Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 37

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Archive 30

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Archive 35

A limit to the number of articles used in one hook?

Hey everyone, I was wondering if we should think about implementing a limit to the amount of articles that could be used in a single DYK hook, I have no objection to having a double or even a triple hook, but with the shortage of hooks that we've been having, I think having 5 article hook is a little much especially considering the hook shortage we've been having ever sense we upped the amount of hooks per update to 8. Does anyone think we should cap the amount of articles allowed in a hook and require any other articles to get there own hooks? Or should we just leave it to the discretion of the user who is approving the hook? Thoughts? All the Best, --Mifter (talk) 00:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

My hooks tend to be 4+. Its easier to list a series of hooks that are thematically the same, especially when you create a list and build new pages to fill out the list. If you relax the rules some, you can get more hooks in that way. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:03, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe that no such rule is needed and would be opposed to adding it. I see nothing problematic about 5 (or more) related articles included in a hook. If there's a hook shortage we should think of ways to reward other types of new content, perhaps such as extensively cleaned up/rewritten from scratch articles. --JayHenry (talk) 01:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't have a big problem with lots of hooks. Especially when they're closely related, in usual circumstances it's probably better to get them all out in one fell swoop than to give the reader several updates in a row with the same stuff. When there's a shortage of hooks, we can always lengthen the interval between updates. In my experience, it seems that DYK reviewers have encouraged combined hooks where possible. Of course, from a technical standpoint, the {{DYKsug}} template is currently only built to take 5 articles.... if you want to nominate more than that, you're stuck not using the template, muahahaha! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:29, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the notion of having a limit on the number of articles in a hook. Putting multiple articles in a single hook is a way of reducing the total number of hooks, which historically has been a great help in avoiding backlogs. If it turns out we don't need to do this anymore because of the greater efficiency of the bot, I still see no reason to impose an artificial limit on the number of articles in one hook, because it should already be clear from the rules that there are limits to the acceptable length of a hook in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 04:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Economising is good. I thought I did a favour with a few group hooks to save space for everyone. no limit please. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 05:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

No, I think this limit is unnecessary. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I support no limit to the number of articles in a hook, even if this means that the 200 character hook limit is broken. Royal broil 13:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

For group hooks, we could just say that the lenght of the hooks should not be more than 200 characters as measured by one of the DYK article names and the remainder of the hook. In other words, the measurement is done by removing all the DYK article names except the shortest DYK article name and count that plus the remainder of the hook characters (not that this has ever been an issue). -- Suntag ☼ 20:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the general consensus here that multiple-article DYKs are great. For the hooks, surely just saying "don't worry about 200 if you've got a lot of links" would do it! We can trim it to a reasonable length if need be on a case-by-case basis, without worrying just now over how to count it... Shimgray | talk | 03:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"Case-by-case" is what I love to hear. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

For now, "Unwritten" Rule C3 just says "A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule." Art LaPella (talk) 04:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I've always been using as my guideline for multi-article hooks. Of course, it depends somewhat on the number and length of the article titles (I'm more willing to accept a long hook that has 5 articles than a long hook that has 2; if it's just 2 articles, I would still aim to get it around 150-175 if that's possible without making the hook ridiculous) and on the length of the hook being proposed (no one is ever going to accept a 400-character hook, no matter how interesting it is or how many articles are crammed in...but 230 characters is something we can swing, if the circumstances are right). That's what I love about being human—we can make on-the-spot judgments about stuff like these, and our judgments are generally awesome because the other people working at DYK are smart and know what they're doing, which is awesome. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Humanity is nice, but being inanimate always seems appealing. :) 07:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Wellll... I do sometimes feel like a bot when I'm going through making sure all the refs are after the punctuation.... —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You know there's a script which can do that, right? (User:Gimmetrow/fixRefs.js) Dr pda (talk) 09:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hot damn! I just used it and it was amazing. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey everyone, I just went and created a template for suggesting alternate DYK hooks, I have noticed while moving approved hooks to the next update, that some users have been using the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts, and that templaet adds a whole bunch of extra code to the page that is not needed for alts but is needed for the initial suggestion. And, all the extra code makes it harder to find the approved hook when moving hooks to the next update, so to fix this problem, I went and created {{DYKalt}} which has only the parameters that are needed to suggest DYK alts :), the template responds to the following parameters:

{{DYKalt
 | number            = Number of the ALT hook, defaults to 1
 | hook              = Suggested Alternate hook
 | user              = Your username (The user who suggested the alt hook)
 }}

So this:

{{DYKalt|number=2|hook=Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat?|user=Mifter}}

Would produce this

ALT2: ... that Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat?, Alt suggested by Mifter (talk).

Thoughts? I'm thinking that we should have an admin add the usage of this template to the Editnotice for T:TDYK, but before asking an admin to do that I wanted to make sure everyone was on board with us starting to use this template :). Thanks and All the Best, --Mifter (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with this, other than the possibility of confusing people by having yet another template (I've created a monster!!!). But given that most of the alt suggesting is done by regulars, I think regulars can figure things out after a couple days...I'm not sure if it would be necessary to have it in the edit notice, though, just because the edit notice is already quite large and the instructions for {{DYKsug}} in the editnotice still leave a lot to be desired (which means the edit notice will probably continue to get larger until those instructions are good enough). Actually, I personally am not totally convinced we need the table of DYKtick icons in the edit notice, but I dunno, maybe they are useful for other people—personally, I know them just by habit, but are a lot of you other guys still using that table in the edit notice for copying and pasting? —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I copy from the table of DYKtick icons all the time. I reduced it to two lines at Template:DYKSymbols by keeping the symbols, codes, and the {{subst:DYKproblem|Article}} string and getting rid of the rest. My challege to you, my good friend Politizer, is to reduce the vertical height of Template:DYKsugstrings. : ) -- Suntag ☼ 18:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou Mifter for the suggestion, but I really can't see the point of this. It's easier to just write your own DYK hook than go to the trouble of formatting it this way. And unlike DYKsug, this is not producing output that helps speed the DYK process. Given that this will also have to be documented at the top of the page, it just looks like a case of instruction creep to me. Gatoclass (talk) 06:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It is not a matter of a better template for the alts, people should not be using any template for the alts since there really is no need. {{DYKalt}} doesn't seem address the original problem, that of people using the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts. If people think they need to or should use a template to create the alts, I think we'll end up with people using {{DYKalt}} and the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts, which brings us back to the original problem. -- Suntag ☼ 13:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There isn't any real use for a template for alt hooks. Only thing it does is present it in the same way that the user would, nothing much of a help and only increases the work the user has to do I think. Chamal ^talk 13:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Mitsuyasu Maeno hook in Queue 4

There is a typo in T:DYK/Q4: "Japanesese" instead of "Japanese" (that one is my bad). Also, the nominator asked me if we could restore "ultra-nationalist" to the description of the guy targeted in the kamikaze attack (replacing "multi-millionare Yoshio Kodama" with "multi-millionaire and ultra-nationalists leader Yoshio Kodama")—I personally don't have a preference for either one over the other. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh man, it looks like I just made another typo (which is now in the queue, where I can't fix it): "ultra-nationalists" instead of "ultra-nationalist." Sorry! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it. (Occasionally this mop comes in quite handy.) - Dravecky (talk) 21:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for Christmas 2009

I wish I'd had this idea a week ago when there might have been enough time to pull it off for 2008 but given a year to do research it's completely possible: a single themed queue for Santa's reindeer. There are articles that need creating or expanding at HMS Dasher, Dancer (1991 film), Prancer (film), Vixen, Comet (disambiguation), Cupid (disambiguation), Donner, and Blitzen. Heck, Nils Rudolph could use serious expansion, too. Just something to consider and I needed to write it down now or the idea would be lost for good. - Dravecky (talk) 09:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Long title, piping

I have a long titled article: Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs. Was wondering if it would be alright to pipe it in some obvious way, such as a statement or a speech, or something like that, for my hook. Thoughts?

"...that a 1969 policy statement by Richard Nixon", etc? Shimgray | talk | 10:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that. --IvoShandor (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's been done a lot before, I think it should be fine. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should be alright as long as the hook isn't easter eggish, and it's clearly indicating what the general subject is about (i.e., if it's scientific, where something occured, etc). Piping that type of link, though, typically makes the hook more readable/interesting if you can cut down and summarize a long article title. Jamie^☆S93 15:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I just used Shimgray's example above, easter eggish was my main concern, it never used to be much of a problem but I had noticed the occasional talk page discussion about it so I just wante dto give a heads up here first. The hook and several alts are now on the suggestion page, thanks for the input. --IvoShandor (talk) 15:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Expiring nom needs reviewed

Can someone take a look at this nom? It's been here over 10 days now; I've had misgivings because it uses a single source, but the single source does appear to be pretty reliable, so I'm not totally sure what to do with it, and have been waiting for a second opinion. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:27, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

After the holidays...

I just significantly expanded vascular myelopathy and was about to nominate it for DYK when I noticed only articles relevent to the holidays are being accepted for now. This has kind of bugged me. Are articles not relevent to the holidays created during the holidays going to be acceptable after the holidays for nomination? I'd like this article to feature in DYK but for the meanwhile it can't. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 16:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC) ^{P.S. Sorry for the amount of times I've said the word 'holiday'...}

There's a special list of ones to be featured "seasonally" (as it were), but there's no limitation on normal content - just add it as usual under the relevant date. Shimgray | talk | 16:49, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Crap... my mistake there. Cheers, done now. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK page view data is back -- Big spider scores

Well Henrik's page view counter is back, and of all the great hooks in the past week, the biggest score goes to the Giant huntsman spider with 29,300 DYK views. It now ranks among the all-time best.

Article (DYK date)	Image	DYK views	DYK hook	Nominator
Giant huntsman spider (Dec. 19, 2008)		29,300	... that with a leg-span of 30 centimetres (12 inches), the giant huntsman (pictured) is one of the world's largest spiders?	Bender235 DarkAvenger

Ah, the tool is back - nice! :-) Well, I'm not sure if it's been done already, but if you all need a hand with gathering information of the top-viewed hooks over the past week or so, feel free to leave me a ping and I'd be happy to go through the archives and help look up the hooks through the view counter tool in case there's some data that hasn't been recorded at WP:DYKBEST. Jamie^☆S93 04:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Glad to see the tool back and... dang, it looks like Man v. Food only cracked the 4900 mark and I had such hopes for that one. - Dravecky (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The spider got 29,300 views? That's surprising. OTOH, maybe world record topics bring in the crowds. I'm really liking this tool. This is the second spider article receiving more than 20,000 hits, the first being La Princesse (the mechanicl spider). I think the Main Page hits count is interesting enough to have a regular column at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. Also, we should look into having a redundancy feature so that if the first version goes down, the second picks up. -- Suntag ☼ 14:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If we can get the system to regularly generate data on the in-the-news and this-day segments as well, it'd be *really* interesting - this-day has a fairly broad range of topics too, so is quite comparable. Shimgray | talk | 16:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Inline citations and redundant footnotes

