Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines

Did you know?
Introduction and rules
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These are the additional rules (formerly called unwritten rules) of Did You Know, that is, they are additional to Wikipedia:Did you know#DYK rules and Template talk:Did you know#Instructions. These rules provide detailed explanations for commonly asked questions regarding the basic rules. It is not necessary to be thoroughly familiar with every one of these rules, but if you have a question regarding interpretation of the basic rules, you will probably find the answer here.

These rules are meant (as said in G4 below) to describe consensus that has been reached among the DYK community through previous discussions of issues that have come up repeatedly.

Additional article length rules

• A1: 1500 characters means including spaces.
• A2: The prose portion of the article, which must be 1500 characters, excludes (in addition to categories listed in the rules) block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, the references section, Table of Contents, and edit buttons, but includes reference link numbers like [6], although I think the character-counter prosesize.js excludes such reference link numbers.
• A3: DYK qualifying characters: To count the number of characters in a piece of text, you will need to use a JavaScript extension like User:Dr pda/prosesize.js (instructions on the talk page), a free website like this, or an external software program that has a character-counting feature. Prosesize.js is the preferred counting method, and usually carries the most weight at DYK, because it counts only the prose as defined by Did You Know rules, thus avoiding mistakes and providing an impartial settlement of disputed counting. Note: The character counts indicated on "Revision history" pages are not accurate for DYK purposes as they include categories, infoboxes and similar text in articles, and comments and signatures in hooks on this page.
• A4: Fivefold expansion is calculated from the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was (copyvios are an exception), no matter whether you kept any of it and no matter if it was up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article.
• A5: If some of the text was copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate article.

Additional article link rules

• B1: The hook must link to a qualifying article. "Qualifying" refers to the many rules (including these Additional Rules) regulating the quality of that article.
• B2: Don't capitalize your article as it appears in the hook, just because that's how it appears in the article. Capitalize it only if the word would normally be capitalized, even if you weren't linking it.
• B3: Piping the article link is sometimes discouraged, but many hooks are better when the link is piped, and show on the Main Page that way. Disambiguated article titles like Gene Green (baseball) are always piped like this: '''[[Gene Green (baseball)|Gene Green]]'''.

Other additional rules for the hook

• C1: No redlinks in the hook.
• C2: Don't falsely assume that everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about.
• C3: A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule. If your hook introduces more than one article, you can do a basic calculation by subtracting the number of characters in the bolded character string for each additional new article beyond the first. If having done that the hook length is still 200 characters or less, it is probably an acceptable length. If it is over 200 characters after the subtractions, it may still be considered eligible if the hook is reasonably compact and readable, but such hooks will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• C4: No space before the question mark.
• C5: No external links in the hook.
• C6: If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way.

Other additional rules for the article

• D1: No items that have been rejected for In The News (?) or that have already been on DYK once before (pre-expansion, for example).
• D2: Wikipedia, including Wikipedia in other languages, is not considered a Wikipedia:Reliable source.
• D3: References in the article must not be bare URL's such as http://example.com – according to Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 29#Reference section.
• D4: Articles nominated for deletion won't be used unless/until they survive the deletion process.
• D5: The article is likely to be rejected for unresolved edit warring or having dispute tags. (Removing the tags without consensus doesn't count.)
• D6: There is a reasonable expectation that an article which is to appear on the front page, even a short one, should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress. Therefore, articles which include unexpanded headers are likely to be rejected. Articles which fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected. For example, an article about a book that fails to summarize the book's contents, but contains only a bio of the author and some critics' views, is likely to be rejected as insufficiently comprehensive.
• D7: "Five days old" means five days old in article space. You may write your article on a user subpage and perfect it for months. The five days start when you move it into article space. Such moves are often overlooked when enforcing the five day rule, so we may need a reminder. But if you merge the edit history when you move, we might not believe you moved it.
• D8: "Five days old" really means about eight days in Swahili :) . That is, if your article was created or expanded after the last day listed in Template talk:Did you know#Older nominations, it is likely to be approved.
• D9: If your article contradicts an existing article, the contradiction should be resolved one way or the other before your article is approved. Don't expect Did You Know regulars to resolve the contradiction for you.
• D10: If there is a stub tag, it should ordinarily be removed if the article is long enough for DYK.
• D11: To some extent, Did You Know approval is a subjective process. No amount of studying rules, almost-rules and precedents will guarantee approval, nor will violating any rule guarantee disapproval. Just because an unfamiliar criterion isn't listed, doesn't mean you can't be disqualified. The subjective decision might depend on an attempt to circumvent the details of the rules, especially if the attempt doesn't address the underlying purpose of improving the hook and article.

"Rules" sometimes invoked but lacking a consensus

• E1: Does the first word always have to be "that"?
• E2: Can there be multiple sentences in a hook?
• E3: Is one source for an article enough?
• E4: Is IMDb a reliable source? Previous discussion here.
• E5: Occasionally someone objects to linking an unfamiliar word to Wiktionary on the front page, but such objections have always been overruled.
• E6: Does the word (pictured) count towards the 200 character limit? How about (specific object pictured)?

