really, I don't know why they're suggesting that, there's no reason to think GA could handle a sudden, complete DYK takeover even if that was desired. That's one reason I keep structuring my proposal as mixing in GA hooks as available. None available? No problem. Lots? Then up to an agreed max per day til the surge is gone. Rd232 01:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

A brief overview

Overview: The major complaints

These are the problems that most commenters have agreed on:

1. There aren't enough reviewers. The DYK workload is too high, resulting in a lack of scrutiny.
2. There have been incidents of plagiarism and close paraphrasing, and resulting copyright violation problems.
3. The quality of DYK nominations is not consistent. There have been many poor quality DYKs without reliable sources.

Minor complaints

These are other issues that have been raised on the talk page, but lack complete consensus:'

1. The time limit for DYKs is too restrictive.
2. Good articles are not featured on the main page, and yet they require much more effort than DYKs.
3. Many hooks are mundane.
4. The size requirements for DYK are too low.
5. DYK should not focus purely on new articles.
6. There are been too many cookie cutter articles. It's been fueling a "reward culture".
7. DYK doesn't do anything specifically to help systemic bias issues

--hkr Laozi speak 20:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I've redacted point 3 from "The hooks have been boring" to "Many hooks are mundane", because I don't think anyone is suggesting that all hooks are boring or mundane, nor that people's opinions of the hooks will change if nothing happens. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add another point here; that is that DYK hooks do not get enough click-throughs to the actual article (based on whatever basis you like). In my opinion, that's because too many of the hooks are just too mundane, but I think it's a separate problem as well. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant. And I don't see it as a significant problem, it's just an issue that's been mentioned in the talk. If it was enforced as a criteria, the question then becomes, how do we objectively evaluate a hook's appeal? I don't think there is a way.--hkr Laozi speak 04:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Click-throughs are a terrible was to gauge article quality or relevance. Compare the DYK stats for Bacon explosion to, well, almost anything and you'll see that all click-throughs tell you is that people love bacon. - Dravecky (talk) 07:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The solutions

For problem 1 (workload)

1. introduce a requirement that experienced DYK nominators (eg with 5 successful DYKs) need to review a DYK for each new nomination they make
2. or, since a point made by some is that DYK is particularly intended for newer editors: set a lifetime limit on DYKs; or less radically, a monthly limit (perhaps with an exception along the lines of solution 1). This would also help the "reward culture" issue (minor problem 6).

For problems 2 and 3 (quality)

1. more transparency in terms of who's reviewing what
2. require at least 2 reviewers to sign off each DYK
3. change the display of DYKs so that it adapts to the number of hooks available, rather than the current fixed quota per day (eg hooks automatically displayed longer if fewer available). Less time pressure on reviewing may help.
4. introduce some DYKs from a process with higher quality inputs (GA). Also addresses minor problems 2 and 5.

Rd232 21:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Choosing between solutions (these and others) depends on some agreement on what DYK ought to be for. (Supporters of the status quo have tendency to declare what it is for as if that cannot change.) Rd232 21:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

an aside: Can I turn up the volume on Cbl62's recent comments. We are not here to create DYKs we are here to improve Misplaced Pages. If we ensure that everything on the mainpage is perfect then we will have one perfect page. New articles happen. DYK has changed. It requires refs (more than GAs used to have). It used to have lots of editors nominating other people's work. People who sought out the new editors and helped them up. If we channel the output of x editors into 1500 character or 5,000 character chunks then still have the same quantity to review. I'd like to delegate some of "the workers" at DYK to be asked to come up with some solid workable proposals based on the idea that DYK's role is to improve the quality of the most recent articles into wikipedia. If we raise DYK's standards then will people stop creating poor articles or will we just ignore them and stare contentedly at the pile of FAs. We are here (Ithought) to improve the quality of the flow of new articles. We cannot change the quantity.Victuallers (talk) 22:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

"We are not here to create DYKs" - disagree on that point. The "did you know?" main page tidbits are valuable for readers. This doesn't affect most of the decision-making about how to do DYK, but losing sight of that does encourage a fundamentalism about "DYK is for new articles", when the incentive effects for editors is just one of the purposes of DYK, and historically those incentives have been pointedly solely at new articles and 5x expanded old articles. (The latter exception tends to be ignored in these discussions, possibly because it weakens the philosophy of "it's about new articles" and opens the door to, say, hooks from newly promoted GAs, which some people seem quite allergic to.) Rd232 22:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

DYK can't do much to affect the quantity or the quality of new articles, because it involves such a small proportion of new articles. It's one of the reasons GA hooks make sense - you could accommodate a much higher proportion of newly promoted GAs, even if the resulting incentive increases the flow of GA promotions. Rd232 22:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Question: Any data on the average number of GAs approved per month? Cbl62 (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Guesstimating about 3 a day recently. But bearing in mind hooks need to have a certain interest factor, not all newly-promoted GAs may be able to provide good hooks (naming no names on what sounds boring to me :) ). Rd232 01:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Some one said we need "agreement on what DYK ought to be for" and I think then implied that "we are here to create DYKs". I agree with the first Rd232's first assertion not the latter. ... oh and no I havent seen data on GAs. Oh and sorry. Goodnight Victuallers (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It is one of the purposes of DYK. It's not a prominent one much of the time because it's about readers, and most of the time meta-discussions focus on editors. Rd232 01:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Let me say, first of all, thank you for this concise overview of the hundreds of KBs at AN/I, here, and elsewhere. Now, as to solutions, I'd like to try to suggest a few ideas for consideration:

Major issues

1. There are a few ways to reduce the DYK workload, but they must all do one or more of the following: increase the number of reviewers, reduce the average per-article reviewing time, or reduce the number of nominations.
   1. Increasing the number of reviewers would require attracting qualified volunteers or some form of conscription (e.g., requiring experienced nominators to act as reviewers).
   2. Reducing the average per-article reviewing time would require lowering standards for acceptance, which is definitely not a step in the right direction, or raising standards for speedy rejection (e.g., requirements pertaining to length, sourcing, and other quality control elements which can be judged quickly).
   3. Reducing the number of nominations would require discouraging nominations in some way (e.g., reducing "rewards" for writing DYKs) or imposing artificial limits on the quantity of nominations.
2. The problems of plagiarism and close paraphrasing probably cannot be eliminated completely, but the only reliable way to reduce them is to subject selected articles to closer scrutiny. This, of course, brings us back to the problem of the DYK workload.
3. The only effective way to avoid "poor quality DYKs without reliable sources" is to tighten the DYK selection criteria and require that selected articles undergo more thorough review.

Minor issues

1. The time limit for DYKs can, if there is consensus, easily be extended as much as is necessary (e.g., 7 days, 10 days, 14 days).
2. Good Articles (GAs) can be added to the DYK box on the main page.
3. Every hook will interest some readers and bore others ... most will be somewhere in the middle. I don't think that this particular issue can be effectively addressed, nor do I believe that it is actually a problem.
4. The size requirement for DYKs can, if there is consensus, easily be raised as much as is necessary (e.g., 2,000 characters).
5. The focus on new articles can be diminished by featuring hooks from GAs and/or reducing the size requirement for expansions (e.g., from 5x to 3x, above a certain minimum size).
6. The issues of cookie cutter articles and a "reward culture" are related (and neither one is necessarily a Bad Thing), but I do not think that they can or should be address by modifying the DYK process. Instead, the focus should be on initiatives such as WikiCup and process such as RfA, which reward certain behaviors. Again, I make no negative judgment against these processes (including WikiCup) and, truth be told, do not consider high-quality cookie cutter articles to be a problem.
7. DYK is not intended to correct systemic bias issues and, given the relatively small number of articles that pass through DYK, probably can't do much to correct it. However, one way that it does help to counter systemic bias is by encouraging editors to create articles on notable topics on which there is not as much written in online sources (e.g., almost anything to do with Africa).