After reading the discussion about the hook for Yes-no question, I think it's worthwhile to gauge consensus on the balance between requiring inline citations vs encouraging redundant footnotes. By redundant footnotes I mean a situation where you have consecutive sentences all sourced to the same reference with a repetitive use of the same footnote. (Like this example) Looking at guidelines like WP:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_present_citations, having a single footnote at the end of a paragraph is clearly an acceptable practice. While no one has the omniscience to know what every reader will think, logic generally dictates that a solitary footnote at the end of the paragraph is the sourced used for the entire paragraph. If there are multiple footnotes then it would stand to reason that the text prior to the footnote, but after the earlier footnote, is what's being sourced.
As a reviewer myself, I am obviously a huge supporter of requiring inline citations for verifying hooks but I don't see any substantial benefit in requiring redundant footnotes. Sometimes a hook utilizes information from multiple lines of text in the paragraph (or article). If consecutive lines of text are sourced to the same footnote, it doesn't aid the reader (or the reviewer) to have consecutive appearances of^[1] the^[1] same^[1] footnote.^[1] If a reviewer can not clearly tell where the reference citation is, I think it is fair to ask for clarification from the nominator. But once clarification is given and verification is complete I think it is rather silly to go ahead and still require a redundant footnote. That's what concerns me with the discussion on the Yes-no question hook. The whole purpose of verifying hooks is to avoid embarrassing error report at WP:ERRORS and inaccurate information on the mainpage. If the hook is verified to a cited reference and there is no disputing facts, then why not let the article appear on DYK? Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 06:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If the purpose of a reference right after the hook sentence is only to make it easier to verify it for Did You Know and not as a permanent record, then the rule should be that the reference should either be immediately after the article's hook sentence (as now), or else the reference should be with the hook at Template talk:Did you know. This could be done with a new Reference field in DYKsug. Art LaPella (talk) 06:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea Art. I think most nominators wouldn't have a problem noting what the references for their hook are. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 06:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

This sounds good. It would only require a small change and would bring benefits in potentially tricky situations. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

See Template_talk:DYKsuggestion/Archive_1#Hookref. The basis for requiring inline citations in hooks is at DYK selection criteria. Also, is this really a problem? People generally understand the need to allow the 3,000,000+ readers of the Main Page to confirm the hook and it is rare that anyone objects to inline citing of the hook fact. Few hook use information from multiple lines of text in a paragraph or article. Rather, most hooks use actual language from the article and additionally provide an inline citation to that language. In the Yes-no question DYK suggestion example, there was no redundant footnote request. That original hook was not verified to a cited reference and the inline citation request by Politizer was an effort to develope an alternate hook since the original hook is not worded well. Sometimes its better to try to initially work with a user on the DYK suggestion page through discussion rather than come out initially and post an objection to the suggested hook. Politizer took the right approach. -- Suntag ☼ 14:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) In the yes-no question discussion, I would have made that recommendation whether or not this was DYK. As I pointed out in the discussion, I can't tell in that instance whether a paragraph with one footnote at the end is supposed to mean X^[1] Y^[1] Z^[1] etc.^[1] , or whether it's supposed to mean X^{[citation needed]} Y^{[citation needed]} Z^{[citation needed]} etc.^[1] I don't require repeating refs when multiple sentences flow into one another (for example, when multiple sentences are following the same stream of logic, reporting the results of an experiment, explaining a fact, etc.), but when three sentences contain three facts that could in theory have come from anywhere, I use three references. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 12:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The usual method is to add a cite at the end of the paragraph to cover the whole thing, and then add citations for individual facts that are likely to be challenged. If the fact is not something that is likely to send people thinking "what the hell?" and it'd backed by the reference at the end of the paragraph, it's not necessary to cite that individually. But the thing here is, some DYK articles don't have a good structure, some don't even have sections. So in something like that it's hard to find where the ref is for a particular piece of information isn't it? So better to have the ref right next to the hook fact I think. It'd be great if we can have the ref linked from the suggestions page itself, as Art suggested. Chamal ^talk 13:33, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree that citations should not need to be repeated if they are provided in a logical place, which generally means at the end of the paragraph (or at the end of the sentence that introduces a list or quotation). However, after a variety of experiences here (notably after an article that I created was eviscerated by a righteous Wikipedian who deleted every insignificant factual item that was not supported by its own independent footnote), I reached the conclusion that in Wikipedia (where subsequent contributors may add or delete content without respecting the relationship between existing content and associated references) it's often better to include extra citations for traceability. Extra citations are not nearly as bad as unverifiable content. --Orlady (talk) 00:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of adding footnotes to DYKsug, it will just complicate things further. In regards to the general question, I think cites need to be as close to the relevant fact as possible, otherwise one really doesn't know whether the cite refers to that particular fact. This can mean redundant cites but users can always delete a cite they think is redundant after the article has had its time on the front page. Gatoclass (talk) 17:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If we're already expecting nominators to submit a hook that they've made sure is referenced, where is the extra work or complication is simply noting what reference is being used? Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 18:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I still don't see what is the benefit of encouraging redundant footnotes if the material is already referenced and cited with a footnote? (Note that I'm working from a good faith assumption that the material used for the hook is, indeed, cited with a footnote in the article just maybe not every line with redundant footnotes) Does poor readability and bad style do anything to increase a reader's faith in Wikipedia? If we are assuming that each of the 3,000,000+ readers of the main page desire to be able to check the sources for every hook featured on DYK, can we not also assume they have the common sense to look at the footnote at the end of the paragraph that the hook is from? One statement jumped out at me, when Suntag states "Few hook use information from multiple lines of text in a paragraph or article." I know that its been a few months since I've been actively reviewing but if this statement is true then that will go a long way towards explaining the dilution in quality of hooks at DYK. Some of the best, most eye catching and informative hooks usually come from utilizing multiple aspects of the article and may be referenced by multiple footnotes. While we should stay vigilant in requiring that the hook material be referenced to an in-line citation, this culture that wants the hook to be drilled down to an EXACT single line from the article with a single footnote is cutting our noses off to spite our faces. And for whose benefit? The 3,000,000+ readers of the main page? The content creators? Or the reviewers? As a reviewer, I would concede that it is easier to "Control-F" to search for the exact wording of the hook and then tick off that there is a little blue footnote immediately next to it. But what is easier for the reviewer, is not necessarily in the best interest of the groups that DYK is designed to served--the readers and the project as a whole. We should be encouraging better habits, better hooks and better articles for the benefit of all. It is infinitely possible to maintain our standards of verification without handcuffing the nominators to dumb down their hook to an exact line from the article or to mandate redundant footnotes. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 18:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not always possible to have a single cite for a hook, because hooks often contain more than one fact that needs to be cited. However, regardless of whether the hook needs one cite or more than one, it's best to have the hook cited as closely as possible to the relevant fact or facts. If that isn't done, reviewers are in the dark as to whether the hook actually has a valid cite or not.

Now for someone like you Agne, who likes to cite things at the end of a paragraph, and who knows the rules well, I might make an exception, but one cannot operate from the assumption that every user who gives a cite at the end of a paragraph intends it to be a cite for the hook fact. I know from experience that many users completely forget to add a cite, or else when they do add a cite, it turns out that it's not actually a cite at all. That's why we need rules about these things. Gatoclass (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The reviewers don't have to be in the dark. If the reference citation is not immediately clear, they can always seek clarification and the nominator can respond in kind. This is actually not a new idea since we've been doing this for quite a while now. But the question then is, after the nominator has responded and clarified the referencing--allowing the hook to be verified by the reviewer--are we still going to mandate a redundant footnote in order for it to be featured? Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 18:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Like Agne, I much prefer hooks that don't derive directly from the words in the article, and that may require multiple sources. However, complex hooks are harder to verify, particularly when they are based on unusually long articles (a couple of weeks ago I reviewed a couple of candidate hooks that were based on a 128K article, and the review was a time-consuming job). When nominating a complex hook, it would be helpful to include a comment to tell the reviewers where in the article to look for the hook fact and sources. --Orlady (talk) 00:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This may be a little late for me to be posting this, but anyway, in response to Art's suggestion that we include a |reference= field in the DYKsug template.... Suntag did float that idea a while back, but we never pursued it, and I wasn't a huge fan of it. I may be more hardline than most other reviewers here about citation, but my way of thinking is, we want the referencing style in the article to be as clear as possible, and in a perfect world we wouldn't need nominators to tell us where the citation is because in a perfect world that would be obvious just from reading the article. (And most WP readers will read only the article, not T:TDYK...and those are the people we're serving, anyway.) My worry was that adding such a field to the template might just encourage nominators to get lazy about referencing in the actual article. That is probably paranoia on my part, but anyway, that was my take on that issue. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 05:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to reiterate, I see no need to relax the rules on this. It's all very well for Agne to talk about reviewers "seeking clarification" from nominators, but we shouldn't need to do so. Nor should hook facts be buried in articles in such a way that determination is difficult. Time is very much of the essence here, it's already a very time-consuming job trying to verify hooks, and expecting reviewers to plough through reams of text, or contact users when they shouldn't have to, is simply unreasonable. Gatoclass (talk) 07:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I must be still missing something here. If the reference after the hook sentence rule is for "most WP readers [who] will read only the article, not T:TDYK...and those are the people we're serving, anyway", then the article's hook sentence should be treated the same as all the other sentences, since these readers haven't even read the hook. Or if the rule is because "expecting reviewers to plough through reams of text, or contact users when they shouldn't have to, is simply unreasonable", then including the reference(s) with the hook would relieve that very burden on the reviewer. The only people who benefit from requiring a reference after the hook sentence (and only the hook sentence) are readers who see the hook, and respond by clicking the article, finding the hook in the article, and clicking the reference to decide if they want to believe the hook. If that is a frequent occurrence, then that is the only reason for the present rule. Yes, a reference(s) with the hook (with or without a new DYKsug field) is an added complication, but at least it's more user-friendly than expecting them to add a reference and then counter-intuitively delete it after the DYK period. Art LaPella (talk) 18:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I usually don't think of this as a DYK-specific thing (which is why I get a funny taste in my mouth when I hear talk of people adding an extra footnote just for DYK and then removing it once it goes off the main page), but as a general style thing that every article should have and that DYK happens to enforce—just like no bare URLs in refs (that's a random example but I think it's relatively parallel). In any article, every fact should have a reference reasonably close to it (no one doubts that; what we're debating here, I think, is how close and how often is "reasonable"), and DYK happens to require that that general guideline is met before a hook is featured. At least, that has been my understanding of things since I started here. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I do think of this as a DYK-specific thing. The rules state: "The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable." I have never read that every sentence in the whole article needs such a reference; only the sentence that verifies the hook. And I believe that is the DYK-specific rule that this discussion is about, not the additional rule that the article in general needs some references. Art LaPella (talk) 20:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a DYK-specific thing we are discussing here - the DYK requirements regarding the hook are a separate issue from the normal Wikipedia policies and guidelines concerning referencing. What we are basically looking for is confirmation that the hook statement itself is accurate. The second issue is that the confirmation should be as transparent as possible, so that reviewers can quickly confirm hooks. I know I probably sounded a little blunt in my previous post on this thread, but really, I can't stress this enough - I have sometimes spent considerable time trying to confirm hooks because users didn't reference the hook clearly enough, and that is time that could obviously be spent doing something more useful. It can take a long time to put an update together if you get several poorly referenced hooks in a row.

