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Did you know?
Did you know?
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Changing DYK

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

Proposal 1: Slowing down the output rate

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

Discussion (Prop. 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proposal 2: More transparent logs

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

Discussion (Prop. 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proposal 3: introduce some GA DYKs

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

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

Discussion (Prop. 3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To roux, I think there are still oodles and oodles of articles out there, but I do worry that the ones we make are more and more esoteric over time, hence why I support recently promoted GAs. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not opposed to featuring hooks from recently promoted GAs. Set a certain time to feature new GAs, give them there own nomination section. Grsz¹¹ 14:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

Oppose. Not that I don't think that GA is an important part of Wikipedia, but I generally disagree that GA's deserve special mainpage recognition. The existance of DYK and Featured Articles on the main page provides a nice bookend effect: at DYK you can find the newest articles, and at FA you can find the best articles, in their closests-to-finished state you will get (yes, I know that even FAs aren't finished, but you get my drift). Adding GAs to the main page muddies this nice symmetry. I don't really think we need to place articles on the main page at intermediate stages. The current system works fine, and doesn't need any tweaking in this regard. --Jayron32 04:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it is a matter of GA's deserving recognition; instead they are a vast resource which can be used on the mainpage to encourage editors to contribute to Wikipedia. Geometry guy 01:06, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wikipedia is at a point where we should encourage quality over quantity. The amount of GAs will be insignificant, but it's a project that deserves more exposure. Lampman (talk) 12:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The main argument against this proposal seems to be that DYK is for new articles only. Apart from being circular reasoning, this is patently false: anyone who has followed DYK recently will know that articles are increasingly newly expanded articles, not recently created ones. So by banning recently promoted Gas from entry, we’re basically saying that recently expanded articles are ok on the main page, while recently improved articles are not. This preference for expansion over improvement seems to me a complete perversion of the most basic principles of Wikipedia. Lampman (talk) 13:56, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. DYKs have simply too many issues for this to persist, and I think GAs are more useful to readers as a generally higher-quality resource. I'm not swayed by the various arguments above: DYK is hardly any more "newb-friendly" than GAN, seeing as a few people churn out the lion's share of them. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Encourage. I have for some time suggested that the main page should make use of the resource that is the rapidly expanding pool of Good Articles. This is an idea whose time may have come. Supplementing DYK's by articles which have already been reviewed, and pre-identified at GA for quality and interest could lighten the workload here while also providing greater choice of articles and hooks to present each day, so that we don't reach (or have to scrape) the bottom of the barrel. I agree that such a change may have to be introduced in conjunction with other reforms to the selection and scheduling of DYKs, but the synergy created with GA reviewers might boost contributions to both DYK and GA processes. Indeed the interaction could be quite exciting! Geometry guy 01:06, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I too have advocated for this in the past. The current criteria for DYK is sketchy (e.g. 5x expansion for existing articles). GAs and FAs would actually complement DYK quite well considering that an extensive review process already happens for articles to achieve GA/FA. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 20:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Featuring some GAs for 24 hours is better than showing a bunch of DYKs that stay on the main page only for 6 hours because a lot of us will miss 1 update while we sleep. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:59, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support. Adding a GA that has been promoted in (say) the past 5 days fits under the definition of "newly improved" for mine (which is what expanded articles are, i.e. not "our newest articles" anyway. The other reason I like this idea is often a GA improver is looking for more sets of eyes before propelling an article towards FAC, hence this is a nice nudge in the right direction. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:09, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another suggestion: Use newly promoted Good Articles as DYK source

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

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

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

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

"much better uses" - like what? Rd232 ^talk 20:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's Proposal 3 above. Rd232 ^talk 22:25, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support changing process to limit to showcasing newly-promoted-GAs, and then also increasing timeframe of selected hook sets on Main Page. -- Cirt (talk) 15:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support - replacing DYK with a selection of recently-promoted Good Articles would be a far better use of the space on the main page. What should be important is quality, not mere newness (and rapid expansion) and DYK encourages the latter. Robofish (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for same reasons I cite above. I like that the main page features the new articles; it highlights the fact that we are constantly growing. If the DYK process needs tweaking, that's fine, but scrapping it and replacing it with GA is a bad idea. --Jayron32 04:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I don't think we promote enough articles to GA to fill an entire queue. If we threw B-class articles into that category I would strongly support. Marcus Qwertyus 21:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It took me a while to locate the monthly Wikipedia:Good article statistics, which go back years. Cheers. Haus^Talk 18:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. So it could work but we'd have to have reduce it to about 2 queues a day. Marcus Qwertyus 20:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

support. It seems like a good compromise of all the comments made previously. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 03:07, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow - definitely has merit, but I have a niggling worry that the gulf between stub creation and GA is too big. I do like it alot though. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:20, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support per my comments above and elsewhere on this page. Haus^Talk 02:09, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fifth Proposal: No more time deadlines

Based on the above discussion, I have an idea for another proposal: I think we should scrap the five day deadline entirely, it encourages people to rush out articles, and ignores recent, good articles that have already passed the five day deadline. Quality takes time, after all. Doing so would make the process more like FA and GA nominations, but for shorter articles and with lower quality criteria. Regardless of when they were created, articles with enough support votes end up in DYK, and ones that fail, don't. It could be argued that this would increase the workload, but if we reduce the daily output to 10 DYKs a day, the workload should be about the same as the AfD process.--hkr Laozi speak 23:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- The time limit is not much of an issue really; in reality, very few articles are actually passed and shown within 5 days of being created or nominated. Plus, even with longer time, I doubt reviewers would spend more time checking articles more carefully; what happens (in my experience) is you do what is needed to check that an article meets the established criteria, and then you move on. Having twice as much time to review an article doesn't necessarily mean you would spent twice as long doing it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I see your point, but I think having no time limits would allow much older articles, but of good quality (not neccessarily a Good Article), to be nominated. However, this couldn't be implemented without also upping the criteria for DYK nominations, as you've proposed, and I support. I guess what I'm suggesting is a DYK for a third tier of articles, short articles with a quality in the B range to A range (which would include GAs, but not make it exclusive to them).--hkr Laozi speak 00:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, the purpose of DYK is to showcase new material. -- Cirt (talk) 12:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, insofar as expanding the time horizon of DYK hook sets, while requiring all DYK hooks to come from newly-promoted-GAs. -- Cirt (talk) 15:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, although an extension from 5 days to 7 might make sense. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Identity crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DYK lottery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oppose, this seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. -- Cirt (talk) 12:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Perhaps you would care to actually explain your positions, instead of just blanket opposing every suggestion? → ROUX ₪ 12:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Perhaps you could stop focusing on me and replying to every single one of my posts with pithy responses. -- Cirt (talk) 12:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Hear hear: please explain, per WP:NOTVOTE. In particular, are you opposing a lottery per se, or Yzx's approach to it, which involves some DYK noms not getting on the Main Page at all? What about Roux's/my approach noted above, which doesn't? Rd232 ^talk 13:20, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Arbitrarily throwing out hook nominations is a bad idea. How about applying that to GAN? How about marking as "failed" all GAN reviews on candidates that have not yet been reviewed if the nom is over one month old? How would that go over at GAN? -- Cirt (talk) 13:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - What is with people making obviously unhelpful comments in this discussion?? GA review is not comparable to the review of DYK hooks in the way that you imply. Worse, the suggestion I asked you to respond to was Roux's/my lottery idea, which does not involve throwing out any DYK hooks, it instead involves a lottery to display DYKs from a pool, so there's less time pressure on reviewing due to the constant need to fill a daily quota. Rd232 ^talk 13:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - I have subheaded my proposal, below, for clarity. → ROUX ₪ 15:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, this sort of idea of automation as proposed seems reasonable. -- Cirt (talk) 15:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I fail to see how this will solve any problems. DYK reviewers are currently having a hard time as it is getting through all the entries. This suggestion would mean that they'd have a to review a bunch of entries that would not even get featured. That would be a great disincentive for reviewers, who are already in short supply. If we want to reduce the number of DYKs, perhaps to accommodate a certain number of GAs, the best way to do that would be to tighten the requirements. That would have the added benefit of securing better quality DYKs. Lampman (talk) 14:16, 5 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose,. per Lampman's comments. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK lottery system, new process proposal

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

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

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

This has numerous benefits:

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

Possible objections:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support, in particular the idea of FIFO sounds most logical. -- Cirt (talk) 15:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Well I was aiming for random, but I suppose FIFO would work just as well, given that there seems to be some support for it. Have amended the proposal and my comment above to reflect this. → ROUX ₪ 15:55, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How would you prevent a glut of (for the sake of argument) U.S.-centric hooks from ending up on the Main Page at the same time? GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 20:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't really see a problem with that (and before you say it, I am very much not from the USA and have general issues with americentrism); DYKs just go on the main page in the order they get approved, FIFO. Or go back to my original version, and do the actual appearance totally randomly. → ROUX ₪ 20:03, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I can see the benifits, and I can see the rebuttals to the possible objections, but overall, to me, the benifits don't outweigh the negatives by enough to make this worthwhile. YMMV! - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 5

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

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

unnecessary

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

- - Citing WP:OTHERSTUFF while saying "And?" is a bit amusing, particularly when this involves the suggestions of merging the DYK process with GAN, it is actually directly relevant. -- Cirt (talk) 13:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - My point is, basically, so what if this isn't currently done at GAN? Your blanket opposes all over this page smack of the typical Wikipedia kneejerk opposition to any kind of change or rationalizing any process, and it's disappointing. → ROUX ₪ 13:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - Your blanket responses to every - single - one - of my comments, smacks of opposition to my opposition and a need to reply to every single one of my posts, in a back-and-forth and back-and-forth and back-and-forth drawn out threaded process, over and above actual polite, professional, and constructive dialog. -- Cirt (talk) 13:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        They are nothing of the sort. You are making blanket opposition, apparently because change is bad. You're simply not acting in good faith here, and I see no reason to continue speaking with you until you are. → ROUX ₪ 13:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        And you seem to have some intense pattern of needing to respond to my comments about this discussion. -- Cirt (talk) 13:16, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

In addition to the points I raised above, I'm not sure this proposed rule would ensure good reviews (i.e., reviews that catch copyvio, which is the whole issue that started this discussion). A person being forced to do a review so that he can get his own nomination reviewed is, I expect, likely to just do the bare minimum. Call it not assuming good faith, but that's what I imagine would happen. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Not everybody has the time or energy to rummage through DYK noms as well as writing good new articles. Should they be penalised for it? - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A personal observation and request

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summarizing some of the problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you know....