Anyway, these are just some thoughts. -- Black Falcon 21:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

So I assume you feel it is a good idea to only have each DYK hook up on the Main Page for only six hours, regardless of its quality? After all, DYK already makes special provision for the first and last hooks in a set, and these are the hooks which attract the most click-throughs. Why do you feel that it's impossible to extend this sort of selection throughout all DYK hooks, given that DYK has both the lowest rejection rate of nominations and the lowest click-through rate per hook of all the Main Page sections? Physchim62 (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think that hooks ought to remain on the Main Page for 8 or 12 hours (in other words, we ought to update two or three times every day, instead of four times). More directly on the point of quality: I think we ought to set a higher standard of quality for DYK articles, and then feature qualifying articles for an equal time. I don't think that it is impossible to feature certain hooks for a longer duration than others (in fact, I'm quite certain that it can be done using transclusion and an update-bot), but I don't really see a reason to do this. It will add more work for DYK reviewers and updaters, and yet provide relatively little added benefit (that I can see, at least). -- Black Falcon 01:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Impact of adding GAs to DYK

In considering whether or not to add new GAs to DYK, it's important to consider how that will impact DYK based on the data. New GA statistics are found Here. Last month, there were 333 new GAs. In April, there were 630 new GAs. The quantity varies, probably impacted by school schedules, WikiCup, etc. Presumably, including GAs on the MainPage would incentivize folks and increase the flow of GAs even above current levels. Even at the current rate, the new GAs in a big month like March would fill 20 slots per day. That would leave FAR fewer slots for new/expanded DYK hooks. As rd232 noted above, "The Main Page offers limited incentives because of limited space." I appreciate his desire to reward those who work hard on the GA process. However, those editors are far fewer in number than those who contribute hooks to DYK, and they already have the FA spot on the MainPage which is presumably the ultimate goal for those working to intensively improve an article. They are also free to participate in DYK by nomming when new or expanded. The DYK space is a place where a far broader and more diverse base of editors can come to have their content featured. This is highly valuable to the continued ability of Misplaced Pages to keep and attract editors. By giving over a significant number of the DYK slots to GAs, we are limiting the slots available to feature the work of the broader base of people who create new/expanded articles. I think it would be a step in the wrong direction. There are other ways to improve DYK quality. Even though I'm one of the persons who would be negatively impacted, I continue to believe that a limit on how many articles an individual editor can nom for DYK per month (maybe 20? 15? even 10?) would help. Many of the most problematic hooks have been the cookie-cutter articles which some folks generate, possibly to rack up rewards (someone called them "smarties", which I like) or to help them in WikiCup. Let's try incremental steps before radically shifting the focus of DYK away from promoting new/expanded articles. Cbl62 (talk) 01:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

You're assuming a near 100% pass rate for DYK nominations under the new-article system: I don't have any accurate statistics (the very throughput of articles on DYK makes statistics very hard to gather) but if DYK is receiving 25–35 submissions a day and posting 32 hooks a day, the failure rate cannot be very high at all. Physchim62 (talk) 02:14, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• Someone, please correct me if I'm wrong. I am of the impression that every one (or almost everyone) is a winner in the DYK lottery. With this kind of very low failure rate, it would be unreasonable to hope for anything but mediocrity, and the problems we know well exist. --Ohconfucius 05:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• You are indeed incorrect. Browse the edit history of T:TDYK and you will see that nominations are regularly rejected, often because nominators are unwilling or unable to correct problems pointed out by the reviewers. 28bytes (talk) 06:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• I wasn't suggesting that nominations were never rejected, but what proportion of noms are rejected? 10%? 20%? Other Main Page sections have rejection rates of more than 50%... Of course, simply rejecting more nominations, on its own, won't help with quality: the rejections have to be based on some valid measure of quality (which need not be perfect or entirely objective, simply non-random). But DYK shouldn't be "Smarties for everyone" but "BIG 24-hour Smarties for the best hooks and articles" ;) Physchim62 (talk) 15:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The biggest problem facing Misplaced Pages is a declining pool of new editors, not a lack of serious topics to be tackled. Reducing opportunities for these new editors to have their work highlighted to favor GA articles from well-established editors will only accelerate this trend. None of the current (often conflicting) proposals would actually improve DYK either as a project or as a benefit to readers or content creators. The one thing they all have in common is that they would displace genuinely new content from a wide pool of editors with a stream of articles neither timely enough for ITN nor good enough for TFA. DYK is the entry-level and the whole encyclopedia will suffer if we raise the bar too high for new contributors.

The biggest problem facing DYK is an overworked pool of content reviewers familiar with DYK standards while the project is awash in cookie-cutter articles generated by contestants in a gameshow. Restricting the number of points that can be scored in the WikiCup from DYK submissions would have strongly reduced both the backlog over the summer as well as the volume of cookie-cutter articles up for review. Indeed, removing DYK from the WikiCup altogether would improve the average DYK submission, lower the workload on DYK reviewers, and allow competitors to focus on improving existing articles to GA/FA status. - Dravecky (talk) 07:11, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Removing or at least limiting DYK contribution to WikiCup probably makes a lot of sense for DYK. But I anticipate at least as much resistance to that idea from WikiCuppers as there is resistance to GA hooks from DYKers. This resistance would be reduced by instead putting an overall monthly limit per editor (10?), so the Cup isn't targeted. 09:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• Cbl still hasn't explained exactly how opening DYK to more articles and more editors limits the pool of people who can contribute. And, again, my proposal above (new lottery process) very, very neatly handles all concerns related to 'too many approved DYKs'. → ROUX ₪ 11:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Cbl's argument is disingenuous at best. He has cherry-picked the month with the highest number of new GAs, without mentioning that this was the month of the GA review drive, resulting in a number of new GAs more than three times the norm. This chart will tell you that the real number is around 200 new GAs a month; that is less than eight per day, or one to two per update. That is presuming all GAs will be put up for DYK, which they probably won't so the number will be closer to one.

This is what the DYK partisans are up in arms about: giving up one of their eight bullets. This is how obstinate and insular the project has become, and why it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion about the subject without being met with "shut up, DYK should stay the way it's always been." Lampman (talk) 16:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

DYKCheck question

Running DYKCheck on Samangan Province shows the article as marked as a stub, but I can't find any stub template in the article (and it shouldn't have one, since it's over 12,000 characters long.) Any ideas? 28bytes (talk) 03:42, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

One of the Project tags on the talk page had it rated at "stub" class. I changed it to "start". Hopefully that will fix it. First Light (talk) 03:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Don't know why I didn't think to check the talk page. 28bytes (talk) 03:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Apart from this plagiarism thing ...

I've long been building up to blowing off some steam about the general quality of DYK. It appears bleedingly obvious to me that many of the entries are not attention-grabbing, cogent, surprising, or even interesting. Perhaps lame would be a better description.

I do appreciate the very good work done by some editors on DYK, but it is diluted by the low benchmark.