As for Art's suggestion that refs are put directly on the Suggestions page, I'm not keen on this idea, even though I've sometimes done it myself, because our other requirement is that the hook statement actually appears in the article, so the article has to be checked anyway and it may make the statement harder to find if it isn't flagged with an accompanying cite. Gatoclass (talk) 05:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Typo alert

Plz could an administrator correct a typo I've just spotted in the pictured hook (the squirrel monkeys) in Queue 4: "fragemented" → "fragmented". Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks BQ! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 09:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK hook having 9-articles

Congrats to Doug Coldwell for his 9 article DYK hook. I guess that would be the present record? -- Suntag ☼ 13:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, what is the record so that I can promptly smash it?--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I created DYK hooks with 5 or more DYK articles to keep track of this. If you know of other hooks that had 5 or more DYK articles, please add them to "DYK hooks with 5 or more DYK articles". -- Suntag ☼ 23:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Length of the hook question

Do the ellipses (...) and the space between them and the word "that" count towards the length of the hook? I sort of assume that they do but would like to make sure. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 14:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... I count "that" and the question mark at the end, but not the "..." Chamal ^talk 14:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Either way, I think some sort of clarification is needed. The reason I asked is that I was looking at a proposed DYK hook whose length, counted from "that", was 200 characters (the official limit), and whose length when counted from "..." was 204. I was contemplating whether to try to shorten it by 4 characters or leave it as is. Nsk92 (talk) 14:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

And what about (pictured) – does that count towards the length of the hook? I've always included it because I feel it consumes space on the Main Page. --Bruce1ee^talk 15:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would count (pictured) too and in fact I thought that (...) should be counted for exactly the same reason. Nsk92 (talk) 15:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

My practice has been to count (pictured) and the question mark but not the ellipsis. Cbl62 (talk) 16:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't count the ellipsis and I usually count the "(pictured)" but I do think it's a little unfair to count the latter. Gatoclass (talk) 17:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

User:Art LaPella/Long hook says "For what it's worth, I don't count the "..." but I do count the "?"." I also count "pictured" just because hook length enforcement is such a repetitive, un-automated task. I haven't tried to settle the question with an Unwritten Rule because I thought arguing over 204 characters or 200 defeats the purpose of the word "about" in "about 200 characters". But the current consensus might be better reflected by removing that word "about". Art LaPella (talk) 18:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Nsk92 (talk) 20:17, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Grammar in Queue 3

The Pennsylvania Route 343 hook in Queue 3 could do with rewording, as it's ungrammatical at the moment. Perhaps "... that Pennsylvania Route 343 is part of the ..."? Thx in advance. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. Gatoclass (talk) 09:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Procopio

The Procopio article is a pretty thoroughly researched piece on California history. It's currently in queue 5 set to hit the main page from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. California time. It would be nice if it could be switched to a queue where it would hit the Main Page while Californians are awake. I wouldn't normally ask, but this article took a lot of time to prepare. Cbl62 (talk) 13:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I've moved it to #1. Let's hope they wake up early in California. :-D --BorgQueen (talk) 16:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, BorgQueen. Cbl62 (talk) 16:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Update late

Are any admins watching this page right now? The update is about 30 minutes late...maybe something happened when BorgQueen and Gatoclass were changing the bot's update intervals? —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 13:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been watching, and just updated manually. I don't think it has anything to do with the timer template (which is the only thing I altered and then reverted), but only the bot creator could come up with a good answer. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Btw, could someone do the credits please? It is the queue 2. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm on it! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Credits done, the queue can be emptied now. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, you are an angel. --BorgQueen (talk) 14:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Just doing what I can to pad my contribs ;). —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 14:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Now's the time to ask BorgQueen to assign you to a good job. Once Wikipedia contains the sum of all human knowledge, it may be revealed that Wikipedia is nothing more than a tool the Borg and all earth individuals and technology, including Wikipedia, will be transformed into Borg. At that time, we'll all be scrambling for decent jobs in the collective. Personally, I don't want to end up in Sanitation duty, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't mind food preparation, however. -- Suntag ☼ 18:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Christmas in DYK-land

There are now about 22 Christmas DYK hooks on the suggestions page -- not yet quite enough to fill all four (?) DYK slots for Christmas day. As the time is getting near, does someone want to volunteer to figure out which queue should be used to start loading with all the DYK goodies from Santa's sleigh? Also, since they are time sensitive, we should probably put a high priority on approving any Christmas hooks that have not yet completed the review process. Cbl62 (talk) 21:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought we decided not to have all Christmas hooks all day, but rather to have a couple Christmas hooks in each update? (Or maybe I'm confusing that discussion with Darwin Day...either way, I personally feel similar about both.) —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of what the prior discussion was. Just raising the question. If 20 of the 22 Christmas hooks were deemed worthy, and we used them over the four Christmas Day update, that would be 5 per update, leaving room for 3 non-Christmas hooks per update. Cbl62 (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

How about this as a proposal -- Spread the 20 Christmas hook over six updates starting with the current Queue 2 which will go live while it's Christmas in the Far East and Australia. That would mean about 3 or 4 Christmas hooks per update and still leave room for non-Christmas hooks? Cbl62 (talk) 01:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

That plan sounds fine to me. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 05:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I just added a Christmas-themed hook on Candy Cane Lane (much more popular than "Candy Ass Lane") to Dec. 24th - sorry for the last minute heads up. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 05:01, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Queues 2 and 3 already got filled but without Christmas hooks. These queues will go live on Christmas so we need to re-adjust. I loaded the Next Update with a mix of Christmas and non-Christmas hooks. f someone could swap the Next update in place of Queue 2 or 3 and save the Queue 2 or 3 hooks for another update, that would be great. Cbl62 (talk) 06:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Probably the easiest way to deal with it is to bump the current Queues 2 and 3 til after Christmas, and swap the Christmas queues in their place. If anyone has a better idea, go for it. Cbl62 (talk) 07:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The queue order can be easily manipulated by altering this. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Who passed...

...this article? They might need a helpful talking to about DYK rules...for one, the grammar is terrible; two, the ref does not even cover the DYK nom (for crying out loud, a Google Books link is even given right there!) -_- Anyway, rant over. Cheers all, Allanon ^{♠The Dark Druid♠} 08:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. This sounds like I am completely angry...and possibly making a personal attack...which I am not and was not trying to do, respectively. The purpose of this was supposed to be a 'heads-up' that someone should help out the person who passed this, not as a hate message. Apologies... Allanon ^{♠The Dark Druid♠} 09:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

That one should never have been passed. I have given it a copyedit, but I had to guess at the meaning in one or two places because the grammar was so mangled. Gatoclass (talk) 13:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.. funny. That article was created and nominated by Piotrus who has a lot of experience in DYK. Maybe he hadn't managed to complete it. But I agree that it shouldn't have been passed at all. Chamal ^talk 13:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The entry was passed by User:Jolly Janner [1], after an initially missing in-line citation had been added. Nsk92 (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the admin that copies hooks from next update to the queue can check the articles a bit (nothing much, just a glance to see if it isn't really terrible) before copying, so that we can avoid things like this in the future? Chamal ^talk 14:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

No, it is not normally the admins responsibility at all. If anything, the person moving the hooks to the next update should double check if possible. However, the guy moving to the next update also shouldn't have to verify it themselves. A once over to check whether the article is still there, in a somewhat usable shape. The people verifying the hook are the people who are meant to be verifying it. In this case, someone made a simple mistake. Mistakes happen. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 22:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with \ / .... 99% of the time the hooks get vetted well and hooks that shouldn't be verified don't get verified; 99% of the hooks that get verified are ones that deserve to be verified. While there might occasionally be an instance where an editor accidentally verifies an article they really shouldn't have (I've done it myself), they happen so rarely that asking Next people to re-review it probably wouldn't have much payoff, and it would exponentially multiply the amount of time it takes them to prepare the next update. I don't think there would be much bang for the buck. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Christmas update status

OK, we've got queues 3, 4, and 5 and the Next Update ready with Christmas hook, plus others mixed in. The next two updates after these should also be a mix of Christmas hooks and others (roughly 4 of each). On Queue 3, if someone can protect the image, I'd appreciate it. I inserted it directly into the Queue without protecting it (I don't know how). Finally, once Queue 1 moves to the Main Page we should direct the bot to skip Queue 2 and go directly to Queue 3, as by that time it will be Christmas in much of the Eastern Hemisphere. Still a few Christmas hooks that need verification, too. Cbl62 (talk) 09:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

We have a new bot on a trial run now. Really convenient. --BorgQueen (talk) 10:08, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The next update has the "(pictured)" with the wrong hook, just fyi. --IvoShandor (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. You're talking about the cookie right? Chamal ^talk 12:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Announcement

Just to let everyone know what is going on, BQ and I have agreed to go to an eight hour cycle over Christmas because it will be Christmas somewhere in the world over the next 48 hours or so, and we only have enough Xmas hooks for six updates. The next update will have the first set of Xmas hooks, and there are three more ready to go, so that means we need to put together two more Xmas updates with 3 Xmas hooks apiece (because there are only six left on the Suggestions page) and then we will have the whole of Xmas covered. BTW, there are two updates in the queue right now with no Xmas hooks but we are just going to bump past those until all the Xmas updates have been featured. Cheers and Merry Christmas everyone! :) Gatoclass (talk) 13:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

All six Christmas updates are now done, and not a single hook about war, weaponry, mayhem, or gratuitous sexual content. Peace! Cbl62 (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Cbl, you've done a good job there :) Gatoclass (talk) 04:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, besides my Christmas in the American Civil War one. ;) BTW, due to being a double hook I didn't include it with the Xmas DYKs, but I do have a hook where one of the highlighted articles is Bethlehem, Indiana, should we need a replacement hook.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 21:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Announcement

I will be taking a holiday trip soon, within next 24 hours, so please take a good care of DYK while I am absent. I will probably take my laptop with me but am not 100 percent sure I will have an Internet access there. I've already told Gatoclass how to change the time interval and I am crossing my fingers and hope that things will go smoothly. I will be back in a week or so. See you next year, guys! --BorgQueen (talk) 15:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Safe journey!--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 15:33, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh NOES. BQ is leaving, now the rest of us will have to get busy!

Just kidding, thanks for all your hard work at DYK thru 2008 BQ, you've earned a good break! Looking forward to your return :) Gatoclass (talk) 06:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Remember Last Night?

Can someone please fix the DYK notice on Talk:Remember Last Night?. Thanks. Otto4711 (talk) 02:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Got it. It looks like the "?" in the article name caused the bot to prematurely end the string when it was gathering text to enter with the template. - Dravecky (talk) 02:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I am awed by your speed. Otto4711 (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Backlog

User:YellowMonkey says on my talk page that we have a backlog. Could anyone confirm? --BorgQueen (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Um, not exactly. Queues 3, 4, and 5 are all empty... Cirt (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

On the DYKT, I think so. That's why I economised the hooks and then added one to each of the queues. And will pad the SA to balance, of course. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

If we indeed have a backlog, we can adjust update cycle rather than lengthening the entire main page. --BorgQueen (talk) 02:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem isn't that there is too many, it is that we aren't verifying them quickly enough. Old hooks get left unverified well into their expiry, while the queues aren't being used to their full capacity. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 02:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, per YellowMonkey's concern, I've shortened the cycle to 5 hours. Let me know if anyone has objections. --BorgQueen (talk) 03:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

There's only 172 hooks total on the Suggestions page, including the Christmas and New Year hooks. So we are actually eating into our hooks again, with only 146 hooks in the main section as opposed to over 170 a few days ago - and many of the current hooks have been challenged. So I see no need at all to accelerate the cycle. Gatoclass (talk) 06:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Granted, I've been out of the loop all day so you should take this with a grain of salt, but AFAIK we have very few verified hooks (I assume 50% because a lot of us are busy and 50% because the events of the past week or two made it not so enjoyable to edit here for a while, for me at least but maybe also for others, which greatly reduced the amount of time I was devoting to checking hooks), and speeding up the updates might make us run out even faster. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, I notice the queue is full so there won't be any more going to the queue for a day or so, but all the same, I don't see much reason to panic yet. We'll have a better idea of where we are at after the Christmas break when all the special hooks are out of the way, that might be a better time to think about boosting the cycle IMO. Gatoclass (talk) 06:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I've reverted it back to six hours. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I definitely had set the timer on 5 hours and I see the latest update was done after 5 hours and 50 minutes. Did someone do something to delay the bot or was it some sort of divine intervention?! --BorgQueen (talk) 09:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was kind of hoping my sixfer hook would not be prematurely relegated so maybe someone was listening :) Gatoclass (talk) 09:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

We're live!