From Wikipedia's Good Articles:

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

From Wikipedia's newest articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

unsourced BLP Drive

In an earlier discussion on this page, Slp1 proposed that "newly and completely (top to toe) sourced BLPs be made eligible for DYK. Not new articles, but older articles that were unsourced as of some recent date, and which have now been fully and reliably cited." 28bytes expressed support for the idea, as did Physchim62 who sensibly (in my view) added that "they can be nominated as "new" (i.e. minimum 1500 characters) without being a five-fold expansion, but that otherwise they have to pass the same requirements as any new BLP on DYK. Cmadler noted (in support) that the referencing would need to be recent and the nomination timely. Naturally, a suitable hook would be needed. Though I did not say so explicitly in this thread, I am also in agreement with this idea. The thread, unfortunately, died in the midst of all the other recent discussions. No opposition to the idea was expressed in the thread, but the views of 4-5 editors in agreement is not community / project consensus to implement the proposal.

To advance the discussion, I nominated the Robert Olmstead article at Template talk:Did you know#Robert Olmstead to test this proposal. It has now been reviewed and rejected on length grounds for a x5 expansion, noting that it does not pass under the existing rules. I accept that this is a reasonable view to take, but would like to invite further comment to see if the DYK community would like to see long-term unsourced BLPs being top-to-bottom sourced (and in this case more than doubled in length to exceed the 1500 character requirement) to be included in DYK. I think coming to a community consensus on whether we support helping recognise the work done in fully referencing long-term unsourced BLPs is desirable, whether or not the consensus finds that my specific nomination is deemed suitable. All perspectives welcome. :) EdChem (talk) 23:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do support the idea of the BLP drive (as noted above), but since reviewers may not be following the threads here, it's probably best to put a note somewhere in the rules and instructions saying this is an OK exception before offering test nominations. And the note should probably wait until there's a firm(er) consensus for the exception. Perhaps we can handle this with a test run similar the same way the date flip was done, as a one-week trial with a note at the top of T:TDYK inviting feedback here. 28bytes (talk) 23:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Recognition of such effort is certainly warranted but is DYK the right medium for recognition? Surely the judicious distribution of barnstars would accomplish the same goal of recognition without adding to the DYK workload or diluting its purpose, showcasing Wikipedia's newest articles. It's one thing to receive a little front page exposure for prose you've carefully crafted and quite another to expect it for properly sourcing somebody else's prose no matter how old. - Dravecky (talk) 23:49, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll reiterate my support for the idea (for what it's worth), although EdChem doesn't mention that the proposal was (implicitly) to be time limited until WP:DAY, that is January 15, 2011, or the tenth anniverary of the existence of our favourite online encyclopedia. I completely disagree with Dravecky: an article that has been both saved from the BLP slaughterhouse and has a hook that is interesting is a better candidate for the Main Page than a cookie-cutter article. Sourcing BLPs when you didn't write them yourself, and then finding one that has a decent hook, is undoubdtedly harder than much of the composition that goes on for DYK at the moment, as can be seen by the contribution stats of certain editors. Physchim62 (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should wait to see if we can attract more over support votes for this proposal. Thank you EdChem for picking up the ball. And I'd agree with Physchim62 that sourcing the articles top to toe is often very hard work indeed. --Slp1 (talk) 01:00, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In principle, I'm inclined to support the notion of relaxing the 5x expansion requirement a bit in order to recognize significant improvements to unsourced BLP articles. However, in addition to references, I would want to see a clear increase in the content value of the article, as well as an interesting hook. The Robert Olmstead example doesn't do those things for me. The additions to the article are mostly quotations from reviews (note that DYK has some history of discounting quotations when calculating eligibility), the length increase is barely 2x (I've added a little more to the article since then), and the proposed hook is both too long for DYK guidelines (241 characters vs. a limit of 200) and not very interesting (largely due to its excessive length). --Orlady (talk) 05:24, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

28bytes, fyi, I did include a note with the nomination, pointing to the earlier discussion.
Dravecky, here is a diff for the changes I made - I believe what I did was more than just "properly sourcing somebody else's prose" – consider the diff, you can decide for yourself.
Physchim62 is quite correct, I missed the implicit date deadline, though I would support including eligibility for long-term unsourced BLPs until the backlog is gone.
To be clear, this is much less about my nomination than it is about whether we as a project support the principle of assisting in recognising the work in properly sourcing BLPs. I agree with Physchim62 that the sourcing of these articles is time-consuming work, and often involves adding material and redrafting, not to mention wikifying and copyediting. If the consensus is that the idea is supportable but my nomination is unworthy then I'll accept it, but I would very much like us to come to a firm (and preferably rapid) decision. EdChem (talk) 06:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a way to gain more consensus for this would be to relax – but not waive – the expansion requirements? Something like 2x or 3x for newly-sourced BLPs? Either that or retain the 5x expansion requirement but go by raw byte count to allow the references to count as part of the expansion? That may bring it more in line with DYK's traditional aims regarding new content. Just a thought. 28bytes (talk) 06:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As already noted, I support this change. Providing thorough citations for a previously-unsourced BLP article is high value to the encylopedia, and I argue that it's similar to fixing a copyvio, which is something for which we already make a special allowance at DYK. My understanding is that eventually this should cease to be an issue, because all new BLP articles are required to have at least one source; there's a special proposed deletion process for this saying the article can be deleted 10 days after creation if it still lacks sourcing. Since no new unsourced BLP articles should be coming in to Wikipedia, there is a finite number of articles to which this exemption could apply, and other abitrary dates that we might choose aside, once that supply of pre-existing articles is exhausted, there will be no further need for this exemption. cmadler (talk) 12:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I fully support this concept. We at WP:URBLPR and WP:URBLP really need more editors if we want to eliminate the unreferenced BLP backlog. Barnstars by themselves do not draw in new editors, and many of these articles could be DYK candidates with some editing help. I would propose that the 5x expansion requirement be relaxed to 2x, keeping the minimum length requirement in place, and the nom must be made within 5 days of the expansion. That way the articles are "expanded" as DYK promises.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea but I'm unsure whether this should be a part of DYK. After all, DYK has a different goal, to showcase new articles. I think we should rather have a separate section on the Main Page similar to DYK but explicitly for such articles, thus emphasizing that such work is very important to the project without mixing it with DYK. After all, if you make this an exception for DYK, people won't know that the article was previously unsourced, thus possibly confusing readers and contributors alike. Regards So Why 14:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm keen on this idea, but I might as well point out that whatever happens to the backlog of known unreferenced BLPs in the next few weeks, we are still finding old ones from previous years and have no idea when we will have finished identifying all our unreferenced BLPs amongst our older articles. At some point the importance of adding articles to the pedia will drop compared to maintaining what we already have, so I think it would be sensible to gently broaden DYK towards article improvement. Ϣere SpielChequers 14:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I Support but would prefer some basic requirement for expansion alongside the referencing, something in the way of 5x bytes or in the way of 2-3x in text length, Sadads (talk) 15:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a great idea; it would draw more focus on the need to reference BLPs, and also provide an opportunity to showcase some interesting articles and hooks. Unlike writing a good article, it should also be relatively easy for new editors to take part. Warofdreams talk 02:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I support as well, though I also believe that the articles should, at minimum, meet the 1500 requirement. But treating them as new articles seems fair to me. This is a method that should, hopefully, get more people involved in referencing unsourced BLPs. Silverseren^C 20:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support without an expansion requirement, only the normal minimum length requirement. Gigs (talk) 15:15, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Testing ideas

Due to the discussion of improving DYK functionality and quality, in the same way we recently worked out changing the order of noms by date, I think we should take Hongkongresident's excellent list and vote. In place of talking , as some of these suggestions have been tossed around for quite some time, I think we can afford to implement any or none of them. Afterwards, we can review changes and remove or try others; please add any suggestions to the vote; I think it would be best to place discussion in a separate area to keep the vote from clogging up.

UPDATE I think it would be less confusing if you only showed support below, by not supporting it is assumed that you are opposing the idea. Leave comments in subsection in order to avoid discussion within the voting area. Or don't. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I only saw this after adding both Supports and Opposes (was it added?); but I think it is better to have both. But remove the Opposes if you like. Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quite happy to add oppose !votes simply to oppose the idea that people cant add a short opposition, if that's what's needed. Wikipedia is not Burma, nobody is obliged to !vote yes. Physchim62 (talk) 02:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I understand, I just wanted to simplify the process, and to avoid turning a vote into a discussion in the same area. However, whatever works... works. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I understand as well (I hope). Can we just keep comments short ;) Physchim62 (talk) 02:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've broken off each proposal as a subsection, to make discussion easier. cmadler (talk) 12:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE Some sections have been closed (very prematurely in my view). Discussion continues on others lower down. Please do not close any more - they have only been open for 30 hours. Johnbod (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Slowing down the output rate