In summary: aim for fewer entries each day, and make them crisp and interesting. Raise the benchmark. The "anyone can edit" thing can't be taken too literally for DYK, since they go straight onto the main page and make WP look lame itself unless they are carefully chosen and tightly constructed. Tony (talk) 06:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. DYK should be rotated once every 24 hours, not once every 6 or 8 hours, as is currently the case. We barely have enough attention-worthy nominations a full set per day, and competition keeps the quality high. There is a sense of entitlement for getting on the main page and receiving some kind of badge, merely for quickly creating a boring borderline AfD candidate. That's not justified. Hans Adler 10:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

According to Misplaced Pages:DYKSTATS, the 8 most "eye-catching" DYKs on record were for, in order, Paul the Octopus, Ivan Castro (soldier), 2010 Moscow Victory Day Parade, Leonard Siffleet, Longest recorded sniper kills, Bacon Explosion, Saxbe fix, and Todd Palin. So the question is, can the community pick out hooks like these from the pool, and justify their reasoning? -- Yzx (talk) 10:42, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The question is not to be guessing which hooks will be the very best (in terms of readership), but to identify those which are so mundane that they are very unlikely to interest our readers at all. So can the community identify hooks like "...that between 1933 and 1935, American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer Walter Roland recorded around fifty songs for Banner Records?" Hmm, a musician who is notable enough for a WP article actually recorded some of his music! Who'd have thought it! It's not difficult to spot hooks like that very quickly: after all, our readership does so already, which is why the average DYK hook only gets a thousand click-throughs, if that. The figures on DYKSTATS show that there are readers who are looking at the DYK section and who are willing to click-through to artciles that interest them: why don't they do it more often? Because so many of the hooks are so obviously mundane. The current system penalizes the good DYKs (and there are many) by robbing them of the Main Page exposure they deserve. Physchim62 (talk) 14:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Hans, talking of justification, can you explain more on the "quickly creating a borderline AfD candidate" part? This whole page seems to be becoming a mud slinging exercise against DYK contributors and reviewers (of which I am both). It's not very civil and whilst I agree that some hooks and articles aren't interesting, very few are AfD candidates as they should all have multiple RSs. Of my 20 DYKs, every one, with the exception of Pogopalooza, took several hours of work, so frankly I find your comment rather insulting. If the slagging off continues, DYK is going to fall apart regardless, as us reviewers are starting to feel that there's no point in volunteering our time if the rest of the community thinks it is so pointless. Sorry to be a bit aggressive, but I can see lots of people happy to criticise, but not so many actually doing anything about it, like reviewing/commenting on hooks. SmartSE (talk) 12:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Up on DYK at the time when I made the comment :

• A list of churches most of which have their own articles, with a hook that really referred only to one of them.
• A very specific motorcycle model that would profit from merging with other, related models by the same company. Extremely boring hook following the popular "did you know that X is the biggest city in X-shire" superlative producing schema.
• A person who is presumably unknown outside Scandinavia, with a hook that can only make sense to some of those who have heard of him.
• Two articles about unambiguously DYK-adequate topics, with somewhat interesting but uninspired hooks.
• Another adequate topic (Aylesbury ducks) with a more inspired but ultimately unsurprising hook.
• An American singer (up mostly at a time when most of the US was asleep) with a very uninspired hook.
• A boilerplate article about a random battle ship, with an incredibly silly hook which almost follows the scheme "Did you know that Hermann Einstein was the only father of Albert Einstein?"
• A recently discovered mushroom species (good!!) with a hook that ignores the fact and instead boringly just describes the ugly mushroom, wetting the reader's appetite for the image which is not present in the article.

No actual AfD candidates, but some articles came uncomfortably close. At least half of this was not main page material. In some cases there were severe presentation problems. If DYK is unable to produce main page quality at the current rate, then it should simply reduce its rate. "Did you know that ..." is not an appropriate form of presentation for random recent articles. Hans Adler 13:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

PS: Was there any particular reason to put three of the most boring entries first? Hans Adler 13:07, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

So none of them are AfD candidates then, that's good. Like I was trying to say, if you find the interestingness of hooks a problem, then please help us to review hooks and object to them if you find them boring or uninteresting. This seems like a better option to me than trying to impose arbitrary limits on the number of hooks per day, it would be better if it were a more organic process. If we agree amongst ourselves that a hook isn't interesting enough then we can not include it, and just include how ever many are deemed interesting. RE the mushroom hook, I reviewed that, the nom's orignal hook was "X is a new species of mushroom" but I suggested that we try something more interesting, precisely because of the recent furore. The nom had also emailed the author of the orignal paper to try and get a pic, but without any joy. Your comment on the hook demonstrates the subjectivity of interesting... I can only see this being solved by more people helping out with reviewing. RE you PS, those are the three articles with the most hits this year, Yzx listed them in order. SmartSE (talk) 14:05, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

You mentioned the "arbitrary limits on the number of hooks per day" further up, and I didn't have the time to reply to you then: my apologies, and here goes! 8–10 hooks per day is not an arbitrary limit: it is a single DYK section of the current length staying up for exactly 24 hours, so readers in all time zones get a chance to see all the hooks. Why should the best hooks not get the exposure they deserve? At the moment, DYK robs exposure time from the hooks that readers might click on so as to give it to the routine and the mundane: that's not a logical use of our limited resources, either in terms of Main Page space or in terms of reviewer time. Physchim62 (talk) 14:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I got these hooks from a rather mundane Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. I think people can do better with their hook choices... Ed  16:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I've suggested requiring hooks to have two reviewers sign them off, for better quality control. That applies to decision-making on interestingness of hooks as well as on plagiarism and sourcing. But of course that's not really practical in separation from increasing reviewing, eg by requiring it from experienced DYKers who wish to self-nominate. More radically, we could have an approach that involved voting for hooks (with different ALT versions included if available), and queues are built by looking at the top votes. Hooks that languish really long (eg 1 month? 3 months?) could ultimately be ejected as too boring. It will be complained that voting is subject to gaming, but on the bright side, it introduce a community element beyond nominating or reviewing; new users in particularly can be drawn in through such voting, if it's appropriately advertised. Rd232 18:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Who is involved in DYK?

I keep hearing this idea that DYK is a path for new editors. I'm skeptical that this has much significance; a priori I can't see many new editors finding it and getting involved. So a survey of yesterday's nominations (November 2). There were a total of 14 nominations. Most of these were by editors nobody could call new. One was fairly new (May 2010, 261 edits), though I wonder from the proficiency of their early edits if it's their first account. Only one was not a self-nom, being a nom of an IP's AFC-submitted article. They only made one edit and I wonder at the incentive effect there. Anyway, 11 of 14 (79%) are by editors with 5k edits or more.

So, in sum, from this sample it appears the thesis that DYK does much for new editors pretty well fails. (Was this a very unrepresentative day? Well if you have reason to think so, prove it.) But wait, what if we compare it with GA nominations for the same day? We see that GA has more newish-editor nominations in both absolute (3) and percentage (50%) terms! Huh. Rd232 10:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

In a rough estimated, I would say about half of the nominations I've reviewed were from presumably new editors. I would call them new based off of how often they nominated, their number of DYKs and the quality of the article among other things. I wouldn't trust time on Misplaced Pages because some editors take long breaks or have very slow starts. Touching story: I have been on Misplaced Pages for a little over a year and had little idea what DYK was for about 4 months until I started getting these DYK notices on my talk page about 2 weeks after I started certain articles. I later found out that someone was nominating them. This helped motivate me to contribute more and eventually nominate my own articles. It wasn't just a reward but a feeling of community. Then, I started reviewing as well to help out the the "eternal backlog" as one editor at the time described.--NortyNort (Holla) 11:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(e.c.) Well, let's consider the most recent hook with which I was involved:

• ... that ophanin, piscivorin, ablomin, latisemin and triflin, found in the venom of the King Cobra (pictured), the water moccasin, the Mamushi snake, the Erabu sea snake and the Habu snake, respectively, are all cysteine-rich secretory proteins that can reduce muscle contractions?