The number of 'Did You Know' hooks currently found in the DYK pipeline is stored here and updated every 30 minutes. Here's the output:

Section	# of Hooks	# Verified
Count of DYK Hooks
February 28	1
March 2
March 12	1
March 14	1
March 19	1
March 24	1
March 25	3
March 30	2
March 31	1
April 1	1
April 2	4	2
April 4	4	1
April 5	3	3
April 6	7	6
April 7	8	7
April 8	7	6
April 9	6	3
April 10	4	3
April 11	1	1
April 12	3	3
April 13	17	12
April 14	7	2
April 15	12	9
April 16	8	6
April 17	10	7
April 18	10	5
April 19	10	6
April 20	11	9
April 21	9	6
April 22	6	1
April 23	7	3
April 24	9	2
April 25	2
Total	177	103
Last updated 07:22, 25 April 2024 UTC Current time is 07:22, 25 April 2024 UTC [refresh]

The timing of the update is controlled at User:WikiStatsBOT/DYKdelay. I just requested that the bot be revised to reflect the number of verified hooks, so that column is empty. If there is some other modification that you think the table should have, please post here. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 18:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Sweet! Is this going to be included in the navbox, or transcluded somewhere prominent?

As for having the bot count verified hooks, I agree that that would be awesome, but it might also get a little complicated...for one thing, some hooks occasionally get multiple

or

(for example, sometimes i get into an EC with someone else verifying and after that i'm like, "ah, screw it, I reviewed it too, so I'll tick it too"...other times someone ticks one of the hooks and someone else ticks an ALT or something)...and, on the other hand, sometimes a hook gets ticked but then people change their minds or start arguing about it, but the tick remains there. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to get the bot to be able to think around all that stuff...it might just be easier to have a disclaimer saying "these numbers might be off by a couple." —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, I like this; hook-verifying activity can be prioritised more clearly and backlogs can be seen before they arrive. This might give me the necessary kick in the behind to get on and do some verifying like I keep meaning to! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 19:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Very impressive tool. Dare I ask -- is there a way we could automate the Best of DYK? To date, BorgQueen and I have been doing it manually, inputting each DYK hook into Henrik's page view counter to see how many hits it got. It's a pretty time-consuming process to do that for roughly 1,000 hooks a month. If the task could be automated, that would be a tremendous time saver. Perhaps a trained bot could even go back through the old archives to check the months of DYK's that BorgQueen and I haven't gotten to yet. Cbl62 (talk) 21:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice, I think this'll be very helpful! Thanks a lot for your work guys. :-) Jamie^☆S93 21:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Great work Suntag! I can't pretend it's been fun adding up all the hooks as I've have to do on a number of occasions lately :)

A couple of suggested improvements however - would it be possible to add a column or two for challenged or rejected hooks - and maybe some extra totals taking these into account? I don't know how you could reliably do this - but then again I'm not sure how you can reliably count the verified hooks either, so it might be possible.

Also, I think it might be useful to have some sort of history where the totals are stored, to see how the number of hooks is trending over time. Gatoclass (talk) 04:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I am the one who actually programmed the bot, so perhaps I am bet suited to answer the questions posed here.

To get the number verified the bot simply counts the # of checks. Yes this is not 100% accurate, but it should be accurate enough. The idea is the give people a quick idea of what needs worked on, so the verified number occasionally being 1-2 high shouldn't matter.
Yes, I could add whatever other stats desired as long as there is a clearly defined way to count them. However, keep in min the table will be transluded to one or more pages and a bigger table might mess up formatting if its put to the right of a TOC or similar. The extra info may or may not be worth making the table bulkier.
What did you have in mind for "some sort of history"? Of course, the complete history is already available in the stat page's history, so what were you desiring?
The "Best of DYK" could probably be completely automated, but I'll need more information on the precise process you'd want the bot to follow.

--ThaddeusB (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

FYI, the Bot's trial period is complete so the next update won't occur until after it gains official approval (shouldn't take long). --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Bugged bot

The DYKadminbot seems to have bugged and replaced T:DYK with an empty list [2], skipping queue 2. As I have very little experience with DYK, can someone clueful handle it? --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 22:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, since BorgQueen is absent and the previous set of hooks was getting staler than fruitcake, I've added the hooks from the "lost" queue #2 to the template by hand. I'm quite new at this so things like archiving, credits, and such are a mystery. (But I'm working on it.) Anybody with more DYK experience who wants to jump in, please do so. - Dravecky (talk) 01:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

So it appears that the bot handed out all of the credit on the articles and BorgQueen on all the talk pages so that's taken care of already. The bot's next scheduled update is at midnight Dallas time so if anybody up late on the US west coast or up early on the other side of the Atlantic could make sure the next update goes smoothly, that would be appreciated. (I'll try to be here but I've been up since 4am, so....) - the trying-to-save-Christmas Dravecky (talk) 02:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've manually uploaded an identical copy of the cookie photos and protected per the instructions. I think that's everything for now. (Hope to goodness I'm doing this right.) - Dravecky (talk) 02:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping in and fixing things, Dravecky. If there is a "Barnstar for Saving Christmas" around here somewhere, you've earned it. --Orlady (talk) 04:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

At least no one ruined Christmas. I always ruin Christmas. :-) --IvoShandor (talk) 05:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, the DYKadminBot just did it again.... I've left a note on the bot's creator's usertalkpage. Hope this helps. --PFHLai (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That's it; no Christmas bonus for it.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 06:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked both DYKadminBot and DYKBot until I can look into it (not at home so I couldn't switch them off). So updates will have to be manual. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 12:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've worked out what happened. [3][4] The bot looks for the hooks between  and . Of course the "Next next update" didn't have these tags and so it was easy to replace it when copying the hooks over. My fault as 1) I should have pointed out how important those tags are and 2) the bot should check the tags are there and if they aren't then stop, not blank the template it if can't find them. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 12:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The next two queues have these tags so everything is good to go, no further manual updates should be needed. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 13:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it should be added to the editnotices of the pages not to remove those tags? Chamal ^talk 13:06, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Well done Ameliorate! That was quick work. I just popped back to do a manual upload but thought I'd better check here first, good thing I did because it appears you've saved me the trouble :) Gatoclass (talk) 14:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Um, wait, it appears I spoke too soon. The update hasn't actually updated, it seems to have disappeared into the ether. So it looks like there's still some sort of bug. Gatoclass (talk) 14:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

As the update had been manually done there was no  tag on the template itself and because the bot finds and replaces [...] with the content from the queue it had nothing to replace. I should've thought about that but everything should be good to go now (although I did say that before and it didn't work ...) ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 15:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, we'll see how it goes next time. Thanks for the explanation :) Gatoclass (talk) 16:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK articles that make GA/FA

Suntag and I just thought about the idea of keeping a list of DYK articles that go on to make GA or FA (while keeping our fingers crossed that the result doesn't look embarrassing), and to facilitate keeping track of that Suntag suggested adding |FA= and |GA= parameters to the {{DYKtalk}} template that goes on DYK articles' talk pages...it defaults to "no," but if an article gets promoted you can set it to "yes" and then it shows up in Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are featured articles or Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are good articles). I've written code to add those parameters to the template, but since the template is protected I can't update it; the code is at User:Politizer/Dyktalk if any of you admins want to double-check it and then paste it into Template:Dyktalk—that is, of course, if you guys all think this is an idea worth pursuing.

(Suntag has put in a bot request here for a bot to go through and update those templates in existing DYK articles.) —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Further on the above. The |FA= and |GA= won't change how we presently do things. I don't anticipate anyone in the future actually filling in the |FA= and |GA= for {{DYKtalk}}. Every few months or so, we'll just have the bot run an update. When compared to the overall contributions in Category:Wikipedia good articles and Category:Wikipedia featured articles, the new DYK categories will give DYK some feed back on DYKs part in the GA and FA process. In sum, there's nothing for anyone to do but enjoy the gravy. -- Suntag ☼ 18:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Cool. What a good stream of innovations today! One question to sneak in at this point: could Featured Lists be included as well? Lists with lots of prose in the lead or elsewhere sometimes get featured at DYK, and could in theory be nominated at WP:FL... (and yes, I admit I'm thinking of one of my self-noms which will be presented at FL if I ever get round to it...!!) Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 19:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why not, as long as it was once in DYK and is now featured. I can just change name of the |FA= parameter to |FC= parameter, to clarify that other kinds of featured content are acceptable as well. (Within reason, of course—I think we can safely assume that no feature images were ever had a hook taken from them and put on DYK.) —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Umm, I can see a problem adding with parameters to {{DYKtalk}}, namely FA's and GA's don't normally use this template. Instead, any DYK appearance gets added to {{ArticleHistory}} via its |dykdate= parameter (to reduce talk page clutter). See for example Talk:Dürer's Rhinoceros. It may be possible to fill the categories Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are featured articles etc by modifying {{ArticleHistory}}. I would recommend you consult with User:Gimmetrow on this, since he is one of the few people who fully understands all the workings of {{ArticleHistory}}, and as an admin can implement any changes. Dr pda (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's a good point...I think one of my own GAs is using ArticleHistory instead of DYKtalk. I've left a message with Gimmetrow... the {{ArticleHistory}} template is a big deal, and I'm certainly not qualified or knowledgeable enough to mess around with it on my own! —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

How are you going to keep track of all the articles to see if they make GA r FA in the future? Maybe you'd be dedicated to it and keep it going, but in your absence I don't think there'd be many people who'd like to spend their time (and it will be very time consuming) doing this. And if what Dr.PDA says is true, then I think we can easily make the categories using that template? It can automatically add it when the template gets updated when the article is promoted, and we won't have to worry ourselves about it. Chamal ^talk 01:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's the plan; no matter whether we use {{DYKtalk}} or {{ArticleHistory}} (I assume what we make will have to be compatible with both), the ultimate idea is to have something in the template so that when the article gets promoted, the person who's working on the article can just make a note of that in the template and that will add the article to the category. I think the bot that's being developed is also intended to run periodically to automatically update articles that the people working on promoting might have forgotten to (ie, if the bot encounters an article that is an FA and has a DYK in its article history, and no one entered |FC=yes , then the bot will insert that and then the template will automatically add the article to the category). At least, that is my impression of what we're trying to do. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I would discourage adding any form of article rating to {{dyktalk}}. The {{dyktalk}} template gets incorporated into {{ArticleHistory}} whenever an article becomes FA, and most of the time when an article becomes GA or goes through peer review. At present there is only a handful of articles with both {{dyktalk}} and {{ArticleHistory}}. Gimmetrow 04:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yea, DYK uses the parameter |dykdate= on ArticleHistory. See Talk:Eddie Hill for an example. So you need to change your plan of attack. Do you want to add a new parameter for ArticleHistory for this purpose? Royal broil 13:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

It's probably not necessary to add a new parameter. Again, I'm not familiar with the intricacies of {{ArticleHistory}} and don't want to go messing with it, but I imagine the existing parameters could be used... something like a pair of nested #if: statements to say basically "if this has something entered for |dykdate= and its |currentstatus= is FA, FL, GA (and maybe also FFA, FFL, FFA/GA, and DGA), then add [[Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are also featured articles]] or whatever."