Rules listed elsewhere but often overlooked

• F1: Space after the ellipsis.
• F2: The link to your article should be in bold type.
• F3: The first sentence should end with a question mark.
• F4: For a hook with an accompanying picture, the string (pictured) is all in italics, including the brackets.
• F5: WP:DASH.
• F6: MOS:NUM#Numbers as figures or words.
• F7: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
• F8: "a 'new' article is no more than five days old. This does not include articles split from older articles", although an article sufficiently expanded from a section of an older article can be a fivefold expansion. The word "fork" is sometimes used to mean Wikipedia:Splitting.
• F9: The piped redirect guideline WP:R2D, as clarified by Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Link here (which may be archived by the time you read this). This guideline and its applicability to the Main Page are controversial, but if you disagree, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Redirect so those who wrote the guideline can have their say.
• F10: WP:ADVERTISING

Other recurring issues

• G1: Authors often complain that requests for changes don't come until the time for responses is about to expire. However, most reviewers prefer to review the end of the list, because the oldest hooks are the first priority, and they can't keep up with the volume of submissions. That isn't the ideal situation, but it explains what happens. Similarly, authors wonder if their submissions are rejected or forgotten. But as the submission is still on the page, it will stay there until it either gets approved and accepted, or until there is an for rejection, or until there are other negative comments which should be promptly answered to preserve the hook's eligibility. Hooks for the updates are usually chosen from near the bottom, even though they are marked as "Older nominations". Some relevant statistics here.
• G2: To calculate fivefold expansion since a specific day, which I will call July 18, 2008 for definiteness: 1. Count the characters in the prose-only portion of the current version. 2. On the history screen, click the latest time stamp before July 18, not the first time stamp for July 18. 3. Divide by the prose-only characters on that screen.

To explain the counter-intuitive step 2, I emphasize the difference between an edit's change, which you see by clicking "last" on the history page, and an edit's result, which you see by clicking the time stamp on the history page. Although an edit's change and an edit's result are listed on the same line, the edit's change really comes between that edit's result and the previous edit's result. Similarly, an edit's result really comes between that edit's change and the next edit's change, even though an edit's change and an edit's result are shown on the same line.

Example. On January 1, 2006 a 100 character stub is created. At 1:00 on July 18, 2008, the 100 characters are expanded to 1000 characters. An hour later at 2:00 July 18, 2008, the article is further expanded to 2000 characters. When I say it that way, the expansion is clearly 20x and qualifies for Did You Know. But to count the 100 characters, they wouldn't be listed as 1:00 July 18. The 100 characters existed on July 18 before 1:00, but the 100 characters were the result of the previous edit. So you would have to click the 2006 edit to count the 100 characters, even though 2006 is much too old for Did You Know. If you made the mistake of clicking the first edit for July 18, you would get the result of that first edit and therefore miss the change of that edit, and count 1000 characters, resulting in 2x expansion and an unjust disqualification.

• G3: So why don't the additional rules combine with the other rules? Two answers: #1 is that they are combined with the other rules with a link. #2 is that we don't have a consensus on what to put into the integrated rules, in part because no one has proposed such an integration in a complete form. See Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 29#5x expansion.
• G4: These additional rules are intended to describe the consensus, not to prescribe it.

Additional rules for evaluating other people's hooks and articles

• H1: You don't have to be an administrator or a Did You Know regular to comment on a hook, to use a symbol such as or , or even to edit Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1. Of course the judgments of regulars are less likely to be challenged.
• H2: You are not allowed to approve your own hook or article.

Rules of thumb for preparing updates

Users are encouraged to help out by preparing updates on the preparation areas. Note that promoting your own articles is generally discouraged, and promoting your own articles before they have been independently verified is disallowed.

Here are a few rules of thumb to bear in mind when preparing updates:

• J1: Currently the accepted length of an update is eight hooks. This is not an absolute rule but it is the currently accepted standard length for an update.
• J2: Make sure to choose a varied selection – don't choose half a dozen people hooks, for example, or a bunch of hooks about one particular country or topic. Variety is the spice of life. (However, see the following clause for an important qualification).
• J3: Because of the preponderance of submissions on US topics and biography hooks, it is usually appropriate to have roughly 50% of hooks in a given update on both US and biography topics. That is to say, in an eight-hook update you should have roughly four hooks per update on US topics, and four on biography. These are not mutually exclusive, for example if you have two US bio hooks that would count as both two US hooks and two bio hooks. Note that "roughly 50%" means just that – this is not an absolute; you can have less of either if there are not many currently available such hooks to choose from on the Suggestions page. Note however that as a general rule you should never have more than 50% of hooks on US, biography or any other topic, except when doing so is unavoidable.
• J4: Also, mix your hooks up. Try to avoid having two hooks of the same general type next to one another in the update (for example, two US hooks or two bio hooks together). Putting several US hooks next to one another in an update makes the update look US-centric, the impact is greatly reduced if you interleave the US hooks with hooks about different countries. In the same spirit, try to avoid putting two bio hooks together, or two hooks on any other subject.
• J5: Try to avoid putting inappropriate hooks next to one another. For example, don't put a sad hook next to a funny one; it looks incongruous and jerks the reader uncomfortably from one emotion to another.
• J6: Hooks on the Suggestions page that include images often get verified first. Users sometimes then just go and grab a bunch of the nearest verified hooks for the next update, which can often include several of these verified picture hooks. Not every submitted picture can be featured in the picture slot of course, but since only one picture can be featured per update, try to leave the good picture hooks behind for another update if you possibly can.
• J7: Consider picking at least one funny or quirky hook if there is one available and putting it in the last (bottom) slot of the update. Just as serious news programs end on an upbeat note to bring viewers back next time, ending on an upbeat or quirky note rounds an update off nicely and encourages readers to come back next time for more.
• J8: Don't be afraid to ruthlessly trim hooks of extraneous information and clauses. A lot of people who submit hooks tend to overestimate the amount of information that is required, but the end result is a hook that has too much information and is difficult to process. We don't want our readers to work hard, we want to make reading the DYK section as accessible and enjoyable an experience as possible! In general, the shorter and punchier the hook, the more impact it has. As it says on the Suggestions page, the 200 character limit is an outside limit not a recommended length—the ideal length is probably no more than about 150–160 chars. Note however that some hooks cannot be reduced in length without losing essential information, so don't assume that every hook that is 200 characters long requires trimming.