Obviously, one of those trivial hooks dealing with articles that aren't encyclopedic and are borderline for AfD, and made by experienced wikipedians? Let's look:

• Ophanin – created and expanded by User:Millesya (joined October 19, 2010) – total edits = 7
• Piscivorin – created and expanded by User:Jstedehouder (joined October 19, 2010) – total edits = 20
• Ablomin – created and expanded by User:Danyasimone (joined October 15, 2010) – total edits = 2
• Latisemin – created and partially expanded by User:Aleid Lisanne (joined October 19, 2010) – total edits = 11

Further expanded by User:EdChem (joined January 4, 2008) – total edits = 2887 (2275 of which were in the last 6 months)

• Piscivorin – created and expanded by User:Jstedehouder (joined October 19, 2010) – total edits = 20
• Cysteine-rich secretory protein – created and expanded by User:EdChem (joined January 4, 2008) – total edits = 2887 (2275 of which were in the last 6 months)

Original nominatioin assembled by User:PFHLai, an experienced Wikipedian, highlighting the work of new editors. I was going to add a review until I saw that Cysteine-rich secretory protein was not an article. This "CRISP" class of proteins is essential to spermatogenesis in mammals, and in my view is an example of a significant gap in Misplaced Pages's coverage. So, we ended up with an article (4000+ readable characters, 11 references) on a class of proteins and five articles on toxins in snake venoms from new editors whose work got some recognition. The hook got a total of 4689 views, so feel free to disparage it as uninteresting - I'm sure many readers were not interested.

Incidentally, the current nomination I have at T:TDYK is a 5-article collaboration with User:Paralympiakos, who I met through DYK when I was reviewing. I suspect those articles wouldn't have been written (certainly not by me) without that collaboration and the DYK project. Go look at them - are those 100,000+ bytes that we generated borderline-AfD cookie-cutter rubbish? What about my article on the compound rhodocene (a DYK that went on to GA status), or the biography of Hans Freeman (a x38 expansion in terms of bytes of a stub that had sat around since March 2006).

I know some of this response refers to comments made in other sections of this page. I also know that I am emotionally involved and the fact that I am upset, offended, and defensive is showing through. Maybe some of you could consider why everything that has been going on makes me feel like I should just take the hint and leave Misplaced Pages, because I am really get sick of being treated as an annoyance. EdChem (talk) 11:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Very good points and made well. I agree DYK helps breed community and collaboration as well. I started Nora W. Tyson recently because of this, and it is not my general area of interest. DYK also helped me understand WP policies much better.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your experiences, perhaps my sample was unrepresentative (though we should not replace sample by anecdote). The fundamental point I want to make is not that DYK is useless for new editors, it's that if it's supposed to be targeted at drawing new editors in, it can be reformed in ways we haven't really thought about yet to make it fulfil that function more effectively. Secondarily, that GA also has less experienced editors, and that there's a certain learning curve which both DYK new articles and GAs can be part of. Linking them together, even just a little, ought to strengthen that, as well as collaboration more generally. Rd232 12:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with the EdChem and NortyNort, based on my reviewing experience. The fact is that DYK does provide a way for someone totally new to the project to write a short, relatively interesting article and have it viewed by millions (in hook form). I was certainly encouraged to contribute to the project in general after writing my first DYK and I'm sure that others have been too. I've tried to persuade friends to contribute and they're certainly more interested by the fact that articles can go on the main page, and in one case it worked. Your one day sample is very simplistic and you don't seem to have checked who has actually written the articles either. If it weren't for DYK, I doubt I would be bothering to draft this beast of an article, that represents a massive whole in our coverage of ecology. For articles like this, it will take ages to get them to GA standards, so DYK is a nice way of featuring articles like that. I'm afraid that I agree with EdChem's last points too, please don't criticise this project without carrying out a detailed and comprehensive analysis of articles featured, rather than just bringing up some bad examples and saying that the whole project is useless. SmartSE (talk) 12:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. I took yesterday as a sample, and invited evidence that it was unrepresentative. Anecdotal evidence merely proves that DYK isn't completely useless, an assertion no-one has made. Why do people keep labelling attempts at reform as implying the whole thing is useless? Since nobody's actively claiming DYK is perfect or unimprovable, this just seems like overly emotional stonewalling. PS As to who wrote the articles: with one exception they were self-noms, as stated. Rd232 13:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Nothing wrong I can see with the articles. The hook is really too convoluted and unappealing for the main page, but with a technical topic and so many articles in one hook it's close to a reasonable compromise.

I have done six DYKs myself and occasionally helped out in the process, so obviously I don't consider it completely useless and everything it produces trash. But I see DYK primarily as a means for creating mainpage-worthy content that draws the reader in, not as a badge factory. Which is why I only nominate articles for which I can find a good hook. (I have now started collecting my hooks here, so you can get an idea of what I have in mind. I consider my first hook borderline, btw, but the article is interesting.) Hans Adler 13:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Or...

OK, how about this. There is a current exception to the "new article" rule, namely 5x expansion. Simply add another exception, for newly promoted GAs. But require anyone wishing to nominate a GA hook to review 5 DYKs first, so there can be no complaints about adding to the backlog. And what the hell, since the slots are so precious and GAs not really worthy of recognition on the Main Page, limit GA hooks to 1% of weekly slots. Rd232 13:12, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Er, I'm think I'm going to just unwatch this page; it's a TL:DR bitchy mess. I don't understand why the subpage was merged back; it was the beginning of a rationalisation of the discussion, which was and is sorely needed. At the end of the day, I've got a handful of DYKs to my name and 1 GA; it is deeply frustrating to be in the middle of such a mess looking in from outside, and so many people in the middle of it apparently unable to discuss it neutrally and with appropriate perspective and AGF. So, good luck with that. Rd232 19:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Bach cantata - again

This is a reminder (again, sorry for being boring) that the weekly Bach cantata in the Special occasions section is still unreviewed. Rlevse did the first and the last one (#22), hope someone is willing now, False world, I don't trust you BWV 52, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll check it for you now. Bencherlite 12:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:09, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit protected

{{Edit protected}}

Time zone table should be be ordered chronologically. Order right now is arbitrary. Thank you. Marcus Qwertyus 18:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)Marcus Qwertyus

...on the Queue. Marcus Qwertyus 18:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Did you know/Queue/LocalUpdateTimes is not protected, if that's what you want to change. Bencherlite 18:32, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Didn't realize it was just transcluded. I ordered it and went ahead and added Los Angeles. Marcus Qwertyus 02:18, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it's best without Los Angeles. When the template was created, we decided on Chicago to represent all of the US/North American timezones since it's easy to remember the time difference. Also, the added timezone makes the template busier and harder to read. Shubinator (talk) 02:54, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

The main reason I included it was to help break up the 9 hour time difference between Chicago and Sydney. Marcus Qwertyus 12:49, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

If LA is on there, then Chicago should really be changed to New York: I think most people can figure out that most of North America is somewhere between the two! Physchim62 (talk) 13:18, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Support Both LA and NY are more populated than Chicago.Marcus Qwertyus 14:15, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Chicago made sense if using only one North American city (which was relatively easy to adjust to other US time zones). If we have room for 2, then LA and NYC make more sense. Cbl62 (talk) 14:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I have swapped Chicago for New York. Marcus Qwertyus 17:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Some issues to address

I see a few issues in the queues and prep areas at present, that I believe warrant further consideration before they get to the main page:

• As I understand it, the last entry in an update is usually reserved for something quirky (for want of a better word). In prep area 3, for example, I think the "Troughman" hook strikes me as more of a last entry hook than the "National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin " hook.

  Swapped. Materialscientist (talk) 00:33, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• While we are on "Troughman", I am not convinced that the reference supports the hook. The hook states "Troughman is mythically famous in Sydney", but the article includes caveats: "According to Robert Reynolds by the early 2000s in the Sydney gay community "Troughman has become a cultural icon, an almost mythical figure," and that Troughman was particularly famous for his role in the Sydney Mardi Gras parties". Maybe the hook should indicate the mythic fame is within the gay community, and I suspect maybe even within a subset of it, the community attracted to his watersports paraphilia.

