Wikipedia talk:Did you know

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

Reviewing and moving to prep/queue for July 14 of France-related articles

Tomorrow is France's Fête Nationale, and we have a special category for July 14. Could I solicit some reviewers to take a look at relevant articles not yet confirmed at T:TDYK? Searching the page for France/French, I came up with ...

• Palace of Versailles Research Centre
• Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro

(I didn't have to look very hard to find those, since I just did clean-up on one and nominated the other. What I mean is, I could not find any more besides those.) Anybody else with some great ideas, a French-twist to put on an article already up for DYK, or the savvy to nominate somebody else's new France-related article, it is not too late yet! Sharktopus ^talk 13:17, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks to Gerda for reviewing these! Could somebody more uninvolved (and more competent) than Sharktopus move them to Prep for Main Paging tomorrow? Sharktopus ^talk 18:50, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

:And another possible with mentionable Paris ... Sharktopus ^talk 20:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure)

Main page features

A RFC is underway to discuss what features the community desires to see on the main page. Please participate! Thanks. AD 19:22, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Still looking for participants. 110.136.175.79 (talk) 01:12, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

All the queues are empty. All the preps are full.

Also, please try to have France-themed articles show up on the front page during a part of July 14 when France is awake, not asleep. Thanks! Sharktopus ^talk 01:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I have filled out one and a bit prep areas. If someone could continue loading prep areas, that'd be great. I can upload to queue later. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:48, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I've done four more, and Crisco 1492 has done another. The biggest problem I see is that most of the many nominations from before 9 July had not been reviewed at all. I've spent several hours today wading through a lot of these, and have posted initial evaluations. Most of those that checked out have already been moved to a prep area. As for the others, I've marked some as having unusable hooks, or as needing copy editing of the article itself. However, there are still many nominations in need of checking, even if it's just a preliminary check. Most of these are biographies or buildings.

Prep areas 1, 3, and 4 currently contain nominations I've selected, so someone else should double-check and set those into a queue (when space allows). A few of those nominations were older, unreviewed noms that I reviewed and moved in one fell swoop, so a double check of my work is in order. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Church Cottage, Tutshill

Just drawing attention to my self-nomination of that article, started yesterday, about J. K. Rowling's childhood home. The new (final) Harry Potter movie is in theatres tomorrow, hint hint. I will find something to review. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:42, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I've verified this nomination, if someone could please move it to Prep 4 to feature on the Main page tommorow. Thanks. —Bruce1ee^talk 11:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Moved. Materialscientist (talk) 11:50, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Wording of hook for Harley-Davidson XR-750

Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone is interested on weighing in on the wording of the hook for Harley-Davidson XR-750, located at Template talk:Did you know#Harley-Davidson XR-750. I am looking for a second opinion. Thank you. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Up or out: "From Wikipedia's newest content"

When I was making up Prep last night, I wanted to clear some of the backlog of older articles but most of them didn't have the magic checkmark. Three items created July 2 do not have even one review. I suggest we review articles from the backlog, NOT articles recently added, until the backlog is cleared. Sharktopus ^talk 11:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

As I say above, I noticed this problem as well. I've reviewed and moved quite a few of these, and have noted problems with a few more.

Current statistic: about 25 nominations in 2-6 July, but only 3 of those cleared for use.

However, I've now been at DYK for nearly four five hours straight and will need a break to do other things now :P --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, EncycloPetey, your work is appreciated! Sharktopus ^talk 23:50, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Verifying science articles

I've seen a fair number of science articles get posted to DYK lately that have absurd claims or outright misinformation in them. I'm not talking about scientific controversies, just basic facts that are wrong or extremely outdated. Can reviewers PLEASE post requests to review scientific or technical articles to the relevant WikiProjects BEFORE the DYK goes live? Otherwise our DYK section is going to erode Wikipedia's reputation for accuracy. Kaldari (talk) 21:39, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