Seems to have general consensus already. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

support Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - not an end in itself. It was only one possible means of reducing the burden on reviewers and there has been no agreement on a method of reducing the rate. Gatoclass (talk) 03:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Over ten days of discussion, nobody has offered an argument as to why to why the current rate of output is Good; on the contrary, many arguments have been made as to why it is Bad. Physchim62 (talk) 04:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The current rate of output is Good because it ensures that everyone who wrote an eligible article got a DYK. Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need for a Main Page slot to give out "awards" to all qualifying articles. I assume that Gatoclass will be happy if we use the DYK Main Page slot for something with more focus on our readers, rather than as the simple Smartie factory that it has obviously become, without even any respect for its own criteria and certainly none for the title "Did you know?". Physchim62 (talk) 14:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - the key is to slow the input rate to allow more thorough review. This whole thing was kicked off by copyvio concerns which slower output will not address. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support This is the cornerstone in any improvement of the project. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Gatoclass and Dravecky. cmadler (talk) 12:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose as a driver of change, Support as a consequence. Reducing hooks displayed without other change will require arbitrary rejections, and I cannot support that. However, meaningful changes in standards and practices that have the effect of increased rejections and longer times on the main page for those hooks selected is fine as a consequential effect. EdChem (talk) 14:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose treats a symptom, not the disease. Haus^Talk 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This proposal is the same as Reducing DYK frequency below! (the number of hooks per set is very hard to change significantly) Rejecting poor-quality noms is primary, the output rate should be flexible depending on the availability of approved noms. Limiting the output will simply bloat the T:TDYK page, which is already slow to load. Materialscientist (talk) 07:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not actually the same proposal as the DYK frequency one below. Limiting the DYK frequency would (among other things) provide a hard maximum to the number of hooks. This proposal doesn't provide any hard maximum; it merely says that the throughput should come down if there's to be additional reviewing requirements (specifically, copyvio) given that we cannot assume that the number of reviewers is going to increase significantly. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support—"The current rate of output is Good because it ensures that everyone who wrote an eligible article got a DYK."... This is entirely unacceptable as a reason. Is this some kind of socialist welfare state? Tony (talk) 09:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no, that wasn't actually my reason for opposing this measure. That was just a response to a user's questioning the utility of a high rate of output. Most of these half-baked proposals have unfortunately completely missed the point, which is that the key to improving anything is to reduce the burden on reviewers - anything that doesn't take account of that is just a distraction. Gatoclass (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— There should be no 'guarantee' of a slot on the main page. Qualitative criteria must come first, thus slowing down would create a bigger selection to weed out 'weak' candidates. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support It makes no sense to me to reserve a fixed number of slots for DYK if the pickings are slim and a slot or two have to be filled with some candidates that make many editors’ noses wrinkle a bit. Quality before quantity. Keep it flexible. If there are a number of really good candidates, then expand the quantity that day (or spread them out across two days). Greg L (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist.4meter4 (talk) 20:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, makes sense. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 10:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose and agree with EdChem, no one has any decent proposals as to how we can decrease the output rate. SmartSE (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support per Tony. We should be improving quality of articles and hooks by not seeing DYK as an entitlement. First Light (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incorporate CorenBot to scan for plagiarism

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Consensus in favor of implementation cmadler (talk) 13:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, but how much help is it? Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

a bit, but certainly not the only tool to be used. This is not a practical problem, everyone agrees about a bit more copyvio checking: basic copyvio training can be provided and reviewers can use the methods they see best. Physchim62 (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, since it should help catch copyvio/plagiarism without significantly adding to the workload. cmadler (talk) 13:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Just as a note, Coren has said that Corenbot must be used manually to scan articles, since the bot only checks for new articles. Also, due to TOS issues, Corenbot can't check Google Books. Either way, I still support this proposal.--hkr (talk) 13:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support as one of a suite of tools and checks. I would hate to see a CSBot tick being seen as a guarantee of no plagiarism. EdChem (talk) 14:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. While it can't scan Google Books, it would certainly help elsewhere. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand this proposal. Plagiarism is bad and any tool which fights it is good - nobody will object this (proposal). The question is technical: who and how will do that? Materialscientist (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, without knowing much about the bot. Sounds good. Tony (talk) 09:03, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose— Lazy option that creates a false sense of security. Does not absolve editors from physically checking entries for thinly disguised copyvios. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Encourage editors to manually use online plagiarism checkers

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Consensus in favor of implementation cmadler (talk) 13:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

simply reading the article (without a checksheet in your hand), source-checking and a judicious use of Google make a good practical substitute for this Physchim62 (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Other than CorenBot, there are two (maybe more?) free plagiarism checkers online that can be used. One problem is that they aren't accurate as paid services. But I still support this proposal. --hkr (talk) 13:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See above support comment - encouraging editors to do a range of checks is good, mandating particular checks risks the development of a "checklist" mentality which I think is anathema to what we seek to achieve. EdChem (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per Hongkongresident (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but we'll need a list of recommended online checkers. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How long does a string have to be before it's an unacceptable duplication? How different does it have to be to be acceptable as paraphrasing? Tony (talk) 09:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support I do it all the time when something looks suspect. It's called Google string searches. ;-) But usually not very useful unless it is a wholescale copyvio. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Require two reviewers per hook

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Consensus not to implement at this time. There seems to be interest in this as in the long term, but an agreement that it is not workable at present; this may be worth revisiting down the road (maybe in 6 months). cmadler (talk) 13:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

medium-term objective; additional reviewer resources should go to the borderline cases, not the ones that are clear yes/no. Physchim62 (talk) 02:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Currently impractical, and only of value if throughput was substantially reduced, and as I said above there is no consensus for doing that or for a means of doing so. Gatoclass (talk) 03:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Reviewer resources are better used for more thorough examinations of each article. Doubling the workload will work against that goal. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Probably not practicable. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose but open to reconsidering this pending other changes. cmadler (talk) 13:23, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. It takes long enough to get one review. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not now, but encourage the thinking that moving an article to prep is taking some responsibility for judging the article and hook "DYK-ready" and "main page-worthy". We already have checking at T:TDYK, moving to prep, and promoting sets to the queue. Each step should include some level of check; none of them should be seen as purely routine and housekeeping. EdChem (talk) 14:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, WP:GAN process should have higher standards — but this is not done there. -- Cirt (talk) 16:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Lampman. Nev1 (talk) 23:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: reduce the number of items appearing if reviewer resources are thin. Tony (talk) 08:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This would be nice, but it's not practical. —Bruce1ee^talk 08:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Encourage, not require, support or object - the more the better, but we can not set a fixed limit here. The consensus seems solid for rejecting boring hooks. This automatically means more than one editor will evaluated the "boringness", so we automatically get more than one reviewer :-) Having 2 or more approvals for every single noms is not yet feasible. Materialscientist (talk) 09:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Corblimy... it's not just the hooks that need reviewing, it's the whole frigging article. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you've misunderstood this one (and others? it helps to read the debate above). Johnbod (talk) 11:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of support. Imposing a requirement in the short run is probably impractical, but we could have a system of encouraging Two Reviewers, by not promoting single-reviewer hooks unless DYK is short of hooks. If that bedded down well enough, it could evolve into a requirement. Rd232 ^talk 12:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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More transparent logs, better accountability

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Consensus in favor of implementation. cmadler (talk) 13:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, not sure how helpful. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but proper implementation of this will require detailed discussions. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Sub-pages for each day would probably be the best solution . Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, EdChem brought this proposal up which was focused on 1) Archiving T:TDYK, 2) More detailed DYK templates on article talk pages, and 3) Double-checking for COI issues. May take a while to implement, but I support the idea.--hkr (talk) 13:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I've previously mentioned that I'd like to see each hook get it's own subpage, transcluded onto daily pages in a manner similar to AfD. cmadler (talk) 13:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - sounds like a lot of additional red tape for very little benefit to me. If someone can come up with a low-maintenance process, it might be workable, but in any case we can only do one thing at a time and there are more important issues to deal with. Gatoclass (talk) 13:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It really doesn't involve any red tape. All it requires is a change in a couple of templates and a new bot to archive T:TDYK. It may take time to get through the technical stuff, but it certainly won't be done manually.--hkr (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well if it can be done without creating more work for anybody, there is probably no good reason for opposing it. I would like see the system first though. Gatoclass (talk) 15:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The one thing there does seem very wide consensus on is that we can do more than one thing at a time, and should. Johnbod (talk) 11:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support - our current records suck, but the process needs to be bot-run. Accountability need not be a scary thing. It will allow us to see where our weaknesses are, it may allow us to help editors having trouble getting used to our standards, plus we can recognise the people who contribute a lot of high quality work. EdChem (talk) 14:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I'm concerned that this will just add extra bureaucracy to a Process that already has a lot of "process". It's obviously not a Bad Thing in itself, but will the supposedly better reviewing compensate for the time taken in completeing the bureaucracy? I'd suggest leaving this to one side until the excessive throughput rate has been dealt with. Physchim62 (talk) 15:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Should be trivial to implement, and useful some of the time, therefore, net benefit. Sasata (talk) 07:41, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, if it can be implemented without too much effort. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment— logs are quite transparent enough. Its the use they are put to that is important. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. A pre-requisite for various improvements. Rd232 ^talk 12:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Introduce Good Articles to DYK