  Valid, but I won't accentuate on gay community - the hook does not need to explain all details (the article is actually marginable notable, IMO). Materialscientist (talk) 00:33, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• Prep Area 1 has as its final hook: "that politician James R. Lewis was involved in plans to build a laser gun "designed to blind people", sell it to a Guatemalan colonel, and use the proceeds to build a laetrile factory in South America?" The source, a 1979 newspaper (according to the article describing a 1980 event), states that "The gun, which was to have the capability to blind people, was going to be built in Wisconsin and sold to a Guatemalan Colonel. They money was to have been used to build a Laetrile plant in South America." Issues:
  1. Is this hook too close a paraphrase of the source?
  2. The quotation "designed to blind people" in the hook isn't actually a quotation of the source.
  3. Laetrile is a chemical, so I'm not sure factory is actually a synonym for plant in this case.

I think a modified hook that actually indicates what laetrile is might be better in any case. Laetrile was promoted as a cancer cure, but is now known as an example of quackery. A 1979 journal article titled "Laetrile: the cult of cyanide. Promoting poison for profit" shows this was controversial at the time. I suggest the article be checked for paraphrasing issues, the quote be removed from the article and the hook, laetrile be covered more in the article, and an alternate hook be used. Perhaps something like:

• ... that politician James R. Lewis was convicted for lying about his role in a scheme to sell a laser-gun and use the money to fund a plant to manufacture laetrile, an ineffective claimed cancer cure that it is now known can cause cyanide poisoning?

  Need 3rd opinion here (as I am inclined to return the hook to T:TDYK) - the person is alive, and we do have a specific rule on avoiding BLP issues. Opinions? Materialscientist (talk) 23:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

  Materialscientist, I have had a hook sent back when it deemed a possible attack. The hook was about a guy becoming the first ever to fail drug tests in a certain organisation. I didn't put the hook up to attack him (I was a fan of the guy), but felt it particularly relevant. An alternative of "he failed the test, but returned successfully" was finally passed. I think the main thing to avoid anything that could be construed as an attack. Paralympiakos (talk) 23:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

  The hook originally was much, much longer and did include the part about his conviction. I chopped off the first part of the hook for length, intentionally omitting what seemed to me as a negative BLP issue, and including just the last part, which seemed "hookiest" anyways. I had added an online source to the article because the story seemed so outlandish. There was an offline source following the information included in the original hook, and presumably the quotation came from that source. But I've just added another source which includes the quotation. I removed the incorrect 1980 and added 1979 as the year of his guilty plea. I didn't think the hook in Prep was too close a paraphrase to the source (note that I did not write it; I merely chopped off the first part), but it could certainly be reworded a bit if others think so. Hooks are intended to, well, hook people, and I personally don't think we need to include more laetrile information in the hook. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 00:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

  The original hook seemed such close paraphrasing that I check the whole article for copyvio (couldn't find any). I would go with a shorter hook like "...that Wisconsin politician James R. Lewis tried to manufacture a laser gun for sale to the Guatamalan military." Physchim62 (talk) 11:43, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

  The hook is much more interesting with all of the original facts. How about:

  ... that politician James R. Lewis was involved in plans to sell a laser gun "designed to blind people" to a Guatemalan colonel in order to finance the construction of a South American laetrile plant?

  (Note: the hook is currently in Queue 3.) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• In Prep area 2, the Microsoft / Catholic church hook strikes me as a last slot hook, much more suitable than the drawn out death of someone from a botched execution.

  Swapped. Materialscientist (talk) 23:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

• We presently have two empty queue slots. Thank you to those who have helped tack up the slack left by Rlevse's departure, but we are still running behind. I know the demotivating effects of the current furore, but it would be great to see the project keep pulling together and weather the storm. EdChem (talk) 23:17, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

One or two empty queue slots aren't necessarily a problem. When I first got involved with DYK, there was only one queue, so a steady rate of production was critically important. Now that we have 6 queue slots and 4 prep area slots, there's a fair amount of flexibility. --Orlady (talk) 20:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• Wasn't aware of the last hook, quirky suggestion (not that I composed that prep area, mind). I would pick up the slack, as I've done in the prep areas, but I'm not an admin, so I don't have the permission. Would be nice to see an admin help out. Paralympiakos (talk) 23:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

  By the way, Paralympiakos, I hope I'm not stepping on your toes here, but I've approved a number of hooks you've commented on where it's been unclear whether or not you have objections to the hook or article. Can you use the symbols (, , etc.) when you review to indicate whether or not there's a problem? Some of the noms are getting confused what the status of their nomination is. 28bytes (talk) 00:57, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

That's fine by me. Thanks for the help then 28bytes. I'd forgotten about the symbols as I'm not so much of a reviewer. I'm just picking up a small amount of the duty left by Rlevse, in the prep filling. I would say that a question is slightly self-explanatory, but I'll definitely keep the symbols in mind, in the future! I'm still learning about this project, so bear with me! :S Paralympiakos (talk) 01:49, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Paralympiakos. I definitely appreciate your work here; reviewing can be a pretty thankless task. 28bytes (talk) 01:56, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your input and consideration. Maybe collegiality in this place isn't doomed. :) EdChem (talk) 01:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Swap leads from Queues 2 and 3?

If the hooks in Queues 2 and 3 were swapped, both would be featured at times more likely to meet with an interested audience, i.e., the English church during English daytime and the American football hook during American daytime. Cbl62 (talk) 02:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I hesitated to ask, but Christiane Kohl in the middle of the night in Europe is perhaps not the perfect timing, could be later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Good suggestion, Cbl62. I swapped those hooks as suggested. I also swapped some other hooks, as there were two hooks about the Canadian Northwest Territories side-by-side! Interest in Christiane Kohl is not so geographically restricted as English churches and American college football, and her hook will run from 500 to 1100 in most of Europe, so I don't see a particular call for switching it out. --Orlady (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't ask if so, but read the start of q2 at 11pm London, that is midnight in Frankfurt where she had a premiere last Sunday. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:52, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

(???) It looks to me like queue 2 goes up at 06:00 AM in London. Are we seeing different versions of the schedule? --Orlady (talk) 17:12, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

You are right, sorry. I was (too) used to seeing London left and didn't realize that the pattern changed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Picking up the slack

We lost a rather valuable participant in User:Rlevse, an admin who took on a tremendous amount of the burden of reviewing and approving hooks, setting up the prep areas and migrating hooks as needed. The circumstances of Rlevse's retirement and the pressure of criticism for what goes on at DYK is rather unfortunate. Hopefully, the departure is just a much-needed wikibreak and not permanent. Unless (and until) Rlevse returns, we all need to pick up the slack to keep the process running. There is a substantial backlog of hooks to be approved and that should probably be our focus in the short term. Thanks to everyone for their contributions and efforts! Alansohn (talk) 02:53, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. (And Alansohn, thanks for your continued, tireless efforts in this project as well.) 28bytes (talk) 03:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

This project has a history of not backing up and protecting its own. Rlevse is just another casualty, sad to say.--King Bedford I 04:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Alansohn. I spent this evening reviewing hooks instead of working on content. Will try to periodically do so. If we all help, we should be fine. Very sorry to see Rlevse go. Cbl62 (talk) 06:24, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I've also become more engaged with DYK in recent days -- after months when I largely ignored it, mainly because there seemed to be plenty of volunteers working here. --Orlady (talk) 15:33, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to get involved with DYK. Should non-admins put together the update, or leave that to admins and just do reviews. DC T•C 16:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• Non-admins can put together updates in the Prep Areas. cmadler (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Many hands make light work, so additional involvement is welcome. Non-admins can assemble queues in the prep areas, but I think the best way to learn the ropes is to start out by doing reviews of proposed hooks. First step, of course, is to get acquainted with the DYK rules, both by reading them and by following some of the review discussions on T:TDYK. --Orlady (talk) 16:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I'll definitely chip in as time allows. DC T•C 16:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Question re Four Price