There is already a lot of work going on just to keep up with DYK without requiring the volunteeers to post an additional set of notices. If the relevant projects wish to check in and review nominated articles, they can always do that, and it will help the overtaxed DYK project when they do. Any nominated article can be checked, often a week or more before selected for the Main Page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

You mention "a fair number" of articles "lately" with "absurd claims"; please do give a few recent examples so we can see where we went wrong. We haven't had many chemistry or physics articles, but we do have a lot of articles about animal and plant species. As a member of WikiProject Life, I posted an invitation over there,[1] more eyes are always welcome. Sharktopus ^talk 21:59, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

We could try including the specific source, page, link, etc. in the comments for all science articles? The main problem with them is that their 'facts' are often not as clear cut and easy to find as normal news, website, or book-cited articles By providing source info, we save the reviewer the hassle of searching for them inside journals.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Kaldari, these should be raised at the time and on an individual basis. Even retrospectively is helpful so we can review process. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:48, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that no matter how well DYK volunteers review the articles and check the sources, if the article is on an obscure topic, only people from the respective WikiProjects are going to be able to tell if the articles are actually accurate or not. In the case of science articles especially, we have a problem with people using outdated sources, since those are generally the ones most likely to be accessible online (ironically). Then there is also the problem of people simply not understanding the subject they are writing about. I think if no one is available to review a technical or scientific article for accuracy, it shouldn't be approved for DYK, no matter how many citations it has. Otherwise, we are just spreading misinformation. Kaldari (talk) 07:26, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

• The rule change you propose would be a substantial one. Could you give examples of a few recent science DYKs showing a problem with "spreading misinformation" and/or "absurd claims"? Sharktopus ^talk 12:28, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I'd rather not embarrass the authors as I'm sure they were written with the best of intentions. Perhaps I should amend my proposal to say articles on obscure topics, as this doesn't seem to be much of a problem with run-of-the-mill science articles (where the reviewer would probably have a basic knowledge). And I'm sure the same problem could happen with an article on 17th century Russian literature or any other obscure topic. Basically, I would suggest that if the reviewer has no knowledge of an article's subject whatsoever, they request the nominator to get someone from a relevant WikiProject to vouch for the article. And they don't have to vouch for every detail, just vouch for the fact that the article wouldn't sound absurd to someone familiar with the field. Kaldari (talk) 19:18, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Well, there's not much the project can do for you if you want to come here insisting on horrible problems that are occuring but refuse to point out any of them specifically. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:56, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Kaldari, I don't know if you're referring to any of the DYKs I have written, but if you are, please tell me, so I can fix them and avoid similar problems in the future. Ucucha 12:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Good articles redux

Given this trial at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_62#Introduce_Good_Articles_to_DYK which ended 22/18 after one month of voting - is it worth relooking at as a trial? There is some discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Main Page features. I'd normally not do anything but I doubt there will be clear consensus or plan of action on that page for a couple of months. So how about the following, which is modest and doesn't disrupt the existing process much. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:58, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

To whit - I am proposing a modest trial outlined below, that doesn't impact greatly on the current process but give us a flavour of possible how it'd work?

• Recently Listed Good Articles eligible - i.e. within five days of Listing.

• A limit of 1 (or 2) GAs per set of hooks (please specify number below).

• Change mainpage from "newest articles" (which 5x expansions aren't anyway) to "newest and newly-improved articles"

• Review after a month and see how folks feel about it.