Possibly Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - There was clearly no consensus for this in earlier discussion, and would require a radical restructuring of this project that I don't think we are ready for yet. Gatoclass (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually there was clear consensus for it above. I counted something like 13/6, which should count as a supermajority. The problem is that I posted a note about it on the GA talk page, and there's been no response. This won't be possible to do without cooperation from the GA project. Lampman (talk) 11:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well there might have been a brief flurry of support for it when it was first proposed, but when discussion moved to the question of how to implement this it quickly became evident that consensus would be difficult to achieve. Gatoclass (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rather when participation in the discussion fell to include only DYK regulars. Obviously a discussion involving more than one project needs participation from the whole community. Lampman (talk) 16:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Does nothing to address the problems of limited resources or need for more thorough review of hooks submitted to DYK. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose but open to reconsidering this in the future based on other changes. cmadler (talk) 13:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not now - we have enough to fix, and I think this is inconsistent with DYK's core business. EdChem (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, would introduce a bit more high quality material to DYK here. -- Cirt (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but there's enough going on that I can accept putting off further discussion of it for a month. But, please, let's not just forget about this, or the idea of highlighting WP:CSB articles. Rd232 ^talk 17:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Per my comments in the prior lengthy discussion. Cbl62 (talk) 17:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. There are clear advantages to this, and the only disadvantages so far explained are that it would take time and work to set up and that co-operation from the GA people is not yet arranged. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support It's a way of introducing higher-quality articles into DYK rather than slap dash material that's been thrown together in a few days. Part of the problem with "new" articles is that many are obscure and so uninteresting; with over 10,000 GAs there must be some with interesting hooks. Nev1 (talk) 23:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. There are many pros and cons, and the key is: This proposal means diverting DYK reviewers to double screen GAs (surely they have to be screened for hook, MP issues, image, etc.) I vote to improve the quality of DYK reviews instead. Materialscientist (talk) 07:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (for now) Initially I liked this idea, but I think some of the other changes should be tried first. If they fail to have the desired outcome (whatever that is ... higher quality submissions and more interesting hooks, I think) we can come back to this idea. Sasata (talk) 07:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support per Cirt, though I think this should wait a little bit while the other problems are worked on. This would actually give GA a purpose and give DYK more substantive content for the MP. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Tony (talk) 08:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, for now as per EdChem. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— good way to boost quality in pretty short order. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support as a way to encourage improvement of the quality of articles. --Hegvald (talk) 14:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for the reasons I've given in past discussions of this issue. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not now - This may be a good idea in the long term, but it will not address the immediate issue of more thorough review of nominated DYK articles. Also, without some mechanism to reduce input (e.g., higher standards for DYK articles), this would result in a huge backlog at DYK. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This suggestion is moving away from DYK's fundamental purpose which is to encourage the creation of new articles at wikipedia.4meter4 (talk) 20:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Enwiki adds about 1,000 articles a day compared to about 10 GAs a day — which number stands to benefit more from mainpage exposure? Also, a new GA is less likely than a new stub to suffer the quality issues which spurred this whole imbroglio. I haven't seen any arguments on this page to support the idea that many new editors use DYK as a springboard for a prolific editing career. Haus^Talk 22:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose mainly due to the decreased space for non GAs - without decreasing them, there's no way these will fit! I'd like to see GAs on the main page, but don't think this is the place to discuss it. SmartSE (talk) 00:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - GAs are usually "fresh content" anyway, which is essentially the point of DYK. Technical rules about what counts as the necessary ratio for a DYK-able "expansion", or how many days old an article is before it is no longer "new", may not be met by recent GAs. However, those rules are clearly there as a method of identifying fresh content, and the definition of "fresh" isn't necessarily limited to the rules as they stand at the moment. DYK has suffered problems with reviewing, and at least GAN means that a fairly thorough review should already have occurred. Workload and project cultures may differ between GA and DYK; whether this proposal can be made to work, depends a lot on how effectively the two processes can be integrated. There was discussion above that suggested that a good structure for integration can be designed. TheGrappler (talk) 02:04, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have always been an opponent of bringing GAs to DYK, but you do raise a good point about GAs being (usually) mostly new content. I think there's something worth thinking about there. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if, rather than "newly promoted GAs", we could restrict it to "recently written, newly promoted GAs". That would allay many of the concerns expressed in this section, all it needs is a good definition of "recently written". New GAs are usually either new articles or rewritten/expanded old articles. "In the fortnight before being submitted for GA review, the article was either (a) created, (b) greatly expanded, or (c) extensively rewritten" might work, particularly if (b) and (c) could be pinned down more precisely. "At least 50% new or rewritten content" from looking at the diffs might roughly do. I wonder if there is an automated tool that can give a quantitiative rather than qualitative evaluation of the size of the difference between revisions? That would allow "sufficiently big rewrites" to be identified systematically... but to be honest, it's usually self-evident on eyeball inspection, and even if this is objected to, "brand new or 5-fold expansion before GAN submission" would obviously be workable criteria. TheGrappler (talk) 21:05, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think this would be an excellent way of encouraging more GA writing and reviewing. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Definitely help improve DYK quality as above. Derild 49 21 ☼ 02:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support This seems like a good idea. Not every editor is in to starting their own article from scratch, and many are probably more interested in improving existing ones, so this would be an excellent way to increase participation in DYK. WTF? (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is irrelevant; DYK does not require that editor start new articles from scratch (see the rules regarding 5x expansion). Please familiarize yourself with DYK before voting. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, I think what WTF is referring to is that sometimes articles are already expanded quite a bit and 5x expansion is very hard, in which case reaching GA is easier. Just what I think. Derild 49 21 ☼ 22:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support The main page should include GAs somewhere. Combining them with the DYK hooks makes the most sense to me. First Light (talk) 21:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support This is the logical step, it seems to me. We could reduce DYK output (which is necessary to improve quality) while maintaining a reasonably high turnover. At the same time it would provide well-earned exposure for the GA project. Lampman (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - We need to improve the DYK process, adding yet more potential candidates to the existing creaking process will not solve the problems, they will still need to be checked. Mikenorton (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Takes some pressure off DYK, adds some encouragement to the GA process and improves quality of articles linked from main page. An all round winner imho. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 01:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support: looks like a good idea, as noted in above comments; the proposal is to implement this and see if it is any good, so let's see. —innotata 00:08, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abandon the "new article" concept

Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

equivalent to abandoning DYK completely; not a subject for this talk page. Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - related to the GA question above, and my response is similar to that one. Gatoclass (talk) 03:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - The consensus is strongly against this and would radically alter a fundamental purpose of the project. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose cmadler (talk) 13:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - dreadful idea, and as Physchim62 notes, not something that could or should be decided here. EdChem (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per EdChem (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Cbl62 (talk) 17:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support—Well, if you can find enough good hooks from new articles, fine. But I see no evidence of this. Convince me new articles provide a big enough flow of opportunities. Tony (talk) 08:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as per Dravecky. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— anything to widen the pool to dilute weak candidates must be a good idea. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite sure what this means. I would agree that the concept that DYK=new articles should be abandoned; DYK is a tool for showcasing content and providing interesting facts to readers. Pointing the tool solely at new articles is arbitrary, as evidenced by permitting 5x expanded articles. So, formally abandon the concept, and be open to including other sources of content into the DYK Main Page setup - but without abandoning the idea that some DYK hooks come from new articles. Rd232 ^talk 12:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This lies at the heart of the problem. People creating new articles, no matter the quality, to get DYKs, which then have to be rushed because they're only accepted within a certain timeframe. It reduces the quality of both new creations and DYKs. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 11:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Fresh content" is perhaps a better description than "new articles" - it already isn't that, as it's certainly "new and recently expanded articles". Strangely, an article can get a complete rewrite and referencing, but fail to qualify under either of those headings, despite being essentially a brand new article! Is it really such a big leap of faith to go from "new and recently expanded" to "new and recently improved" (e.g. by incorporation of recent GAs)? I think the principle is still the same: displaying fresh content, of a certain quality, and hopefully drawing in new editors to do so. TheGrappler (talk) 01:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose The idea of encouraging new articles, or greatly expanding stubs, is a good one. First Light (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per above comments; DYK is a great idea for promoting new content, and new content seems the most suitable place to find odd facts for the main page. —innotata 00:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose - although TheGrappler's comment bears considering. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Abandon or increase the time limit criteria

Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

equivalent to abandoning DYK completely; not a subject for this talk page. Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - There is already some wiggle room for hooks nominated on day 6 or intended for a specific significant date in the future so any increase would only serve to make more articles eligible, increasing workload for little tangible benefit. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky, this would take us in the opposite direction from where we need to go. cmadler (talk) 13:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - unDYKian. EdChem (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per Dravecky (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky. Cbl62 (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as per Dravecky. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— It's hard (but not impossible) to create an article of any quality in five days. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. For "new articles", 5 days seems fine. See my comment above though - we should be open to adding other content sources to DYK than new articles. Rd232 ^talk 12:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. We're encouraging people to highlight articles on the main page that they've spent almost no time working on. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 11:04, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky.4meter4 (talk) 22:19, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Articles should have been worked on (sandbox, user space - in unlimited time) before they appear. From then on, 5 days is fine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose drafts in user space allow for taking as long as you like already. SmartSE (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Physchim62 (and Smartse). —innotata 00:13, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Psychim62 and SmartSE. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reject boring hooks