In any case, I believe populating the categories should be pretty easy, it's just a matter of a couple lines of code in whatever template is being used. The hard part is updating hundreds of old DYKs that are now FC/GA and none of us are paying attention to anymore...that's the main reason Suntag suggested using a bot. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

To make things a little more tangible...here is the code I had in mind (just a very rough idea; I'm sure I have some errors in there).

{{#if:{{{dykdate|}}}|
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|FA|[[Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are featured content]]}}
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|GA|[[Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are good articles]]}}
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|FL|[[Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are featured content]]}}}}

For anyone reading along who's not used to template code...basically what this does is, the first line checks to see whether there's anything entered under |dykdate= (in other words, whether the article has been on DYK); if there isn't, it doesn't do anything. If there is, it goes on to see if the article is currently an FA, GA, FL, or whatever. If it is, it adds the article to the appropriate category; if not, it doesn't do anything.

One issue is what to do with former/delisted featured or good articles...should they still be in the category, since they were featured/good at some time? Or not? In the case of former featured articles that have been demoted to GA, should they be in the DYK/FC category or the DYK/GA category? etc. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I missed this thread over Christmas, but add my voice to the chorus about doing this within articlehistory and not DYKTalk, as the latter gets absorbed into the former when an article goes through the GA/FA/FL process. To address your query, since the categories you created use the present tense ("are"), then it seems logical to include only current featured/good content. BuddingJournalist 02:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a fine idea, but would also check with User:SandyGeorgia as much of the FA updating work is done by a bot and we do not want to mess that up with this. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Saw my name pop up in an edit summary, so came over to see what this was about. I don't think this is a good idea at all. Gimmetrow runs GimmeBot, and he's already weighed in above on some of the problems. This will create a lot of programming work for very little payout, and create something else to be tracked, when very few of us actually do the tracking. I would not be in favor of undertaking the changes necessary to add yet another element to articlehistory, that Gimmetrow and I will end up maintaining. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood Gimmetrow's reply above. He was addressing Politizer's original idea to add params to the DYKTalk template (which isn't a good idea). However, Politizer's updated proposal of adding some code to articlehistory would require no extra work on anyone's part...the code just adds good/featured articles that have been on DYK to a category. BuddingJournalist 02:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think what Sandy means is that she and Gimmetrow do almost all article history updates. I have been a major contributor to 18 FA or FL articles and have never updated an article history - I do not know what to do. I think Sandy's point is that even one extra thing to do becomes a cumulative "lot of work" when multiplied by the thousands of FAs and GAs. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

If (and that is, of course, an if) this works as I think it would, this would require only one edit, rather than thousands—updating the template code itself. Every article in which that is transcluded should then reflect that change (or at least it will reflect that change the next time the talk page is updated). Again, since I'm not familiar with this particular template or with bots and stuff, I'm not 100% sure; it was only a suggestion that I thought might be interesting. If it ends up being a huge amount of work then, as Sandy said, it might not be worth it since it's just a little fun thing that's not super-important. But I'm hoping it can be done with a minimum of effort, and no need for any labor-intensive maintenance. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this was all flawed and done about in the wrong way. I would suggest a closer discussion with Sandy, some of the other FA people, and some of the GA people. Then, if anything, moving it to a Village Pump discussion. This will affect a lot of pages and a lot of areas. It is definitely not something that should be limited to the backwaters of DYK. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

(ec)This won't affect a thing. All it's doing is maybe making a list of articles that have gotten to FA or GA; the list won't be used for anything, it was just an idea for fun. It's not like I'm proposing to overhaul the whole FA criteria or something. This is not a malicious proposal at all, and there's no need to community discussion; the reason I've brought it to other editors' attention is because those are the editors who are experienced with the technical details behind the AH template and things like that. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 03:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Gimmetrow is the go-to person on this; he's the one who knows if it can be done easily and how to do it best. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Addendum In response to SG and Ottava's concerns...now that I think about this more, I think we actually won't need a bot at all to do this. If the categories can be populated just by adding some code to {{AH}} without changing the way that people actually use the template (which is the goal of the code that I suggested above), the changes should be reflected immediately (or the next time someone edits the talk page) and no one will have to change any code at those pages. Not requiring a bot should simplify things, I think. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot still malfunctioning

I had to manually update because the bot still isn't working properly, it cleared the queue page as if it had posted the update but then didn't post it. For this reason, can I please ask users to keep an eye on it to see whether or not it works properly next time. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 15:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The bot reset the timer about 30 minutes ago but didn't even attempt to move queue 1 over. If someone with more experience can tackle this immediately, I'll hold off for a few minutes. If not, I'll try and muddle through again. (I did already add the "HooksEnd" tag as discussed above but about 24 minutes after the bot reset the clock but not the hooks.) - Dravecky (talk) 20:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The bot appears to have malfunctioned here, the description entered has nothing to do with the article in question. It appears that should have been entered at Talk:Dustbin Baby (film), which appears to have heen at DYK recently. D.M.N. (talk) 20:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I just manually updated - the bot had blanked Queue 5 but not moved the content. Is there anything else that should be done? Nancy ^talk 21:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Huzzah! It appears that the bot is back in business. Can anybody tell me if restoring that "HooksEnd" tag was the difference or was some other change made to make it work as advertised? - Dravecky (talk) 02:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately though, it is still updating on an 8 hour cycle after I switched it to a six hour cycle last night. If it doesn't rectify itself with the next update, I think we will have to switch back to manual updates again as we now have more than 200 hooks on the Suggestions page. Gatoclass (talk) 04:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Good news: the bot did a proper update after 6 hours (and five minutes). Bad news: it failed to put the {{dyktalk}} templates on Magnolia Grove (Greensboro, Alabama) and Wang Shizhen (Tang Dynasty) although I have just done so manually. Why these two? Could the parentheses be preventing the bot from properly making the edit, somehow? - Dravecky (talk) 08:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, probably. The bot has had a few problems with special characters previously. I guess someone needs to nudge Ameliorate again. Gatoclass (talk) 10:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The clock was on an 8-hour cycle because BorgQueen edited {{DYK-Refresh}} for the Christmas hooks. I've just now undone those changes so the display is back to the usual 6-hour cycle. - Dravecky (talk) 10:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that changes the actual cycle, it only changes the display, but that's what was confusing me. To change the time cycle, you have to edit the User:DYKadminBot/time page. Gatoclass (talk) 10:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I saw that one, too, but also saw that you had changed it back already. Finding the DYK-Refresh template was a simple matter of examining BQ's contribs and seeing what had been changed in the last few days. - Dravecky (talk) 11:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot didn't give me my talk page notice for either of my new articles so it may still have a bug somewhere.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 06:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

My first Next Update

As part of trying to pitch in here during the holidays with so many "usual suspects" away from their keyboards, I've constructed my first Next Update using a mix of topics and localities from the oldest existing noms while trying to separate similar topics and balance the lengths, per the many examples I've seen in the past. Before anybody does anything crazy like move it to Queue 4, I'd appreciate it quite a bit if somebody would give it a quick review to make sure I've done this correctly. (Oh, and I didn't move up my own verified hook because that seemed like a conflict of interest so perhaps somebody could put that in the next Next Update.) Thanks. - Dravecky (talk) 08:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Not bad, but a quick glance suggests that (a) most if not all the hooks are on serious topics, (b) a shortage of bio hooks, (c) the two bio hooks that are there are next to each other.

You might benefit from reading User:Art_LaPella/Unwritten_rules#Unwritten_rules_of_thumb_for_preparing_updates if you haven't already, it has a few tips on how to put good updates together. Gatoclass (talk) 10:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

BTW, you don't really have to take hooks from the "oldest existing" noms. If they have been approved they will eventually get promoted anyhow, so you can take a hook from pretty much anywhere, although as a general rule of thumb we do tend to take them from the sections closer to expiry more frequently. Gatoclass (talk) 10:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd read the "unwritten" rules but just made a mistake putting the bios together. I was focused on the street-naming aspect and trying to keep it away from the other place and transportation hooks and completely spaced on the article being a biography. Okay, they're shuffled but I'm going to grab a "funny" one then bump the Iraqi lawyer to the Next Next for now. - Dravecky (talk) 10:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I guess the holidays really bring out the morose in content creators. The approved hooks are things like suicide bags, animals sacrificed for medical research, commandos fighting Nazis, and other not-very-lighthearted fare. I've grabbed something at least a lot lighter if not actually funny and slotted it at the end, per the unwritten rules. - Dravecky (talk) 11:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's pretty difficult to put a balanced update together ATM because all the lighter hooks got used up over Christmas/Boxing Day and all we have left are the plodders. So I guess you just happen to have chosen an inopportune moment to try your hand :)

Still, I think you've done well under the circumstances, so welcome aboard :) Gatoclass (talk) 11:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Transwikied articles

Are articles translated from another Wiki eligible for DYK? If so, does the "last 5 days" rule mean that the article must have been translated into English within the last 5 days? Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe when you start the translation it's considered a new article and is eligible for DYK; after that, it is treated just like any other new article (it has to have been started within the past 5 days). Referencing is important; there might be things that aren't tagged with ^{[citation needed]} in the other-language version but should be here.

My article Suanmeitang is a recent translation from Chinese and just got verified, but I also added a lot (there were no sources originally, so I added sources and did a lot of rewriting). So it's not just a direct translation, and might not be the best to compare to, but anyway, it's there. Anyway, it would probably be good to hear what some of the more experienced DYK people have to say. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Since they are new to en.wikipedia, I have always considered them new articles. Gatoclass (talk) 17:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A clear double standard, when "new" was defined above as information created for wikipedia and doesn't appear elsewhere. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Articles that didn't exist on Wikipedia before they were created are articles that most English-speaking Wikipedia users couldn't read before they were created. Articles that only existed on another language Wikipedia are also articles that most English-speaking Wikipedia users couldn't read before they were created. So for the majority of our readers, they are both "new." —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A translation of a previously published text is not new within law, ethics, or any sense of the term. The attempt to claim it is now shows a clear double standard within DYK. This really should be stopped. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that community consensus says that wikipedia is not a reliable source, and user based translations are not reliable. Thus, there are two marks of unreliability against translated pages. Even then, the sources wouldn't be in English, which is a further problem. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

User-based translations are no less reliable than any other user-based writing. Everything on WP is done by users. As for the sources...non-English sources is not a problem for DYK, there are many articles that make DYK with all foreign-language sources. It would be a problem for GA or FA, but as far as I know DYK accepts foreign-language sources in most circumstances. Finally, English sources can be added as the article is edited; again, see my example above, which uses nearly all English sources.

As far as I know, DYK doesn't base its definition of "newness" on whether or not the article is legally or ethically new (although those issues also come into effect, especially in cases of plagiarism concerns), but on whether it is new for readers; that's the main reason for the guideline that articles should be created or expanded within the past 5 days, to ensure that it will be something readers haven't had a chance to see yet. As such, translated material is probably new to most WP readers.

But no one here is trying to enforce some evil double standards; these are just my guesses about what the consensus may be. I have already said that it would be useful to hear from more regulars. If you think the current way of thinking about things is a problem, you're welcome to make a proposal to add a guideline about translated articles. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

"translations are no less reliable" Consensus at MoS which was done per a problem with translations at FAC determined otherwise. Furthermore, this is already used text. If someone wants to create a page on a subject carried on another wiki, they should probably start from scratch in English and build it up that way. The problem is not the "current way of thinking about things", its the fact that you and others here are disconnecting themselves from the rest of the encyclopedia. There is a large discussion that takes place in other areas across many projects and guideline pages. Why does DYK always limit itself in one tiny area? Just as above with the bot, Politizer, if you would have gone out to the more appropriate places, you would see that there is a big consensus on what is standard around here. DYK is not an isolated group. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I didn't disconnect myself from anyone, I specifically welcomed other opinions ([5]) and said that you are welcome to create a proposal and generate more discussion ([6]). I never said I was unwilling to hear other opinions.