Support

1. Support It has to be acknowledged that Wikipedia is ten years old and needs to slightly shift focus from quantity to quality. Since DYK includes quantitative improvements (i.e. 5x size) it should also allow major qualitative improvements (i.e. reaching GA status). I think a short trial as proposed is a good idea with no major risks involved and it would be fair to test the assumptions of both supporters and opposers of the proposal. GA's which already featured as DYK should be excluded IMO. I think one GA per set of hooks would suffice for the trial, but I would like to see it at the top of the group. --Elekhh (talk) 01:43, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
2. I don't see any harm in a trial, but care must be taken so that we aren't biased towards a certain topic area. The arts and sports articles have a higher GA rate than other areas. —Adabow (talk · contribs) 03:33, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
3. Support, with a caveat, which is probably obvious anyway, that newly made GAs that had previously been on DYK are not eligible and don't get to be featured twice. For the most part this is of no practical significance, but I have seen some articles go from new->DYK->GA very quickly (one of mine travelled this path in less than two weeks). The inclusion of GAs in DYK should be a reward for genuine old-article improvement, which is the essence of this proposal as I understand it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:47, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
4. Great idea, let's at least try it and see how it goes. Malleus Fatuorum 07:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
5. I'm a bit wary, but let's see how a trial goes. There's no harm in that. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
6. I'd like to see a trial of this. It seems like a way to get some more high-quality content on the main page, encourage GA writers and reviewers, and foster a bit of crossover between DYK reviewing and GA reviewing. The Interior (Talk) 17:20, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
7. Strong Support. Elekhh hit the nail on the head - we need to shift our focus from quantity to quality. As mentioned in the section above this one, some of the articles that appear on DYK are really quite embarrassing as they haven't been checked for sanity by anyone familiar with the topic. More importantly, since DYK articles have to consist of a substantial quantity of new content, this excludes anyone who takes a slow collaborative approach to building articles - i.e. the wiki way. Instead it rewards authors who write their articles offline and then post the finished product. These articles are then rushed through DYK before anyone familiar with the topic has had a chance to look at them. Good articles have none of these problems and are much more deserving a spot on the main page. At the very least, we shouldn't be completely excluding them. Kaldari (talk) 19:34, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   Rushed? nominations typically sit for a week or two before being used. Can you provide examples of articles that haven't been checked for sanity? This isn't a DYK problem in any case, as I've seen embarassing GA approvals as well. Why haven't editors in the various projects stopped in to help with that? I typically check articles against their sources, and evaluate sources when I approve hooks. You could do the same, and so can others. With a week or more before the nominations are used, that gives you plenty of time to help. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:37, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   I agree we sometimes have embarrassing GA approvals as well, but if the article has been around for a while it's far more likely that someone knowledgeable on the topic will have stumbled across it and fixed the glaring errors. Now that I've noticed the problem, I'm definitely going to try to be more active at looking at DYK nominations before they go live (rather than after), but regardless, I don't think adding in some GA articles will hurt anything. Kaldari (talk) 00:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

8. Support There are a fair number of GAs which don't have much FA potential. The proposal both allows for more of our better articles to be brought to public attention and for users who improve Wikipedia to get their work seen more by the public. I don't see it as greatly increasing the workload here as the articles will already have been vetted to some extent.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
9. Support per Elekhh. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 21:58, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
10. Strong Support Sounds like a great idea, I think it will probably lead to increased interest in improving articles. Perhaps we should give the top slot with a picture to a GA. Qrsdogg (talk) 22:10, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

    I would expect to see the opposite result. On Wiktionary, we feature a "Word of the Day", and this is never a fully-polished entry. When the word goes up, we get lots of activity adding trandslations and quotations, and other sorts of improvements. When an article is already at GA, I expect there to be less involvement in improvement, since there will be less opportunity for a general reader to participate if the article has alreay gone through a review process. Putting the GA first is also a bad idea, as it overemphasizes that article, limits the GA choice to a suitably-illustrated one, and prevents the new articles from having their photos featured. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

    My comment about "increased interest in improving articles" was in regards to people being more interested in bringing articles to GA if they knew they could get main page territory. I don't see why we shouldn't give the slot that gets the most hits to the best written article. I also don't see the problem with drawing illustrations from GAs, from a reader's perspective at least. (Of course people writing new DYK articles with good pictures or GAs without good illustrations wouldn't like it, but you can't please everybody.) Qrsdogg (talk) 23:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