Support Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

this is simply requiring that the current DYK criteria be respected. Physchim62 (talk) 03:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, in that this is already in the DYK criteria. Crafting an excellent hook is not the same skill as writing a quality article so experienced reviewers are a vital link in this process. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - subjective, time-consuming, and really like many of the other proposals in this section, too lacking in specifics. Gatoclass (talk) 06:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no lack of specifics here: Johnbod and I have outlined a system that would work fairly and with little extra reviewer time. The fact is that rejecting boring hooks is already in the DYK criteria, so DYK has to have a method to do it, otherwise it doesn't deserve the title "Did you know?" (or its Main Page slot). Physchim62 (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please supply a link to discussion of your "system that would fairly work". Gatoclass (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My version is discussed here, Johnbod's version is discussed here Physchim62 (talk) 22:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So which version are we voting for, yours, Johnbod's, or somebody else's? It just reinforces my point - this proposal is far too vague. Gatoclass (talk) 20:17, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose As GC says, too vague. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support in principle, but I'm not sure how this would be implemented fairly. cmadler (talk) 13:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Articles shouldn't be rejected for boring hooks, although the "interesting-ness" of an article could be a topic of discussion in reviews. That, along with the subjectivity issues lead me to oppose this proposal.--hkr (talk) 13:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a question of saying that the article is boring or otherwise unworthy, merely that the hook is unsuitable for a section entitled "Did you know?" EdChem came up with three of his/her newly sourced BLPs a couple of days ago: all three of them were decent articles but, for two of them, it was really difficult to find a hook that fitted with a "Did you know?" section (and, in one case, accepted Main Page legal prudence). Such articles simply don't belong in a section entitled "Did you know?", whatever their other merits. Physchim62 (talk) 14:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Interesting hooks from an article should be found whenever possible and should certainly be given first priority. There's little point in putting a hook on the main page if it won't generate any clicks. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose arbitrary judgments, but recognise that the rules do allow us to consensus-reject hooks as unsuited to use. EdChem (talk) 14:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per Gatoclass (talk · contribs), Lampman (talk · contribs), and EdChem (talk · contribs). This would lead to problems over being too subjective, arbitrary, vague. -- Cirt (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. It may be subjective, but it needs doing. People should not be approaching the process with the viewpoint that it doesn't matter how dull their hook is and that if there are no solid technical reasons for rejecting their nomination then they have a "right" for it to go on the main page. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on subjectiveness. However, I could see supporting a combination of this with a hook limit: i.e., if you have more than x hooks per month, boringness becomes a criteria. Haus^Talk 18:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Boringness" is already a criterion, and indeed is inherent in the very title of the section "Did you know?" Physchim62 (talk) 18:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Sometimes boring is just boring. Nev1 (talk) 23:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Main page must be interesting to as many readers as possible. Materialscientist (talk) 07:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support - we need to reject boring hooks much more often. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Yes, it's subjective, but any disagreements on the boringness of a hook will be ameliorated by the greater number of reviewers who will be able to give 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. opinions (assuming the "Require article nominators to review articles" proposal is accepted). Consensus will then dictate the suitability of 'marginal" cases, and extra eyes will be there to help tweak mundane hooks into something more interesting. Sasata (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support—Hey, it's on the main page. The current method is letting hooks on there that make WP look lame. This has gone on for too long. It's embarrassing. Tony (talk) 08:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I know there are subjectivity issues here, but I believe this can be overcome. See Sasata and Physchim62's ideas above for example. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— WhoTF wants boring hooks? A 'Quick fail' mechanism is needed. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral: Support in spirit, but this can't be done without a proposal for how to implement it. Just saying "let's reject boring hooks now" isn't going to change anything. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are basically two proposals as to how to implement it. On is Johnbod's proposal of "voting on hooks", which is being discussed in more detail just below. The second is my proposal that, if a reviewer spots a bad hook on T:TDYK, they note the fact that they think it's not DYK material. Anyone is entitled to disagree with that assessment, of course, and if an article gets reviewed we should be entitled to assume that the hook is OK. But a submission with a hook that is evidently unsuitable for DYK shouldn't even be reviewed until the hook problem is sorted out. My proposal probably needs some mechanism for submissions to "drop off" the end of the reviewing queue after a certain length of time (5 days? 7 days?) to be fully workable, but I see this as a minor point: the length of time that hooks stay on the queue could even be an ajustment factor to keep the backlog in order – shorter time in the reviewing queue if there's a backlog of approved articles, longer time if hooks are running short. Physchim62 (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If that's your proposal, it's no different than the system already in place. Reviewers are supposed to be leaving complaints about hooks that are too boring; back when I reviewed I did it all the time (and people complained about how I was impeding their nomination's progress even though the article met all the requirements). Your proposal also has the same problems as the status quo: 1) it's only as good as the reviewers who enforce, or don't enforce, it; 2) a single reviewer with an unnatural interest in, say, highways can let a ton of otherwise boring hooks slip through. There is nothing new in your proposal, and Johnbod's doesn't seem to be getting consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If there's nothing new in my proposal, then why is it getting so much opposition? ;) And why are so many editors complaining about boring DYK sections? And why does the average DYK hook only get a thousand click-throughs? Physchim62 (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure where people are voting on your proposal in particular, so I don't know why it's getting opposition. As for DYK sections being boring, well, like I just said (did you read my comment?) the status quo doesn't work either, and your proposal is no different than the status quo. Finally, it has been known for a long time that click-throughs are not a great metric for article interestingness; some interesting hooks get few clicks (because of the time they are shown, their location in the list, or random variation), and as you can see from WP:DYKSTATS, some not-so-interesting hooks get many. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well we know (at least) three objective point:

half of all DYK hooks get fewer than a thousand click-throughs while they're on the Main Page [2]
this isn't because DYK is "below the fold" because, over the same period, OTD hooks had twice the click-through rate of DYK hooks (after adjusting for the rapid rotation of DYK sets)
and there must be reader eyes on the DYK section because, when a really good hook goes on, it gets tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of click-throughs (see WP:DYKSTATS)

So I don't think my proposal represents the status quo, when the status quo is producing hooks that our readers just don't want to click on: it represents actually requiring hooks to be interesting before even looking at the rest of the article. I simply don't believe that there's a host of wonderful articles behind all those lazy, boring hooks: I reckon that, if I could be bothered to click on them, I would find that the lazy, boring hooks link to lazy, boring articles. But that's irrelevant really, because if nobody clicks on the hooks we'll never find out. Physchim62 (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Again, read through my comments. If you do so, you will see I am not debating that DYK often produces boring hooks. What I am saying is that your proposal also will, because it's no different than what people are already supposed to be doing. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we agree that DYK often produces boring hooks, and that my proposal is no different from what people should be doing anyway. The point is that reviewers aren't rejecting hooks because they're boring, and editors aren't refusing to put them into prep queues, when they should be doing under DYK current guidelines and any common sense interpretation of the title "Did you know?" I don't have a magic wand that can change peoples attitudes; I'm just trying to say "look, it isn't that difficult to reject these hooks." Everyone will benefit if these hooks are weeded out before they reach the Main Page, preferably before DYK has even invested reviewer time in looking at the whole article. Contributers will have more readers for their articles, reviewers will have less work to do and Wikipedia will have a better Main Page. But, if it's so easy and it's already in the rules, why isn't it being done? Physchim62 (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - subjective and a potential source of lengthy and unproductive discussions about whether certain facts are interesting. Some facts will be interesting to some people and boring to others ... that is something which cannot be changed. By all means, I support revising hooks in ways that may make the more interesting to more people, but this proposal is not that. Also, this proposal does not address the core issue which was raised at the beginning of these discussions: the quality of the articles, not the hooks. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It does address the issue of article quality: why should precious reviewer time be wasted on reviewing articles with utterly mundane hooks when it could be used on ensuring the quality of the articles with hooks that actually fit in a section entitled "Did you know"? Physchim62 (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What you're saying makes sense in the context that you're considering (one where judgments can be made about which hooks are mundane and which are not) but it is inapplicable in the context that I am considering (one where such judgments are entirely subjective and not useful). I don't oppose improving hooks using an approach taken by Tony (here, without the negativity), but I don't believe that the mundanity of a hook can be judged objectively or on its own merits. Holding constant the quality of the hook itself, hooks about topics which do not interest us will be more boring than hooks about topics which do interest us, and this type of judgment is completely personal and subjective. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, mostly - Interesting and boring are in the eye of the beholder, so this is seriously subjective. Also, we wouldn't necessarily be judging the submitted hook. Many boring hooks can be improved by cleverness in the review process (something that I and some other reviewers actually seem to enjoy doing). However, I would support a rule that says that it's OK to reject articles/hooks that are BOTH boring and substantially similar in topic to other articles/hooks by the same contributor that have been featured recently or are on the noms page. It's the combination of boringness and sameness that I would reject, not boringness alone. --Orlady (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose. What's boring to one person may not be boring to someone else. For example, I find many sports related hooks dreadfully dull because I don't like sports. A sports fan, however, would find it interesting. This policy is only likely to create a lot of wiki-drama here.4meter4 (talk) 20:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support but in the sense that hooks should be interesting, which is less subjective than what is boring (or at least it is IMO!). SmartSE (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that you should think that way. The proposals that have been worked through (including mine, obviously) have tended to assume that it is easier to identify the "obviously bad" than the "obviously good". For me, all hooks that are posted to the Main Page should clearly fit within a section entitled "Did you you?", which sort of implies that they should be interesting. Another way of wording it might be that the hook fact has to be "unusual or unexpected" (rather than an "extraordinary claim", as the current selection criteria put it). Physchim62 (talk) 01:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Again, subjective. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Subjective and counterproductive. Will encourage sensationalism. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Am concerned (leaning to oppose) that "interesting" hooks are often misleading or sensationalist. Good on April 1. Good to see the odd eye-catching one in an otherwise dull list. But if you try to make it into "today's surprising but possibly somewhat misleading facts" then actually the "shock value" of the good ones will be lost, while the whole thing loses a little bit of dignity. "Interesting hooks" are nice, and although subjective, it's certainly true that there would be good correlation between different people's opinion on what counts as one... I just don't think a continual diet of them (nor pressure on editors to manipulate an "interesting" hook out of a dull-but-worthy type of article) is particularly useful. TheGrappler (talk) 21:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional Support, but only if there is a fair system of judging "boring" that involves more than one reviewer. I realize that the current system already allows a single reviewer to reject a hook as too boring, but nobody uses it because everyone realizes it is patently unfair and subjective. I prefer Johnbod's approach just below, but others could also work. First Light (talk) 21:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~Support~~ this obviously makes sense but any changes must be done carefully. (I've submitted much too boring hooks (for other's articles, and when other hooks were rejected).) —innotata 00:16, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Current DYK rules should be enforced: that's enough. —innotata 00:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strongest Possible OPPOSE - aside from all the other problems I have with it, implementing this would get the camel's nose under the tent for "I don't like you/I have a beef with you/etc., therefore I say your hook is boring" incidents. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:25, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, rate hooks for interest