About the reliability of translations...granted, I don't know exactly what MoS consensus you're referring to since you didn't provide a link, but to the best of my knowledge, the consensus is that user-generated translations of foreign-language sources (for the purposes of quoting, etc.) are less reliable than third-party translations of the same sources. For translation of foreign-language Wikipedia articles, though, I don't see how that applies; when you write a new article on en.wiki translated from zh.wiki or wherever else, you're still starting and writing an article, and just with any article-writing it's all done by users and falls under what WP has in general to say about what users write. There's no reason that en.wiki articles translated from elsewhere should be considered any worse- or better-written than en.wiki articles that the user writes from scratch, because in both cases it's still a user who's doing the writing.

The thing about the bot is unrelated to this and you have no reason to bring it up here (heck, I have doubts that you even understand it). But since you chose to bring it up, oh well, here it is. I made a friendly, good faith offer to work on something that might help with some record-keeping for the project (if you look more closely at the section above, you'll see that a bot isn't even an important part of it; it's just the part that you've chosen to rail on) and you've chosen to respond to it by throwing it back in my face and trying to say it makes me an asshole. Real cool. I'll let someone else talk to you now. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Outdent. Good intentions pave the road to hell. Having good faith when proposing something is a nice defense if you are up for block, but making a proposal is not based on good faith. Its based on what the community needs and what is best for the community. It normally involves a lot of people. Having translations should go through MoS because it deals with how translations are as a whole. There is even a wikiproject for translations. If you want to go about and put forth new understandings of translations, at least go to the places that deal with it first. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Whatever. I didn't make the proposal for the "community," I made it for a DYK subpage. DYK has lots of subpages that don't need community consensus (see WP:DYKBEST, which is just a list of DYK hooks that have gotten lots of hits). People who work at AfD or SBL don't care about whether or not I make a fun subpage for DYK. If you had actually looked at what I was saying, you would see that I never suggested any changes to the FAC or GAN process, or to how the {{ArticleHistory}} template is actually used; in other words, I didn't suggest a single thing that would affect you in the slightest way. If anyone else had made the proposal then you wouldn't care; you're just looking for something I do to whine about. If you think my idea is going to "pave the road to hell," then go to the appropriate place (hint: not this section) and say what you think it is going to hurt; don't go around bitching to people about how I'm a bad editor and am circumventing WP process. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Politizer, I really think you need to have a long discussion with User:Kim Bruning about consensus and what consensus is on wikipedia. It will do you a lot of good. He is our resident expert and lectured for a long time about consensus on wikipedia. And what is this about a "fun subpage" stuff? I was talking above about the interpretation of "new" when it comes to translation and how it conflicts with multiple guidelines about translations, and I mentioned that the rushing in without talking to experts or questioning them first is the same problem as above. Why would it really hurt you to discuss with people who know about these things and take your time? Wikipedia is not a project for rushing, and speed tends to be opposite of what Wikipedia is about. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't talking about the translation issue, I've chosen to stop paying attention to it because I've already said what I think. I was responding to your bullshit attempts to discredit me and make it sound as if I'm proposing sweeping, earth-shattering changes to WP (regarding the GA/FA thing, not the translation thing—if it's confusing to have that topic coming up in this section, you can blame yourself for having brought it up) when all I was doing was talking about making one tiny DYK thing that wouldn't even affect the people at FAC or GAN. I know what consensus is and how it works, and I know that I don't need community-wide consensus from thousands of people to make a tiny little change; the only people I need to discuss it with are the DYK people whom I'm doing it for, and the people in charge of the upkeep of the {{ArticleHistory}} template that I was proposing to edit (and I have contacted that person, Gimmetrow, already). Again, it wouldn't change a single thing about what you do on WP and you would never even notice the difference, unless you like going through template code. It's not like I'm trying to add a 6th pillar or something. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 18:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Politizer, you can use vulgarity and claim I am trying to "discredit" you all that you want. However, this is the third time that a change has been attempted that does not match what the community says, and when it was mentioned that it should be taken to a larger audience that you stepped in and had a problem. The only reason why Gimmetrow et al came to the page about the ArticleHistory is from the fact that I left a note on the FA director's page. Normally, discussing an issue without bringing in people who are regularly involved in an area is seen as highly rude and problematic. Why don't you try to be inclusive to the greater community instead of criticizing those who stand by tradition? Ottava Rima (talk) 19:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't criticize those who "stand by tradition," I criticize those who come and call me "rude" for offering to do something nice. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I am extremely confused as how you can say reinterpreting guidelines and proposing changes to systems without contacting those involved is "offering to do something nice", nor how you can claim that I said you were rude when I stated that people would see it as rude if you didn't contact them. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, making a little list of articles for fun is TOTALLY a reinterpretation of Wikipedia guidelines. Haha. That's a funny one. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:34, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Politizer, you do a disservice to yourself by purposely merging three different things into one and ignoring the problems raised. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:12, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Ottava's being a silly sausage. Common sense certainly tells us that translated articles are eligible, as long as they meet the sourcing requirements. --NE2 19:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A final comment by original questioner: I thought I was asking a simple question. It was prompted out of curiosity when I saw Meldemannstraße dormitory (which has a very interesting hook) listed on WP:TDYK for "Articles created/expanded on December 23" while I was trying to help patrol the list of candidate articles. I guess I'll leave that to the "DYK experts" in the future. Please put this discussion to rest. Truthanado (talk) 22:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

You're not the only one frustrated by the degrading nature of this talk page. It's now become a battleground for certain users to take passive aggressive swipes at each other, all while ignoring the actual issues at hand. Too many threads have been hijacked to the detriment of Wikipedia. It was such a simple question. Instead of an answer, we get kilobytes of pathetic back and forth sniping. I, for one, have unwatched this page. BuddingJournalist 02:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Randy L. Bott

The claim that his tests are called "celebrations" is on the main page right now, yet the source it was cited to {ratemyprofessor.com) did not say anything like this, it was simply a top ten list, no text, no additional information. Either the wrong ref was used by mistake or this is a case of OR slipping by DYK. Honestly, this hook should probably be removed from the template asap. --IvoShandor (talk) 10:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Woody removed it just now. Two mistakes in three days, we really should be more careful. Are the instructions for verifying hooks not clear enough? Maybe new reviewers find them confusing. Doesn't really look like it but I don't see any other explanation. Chamal ^talk 11:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That article was approved by Ecoleetage. Maybe someone should ask him about it. Gatoclass (talk) 12:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

It was my fault for not providing the more precise source, which was at Ratemyprofessors.com but on a subpage. I thought I had provided it. The issue should now be resolved. --Eustress (talk) 15:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

We wouldn't have accepted that anyway because it's just an anonymous post on a public forum, but thankyou for explaining where the claim originated. Gatoclass (talk) 04:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I was just told about this conversation and double-checked what went wrong. It appears I misread the reference link -- I was looking at reference #5 from the article. I apologise for the error. Ecoleetage (talk) 21:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Transwikied article - questions on their status

Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects

I am not sure if this pertains to the current discussion. However, there has been a problem at FAC (and with articles in general) being translated automatically by Google or other automatic translating device. The translations obtained this way are usually inaccurate. There have been specific articles where the editor claimed to have translated it, then admitted it had been done automatically, then said he had a friend look over it for inaccuracies etc. It was agreed in FAC discussion that such translations were only acceptable if everyone involved in the translation was fluent both in English and in the language being translated. If not, then there would accuracy problems and a question of satisfying the fundamental policy of WP:V and WP:RS.

Also, at some point in the past there have been efforts to disallow links from wiki sister projects to be allowed in the body of an article on the ground that, although these projects are hosted by wiki servers, they are not Wikipedia, do not have the same standards and fact-checking requirements as Wikipedia, and should be treated just the same as links to article from any wiki. Therefore, they should go under External links only. As far as I know, this issue has not been definitively resolved.

There have been discussions over whether wiki sister projects should be promoted in any way on Wikipedia. That argument has apparently been decided in favor of allowing the links, as recently they have begun appearing to the right of Wikipedia links when a search of Wikipedia is done.

However, I am unclear as to the status regarding reliability of wiki sister projects and whether they have the same status on Wikipedia as articles produced for Wikipedia do. If anyone can point me to policy information on these issues, I would appreciate it.

I am going to post a similar question at the Village Pump. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:10, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Of course, I wasn't a participant in any of those discussions so I'm not totally familiar with the issues, but personally I treat additions the same no matter where they came from—whether they're a paraphrase of a source that the author is referencing, or just something the author is pulling out of his head, or translated from another WP project. I don't care where the person got it, as long as they provide good sources and adhere to the various policy guidelines. If an addition to an article on en.wiki is comes from article text on zh.wiki, I treat it just as if it was a new addition—look for a reference, give it a {{fact}} or {{or}} tag if there is none, yada yada. No matter what state it was in at its originally wiki, it needs to meet the standards when it comes to en.wiki. So I sometimes criticize a translated article or nominate it for deletion, but when I do that it's not just because it's a translated article; it's because the article is unreferenced or has other problems that I would treat the same way if it had been a brand-new article. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The last time translated versions came up (relatively recently) an article was presented for FAC. Originally, no mention was made that it was a translated article, as I recall. When questions came up regarding the information and the sources, the editor said that it had come from an alternate language Wikipedia article, and justified its accuracy and the accuracy of its sources on that basis. He also admitted that he did not know the language in question, but trusted the translations. At that point, a discussion ensued o the adequacy of translations (automatic translations were ruled out, and a standard invoked that the translator(s) must be fluent in both languages. The issue was also raised other language Wikipedias in general had lower standards of reliability and verifiability. In other words, although an editor could use an Wikipedia article in another language as a basis, he had, in essence, to rewrite the article and verify sources, finding English languages ones ideally for all the references. I am not sure how this applies to "sister projects", nor what their standards for reliability and verifiability are. I know that images are regularly deleted from the Commons, not infrequently because they do not represent what they are purported to. I am just looking for information here, as I am not very familiar with the standards of the sister projects. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

" I wasn't a participant in any of those discussions so I'm not totally familiar with the issues," Which is why I told you that you need to get involved with the larger community and start talking to the people that are. This is why there are so many problems as of late. You are purposefully isolating yourself from the community, which does a disservice to both DYK and the community. We are one project, not separate groups. As Mattisse points out, translations are unreliable, and deemed unreliable. If someone wants to base their page off of text on another, but completely rewrite and independently verify the information and source it, then it is not a translation. Thus, there would be no problem. But translations are simply copy and pasting, then turning it into English. There is no verification. No reliability. Nothing. This is very problematic. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Ottava Rima, I completely agree with you. This is extremely problematic, not just for DKY but for any article on Wikipedia. Such articles, bases on questionable translations, are not, in general, allowed on Wikipedia as I understand the policies and guidelines. It would undermine Wikipedia to allow this. —Mattisse (Talk) 02:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that a simple translation from another language article is not the same as a new article. But something based on that article, using reliable sources to verify the facts, is a different matter. We'll see how the discussion at WP:VPP goes.