11. If DYK were limited to new articles, this would be radical. But it isn't - it already includes articles that have substantially improved in quantity (5x expansion) - so on what basis are we excluding articles that have substantially improved in quality as measured by peer review (Good Articles)? Frankly, a lot of the opposition to this would seem WP:OWNery if exhibited on an article. Rd232 ^talk 21:14, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
12. I think it's good to give GAs some exposure; a trial won't hurt. Ucucha 12:16, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
13. It would be good to gives articles a chance to be featured if someone revamps a fairly large article (impossible to make eligible under DYK rules) and gets it to GA status. The only caveat is making sure the article is thoroughly examined because of the potential for substandard GAs. – VisionHolder « talk » 12:26, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

1. The way GA has been running lately, there is little difference between GA and FA for many reviewers. Articles up for GA are often pushed to FA standards, so those articles should soon have a chance for the Main Page anyway. I also prefer a uniform set of criteria, not a this-or-that blend in DYK. It makes the entire process much easier to manage. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:33, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   Please consider that in the last ten years there were 3,335 FAs produced while 12,336 GAs which means there are four times more GAs than FAs. Most FAs have been promoted without being GAs before. Those editors who wish to bring the article from GA further to FA most likely will not bother to nominate for DYK. So doubling wouldn't be frequent, probably not more than between DYKs and FAs anyway. Your other argument is about the difficulty to manage an extra rule. Well, why not be friendly towards those who think that this is a good idea and allow for a trial. Than the results could be evaluated and your concerns proven to be justified. --Elekhh (talk) 02:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   Your argument supports my point, in that if so many articles are making FA without ever going through GA, then the function of those two processes has become largely the same. We don't need to double-dip the highly improved articles. Featuring the new articles will do much more to encourage newbies that will featuring GAs. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:22, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

2. In just the past couple of weeks I have seen proposals from Tony1 to reduce the number of DYKs per day to 8 and to replace an unspecified fraction of DYK with a large image promoting one article. SandyGeorgia now proposes getting rid of DYK entirely, to make more room for more featured content. DYK is a wonderful feature of the Main Page and it is there to promote creation of new content. There are many other wonderful goals in the world, but it would be better to do a very good job on DYK's own good goals than to start pursuing radically different good goals. Sharktopus ^talk 03:46, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   I thought DYK and GA have the same goal, which is to improve Wikipedia. This is a proposal to trial a possible improvement of DYK. If this minor proposal cannot be tested, I'm afraid the number of those calling for truly radical change will increase. --Elekhh (talk) 06:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   The goal of DYK is giving "publicity to newly created or expanded Wikipedia articles. This serves as a way to thank editors who create new content, encourages editors to contribute to and improve articles and the encyclopedia, and brings new and expanded articles to the attention of readers who view the Main Page." That is the way we "improve Wikipedia" here. Of course the goal of every feature on the Main Page is to improve Wikipedia," but reviewing and selecting GAs for exposure is much closer to the mission and expertise of the FA section than to DYK's. Sharktopus ^talk 11:54, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   I'm afraid you're misguided, GA is not about reviewing and selecting, it is about qualitative improvement. I don't think the concept of having a DYK which stands only for quantity is tenable. --Elekhh (talk) 14:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   DYK is about reviewing and selecting new content of quality. But I don't want to WP:BLUDGEON this discussion, and perhaps you don't either? Sharktopus ^talk 14:24, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

3. If there is a need to feature recently promoted GAs on the main page, why not propose just that as its own section? DYK's purpose is to feature new content, encouraging both new editors and frequent content creators. Diverting 25-33% of the slots to freshly-minted GAs would divert DYK from its mission, create a slippery slope towards the de facto destruction of DYK as the same tiny group of editors propose these changes over and over until something sticks, and only add to the workload of DYK reviewers with no benefit to DTK's mission. - Dravecky (talk) 10:19, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   There are about 100 times more new articles than GAs. That's 1% not 25-33%. No reason to be scared. --Elekhh (talk) 14:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