Interesting issue in connection with Billy Hathorn's nom of Four Price. It appears he (under user name Bhathorn) created the article on conservapedia in July 2010. The link is http://www.conservapedia.com/Four_Price . CorenSearchBot picked it up as a copyvio. He has now copied the article (his own) verbatim onto Misplaced Pages. Not sure how that fits with DYK "new" content requirements and copyvio issues. Thoughts? Cbl62 (talk) 06:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'd say that, based on your description, it meets the DYK requirement of "new" content. We regularly allow content that's been translated from a foreign-language-Misplaced Pages, for example. And if it can be confirmed that the contributor here is the same person as the contributor at Conservapedia, there is not a copyvio issue; since copyright is owned by the creator, a person can contribute (license) their content to multiple websites/organizations if they wish. Actually, looking a little further, Conservapedia's copyright statement says "Conservapedia grants a non-exclusive license to you to use any of the content (other than images) on this site with or without attribution." So even if it can't be confirmed that it's the same contributor, it's still not a copyvio, since Conservapedia say's it's OK. cmadler (talk) 11:30, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Higher standards for sourcing

There has been a lot of discussion about modifying the DYK process to reduce the likelihood that problematic content will slip through to the Main Page, including:

1. Reducing the number of hooks which are promoted per day;
2. Replacing a certain percentage of DYK hooks with hooks from GAs;
3. Tracking which editors review and approve hooks;
4. Requiring DYK nominators to become reviewers;
5. Imposing a lottery system which gradually selects all eligible hooks;
6. Imposing a lottery system which selects a few hooks to be featured and rejects the rest; and
7. Removing or changing the 5-day deadline.

I think some suggestions should be implemented (reducing output, improving transparency, extending the 5-day deadline), some should be considered (featuring GAs), and some should be rejected (requiring DYK nominators to be reviewers, imposing a lottery system which rejects all but a few eligible hooks).

One suggestion which I have not seen (and please feel free to hurl fish my way if I just missed it) is to raise the sourcing standards for DYK articles. For instance, the current criteria require that the hook must be cited, but impose the less-stringent requirement of "the article in general should use inline, cited sources" for the rest of an article.

Why do we not require that all (or almost all) content in an article, not just the hook, must be attributed to reliable sources? This way, an article would need to undergo a much more thorough review before a hook was approved. A change of this type would have two effects:

1. It would increase the time needed to review a proposed DYK hook; and
2. It would reduce the number of articles which pass the minimum selection criteria.

This, in combination with other changes (such as reduced daily output and an extended deadline), would allow a balance to be achieved, wherein fewer, but better, articles are featured. -- Black Falcon 20:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

There are many suggestions out there for reducing output, and I think that is the first thing DYK should do (by whatever means, except just building up a backlog). None of the other options for improving scritiny of DYK nominations will work with the current throughput, much less with the idea that the throughput must be at the current rate because of the input rate. Physchim62 (talk) 20:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Upping the reliable source requirements is a good first step,and increasing the criteria can help in reducing close paraphrasing (which has been plaguing DYK, per SandyGeorgia's findings). Using multiple sources forces the editor to synthesise his ideas and think in his own words. I fully support the proposal. --hkr Laozi speak 21:46, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

While the rule says "should", a lack of citations on paragraphs, charts and sections, etc. is brought up in reviews. The wording should be stronger in that particular rule.--NortyNort (Holla) 21:59, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Enforcement is entirely dependent on the reviewer, some reviewers are very strict about it, others only check the hook. But that brings up another point, even if the wording/criteria changes, would any of the reviewers follow it? And will anyone check to be sure? Which brings up the workload problem again...--hkr Laozi speak 22:37, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with Laozi that increasing the source requirement would reduce "close paraphrasing". All it would do is make it more difficult to find "close paraphrasing" where it exists: more sources to check = more work for reviewers; and there is still no idea of how to cut down the number of articles to be reviewed... Physchim62 (talk) 22:10, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, what would you propose?--hkr Laozi speak 22:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, points 1–7 above as long as you can come up with a way of reducing output! Everyone here knows my preferred method of reducing output, fine: but it's not the only one. Physchim62 (talk) 22:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

That's the conundrum isn't it? We have to reduce the output to reduce the workload, by increasing the criteria or rejecting more hooks. (even with rejecting mundane hooks, you need multiple people to do it objectively). But doing so increases workload and defeats the purpose. So it's best to address the problem that started the entire discussion, plagiarism. And yet, as you've pointed out, the solution also increases the workload, which makes the situation worse. I guess the only realistic way to reduce the workload is to have more reviewers, which would make solution 4 appealing. Unless there's another method? --hkr Laozi speak 22:53, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it takes far less time to challenge a hook than to refuse an entire article, although obviously you need to factor in the time for discussion, and the multiple editors involved. We might not all agree on the proportion, but some hooks which appear at present are really pretty mundane. The click-through rates speak for themselves: some hooks interest our readers, but the vast majority don't. Physchim62 (talk) 23:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, if the stricter criteria include more options for speedy rejection, then it may become easier to challenge proposed hooks and articles. A poorly written or poorly sourced article with a perfectly-cited hook would be more difficult to challenge under the current guideline than if the minimum criteria for articles were raised. For example, one can judge fairly quickly whether a short article is well-written (not the "engaging, even brilliant" prose requirement of WP:FA) or contains inline citations from multiple sources. The most time-consuming part will be attempting to verify that the content of the article is actually supported by its citations (and is not plagiarized), but this is also the most important. -- Black Falcon 01:22, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course speedy rejection is the key. Reviewers should look at the hook first, before the article. Why? because that's what our readers do. If the hook is lazy, the article is likely to be lazy as well, so why waste time on it? Well, you can if you want, nobody's stopping you, especially if it's a new user... but why can't I say "I think this hook is really too mundane because XXXX" and note that in the review, so that other reviewers might think twice before starting a review on the whole article? I cannot do that at the moment, I would be (quite rightly) accused of disrupting Misplaced Pages to prove a point. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Whether a particular hook is mundane is a subjective determination. Mundanity could be argued for virtually every hook, and there is no good way to resolve disagreements precisely because the determination is subjective. You may think a particular hook is interesting and I may think it is more boring than watching mold grow in real-time, or vice versa, and neither one of us would be "right" or "wrong". By the way, I do not think it would be wrong to point out that certain hooks are mundane because they state something that is obvious or well-known (e.g., "... that France is located in Europe?"); however, I don't think we should label hooks as boring due to facts about certain topics being subjectively uninteresting. -- Black Falcon 02:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree that DYK shouldn't label topics as "boring", and should aim to cover as wide a range of subjects as possible. Do you think DYK does that at the minute, when it it is repeatedly featuring "cooky-cutter" articles on a single topic over repeated sections? I don't wish to knock the articles, which are undoudtedly encyclopedic, but is it not too much to ask their authors to choose only the most interesting one (or two, or three) to put onto the Main Page? A little bit of self-selection, perhaps? "Interesting" is subjective, of course, but that is no reason to run away from it. Still, it's opposite, "mundane", is much easier to justify for a given hook, whatever its subject. Physchim62 (talk) 02:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I sympathize, and I think that multi-article hooks can effectively address the "cookie-cutter articles" issue. However, the five-day deadline can make multi-article nominations quite difficult to achieve. It can be difficult to write two or more DYK-quality articles within a five-day period when one has other time commitments (on or off Misplaced Pages). -- Black Falcon 03:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Current rule

FYI, we do have a stronger rule in place; D2 says "a rule of thumb is one inline citation per paragraph". Shubinator (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• I believe that this suggestion will have a bigger and more positive impact on improving DYK than all of the others combined. Increasing quality requirements will minimize, if not eliminate, all of the issues that have been brought up. I would suggest expanding on this by including 3 of the 6 GA criteria, it should be required that the entire article be:

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct; and

(b) it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

2. Factually accurate and verifiable:

(a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;

(b) it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; and

(c) it contains no original research.

3. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias. (this is already in place)

J04n(talk page) 00:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

And how do you plan to review all the 25–35 submissions a day aginst those worthy goals? Physchim62 (talk) 00:29, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, my assumption, and yes it is just an assumption, is that with stricter requirements there will be fewer submissions. If folks with more DYK experience than me (which is probably everyone reading this) feel my assumption is faulty then so be it. J04n(talk page) 00:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

It's nice to see the issue of the quality of the articles being addressed, and not just the hooks. Both are important, but asking that the articles appearing on the main page are also "well-written", "factually accurate and verifiable", and "neutral" seems somewhat obvious. We are already asking essentially the same for the hooks. Before asking "how can so many articles possibly be reviewed?", we should first answer the question "should main page-linked articles meet this minimal standard?" I say yes, with the qualification that they don't need to be "well-written" all the way up to GA standard. First Light (talk) 05:18, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Early life of Néstor Kirchner. Is this the sort of stuff we'd like to see on our main page? No offence to the author! I approved the article because it meets our current standards, but "...by the end of the XIX century, during the big immigrations waves of the time... he developed a mail friendship with a croatian Chilean..." - I think there should be at least a little more stringency re. quality. Arctic Night 12:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I would have at least delayed that article until it could get a quick copyediting (not that it needs to be perfect, but I agree that it should be better than that article), and I know this has been done before. If you need to cite a DYK rule in such a case, there's always D13. cmadler (talk) 13:07, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Rule D7 is also relevant - something so much in need of a copy edit appears to me to be unfinished / a work in progress. EdChem (talk) 13:59, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If there were additional article rules for "well-written", "factually accurate", and "neutral", then it would actually make the reviewers' job easier and quicker. Having such a checklist, where an article could be rejected for those specific reasons, would be helpful to reviewers. It would also help if prospective reviewers were first sent to those guidelines/rules—the current approach is not even a suggestion: "For a more detailed discussion of the DYK rules and review process see the additional rules." First Light (talk) 14:35, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know that I'd argue for "well-written" as the minimum standard for DYK, but I would support a minimum standard of "not rife with grammar errors, misspellings, etc." cmadler (talk) 14:56, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been think for a while that we need to develop a set of guidelines for reviewers that would also be a useful tool for editors. It would help us to get more consistency in reviews. However, it could be misused if it became a checklist that meant anything not explicitly mentioned is not something that can be considered by a reviewer. EdChem (talk) 15:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, reviewers and editors need better guidance, and a procedure to follow. It doesn't have to be a checklist. The quality of hooks and articles, and the reviews of both, would improve. First Light (talk) 16:22, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Queues 1 and 6

It has been a while since I last uploaded from prep to queues. I have done that tonight with queues 1 and 6. I think I did it all OK, including image protection. But it would be good if another admin can double-check to make sure I didn't muck it up. Cbl62 (talk) 03:18, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Moving from prep to queue, if your own hook is in the prep?

I try to avoid this, but rarely I overlook a set once in a while. Here is the scenario:

1. An editor (in this case myself for sake of case study) nominates hook at T:TDYK suggestions page.
2. A 2nd editor reviews the hook and article, and marks it as satisfying the DYK criteria.
3. A 3rd editor moves the hook from the T:TDYK suggestions page, to one of the "prep" pages, example, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1
4. An admin, in this case, the same editor that originally nominated the hook, moves the now full set of hooks from the "prep" page, to an empty "queue" page, example, Template:Did you know/Queue/1.

• Question: Is it okay for an admin to move a set of hooks full from a "prep" page, to a "queue" page (if one of their nominated hooks was contained within that prep page), provided of course, that the hook was reviewed by a different editor, and moved to a queue by a different editor?

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 06:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

This happens from time to time (e.g. with Cbl above), and IMHO it is Ok as long as you don't make non-trivial changes to your hook (text, changing lead/nonlead status and such). Materialscientist (talk) 06:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't count as a conflict of interest, as the movement from prep to queue is pretty much a technical matter and not an editorial one; it would only be problematic if an admin abused their technical ability to give their hook some sort of advantage, such as greater prominence on the page, or substantive changes to the hook as not already approved. But the mere technical matter of moving the text from one page to another doesn't seem to be a problem for admins who happen to have hooks in the queue. --Jayron32 06:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks very much for your input! ;) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 12:31, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree in principle - the transfer is the final formal check that the update is main page ready and so I think that it is desirable for this "signing off" to be done by someone who has no nomination in the update. Particularly with inexperienced contributors preparing sets, the administrator who does this check should be checking for malformed updates, complete credits, image protection, conflict of interest in set preparation, etc. Cirt, I don't think current practice frowns on your action, but I think it should at least be discouraged. EdChem (talk) 14:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

A side question to this. I've made up the prep areas a few times now. Would it be considered a COI if I move my own (joint) hook - that had the DYKtick - to the prep area? I would never move an unticked one, even though I'm fairly sure it's ready, but would people complain about the above situation? Paralympiakos (talk) 14:08, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• I don't have much opposition to the situation described above by Cirt, but I'd be a little concerned about an editor putting their own hook -- even if it's been approved -- into the prep area. I can imagine situations where it would be OK, but they're all fairly far-fetched, so realistically, I'd say don't do what Paralympiakos described. cmadler (talk) 14:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Placing hooks into the prep areas and moving a formed set of updates into the queues strike me as both processes where conflict of interest should be avoided. I would not take either of these actions on a hook where I was an editor, nominator, or reviewer – not only because of conflict of interest issues but also because it is desirable to have more editors consider each hook as it increases the chances of issues being raised earlier. Others may (reasonably) have different standards but I think we should (as a project) have a clear statement of what is acceptable "involvement" in this regard. EdChem (talk) 15:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Physchim's first law of chemical safety: it's always the point you didn't put on your checklist that makes your reaction explode. Physchim62 (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

'Hook' parameter

This isn't coming up in the credits given to creators/expanders/nominators in the user talk template. I oppose the idea myself, but if we're going to implement it, we should make sure the hook line comes up correctly when placed on a user talk page! See this example. Arctic Night 12:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Fixed, sorry about that. On the concept itself, pitch in at the discussion above at #Get the facts straight. I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other; it's up to you guys to decide what you want. Shubinator (talk) 15:54, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The DYK Hall of Lame

As I pointed out above, there is a desperate need to (1) present fewer DYKs, with a higher benchmark of interest; and (2) include enough information to make the hooks meaningful. There seems to be a culture of reverse engineering from new articles that ends up with alarmingly bad hooks. Having read through a target article, DYK editors are too often seduced by their familiarity with its contents into thinking that a very brief hook will be a stand-alone—interesting, funny, outrageous, quizzical, incongruous—any of these will do, but must be tested for such. Most of the DYKs from two sets I happened upon over the past three days need to be either trashed or expanded. There is too little empathy for the reader who has not yet read the article in question; and there is no awareness that an effective hook has to function, in certain respects, as a stand-alone.

DYK Hall of Lame, Wednesday 3 November

• that the 1964 BSA A65 Rocket motorcycle had a top speed of 108 mph and was sold as the fastest motorcycle being produced by BSA?
• that Norwegian folk singer Jack Berntsen had a cultural prize named after him?
• that between 1933 and 1935, American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer Walter Roland recorded around fifty songs for Banner Records?
• that Empire Conveyor was the only ship sunk by U-122?

DYK Hall of Lame, Friday 5 November

• at M-1 Global's Challenge XXI event, Artiom Damkovsky defeated Mairbek Taisumov to become their inaugural Lightweight MMA Champion and Guram Gugenishvili defeated Kenny Garner (who was replacing the injured Maxim Grishin) for their inaugural Heavyweight Championship?
• Emery Point Light, an active lighthouse at Larrakeyah Barracks, near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, was the only navigational aid to remain functional in the path of Cyclone Tracy?
• various authors speculate that the Byzantine aristocratic Phokas family are of Arab, ancient Roman, Armenian or Georgian origin?