Ottava, you obviously see problems (big ones, too) about how DYK operates. How about you give us those problems clearly along with your suggestions to correct them? We can then discuss them and decide how to refine the project. Giving hints here is not going to help you, us or the community, and will only create heated discussions which I'm sure none of us wants. Chamal ^talk 03:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think there is a problem. My feeling is that people need to unify themselves witht he whole community. DYK is the beginning of a long and complex process that involves tens of thousands of dedicated editors. We should include the whole community and make sure that we have a unified system. We shouldn't be afraid of others opinions. Consensus changes, opinions change, but we should always be on top of what is happening and always know each others's concerns. Wikipedia needs well rounded users and view points from highly specialized users together. My challenge to Politizer is for him to hunt down some of these highly specialized users so he can become more well rounded. We have plenty of deeply specialized DYK people, but few well rounded community people willing to spend a lot of time here. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

You can go fuck yourself, Ottava Rima. Here I took an effort to participate in a discussion that is new to me, while admitting that I am new to the topic; I haven't been involved in previous discussions on it because I'm a relatively new editor and I don't happen to have every single page on WP on my watchlist. I happen to be involved in several different areas, just not the ones that you happen to think I ought to be involved in. This is now at least the second time that I've tried to be helpful to someone and get involved in a discussion, and you've thrown in back in my face and singled me out in front of my peers to criticize me for some imagined slights. I am sick of your stupid bitching and I am sick of putting up with this shit. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 13:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

As DYK currently operates, articles based on PD sources are accepted, just not preferred. Since other wikis are PD sources, we can accept transwikied articles so long as they meet all the usual requirements here, such as NPOV, V and so on. There is no existing policy on wikipedia banning transwikied articles, and until there is I see little reason to change our policy at DYK. Gatoclass (talk) 05:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

If blockquotes aren't accepted from PD sources as new content, then full on copying without blockquote is not acceptable, Gatoclass. Never has PD sources been accepted as acceptable under DYK. Never would pages from EB1911 be listed as DYK. Never would any of the other PD works be listed as DYK. You should know this and probably do know this. Your comment should be struck immediately. What you stated is 100% against what our policies and guidelines state, and you know that. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I've had it with your combative, hostile attitude to discussion on these pages. You generated over 100 pages of useless discussion here over the last few weeks because you didn't bother to acquaint yourself properly with our rules, choosing to prevaricate endlessly instead with users who have far more experience of the mechanics of DYK than you. You have already managed to drive away a couple of our valued contributors, at least temporarily, and now it seems you want to start again. If you don't stop this, I am going to move to have you topic banned from DYK.

Just for the record however, I will respond to your comments here once again. You claim that "never has PD sources been accepted as acceptable under DYK." In doing so you just display your ignorance and laziness again, since a quick look at our basic rules would demonstrate the incorrectness of your claim. The only reference to PD sources in our rules is (I quote) Try to pick articles that are original to Wikipedia (not 1911 or other data sources) and interesting to a wide audience. That is to say, PD sources are not ruled out for submission, they are just not preferred over original (and interesting) content - which is how that rule has always been interpreted. I myself have dozens of DYK awards based on DANFS, which is a PD source. In a nutshell, you have no idea as usual what you are talking about.

As for your claim that blockquotes are equivalent to PD - not so. An article based on a reliable source that happens to be PD can generally be assumed to have meaningful content. The trouble with articles based on blockquotes, on the other hand, is that a user can easily create a 1500 char article with virtually no meaningful content at all, just a bunch of blockquotes strung together with a line or two of introduction. In fact, we had some complaints about your own recent barrage of Milton articles, that some users felt lacked sufficient meaningful content even though they had 1500 chars of content not counting the blockquotes. That is why we don't count blockquotes. Gatoclass (talk) 06:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

OK guys, we're all going overboard here :( Being regular participants here don't make us the only ones who can decide how it goes. On the other hand, any editor of Wikipedia has the right to express his ideas and criticize our rules and the way we operate, but in that case alternatives should be given by which we can improve. Surely both sides can keep the discussion civil and free of personal attacks. Also, the project should not be blamed for individual editors' faults. Any such problems can be resolved without harming the project I think, whether it is a regular or otherwise. If I'm hurting your feelings with this, any of you guys, I'm sorry. But it looks to me like we're making a mountain out of an anthill. Chamal ^talk 08:18, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, people have a right to criticize and to make proposals. What they don't have a right to do is constantly question the ethics of others, insinuate that they are liars, misrepresent their positions, behave generally with gratuitous hostility and wikilawyer endlessly to create needless strife.

Thanks to Ottava Rima, we just lost a highly valued contributor to the project, and I have no intention of allowing him to drive any more of our valued contributors away. Gatoclass (talk) 08:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

You support a "highly valued contributors". Did you forget about this? Did you forget about the thousands of hours that I dumped into this project? Did you forget that I helped to get you to admin status in order to improve this project during a time of need? According to your friend, the project is better off than with someone like me, a content contributor who has done a lot for the community. Remember, we are a community. Now, you have stated some of the most absurd comments possible: "An article based on a reliable source that happens to be PD can generally be assumed to have meaningful content." Many of my blockquotes are public domain sources. Thus, there is nothing different between the two. And if you want to say that the blockquotes I use are not meaningful, then you have no clue about scholarship at all, and your opinion on the matter is detrimental to the project as a whole. Then there is this: "properly with our rules,". No, you mean "your" rules. Not DYK. Not the Community's. The community defined prose. You wanted to redefine it. The Community defined the reliability of translations, and you want to redefine it. My opinion is not alone on this as proven above. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Stop. Seriously. Continuing this thread is not helping. Disengage, please. BuddingJournalist 17:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Note - BuddingJournalist, we need to come to a decision because this is an important matter. Community guidelines and policies state that other wikis cannot be reliable and translations are not reliable. It is strongly frowned upon to use them, let along using them without any changes to ensure the standards are upheld. Verifiability also demands that the individual writing the page knows the source and cannot "trust" a source through another source, so all of the sources would have to be completely redone to matter. We need to make sure that DYK continues to abide by the practice of the community and fulfill our standards. Gato seems to be of the minority to say that such pages are acceptable. We need to ensure that we uphold the community standards, and this needs to be continued until that moment. Otherwise, there will be hundreds of unreliable articles making it to the main page and there will be a free for all taking things from other places without checking. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

You know perfectly well that my message was aimed at trying to stop the attacks and sniping in this thread, not at halting reasoned discussion. Cbl62 has started a new thread below. BuddingJournalist 20:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

DYKbot gave no creation credits

On the last update, DYKbot gave no creation credits; just nomination credits.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 07:38, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Which one do you mean - the one on the front page now? The bot seems to have given out at least some of the creation credits for that one - I didn't check all of them. Gatoclass (talk) 07:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've just gone through and manually handed out the credits to all the creators and expanders. On a separate note, for some reason, Bethlehem, Indiana was part of a double hook entry but apparently no template for that half of the hook was entered by the admin who assembled the queue. - Dravecky (talk) 08:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Kudos to Dravecky.--Gen. Bedford ^{his Forest} 08:03, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I nominated Mifter as the updater in the DYKbotdo string. I notice Mifter has done something odd with his user page so that it is called "Mifter's user page" instead of just "User:Mifter". Possibly this confused the bot so it spat the dummy and just skipped the creds. It's the only thing I can think of that may have gone wrong.

I see that Ameliorate has retired, so I guess there'll be no further help from that quarter. Gatoclass (talk) 08:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Mifter has just placed a <div> banner thingy over the "User:Mifter". I don't think that would affect the bot. Are we going back to the old school way then? No use keeping a malfunctioning bot. Until we get them fixed, maybe we should do the whole process manually to avoid any confusion. Chamal ^talk 10:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I still think it's worthwhile keeping the bot going, even if the credits are malfuctioning. We may be able to figure out what is wrong with it, and the regularity of the bot has proven remarkably useful at working its way through backlogs. If we switch back to manual updates you can be sure there's going to be a lot more work trying to keep up with the number of submissions. Gatoclass (talk) 10:49, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I've asked User:MessedRocker to take a look at it for us. Gatoclass (talk) 12:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

What?! I can't believe that I had a role in pushing Ameliorate to retire! I was supporting him/her for adminship! How could that possibly be a problem? Could someone else approach Ameliorate and ask for the code? Maybe someone else could run the bot on their computer. We need this functionality. Royal broil 13:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the code is in wikispace now isn't it? If it isn't, I would be very disappointed. We need to find someone who is willing to do some troubleshooting. Anyone know what language the bot is written in? Gatoclass (talk) 03:33, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how you, of all people, are responsible for Ameliorate!'s leaving, Royalbroil. As for the bot, I'm sure we would find someone for it soon enough (or hopefully Ameliorate! will return) but until then, we'll have to keep and eye especially on the credits. People wouldn't like it if they didn't get credit for their efforts ;) One has question me about that just because it was delayed for half an hour some time ago. Chamal ^talk 14:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

(de-indent) I've just had to hand out the credits for creators/expanders for the current set of articles. Once again, the bot gave out the nominator and article credits all by itself with no issue. I bet it's something subtle we're overlooking but life is better when a bot can do this by itself. (Somebody send Ameliorate! a box of cookies or bottle of scotch or something and see if he'll come back. Soon.) - Dravecky (talk) 06:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Wrong article used for DYK

Hi, an article that I submitted for DYK Portland Trail Blazers accomplishments and records, was accepted and its corresponding hook is currently on the main page. However, the article link is wrong; it links to Portland Trail Blazers instead of a piped [[Portland Trail Blazers accomplishments and records|Portland Trail Blazers]]. I don't know if there is anything that can be done about it but I thought that someone should know so that templates and such are fixed. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Alright, on further inspection, no harm was done, the link will eternally be wrong. Talk:Portland Trail Blazers accomplishments and records has the DYK notice, so everything is good. Unless an admin can repair the link right now? Dabomb87 (talk) 17:08, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I fixed it. Cbl62 (talk) 17:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, sorry for posting in the wrong talk page. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Signpost article for Christmas DYK?

Is anyone interested in writing a Signpost article on this month's Christmas/Holiday DYK? Something similar to the Halloween Dispatch? I wasn't involved with the Christmas DYK so I can't do it. There's a start at Wikipedia:FCDW/December that you can edit and use for the background. Royal broil 04:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

To me this is not something of which to be proud. —Mattisse (Talk) 04:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Translations as "new" content

Rather than post my thought in the above thread, here's a fresh start. The above thread raises a legitimate point, though some (including me initially) may be reluctant to weigh in because the discussion became so hostile. And the last thing I would want is to be perceived as joining in an attack on the two hardest working contributors at DYK. All that having been said, I question whether an article that is purely a translation of an existing article from a foreign language wiki is "new" content of the type DYK is intended to encourage. While translation is a valuable contribution, my understanding has been that DYK is intended to encourage editors to write new articles or expand existing stubs -- and I don't think that's the same as the act of performing a translation. It may be that there's a sufficient need to have articles translated from foreign wikis that we choose to make translations eligible, but we should consider the point. Cbl62 (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a serious problem. With automatic translators, such as [7] and others, plus the acceptance at DYK of articles referenced only by sources in foreign languages, there is no way to know the accuracy. Sometimes the only clue that the article is a translation is that none of the references are in English. Further, to say that DYK does not have to adhere to WP:V and WP:RS of Wikipedia and may have its own, independent standards regarding article quality outside of those reached through consensus, seems wrongheaded, as not only do DKY articles receive extra exposure by being seen on the main page, but they are part of Wikipedia's body of work. DKY should be improving article quality when possible, in my opinion, not lowering it. —Mattisse (Talk) 18:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Who the hell is using automated translations? If that is being done, it should be rejected, and the editor should be blocked if he continues. --NE2 19:07, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Auto-translation may be a serious issue for Wikipedia (I’ve seen plenty of cases where text has been auto-translated and dumped into articles), but is it a problem at DYK? It's pretty easy to spot auto-translated text, as it's often just gibberish. Have auto-translated articles made it to the main page somehow? BuddingJournalist 20:35, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The "clue" that someone is using an automated translation (or doesn't know much English) is that the article is pretty much unreadable. I believe the issue is about good, non-automated translations. Of course that issue should be settled by our previous practice, or modified by a discussion and a consensus, not by issuing orders (which is not a criticism of anyone in this talk page section). Art LaPella (talk) 20:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Art. I do think translation count as new content because it is new to the English Wikipedia and will be new to our readers. To do a good translation requires much more work that copy & pasting from a Google translate screen because clean up is needed so that the article is even readable. Plus it requires the actual step of verifying the sources yourself in order to satisfy that they really support what they are cited to. Editors who put in the hard work to craft presentable and verified translated article should not be categorical barred from DYK but that doesn't mean we should accepted copy & paste translations any more than we would accept an article with gross wikification errors and issues. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 20:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