4. For the same reasons I have given in all the previous repetitions of this perennial proposal (e.g. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page#break, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 62#Allow some DYK hooks to go into newly promoted Good Articles?, Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 33#Radical suggestion). GA status means nothing to our readers, most of them don't even know what a GA is; this proposal has always seemed to me to be more about editors wanting to scratch their own backs then about improving the experience for readers. Is there anything new in this proposal that hasn't already been gone over in the numerous previous discussions? rʨanaɢ (talk) 11:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   Why do you think that including Good Articles would not improve the experience for readers? Considering how abysmal some of our DYK articles are, I think we could only stand to improve from this change. Kaldari (talk) 19:38, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   This is already discussed at length in the numerous links I posted above; please take the time to read them. And, as Sharktopus pointed out above, take care not to bludgeon the discussion. There is no need for you guys to respond to every single opposing comment; your opinions are already known. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:50, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

5. I agree with Dravecky that this would be better done in a separate section (and I'd support it there), as mixing these two in one section would confuse and dilute the important mission of DYK in encouraging new content creation. -- Khazar (talk) 14:19, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   Isn't writing good articles part of new content creation? More importantly, isn't it about adding high quality new content, which is the one thing that Wikipedia really needs to support more of? Last time I checked, we weren't suffering from a lack of articles. Kaldari (talk) 19:43, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

   First, what's with the badgering of each oppose vote here? Second, I think you're missing the point a bit. I agree that encouraging the refinement of articles is important, which is why I'd be fine with a section of the front page that recognizes GAs as we do FAs. But I also think that quality first-stage content creation is equally important to recognize.
   Because the truth is, Wikipedia is suffering from a lack of articles, at least on certain subjects. Check out the DYK section of my my user page, if you like; all of those appeared on DYK since May of this year, and I'd estimate that 49-50 of the 53 were wholly new. You can argue that Ali Salem (Egypt's most famous playwright), Zayar Thaw (a well-known Burmese hiphop artist, now a political prisoner), Thepchai Yong (an internationally-recognized Thai journalist who heads the country's largest TV network), or U Gambira (leader of the monks in Burma's 2007 "Saffron Revolution") don't belong in Wikipedia, I guess, and that we should stop encouraging people to create articles like those. But IMHO, you'd be wrong; to keep the encyclopedia growing, we need to continue to expand our coverage in both breadth (quantity) and depth (quality), and our awards and front page should reflect that. I get a bit tired of those interested only in the latter dropping by to deride even the idea of working on the former. -- Khazar (talk) 04:02, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

6. Per the other opposes, in particular rʨanaɢ and Khazar. This suggestion is step towards disbanding DYK as it is today - by reducing the newness and the variety. Manxruler (talk) 13:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
7. Per the other opposes, for a broad international and cultural representation, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:42, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
8. For many of the reasons above. DYK encourages new content, and that remains an important element in the continuing development of Wikipedia. Placing featured articles on the main page promotes those who work to elevate articles to top quality level. Both elements are important. Already, FA is more prominently featured than DYK, but the current balance is appropriate in my mind. By watering down DYK with inclusion of GAs, it shifts the focus further toward the top quality element at the further expense of new content. Cbl62 (talk) 21:13, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
9. Per Rjanag and Khazar. cmadler (talk) 14:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
10. I agree with just about all of the oppose reasons given above. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:06, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
11. The point of DYK is to foster new content and feature users' work on the main page, if only for a moment. I think it works fabulously as an incentive to create new articles, and I have to oppose any proposal to modify it with GA material. Nomader (talk) 20:03, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

• I think if GAs are going on the front page, they should be highlighted as good articles. That is, I don't want them mixed in the same box with new articles. I think a better idea would be to highlight GAs some days and new articles other days (like every other day), or have a separate box for GAs entirely. —Designate (talk) 03:43, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

  DYKs are a mix of new articles and old articles improved through quantitative expansion (5x). Adding qualitatively improved articles does not really change the current new-old mix. The difference between new, 5x-expanded and GA articles might be important for editors, but readers just want to see quality content. --Elekhh (talk) 04:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

  The 5x expanded articles are at least 80%-new prose and usually more than that so they genuinely are 'new' content. I do support the idea of a separate box for newly promoted GAs, perhaps in a screen-wide box under the featured picture. - Dravecky (talk) 10:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