Support Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - too subjective and too time-consuming. Gatoclass (talk) 06:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. While I agree (in principle) with rejecting boring or mundane hooks, I don't see a great value to rating for subjective interest. As an example, there is currently a hook on the nominations page, which I just approved, that has to do with a cricket match. I have no interest in reading about cricket, but it was definitely an unusual (neither boring nor mundane) and "hooky" hook. cmadler (talk) 13:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No need for a specific "interestingness" rating (how on Earth would we construct one of those?), simply reject the hooks that are obviously mundane. If an editor can't be bothered to find a non-mundane hook, why should a reviewer be bothered to read the article? Physchim62 (talk) 14:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, I support the proposal as discussed in detail above, but I do think my proposal for simply not reviewing mundane hooks is quicker, simpler and more in line with DYKs vocation as a Main Page section, so I prefer it. Either one could work, but doing nothing is already going against the current DYK criteria, not to mention any other good reasons for rejecting mundane hooks. Physchim62 (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't review boring hooks, but then someone else always does, eventually. By leaving a quick low rating you could actively express your lack of interest & disapproval. At the moment the culture is such that leaving a query sign just for boringness usually gets overriden. And if say 3 low ratings are left you are on the way to overcoming the subjectivity issue. But one way or another we need a way to actually stop boring hooks and articles going forward. Johnbod (talk) 17:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, just adds a systematic / objective appearance to a decision process that remains fundamentally arbitrary. EdChem (talk) 14:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per EdChem (talk · contribs) and Gatoclass (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To all of these, the idea (discussed in detail above) is to overcome subjectivity by getting several quick views - the wisdom of the crowd. But the ratings should not bind those choosing hooks, who can ignore them if they want to. It is a way of reducing rows with noms, since I anticipate that typically views will actually coincide, and also attracting new help to the page - something none of the other proposals are likely to do, with many likely to put newcomers off. Johnbod (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on subjectiveness. Haus^Talk 18:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Someone is putting "too subjective and too time-consuming" everywhere. Main-page appearances need to be a little more time-consuming to be worthy of such exposure. The too-subjective argument seems to reject any notion of striving for quality. Tony (talk) 08:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as per Johnbod's comment above. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. We ought to be able to construct a viable voting system so that the more interesting hooks get given priority in the limited Main Page space. Rd232 ^talk 12:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Don't see how this is workable and don't see how it improves upon any other proposal for rejection of boring hooks; it just seems to add process creep without actually ensuring the outcome that we are looking for. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per above: subjective, time-consuming, and does nothing to address the quality (or quality control) of DYK articles, which is the key issue requiring DYK reform. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Subjective, time-consuming, and a form of instruction creep. Also, many boring hooks can be improved by cleverness in the review process (something that I and some other reviewers actually seem to enjoy doing). --Orlady (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Orlady.4meter4 (talk) 20:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Subjective. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Plus my "conditional support" of Reject boring hooks just above depends on this, or a similar system, being instituted. First Light (talk) 21:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not clear what this is supposed to be; does not sound like a good idea. —innotata 00:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Increasing the character limit

Support - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - ok maybe to 2,000. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Going through a few entries, it's clear that this will rid us of a lot of dross. The limit would have to be relatively high to have any impact (see my stats above). Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - According to Lampman's stats, the character limit would have to be pretty high (4,000 to 5,000) to have a real impact, and I think such a character limit is too high for DYK. cmadler (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No strong view - adjusting to 2000 or 2500 characters seems reasonable, and we do get cookie cutter stuff that just makes 1500 characters, but I am unsure that this wouldn't just change those to just-2000 character cookie cutter articles. EdChem (talk) 14:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. character count ≠ quality, and any attempt to pretend that it does will inevitably lead to a loss in quality. I would support removing the current 1500 character minimum, but now is hardly the time to be increasing DYK input when the reviewing procedures are already stretched beyond their limit. Physchim62 (talk) 15:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In theory yes, in practice many editors simply scramble trivialities to fit into 1500. Here extra 500-1000 bytes of prose means a lot (personal experience). Materialscientist (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, would have to be debate about what to increase it to, but yes, good idea. -- Cirt (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support increasing limit to 2000, but not higher at this time. Because the proposal is vague it will not reach consensus. For example, my "support" vote appears to be in line with Johnbod's "oppose" and EdChem's "no strong view." Cbl62 (talk) 17:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And perhaps Cmadler's oppose too. So an increase to 2K might well achieve consensus. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It might reach consensus, but it would still be pointless on any objective criterion. Physchim62 (talk) 18:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support (2000 or 2500). I would oppose any increase to the 5x rule though. Materialscientist (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Yes, some will "pad" articles with extra verbiage to qualify, but those cases will (hopefully) be caught in the screening process. Reviewers should not be afraid to reject a hook for an article that has been obviously "padded". Sasata (talk) 07:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support—One of the several reasons hooks fall flat on their face is that not enough information is provided for the reader to "get it". Combine with fewer items, please. Tony (talk) 08:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, this proposal is to increase the character requirement for readable prose in the article, not to increase the allowance for characters in the hook. EdChem (talk) 09:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also dispute the comment about hooks: often they need to be cut down to make them more "hooky". Physchim62 (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hooky, sure, but many of them fall flat because they lack just those few extra words that will make them self-explanatory ... the surprising or interesting bit, the whole point. Tony (talk) 12:04, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, up to 2000 or 2500. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. However, downside is that it may actually increase the temptation of committing plagiarism. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. What does this actually achieve? It doesn't tackle the "cookie cutter" problem, it will just create bigger, harder to check cookies. And it'll reduce the supposed benefit of DYK for newcomers, with a higher threshold making their input less likely. A length criterion of 1500 is useful to exclude trivially short articles, but it is not a measure of quality. A crude measure of quantity is not a substitute for identifying quality. Rd232 ^talk 12:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - for now because it's already been shown that the limit would have to be substantially increased to make a difference and no actual limit has been proposed here. Also, I think we should try qpq first. Additionally, per rd232. Gatoclass (talk) 13:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Quantity ≠ quality, and the issue that started this whole discussion was article quality. 1500-character articles can still be good and interesting, and 2500-character articles can still be bad and boring. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - not a solution. It should take approximately the same amount of time to review a 3,000-character article as two 1,500-character articles. Requiring more text is not likely to reduce the workload of DYK reviewers. Increasing the character requirement may be a good idea for later, but it should not be part of the reform to address quality and quality control issues. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Because 1,500 characters seems to be the right length to provide good basic coverage of many topics, that threshold encourages people to write solid articles instead of stubs. Rather than encouraging quality, I expect that increasing the minimum length would lead to more padding of articles with copyvio material, excessive verbosity, and irrelevant details. Additionally, it would increase the burden on reviewers by increasing the effort involved in reviewing an individual submission. --Orlady (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support. Most topics are still stubs at 1500 characters. I would support raising the bar to 1800 or 2000.4meter4 (talk) 20:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support although quantity ≠ quality and this may encourage close paraphrasing and padding, 1500 really isn't a lot and good DYKs tend to have more. I'd support rising to 2000, but maybe consider an IAR clause for amazing hooks where nothing more can be found to increase the length of an article. SmartSE (talk) 00:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The selection criteria already allow reviewers to reject articles of more than 1500 characters if they feel the article is too short. Maybe reviewers don't want to use those provisions, I don't know: if that is the problem, it is the same problem as the "boring hooks", where again the criteria say reject boring hooks but the reviewers don't do it. Physchim62 (talk) 03:25, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personal opinion can always be contensted, and maybe this is why rejection of 1500+ articles is rare. Here putting a clear formal criterion would help reviewers. I wish we had such digital criterion for boringness :-) Materialscientist (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I oppose any move to make DYK a more difficult UX than it is for the novice. For veteran contributors, I'd support the 2000. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Writing should be succinct but the hooks need to be long enough to be well-written. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 11:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is for articles not hooks! There's not much point in commenting on these summary headings if you haven't looked at the discussions above, lengthy though they are. Johnbod (talk) 11:08, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see very little downside, on the whole, to a substantial increase in size thresholds - 3,000 or above is quite reasonable, and even 5,000 would not ruin things. (If we go much above 3,000, however, I'd like us to consider commensurately increasing the time allowed for nomination - perhaps ten days or two weeks - so as not to penalise "gradual" authors) Shimgray | talk | 11:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I've looked at my own DYK articles and found that 11 out of 61 are below 2,000, 26 between 2,000 & 3,000, 13 between 3,000 & 5,000 and only 11 over 5,000. Some articles are never going to be much bigger than 1,500, because there just isn't much written about them in easily accessible sources - none of those 61 articles have been significantly expanded since they appeared on DYK, arguably suggesting that further expansion is non-trivial. Mikenorton (talk) 13:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - some short articles can be both excellent and interesting. Toughening length requirements may make it harder for novices, and for people writing on obscure or poorly documented topics. TheGrappler (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per TheGrappler and others. —innotata 00:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Oppose - as I've said before and will say again, a 1,000-character article on an obscure subject can be FAR more interesting and complete than a 5,000-character article on a less obscure one. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Increasing the citation requirements

Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Same requirements as at GA should apply; one ref per paragraph is meaningless. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, better referencing = the Wikipedia of the 2010s decade. Geschichte (talk) 11:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - DYK currently requires a non-trivial level of referencing (minimum 1/paragraph), and I see raising it further as a back-door attempt to replace new-article DYK with GA. 1/paragraph may not be GA-level, but it is decidedly not "meaningless". cmadler (talk) 13:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is meaningless because the need for references depends on the content. One paragraph can contain several contentious statements, while others can perfectly well stand on their own. Lampman (talk) 16:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: This can't be given a simple support/oppose. The quality of the sources used in an article is important, but discussions of sourcing requirements on Wikipedia always seem to degenerate into issues of quantity and mechanical adherence to over-simplified rules: the number of sources or the density of footnotes in the text. A single widely-accepted in-depth treatment of a topic is superior to three superficial newspaper articles on the same. A footnote after a paragraph is perfectly fine if it is clear that it supports the paragraph, and the footnote can bundle sources and explain what supports what part of the statement. Insisting on a footnote after each sentence (or more) just encourages close paraphrasing and plagiarism of the type that has been debated above on this page. --Hegvald (talk) 14:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your assessment is correct, but quality is already an enforced criteria for DYKs, and not up for discussion. This one is on quantity, although I am ambivalent on the merits of it (for the same reasons that you have described).--hkr (talk) 14:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support some change - certainly almost naked web addresses are as bad as entirely naked ones. We need to come to community consensus on what is reasonable referencing as a minimum requirement. EdChem (talk) 14:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per Geschichte (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Proposal is too vague for me to know what I'm voting for. What would the new citation requirements be? Cbl62 (talk) 17:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. As pointed out by Lampman and Cbl62, I just don't see how this could possibly work, especially from a reviewer's perspective. I tell a nominator that their three-sentence paragraph has to have one ref per sentence, they tell me the ref at the end of the paragraph supports all three sentences, what do I do then? (Especially if the ref is offline). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a clear proposal here. "Two sites per para instead of one"? - surely not. The rule of at least one reliable site covering every non-trivial paragraph is good, it simply needs to be properly enforced, by checking the reliability of the sources. This I support Materialscientist (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as per Demiurge1000 . —Bruce1ee^talk 09:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support— can do with being much more stringent, but is no substitute to close manual checking. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral. Seems like meaningless aspiration or needlessly bureaucratic rule. It's basically down to reviewers - and that's why I'd support moving to Two Reviewers. Rd232 ^talk 12:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - our citation standards are fine. If articles are getting through with inadequate citations, that's because of sloppy reviewing not sloppy citation standards. Gatoclass (talk) 14:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose If an article is poorly-cited enough that it deserve a {{refimprove}} tag, then reviewers are supposed to be rejecting it anyway. I don't see what this proposal would add to that. (FWIW, "one citation per paragraph" is a heuristic only, not a rule as far as I know, and I never much liked it anyway.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this proposal is for raising a per-paragraph citation requirement, then I oppose it'. If it is for requiring that all (or almost all) information in an article be properly attributed (using inline citations) to multiple, reliable sources, then I completely support it. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose The basic citation requirements are fixed WP-wide. Interpreting those basic requirements really depends on the article: different subject areas have different points that can be "taken for granted" without needing citations, for example. DYK should focus on having a good interpretation of those basic requirements (with appeals for a second opinion if necessary). It is a subjective judgement call, and always will be. Obviously, if a reviewer thinks the article is insufficiently referenced, then they shouldn't pass it; I don't think there's any real disagreement on that point. Physchim62 (talk) 19:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On a related note, I suspect that the absolute requirement to have an inline citation directly after the hook fact may be a sort of perverse reason behind some of the "boring hooks", with submitters simply taking a referenced sentence, changing it into a question and posting it as a hook (i.e., without thinking "is this really a good hook?"). Just a reminder of the law of unintended consequences! Physchim62 (talk) 19:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting observation with a lot of truth to it. --Orlady (talk) 20:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - In my experience, the current citation requirements, combined with the expectation of one inline citation per paragraph, are effective in encouraging many articles to be substantially improved between the time they are nominated and the time a hook is approved for DYK. I agree with Gatoclass that it comes down to the quality of the review -- if reviewers do their job, the current rules are effective. --Orlady (talk) 20:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Orlady. Also, increasing referencing standards will only further increase the liklihood that articles by new wikipedia editors will be rejected. As it is, most articles by newbies require DYK reviewers to step in and help clean things up. Let's not make so many hoops that DYK reviewers are less likely to step in and "save" a potential article.4meter4 (talk) 20:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose DYK's are not/should not be required to be Good Articles. Grsz¹¹ 05:10, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support DYK's should be good examples of short articles within policy. They should be well enough sourced to exemplify the current sourcing requirement standards. That is still a much lower requirement than GA. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per cmadler and Physchim62. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reducing DYK frequency

Fundamental. there are many good suggestions that would work with this, but none that would work (IMHO) without it. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, support, but how is the issue. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose on the grounds that it reduces only output and does nothing to address the actual problems of input or the need for more thorough reviews. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Reducing output is essential to improving quality. Can only work in combination with some of the above options though. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Output should be reduced, but only in conjunction with input. And since the proposals that are likely to pass won't affect the input, I oppose any tampering with the output.--hkr (talk) 13:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose output-based "solutions". Reducing output requires some additional change in DYK selection, and without knowing what that other change is, I can't support this. cmadler (talk) 14:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Did you know/Guide already states "Not all suggestions have to be used in the template. Choose the ones that will pull in a variety of readers." (emphasis in the original) No big change needed at all, simply for DYK to adhere to it's own guidelines. Physchim62 (talk) 18:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See earlier response, I haven't changed my view since earlier in this thread. EdChem (talk) 14:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. DYK has to choose whether it is a quality control stamp on new articles, something which doesn't in itself need a Main Page section, or a process to compile a Main Page section entitled "Did you Know?" I'm quite willing to open a specific RFC on this one, because I think there will be no lasting improvement at DYK while it treats its Main Page slot as something which can be sliced up at will. Physchim62 (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree with that. The "change nothing" mentality that persists here shows that this needs wider input, since we're actually talking about the main page of the entire encyclopaedia, not just some limited project. Lampman (talk) 17:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Oppose, in favor of other measures (increasing chars size, citation requirements, etc) that would have the same impact. -- Cirt (talk) 16:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Three updates per day would be optimal IMO. Cbl62 (talk) 17:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The optimum would be one update per day, so that DYK hooks can be seen by readers in all timezones. That's probably too big a step to be taken at once, unless it's forced from outside. Physchim62 (talk) 18:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to give an example of one of the problems caused by DYK's current rotation frequency, see this edit at WP:ERRORS: when problems with an article or hook are discovered through the hook being on the Main Page, they are very rarely addressed because the hook has already disappeared. Another example is the "Recent deaths" link at the bottom of the "In the news" section… never noticed it? Well it gets (on average) more click-throughs than all the DYK articles put together! Physchim62 (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I realise this is only the "output" end of the system, but it needs to happen at the same time the other changes are put in place, otherwise we risk having a "crisis" caused by running out of available prepared nominations. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We can (and have) adjust the output flow pretty quickly in response to available nominations, both through frequency of updates and number of hooks per update. Right now we have six updates in queue/prep, and about 200 hooks on the nominations page. Assuming a 75% approval rate of nomations, we have more than a week's worth at our current rate. The rate could fairly quickly be throttled back to two updates per day, which gives us about a two-week backlog. I suspect that even under the most stringent proposals (except for those that explicitly limit output) we can find 16 suitable hooks per day, which is enough for two updates (which I think is the optimal amount). So I don't argue that we shouldn't seek to reduce the update frequency, but I do say that the update frequency is a result, not a cause, and we need to treat it as such. cmadler (talk) 21:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think the frequency has been a driver for general sloppiness and stress in the DYK process. Not pointing fingers; 4x per day is just a hard thing to keep up with. Frank | talk 21:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This proposal is the same as "Slowing down the output rate" above! (the number of hooks per set is very hard to change significantly). Rejecting poor-quality noms is primary, the output rate should be flexible depending on the availability of approved noms. Limiting the output will simply bloat the T:TDYK page, which is already slow to load. Materialscientist (talk) 07:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, this isn't the same as the proposal above. The proposal above is saying throughput rate needs to come down to allow better reviewing at constant resources. This proposal would apply a hard limit to the number of sets per day, which is also equivalent to limiting the number of hooks per day (with a little leeway for 7- and 9-hook sets). Ideally, the limit would be one set per day, but I accept that DYK would have to run at two sets a day for at least an interim period while the change beds down and participant expectation have time to change. Physchim62 (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as per Dravecky and Materialscientist. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support per my arguments above re increasing pool and thus quality of what gets onto MP. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - if the object of this poorly stated proposal is to ease the workload on reviewers by giving them less hooks to review, it won't do that. As Dravecky said, it will do nothing to reduce the total pool of submissions needing review, therefore it achieves nothing. Gatoclass (talk) 12:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually no, that isn't the object of the proposal at all. There are two main objects. Firstly to guarantee a higher reward (in terms of time on the Main Page and hence article reads) for those hooks that are selected, as a sort of "compensation" to DYK submitters for accepting the necessarily more stringent reviews. What has happened up to now is that the prolific submitters have been allowed to debase the reward of a DYK slot, by increasing the number of sets and so reducing the time that any individual hook is on the Main Page. This is typical of the way DYK has been run for the benefit of its prolific contributors and to the detriment of occasional participants and new comers, and it has to stop. Which brings me to the second object of the proposal: to focus the attention of all participants in the DYK process on the fact that DYK exists to generate a Main Page slot. It might do other things as well, but it's primary purpose is to provide material for a section on the Main Page entitled "Did you know?" If not, then well, we'll just use that Main Page space for something else, there's no shortage of ideas as to what could be done with the space. Physchim62 (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If that was the object of the proposal, it should have been specifically stated and not left for !voters to try and guess what it was about. But your comment just underlines my own criticism of many of these proposals as half-baked and unclear. As for your other comments, everyone has their own opinion on what exactly DYK is "about" and at this point yours has no more validity than anyone else's. Gatoclass (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course it would have been better if there had been links back to the discussions above when this !vote was set up, that's been mentioned elsewhere. As for what DYK is "about", then well, if it's not "about" producing a Main Page section then fine, we'll just find another use for that Main Page section, it's not a problem. Physchim62 (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So if you can't get people to agree on what you think DYK should be about, you will move to have it abolished? Sounds a little petulant to me. However, you will need to get consensus for that, and I suspect that will turn out to be more of a problem than you anticipate. Gatoclass (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not petulant at all. I've been saying DYK has big systemic problems for a long time now. I'd much rather work with DYK regulars to sort those problems out, as that is obviously the most constructive solution. But I'm not got to stop saying that DYK has problems if I haven't been able to overcome the natural inertia on this page. Physchim62 (talk) 17:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I agree with Dravecky and Gatoclass that this would not reduce the total pool of submissions needing review. Furthermore, any measure that artificially limits the number of hooks by setting a quota would increase acrimony at DYK, due to battles over whose hook gets accepted and whose hook gets rejected. DYK can and does adjust the frequency and size of updates to match the availability of content. It also can change the number of suggestions through encouragement or discouragement of third-party nominations. --Orlady (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist.4meter4 (talk) 20:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support will go a long way towards allowing more thorough reviews. Queues can be offset by raising standards and restricting number of simultanoeus nominations allowed.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support increasing quality of DYKs. First Light (talk) 21:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: shouldn't we just put as many DYKs on the page as are cleared? —innotata 00:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Require article nominators to review articles.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Consensus to implement this idea. Physchim62 (talk) 14:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. This is the quid pro quo proposal that has been discussed throughout the talk, and of all the proposals, seems to enjoy the highest amount of consensus, although there is some concern that review quality could be affected. I support the idea, but the question is, how can it be enforced?--hkr (talk) 13:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

cmadler has suggested that it becomes a part of the review, i.e. checking that the nominator has reviewed a hook since their previous nomination, which sounds like it could work OK. Mikenorton (talk) 13:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like this could be incorporated into the nomination template pretty easily: check this user's TTDYK contributions. Click that, and if they have decent edit summaries, it's instant verification. 28bytes (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That would also show up editors that spend a lot of time doing mundane and useful tasks at DYK, which should I think count for something. Mikenorton (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I've suggested this several times, and I'm glad to see that it finally seems to be gaining traction. cmadler (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Stumbled in here, as an infrequent self-nominator, I'd say this is a good idea in concept, though you'll end up having to make sure that the newby reviewers don't completely screw up their reviews.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:29, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, preferably bot-monitored through a new DYKref template. This would also address the quality concern - putting yourself down as the reviewer means asserting you have done a proper review, and will be logged. It means taking responsibility as a contributing member of the DYK community. Editors who will not take that seriously deserve to be held accountable for fnot participating as a responsible and trust-worthy member of our community. EdChem (talk) 14:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per EdChem (talk · contribs) and Milowent (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Nev1 (talk) 23:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Don't see any disadvantages here. Any "tit for tat" reviewing will eventually be caught by our team of eagle-eyed reviewers. Sasata (talk) 07:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as per EdChem. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose as WP:CREEP. Good in theory, but who's gonna keep tabs in practice? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