Examples of possibilities that are allowed to fall flat:

The James R. Lewis DYK has potential, for example, but it falls flat as a stand-alone when you get to "laetrile" factory, since you have to divert to that link (not the James R. Lewis links) to "get it".

Gary Clayton Anderson ... that one works.

George Tuccaro sort of works, I guess.

Myrna Sharlow would work if we knew that she was a dud singer—that would be gossip-worthy; but was she? It gives no indication.

It is astounding that nearly a quarter of the main page has been taken up with what is mostly lily-livered dross. Strong directorship is required to encourage, mentor, train the writers, to act as a filter, and to ensure that there's an adequate spread of topics (there isn't in the samples I've taken). Tony (talk) 15:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Any article (and, by extension, any hook) that is featured on DYK should fit into a section entitled "Did you know?". ITN doesn't post any stories which are not "In the news"; OTD does not feature anything which wouldn't fall under the heading "On this day". If editors are saying "ah, but this is a really good new article, it deserves a spot on DYK", they are abusing their Main Page space, which is for readers and not for editors. Physchim62 (talk) 15:51, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

If the tone weren't quite so nasty, this could become a productive discussion aimed at helping DYK contributors improve.
Tony's first example under 5 November ("M-1 Global's Challenge XXI event") is a mess because of contributors whose goal was maximizing the number of articles in one hook (a Misplaced Pages contributors' parlor trick), rather than making the hook interesting. DYK veterans have learned that shorter is better. Multi-article hooks can work well when the multiple topics fit together naturally, but all too often they collapse under the weight of too many links. --Orlady (talk) 15:55, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

So that stuff is getting through, but killing 60 deer in two weeks is apparently not interesting enough? That goes to show, different strokes... (on a related note, if anybody would care to take a look - the original reviewer doesn't want to get involved - that would be much appreciated!) Arctic Night 16:03, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

That article and hook haven't been rejected from DYK; they are still under discussion. Anyway, the big issue with the hook wasn't so much one reviewer's view that it's boring, as that it described as fact something that was merely an unprovable boast. (That's the kind of quality control that DYK reviewers routinely provide.) Furthermore, there are suggestions made several days earlier than yours that haven't been reviewed at all -- probably because reviewers have been diverted here, and are busy discussing the review process instead of reviewing things. --Orlady (talk) 17:09, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

It is sad to see that people won't accept that world championship-determining bouts in mixed martial arts might not be interesting to some readers. It is sadder that the actual history - a topic of discussion on this page in the last week or so - is forgotten. The hook was originally intended for an October 28 appearance, to coincide with the day both championship bouts was to take place. When it was reviewed too late for that date to be possible, redrafting taking into account the results was needed. By the way, to those whose agenda is just to criticise the DYK project, don't imagine that what you are doing here is being mistaken for anything constructive. EdChem (talk) 16:06, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I assume, Tony, that you are putting yourself up for the "directorship" you proposed? If so, I won't be working for you. The Interior(Talk) 16:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

←No thanks. But there's gotta be someone who has the skills and personality to do it. Raul, Sandy, Karanacs and the team do the FAC process; FLC has a directorship. TFA is determined on very strict criteria by Raul. The Signpost has a Managing Editors in HaeB. But this process is a dog's breakfast and needs some leadership, at least until it's on a proper footing.

The usual pattern when other people come in and criticise a process on WP is that the regulars take up arms in resentment. Then, when they see that the critics aren't going to slink away after a few days or weeks, they gradually recognise the advantages of reform. I'm quite willing to sit this one out until we get to stage 2 and beyond.

BTW, the "M-1 Global's Challenge XXI event," ... who's the target readership? Because no one else will know WTF it's referring to. This is a comlete failure to consider the broad readership on the main page. A few extra words might do the trick, if it were interesting enough in the first place. Convince me. Tony (talk) 16:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT. Go to the suggestions page, find a hook you think is bad for whatever reason, and suggest a better one. 28bytes (talk) 16:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, FAC is an excellent example – of what not to do. I've been complaining about "featured crap" for even longer than I've been complaining about "Did you care?". FAC has shown itself incapable of picking up not just copyvio, but also BLP, encyclopedic style and even basic English grammar problems, all because it has let itself be diverted from its original purpose into a process of providing Smarties for the regulars. DYK doesn't need some sort of Übermanager, simply to concentrate on trying to provide a reasonable amount of Main Page content for our readers. Physchim62 (talk) 16:40, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

e/c To 28bytes: The fix that Tony1 is suggesting is to the overall process, not to individual hooks. When the process is working correctly, then the overall quality of hooks and articles on the main page will improve. Telling someone to stop talking about process and start fixing individual hooks is not very productive to this discussion. First Light (talk) 16:45, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

All haranguing about proposals to completely revamp DYK definitely has diverted attention from the ongoing work of running the process. --Orlady (talk) 17:09, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe that's because it's working over-capacity. If there's trouble running DYK because of all the criticism, why not cut down to 12-hour updates? Or 24-hour updates? There's plenty of material in the queue that has been approved by the current processes and so is presumably no worse than the stuff going up every six hours at present. Physchim62 (talk) 17:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I normally put forward decent hooks. They get rejected though for being "too offensive". Christopher Connor (talk) 18:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

What's the point of DYK?

I see a lot of attempts at solutions above. (Some ideas better than others - but that's how things go when we're trying to hash out what to do.)

But I think the first step should be to decide why we should have DYK. Then once we've agreed upon that, then build upon that in what the solutions should be.

Though this may seem obvious to many who are contributing on this page, the recent discussions elsewhere to scrap DYK suggests that perhaps it isn't as obvious as one might think.

All I seem to find on the whole of WP:DYK is:

"This serves as a way to thank editors who create new content, encourages editors to contribute to and improve articles and the encyclopedia, and brings new and expanded articles to the attention of readers who view the Main Page."

So do we agree that this should be the 3 fold purpose of DYK? - jc37 17:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

New articles only?

Taking just the first section: "This serves as a way to thank editors who create new content..."

Why is it important for DYK to focus on new articles? Especially at this point where it's often said that Misplaced Pages is starting to have issues with upkeep on its existing articles?

And further, doesn't this go against WP:SS, which suggests that some content is better added to existing articles than to create "new" articles?

In other words, why is there a prejudice against new content that it's only DYK-worthy if it's divided into a new article (something that's merely a question of the technology; the way Misplaced Pages presents information).

I'm not being "snarky" or whatever tone might be applied to my questions, as has to some above. I genuinely would like to know what you all think. - jc37 17:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

• Not so. This is exactly why a fivefold expansion in an existing article also qualifies for DYK. cmadler (talk) 18:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

What type of data should be in a DYK?

There's many calls for "mundane" information to be excised. But I'm not sure how that can be done and not be really arbitrarily subjective.

Ignoring the WP:DYK page for a moment, it would seem to me that what the average person would expect to see in a DYK, mostly fall into two categories:

• "records", like biggest, smallest, tallest, etc. (Even second tallest, etc.)
• And juxtaposition; that is, information which one might not have guessed (like the "twist" in the punch line of a joke". Knowing that some person famed for politics did something that might not have been expected by someone in the field of politics. (No infidelity jokes here, if you please : ) Or a famed Nobel laureate for physics who was a life long reader of comic books.

If we can start there, I think we would be able to eliminate most of the "Did you know France is in Europe" type DYKs.

Are there any other kinds that anyone can think of? (Not that we need to be all inclusive, obviously WP:IAR can apply whenever needed.) - jc37 17:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we necessarily need to include all the mundane details in the hook. I keep seeing requests to add dates and locations and other stuff when this is usually not important for the hook. They put me off so I imagine they might put readers off. Also increases the length. Just the important facts of the hook should be included. Christopher Connor (talk) 18:43, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

1. m:Edits by project and country of origin

• Misplaced Pages pages with to-do lists