  • Some folks (like me) are in favor of eliminating the "featured picture", as this is something Commons already does. I would think it could be replaced with a GA section. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:28, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

  If people cared about providing readers with quality content, then they would be arguing for the inclusion of new FAs, which are of higher quality than GAs. Ever since this was first proposed nearly 3 years ago (and there may be earlier proposals I'm not aware of), people have been wanting this as a way to reward editors who write GAs, not as a way to improve the experience for readers. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:15, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

• I argued with Tony1 about this over beers on Friday night. I am thinking we do this instead of reducing, and was thinking of 1 (or 2) initially so the reduction would be minor only and we could see how it goes and how folks enjoyed it. I also think that as many GAs are only reviewed by one reviewer, it might be a good way of a fair number of them just getting a second pair of eyes on them before (hopefully) going to FAC. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:06, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • How about suggesting to Tony1 next time you get together for beers that your joint project be hosted by FA for a month instead of by DYK? They have more pixels than DYK, the mission and editor expertise there are more similar, plus this would give FA an inside track to overseeing GA. Furthermore, since writing the actual FA blurb seems to be a last-minute job with little oversight, it might be good to make FA blurbs shorter. Sharktopus ^talk 20:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
• Should we set a designated 'end' date to possibly blunt some of the opposers' wariness? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • It's part of the proposal, it says clearly that is for one month. --Elekhh (talk) 14:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
    • But the proposal says nothing about how we will gauge the success/failure of all this. Is the proposal simply saying that we'll do it for a month, and then go through the same set of arguments again, or is there some objective way we can gauge whether all this wrangling has resulted in something positive? --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:30, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat separate but not really thought

Regardless of the vote above, I think the wording on the Main Page should be changed to some form of "newest and newly-improved articles", as 5x expansions are never "new" articles. Am I alone in thinking this? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

It says "From Wikipedia's newest content:", which is not the same as "new articles". The content is new, in the form of at least 4/5 new prose. —Adabow (talk · contribs) 07:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

What Adabow said. Furthermore, adding "newly-improved" is not a good idea, as it opens the door to precisely the kind of nominations DYK has been rejecting for years (e.g., articles that have been copyedited or otherwise improved without any substantial expansion). rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:17, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

If the proposal above is successful, I think we should just axe the text completely. Readers don't care if the articles are new or not, they just want to read interesting, well-written articles. Kaldari (talk) 00:52, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

How do you know what readers want?

If all readers want is to read well-written content, then why not just have four TFAs? DYK is meant to serve a different purpose than what you are insisting on (as are ITN and OTD, which also are not necessarily showing interesting or well-written articles). rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:53, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

To Rjanag I will outline my idea of how the article treadmill has worked at wikipedia - essentially getting a bite of the mainpage cherry has been great at pushing editors that little bit, from stub or nonexistent article to DYK, and then finally at the last hurdle, FAC. Over the past few years, FAC has become more and more exacting. I personally don't see this as a bad thing but as a natural development as wikipedia looks more and more like a professional encyclopedia. In this production line, GA has become more and more important as a waypoint for review on the road to FA status. I was thinking that as GA status can be achieved with only one reviewer, that sending a few through DYK might be a good carrots-rather-than-sticks approach at getting more eyes on them and giving them more of a shove to FAC. I have always been happy having good content which has some incompleteness accessible from the mainpage so that the reader sees WP as a work in progress. Anyway, help in bridging the step between GA and FA is what I see as more of a development in the past 18-24 months as opposed to previously. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:20, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Related RfC which has been announced to people at FA but not here at DYK