As someone who's worked on original content and translations from other Wikipedias, I can honestly say that they both require great amounts of work. For example, I think I put more effort into translating Félix Houphouët-Boigny from the French Wikipedia (even though I had help from several editors) than I did in writing the DYK FA 1880 Republican National Convention from scratch. And to further drive in the point, we still haven't verified all the French language sources in FH-B! Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 21:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

It is not necessarily easy to spot a machine translated article, as a recent FAC candidate demonstrated. (In that case, the editor had help from translators, none of them were fluent in both English and the other language. Therefore, although the article read well in English, it was inaccurate.) All the editor has to do to "pass" a machine translated article is to clean up the article so that it reads well in English (whether accurately or not) and add references. Frequently the references are also in a foreign language, so an editor not fluent in that language cannot gain clarification that way. To go the next more convincing step, an editor can do a search on Google, and gather bits and pieces of "references" to add, like google book "snippets", travel guide info, advert articles in the food section of publications etc. Presto. Now we have an article good enough for DYK. I have seen several lately that fit this description. Anyone can look through the recent DYK's and spot articles with only foreign references, or with many references, but the references are to insignificant google book "snippets" or other sources that do not pass WP:V and WP:RS. I do believe translating is difficult work, as noted above, not something that can easily be churned out for a DYK legitimately. —Mattisse (Talk) 21:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

"I do think translation count as new content because it is new to the English Wikipedia and will be new to our readers." Under that logic, blockquotes are new to the English Wikipedia and will be new to our readers. However, Agne has declared otherwise. Thus, Agne's current claims are false. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

"Editors who put in the hard work to craft presentable and verified translated article " If they are putting in that much effort, why don't they just do a good job and come up with an article from scratch, using English sources, and we wouldn't have such a problem! Why do we need to steal content from another wiki? We are supposed to be promoting our content, right? Ottava Rima (talk) 22:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Editors who follow the procedures at Wikipedia:Translation and truly translate the article, have it proofed by a proof reader etc. and add English language references should get credit for their hard work. A person who translates an article without these procedures may not only be inaccurate, as translation is very hard to do, but are probably engaging in original research even if they do more than just copy/paste a machine translation and clean it up so that it sounds correct in English. Copy/pasting quotations can hardly be compared to translating an article in a foreign language accurately into elegant English. That is why machine translated articles are woefully inadequate. It is not just a question of knowing what each word means literally, but of translating the intent of the wording. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

There seem to be three issues here: machine translation; reliability of translated pages; and whether they count as 'new enough' for DYK.

The first is machine translation. Machine translation isn't good enough for articles (see here, or just try reading something that's gone through a machine and back!) so DYK certainly shouldn't have to consider accepting them. This seems clear-cut.

The second issue is the reliability of translated articles. Now, I have no experience with Wikipedia:Translation and couldn't see anything on this there, but my own feeling is that it'd be extremely bad practice to translate an article without checking that the sources actually back up what they claim to. If people take that precaution then a translated article will be no worse than an original one: every fact has been translated and checked against the source, so I don't see a problem. Now maybe the consensus on translating things differs from my opinion, and if so DYK should follow WP-wide rules - but either way it doesn't seem to me that DYK should be making this decision. Either translations are good enough to be articles (and therefore DYKs) or they aren't.

Of course there's the side issue of people translating a page and claiming to have checked all the sources when they simply haven't, but that's not much different from other lies people can tell about articles (plagiarism or inaccurate summaries of source contents). I think previous discussion on this page has shown many times that DYK's position on that sort of thing is that we look out for it where possible and take a zero-tolerance policy where we find it, but that it's simply not effective to institute broad rules to prevent classes of article likely to suffer from such behaviour.

The third issue is whether material new to the English wiki but not Wikipedia as a whole counts as new enough for DYK. The simplest solution would be to allow it since then we won't have to go checking whether an article looks like it's been translated, and trying to work out how much things have been expanded when someone translates an article and immediately expands it five-fold (I can picture people complaining that the language they translated from has longer words and so requiring five-fold character expansion is unfair... then if we compare English character counts, which part of the expanded article corresponds to the old version?). However, people may feel that counting such material as 'new' is cheating. I have no strong opinion either way (so I suppose I'd default to allowing it as it's simpler for the reason above) but am open to being swayed. Olaf Davis | Talk 20:53, 28 December 2008 (UTC) (relayed for Olaf by Art LaPella due to browser problems)

I thought the whole point of DYK was to encourage users to add content to this encyclopedia. I don't understand why we're making such a fuss about the merits of a translation vs. an article written from scratch. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 23:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

(reply to Nishkid64) The issue from my point of view is along the lines of Wikipedia:Translation; that is, the difference between a bonifide translation by editors fluent in both English and the translated language, and proof read, and a copy/paste of a machine translated article such as Google translator.[8] The issue has come up in other contexts. I feel the standards of DYK should be the same as for a regular article, avoiding original research by "fixing" a machine translation into proper English without understanding the context, and WP:SYN by adding references to a "fixed" machine translated article, again without understanding the context of the original language. In a recent FAC, although the editor had some knowledge of the translated article and also had the translation "checked" by others, it turned out that the article had major factual errors because none of the editors involved were fluent in both languages. If an article can become an FAC without such problems being recognized, then I believe that DYK should be vigilant, as a source of "starter articles", to prevent this sort of thing from gaining ground. For example, a recent DYK, Suanmeitang, not only was translated by one editor with no proofing by another, but it contained two or three word "snippets" from a google search of books, stringing these snippets together to provide English references. To me this is questionable and open to charges of original research and WP:SYN. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to add a note so that everyone remembers (about "The simplest solution would be to allow it since then we won't have to go checking whether an article looks like it's been translated"). GFDL requires that anyone pulling something onto en.wikipedia from something not en.wikipedia must be cited as where it comes from. This includes translations of other pages and the rest. This can be simply accomplished via posting it in an edit summary. Although the information may be "free", the original author must be acknowledged. If a page fails to do that, then they are breaking GFDL, which is something that should not be accepted and such an action should be discouraged. Regardless of what we do or say, we must stress the above so that people know how to treat the content appropriately. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe there is no support for allowing a straight copy/paste of a machine translated article. That is stated in various policies/guidelines. It is recognized that machine translations usually alter the meaning significantly and are not reliable sources of information. —Mattisse (Talk) 01:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

(out) I agree with Mattisse on this: Editors who follow the procedures at Wikipedia:Translation and truly translate the article, have it proofed by a proof reader etc. and add English language references should get credit for their hard work. These guys put a lot of effort into it, going through a hard process. I just expanded a 200 character stub into a 2300 character article, and I can get a DYK for that, something which didn't take me more than one hour. Those people have to put a lot more effort into their translating than that. And we are just going to tell them "get lost, your translation is not new"? Auto-translated things are a different matter though, and should have no place in Wikipedia, let alone DYK. Chamal ^talk 02:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

As for Ottava's concern, I believe there is no violation of GFDL in a translation following the above process. There is usually a notification about the original article, if I remember correctly. Chamal ^talk 02:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Machine translations are usually very easy to spot because they are gibberish. We cannot, of course, absolutely guarantee that someone doesn't exploit DYK by massaging a machine translated article into something readable, but there are a lot of things we can't guarantee, like whether or not someone has fairly and accurately represented an article's sources, whether an article is copyvio, or even an outright hoax. We have no choice but to rely on the good faith of our contributors to some extent.

In practice though, we get very few transwikied articles, I've seen no more than two or three in the last twelve months, so this would appear to be a very minor issue. If we were to start getting a lot of them, we might have to change our policies here, but I see no reason to do so at present. As things stand, I'm inclined to agree with Olaf that as long as transwikied articles are accepted by the project as a whole, there's no reason for us to adopt a different policy. Gatoclass (talk) 03:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I still don't understand why some are making the attempt to conflate translated articles and the inclusion of block quotes when it comes to calculating article size. Without getting into the merits and pitfalls of translated articles, the act of translation and cleanup requires significant personal creative effort to build a readable English-language article while merely adding block quotes is a pure cut and paste operation. Yes, somebody has to decide what to cut and where to paste but that's a far cry from the creative effort of assembling new text, even if new text started out in another language. - Dravecky (talk) 06:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) It's very simple. Articles that are translated from other wikis can be very shitty articles (case in point: if someone auto-translated) or they can be very good articles (if someone used the translation as a starting point and then continued to develop the article by editing things, bringing in new resources, etc., which is the whole point of Wikipedia). Likewise, articles that are brand new out of some user's head can be very shitty articles or they can be very good articles. The fact that an article is translated doesn't automatically mean it's one of the shitty ones. People seem to be confusing article provenance with article quality. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

On machine translated articles: they are generally worth less than nothing, and are usually deleted on sight (either through csd or prod). This is because it is usually pretty much impossible to determine the source and they are more often than not copyvios, in addition to being very hard to read. No one would (or at least should) suggest a machine-translated article to dyk. Machine translations of some sources might be useful in writing an article, but one should never blindly trust something they can't read at all in the original language.

Regular translations from foreign-language Wikipedias have been accepted to dyk for at least as long as I've been around, because they do add some unique content that's not available elsewhere in English. The only question should be about whether they deserve the same credit as regular dyks, but since the 'prize'—a template—isn't actually worth anything, it's not an issue. - Bobet 19:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Two things: all editors are required to have access to the sources that they use and must be able to determine their reliability. This means that if there is a translation, the translator must be able to verify the original content. Also, it is unacceptable to have all references to foreign sources and it is looked down upon, so someone who simply "translates" a page is not following procedure. Secondly, there are people who wave around their DYK as proof of their accomplishments and even try to justify an RfA based on how many DYK they have. Don't dismiss the "prize" mentality so easily. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, obviously someone shouldn't cite a source that they themselves can't verify. But having references to foreign language sources has never been a problem, English language sources are just preferred, and should be used in the case they're as good as the available sources in other languages. I've written articles that have had nothing but foreign language sources, since the subjects hasn't been discussed at the same length and depth in English sources, and it has never been a problem. Some of those articles have been on dyk. (And no, they weren't translations.) And if the prizes actually prompt people to add content to the encyclopedia, keep handing them out; as long as the actual content that is added is good, I still can't see it as a problem. - Bobet 14:05, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. If people on other areas of the wiki misinterpret what a DYK template means in terms of an editor's accomplishments (and they do) it's not going to be usefully solved by our narrowing the class of things we give them out for. Olaf Davis | Talk 23:22, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Cite error: The named reference example was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[example-1] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Cite error: The named reference example was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[1]