People including many commenting here are !Voting on Main Page features. The RfC asks what features of the Main Page should be eliminated, including DYK. It seems to me a bit off to be !voting here to change DYK and !voting there to eliminate DYK entirely. I also notice that when the RfC listed the goals of the Main Page, somehow the goal of DYK, to motivate creation of new content, was left out, but I just put that in there. Sharktopus ^talk 19:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Realistically, I was thinking it'd be a couple of months before anything really happened to the mainpage. That is one RfC that really needs to run its course, have results analysed and figure out where to go from there, which I suspect would be more proposals. I figured this would be a trial to try in the meantime. My initial idea (when arguing with Tony) was that cycling 4 queues a day containing average 5.5 DYK and 1 GA meant 22 DYK and 4 GA cycling through vs 3 x 6.5 DYK which leaves us 19.5 DYK hooks going through. This is based on an off-the-cuff calculation of between 6 and 7 hooks per set. I thought this'd be a net gain for everybody.Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:25, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I should bloody well hope the Wikimedia Foundation has more sense than to let its front page be redesigned by a random walk through !voters with COI. Of course the FA people think we should have more featured content, and of course getting rid of DYK, ITN, and OTD would create more room for featured content. Of course I like DYK because I like creating new content and I often notice that Wikipedia needs something it doesn't have. If you offered me twice as many "ribbons" for critiquing other people's metric conversions, I'd drown in boredom. That's my COI. Of course new articles do not have the same smooth proof-read-ness of articles that have been vetted for months, but I follow Main Page/Errors, and we rarely have more errors picked up in 3 or 4 runs of 7 hooks each per day than FA has in their one blurb per day. People don't come to Wikipedia because they want to read polished prose about arbitrary topics, they come here because they are curious and lively and hope to learn something. Sharktopus ^talk 21:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the voting in and of itself there is going to dictate the changes. There has been talk on wikimedia pages before so some foundation input might take place as well. Hence why I think it'll be a few months yet. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:22, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The other "!voters with COI" have no more conflict of interest that you do, with your support for putting DYK above FA. The community needs comments from everyone, because the whole page belongs to all of us, not just to DYKers—or FA folks, or ITN stringers, or any other group you care to name. You should feel free to share whatever opinions you have about the Main Page, even if it's not about "your" area.

This is the first unified discussion, and it is basically a brainstorming session. The majority of ideas will be rejected. Those (if any) that seem to have some significant support will be discussed separately, and probably for months on end, before any actual decisions are made. I would realistically not expect to see any changes as a result of this discussion until 2012. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Disagreement that I would like others to look at

One of our waiting-a-while hooks connects 4 articles -- a nonfiction book and three people who were the subject of the book. To my regret, I think the articles overlap so much that a reader clicking through from this hook on the main page would not discover 4 articles "worth" of new content. The creator disagrees. Could others check out the issues described in this thread? [2] Thanks for taking a look. Sharktopus ^talk 03:11, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Needs new text, not re-use of text that's already in other articles. That's already in the DYK rules. Simple as that. Re-use of text is not eligible. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:29, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I requested a citation for your "simple as that" claim already. You didn't provide it there, do you care to do so here? The four articles were created in main space more or less simultaneously; it seems obvious that since the four are connected there would be re-used text...simple as that, to borrow a phrase. If the rules really state that "re-use of text is not eligible", I'll withdraw the nomination. I've gone back (again) and read both Wikipedia:DYK and Wikipedia:DYKAR, and I just don't see it. The fact that these four articles were added simultaneously precludes use of WP:DYKAR#A5, since none of these articles is being nominated on the basis of expansion but rather as newly-created articles. Invoke WP:IAR, call WP:IDONTLIKEIT, or something else...but without a citation for "not eligible", you'll have to send this to /dev/null without my approval.  Frank  |  talk  03:51, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

General reply. Reuse of one's own new content is well allowed, unless it is misused (willingly or not) for reaching the 1500 char (or 5x expansion) limit in the individual articles, or is simply unreasonable. Whether or not this is the case depends on a personal view on what information should be in what article. My personal view is that the current overlap is such that Zoya Fyodorova, Victoria Fyodorova and The Admiral's Daughter articles could well be merged into one article. They could also stand on their own, provided they are expanded individually and the overlap is reduced. Materialscientist (talk) 04:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Practically speaking this seems to be just a disagreement over semantics. There is at least one DYK article in there, right? So pick one article, feature it, with that particular article's title bolded, de-emphasize the rest in the hook (though of course retain the wlinks) and we're good to go. The only way I can see this mattering is if somebody's bean-counting their DYKs and wants to have "credit" (whatever that really is) for 4 DYKs rather than 1. But I'm not sure that should really be a consideration.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:51, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everybody for very helpful replies, and to Volunteer Marek for a practical suggestion on resolving the disagreement. I have suggested a couple of alt hooks that would point to two out of these four articles. I feel that having a DYK hook pointing from our Main Page to 4 articles that all tell essentially the same story is not appropriate. If somebody else could review the nomination so we can move it up to Prep, that would be good. Sharktopus ^talk 14:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

User:EncycloPetey

I would like to complain how User:EncycloPetey reviewed the article First Lady of the World. I have withdrawn it because he distrusts a Wikipedian like me. Wikipedia belongs to everyone. What he did is against the Wikipedia way of openness and collaboration. He must be removed as an administrator because of this. - AnakngAraw (talk) 01:05, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

He won't be. The diff is here. The nom dates back to July 4, so it's a pity the issues weren't addressed earlier. Including the name of the main character in a plagiarism comparison is a bit, er, harsh, but otherwise his removal seems reasonable. Johnbod (talk) 01:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Is it a striking feature of the plot or public perception of the novel, that the main character worships Hindu gods at an altar in the United Nations building? If so, how else would one word a quick summary of that fact? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:33, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

AnakngAraw, having articles featured on DYK is a privilege, not a right, and the project doesn't need people calling for desysopping/banning every DYK editor who doesn't agree with them. If you can't work with DYK reviewers civilly, then maybe your privilege of nominating DYK articles should be removed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that there was a "privilege of nominating DYK articles" that could be removed, other than by a block etc. Where does this strange idea come from? Johnbod (talk) 02:12, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Do quotes count as main prose for fivefold expansion?

Hi all. I've been working on expanding Star of Love (Crystal Fighters album). It's gone from 10,177 bytes to 29,730 bytes in total... My question is: given that the article constituted of a full third of quotes beforehand, is that counted when ascertaining the prose length to determine fivefold expansion? Also, is there an easy way to see the prose-only byte count? Thanks =) Nikthestoned 18:58, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Bytes are not what you count, see the rules, but re quotes this is a good borderline example. I would say that quotes that ought to have been taken out of running prose per MOS principles should be excluded from before & after counts, but that leaves a fair amount of room for personal taste. I noticed recently that the rules re expansions do not specifically mention quotes. Full declaration: when I did the nom for Tipu's Tiger (July 18) my "before" count excluded a huge 868 char quote that was then in running prose but in the "after" version was separated as a quote, as it clearly should be. I think this was right - at that point it made a difference to the 5x but now it doesn't as the article has grown. It would be silly to include it before and exclude it after. Johnbod (talk) 22:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Expansion is counted based on the size of the previous article, no matter what shape it was in; this is stated clearly in the rules. A character of prose in the pre-existing version is counted as a character of prose, even if it happens to be in quotes. So your article is not 5x expanded.

If an article was already 10,000+ characters before you started expanding it, you should consider WP:GAN rather than WP:DYK. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:57, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

No bytes dude. The previous version contained little prose, but lists, refs, templates etc etc. Johnbod (talk) 02:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

As for your second question, you can calculate prose size using User:Dr pda/prosesize.js, User:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js, or WP:DYKCHECK. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:59, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

• Previous version is 2854 characters, current version is 7568. Less than 3x expansion. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:13, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Daily DYK scandal

There's always one, whether faulty sources, plagiarism, or sensationalism, but y'all have exceeded even your own low standards with:

reporting one negative fact based on one source which places the subject of a BLP in a negative light. Have you all no shame, or simply no processes for assuring you don't trash the main page? All one has to do is take a daily glance at DYK to realize it's gotten worse and worse. By the way, who verified the hook this time, because the source says he "may" be able to, not that he did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 21 July 2011 (UTC)