People know who nominates a lot, and if people don't point to a review as part of a nomination when they should, someone will notice sooner or later. Equally, shenanigans in reviewing will become apparent sooner or later, and if logs are more transparent, it will be a fair deterrent to misbehaviour. Rd232 ^talk 12:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support per EdChem and cmadler - but strongly recommend moving to Two Reviewers to ensure that this doesn't reduce reviewing quality. Would also recommend specifying that reviews need to be of articles created by newcomers, to prevent gaming by exchanging reviews. (People would probably notice that sooner or later, but still.) Rd232 ^talk 12:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This one looks like it's been closed way too fast. I don't care personally if this rule is implemented, but I don't know how it'll work with new editors. —innotata 00:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Having a DYK lottery (either through Yzx's method or Roux's gradual approach)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus to implement. Grsz¹¹ 05:08, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Very dubious Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - this is not a game show - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - pointless. If we're going to limit output, it should be a deliberate, rather than a random, selection. cmadler (talk) 14:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unconvinced EdChem (talk) 14:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The basic principle of lottery is fundamentally incompatible with Wikipedia. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Per BorgQueen and Dravecky. Cbl62 (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. BorgQueen puts it very nicely, but I'd add that it's neither necessary, nor a solution to a problem. Physchim62 (talk) 03:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I can only presume the people commenting in this section haven't actually read my proposal; it was only called a 'lottery' because it built off a proposal that was a lottery. → ROUX ₪ 03:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it (Roux, correct me if I'm wrong), Roux's proposal is to have a large list of approved hooks (about 200, the same as the current "backlog") and that each editor receives a random selection of eight of those hooks in the DYK section when they hit on the Main Page. The oldest hooks in the set of 200 would be replaced as new hooks are approved. Physchim62 (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that might have been the original idea, but I think it was rejected as infeasible to randomly pull eight hooks each time the page is displayed. The only feasible way to do this is to randomly pull eight hooks that will be displayed for everyone for a length of time. In other words, updates would be compiled randomly rather than deliberately. cmadler (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. I would rather have my nom rejected because it's not good enough, than by "the luck of the draw". —Bruce1ee^talk 09:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose— culling ought to be on qualitative grounds. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - complexity of this isn't worth the benefits. I'd rather see a system of voting on hooks, so that any exclusion is on qualitative grounds. Rd232 ^talk 12:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per all above.4meter4 (talk) 20:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Limit monthly or daily self-nominations

Support - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~Support~~ Oppose Agree with Gatoclass below; no point in this one if quid pro quo goes forward. 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - see absolutely no point in this, will be unlikely to significantly reduce the number of submissions and will penalize those who, for example, want to build the occasional multi. Also I think the quid pro quo proposal will greatly reduce the rationale for this. More submissions now = more reviews, so it will even out in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 04:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support as an excellent way to address the input problem, as long as limits are set high enough to allow reasonably prolific writers to submit their best work. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK is supposed to encourage new article creation. I am strongly opposed to any measure likely to discourage new content or participation in this project - especially when there is no evidence that this will make any substantial impact on the total number of submissions, in addition to penalizing a particular group of contributors. Also, see my previous comment above. And BTW I think it's far too early to put a proposal like this to a vote, when it's had limited discussion up to now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not early at all, there's been a substantial amount of discussion under Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Dispelling_a_myth_about_DYK and Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Consensus_so_far. However, I do agree that a quid pro quo approach may make this proposal less appealing. And although the linked discussions weren't !votes, they did have (around) 11 in support of the proposal and 7 against, so it's dubious that there will be enough consensus for it to be implemented. --hkr (talk) 13:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Will shift established editors' focus from quantity to quality. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional support - only if we decide not to require nominators to review articles, and then only if the limit is per-hook. In those cases, I'd be OK with a limit of 2/day and/or 20/month. I am absolutely opposed to any per-article limit. cmadler (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now. We seem to have consensus on going forward with the requirement for nominators to also review nominations. I'd prefer to wait a bit and see what kind of effect that has, both on the number of incoming nominations, and on the reviewer activity. cmadler (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If this is to happen, it should be a limit on hooks accepted (rather than nominated, recognising more will be rejected as standards rise) and not on hooks nominated or on articles. Quid pro quo reviewing is a good start, but I remain concerned about high volume cookie cutter articles. EdChem (talk) 14:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should point out that nobody has even demonstrated that such a system would substantially reduce the number of submissions yet. I think that's the least that should be done before a proposal like this is made. Not that I'd be likely to vote for it in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly not! But the figures above seemed pretty convincing to me and others, and showed it would be more effective than your own proposal to achieve a similar end by increasing article size. Now you are saying "Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now", and opposing each individual suggestion that works in this direction on the grounds it will not be effective by itself. Johnbod (talk) 17:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't done a full statistical analysis but these figures suggest a per month cap would make a difference:

TonyTheTiger: 44 DYKs in Oct. 2010; 58 DYKs in September 2010; 38 in July 2010;

Alansohn: 52 DYKs in Oct. 2010; 61 DYKs in Sept. 2010; 64 DYKs in Aug. 2010; 70 DYKs in July 2010; 65 DYKs in June

Geschichte: 32 in Aug. 2010; 32 in April 2010; 21 in March 2010; 28 in Feb. 2010; 31 in Jan. 2010

BillyHathorn: 24 in Oct. 2010; 19 in May 2010; 18 in April 2010; 25 in Jan. 2010

cbl62: 20 in Sept. 2010; 21 in Aug. 2010; 30 in July 2010; 19 in May 2010. Cbl62 (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the hard work, but that's nowhere near a sufficient survey. Even so, the highest month you've got there - September - has 58 from one user and 61 from another. Reduce them to, say, 15 per month and you've saved 90 slots. That's 90 slots out of 1080 for the month - only 8% of the total. And that's probably an exceptional month, it would probably be half that much normally. I might also add that Alansohn's submissions are almost invariably very easy to verify. What this proposal would do is potentially impose a huge penalty on a handful of fine contributors for a very minor net benefit. Gatoclass (talk) 17:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even if it was only an 8% reduction, which I doubt, that's a considerable help. You know perfectly well that Tony's Wikicup contributions aroused a lot of complaints here at the time, & Alansohn's have also been the subject of adverse comment from Sandy Georgia & others. Which is where we came in. For one person to have a new item on the main page every day seems excessive to me. Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For one person to be submitting two new articles per day over a one-month period shows that the DYK "award" has been debased to chicken-shit level. It has been debased by lowering the standards (and the reward of time on the Main Page) so that these people can get their hooks up regardless of any consideration for the rest of the project or the readers of the Main Page. That's why Main Page readers overwhelmingly don't click-through on DYKs. Physchim62 (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, since no-one else got around to it, I just collated the totals from our top 7 contributors over the last 10 months. Collectively, they averaged 18.7 submissions per month each. So if you imposed a limit of, say, 15 articles per month per person, you would have saved a total of 3.7 * 7 or 25.9 articles per month. We feature 1080 hooks per month, so the net saving from this proposal would be approximately 25.9/1080, or 2.4%. Gatoclass (talk) 06:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Except that an average over 7 months is not at all an accurate way to measure the effect of a cap. Cbl62 (talk) 06:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was over an average of 10 months, not 7. Yes, it would have been better to do it over 12, or better still 24, but I didn't have time to go back that far and it would be unlikely to appreciably affect the end result. Gatoclass (talk) 06:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not my point. Averaging collapses the highs and lows in individual user's output. To examine the impact a cap would have, you need to look at the data on a month-by-month basis. Cbl62 (talk) 06:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Averaging shows the net saving overall. Cherry picking the highs and ignoring the lows gives a very distorted view of how effective a measure like this would be. Gatoclass (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's why averaging hides the impact. If you look at the last four months, and look only at five users (and there are certainly others who have been excluded), the impact of a 10 DYK limit would be significant. Chart below. That said, I've already noted that I'm fine with the "quid pro quo" alternative. Cbl62 (talk) 07:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Editor	October	September	August	July
Alansohn	52	61	64	70
cbl62	9	20	21	30
Geschichte	13	18	32	7
BillyHathorn	24	15	7	15
TonyTheTiger	44	58	5	38
Cap Savings (limit of 10)	93 (8.6%)	122 (11.3%)	87 (8.1%)	113 (10.5%)
Cap Savings (limit of 15)	75 (6.9%)	97 (9.0%)	72 (6.7%)	93 (8.6%)

Yes, but this underlines my other point. There is really only one user who consistently contributes more than about 20 DYKs a month, and that is Alansohn who has a phenomenal average of 29.8 a month and who sometimes produces 60+ a month. A 15-hook-per-month cap would hugely diminish his contributions. I fail to see why one user should be so heavily penalized for the sins of the project as a whole - particularly by a measure that will only marginally address the problem.

I might add that some of those top 7 users have contributed little or nothing to the actual running of DYK. Quid pro quo is going to mean a much bigger contribution from them, which will greatly outweigh the relatively minor impact made by a monthly cap. Gatoclass (talk) 07:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not about "penalizing" anyone. It's about implementing reforms that will satisfy those who might otherwise seek to get rid of DYK as we know it. And I'm willing to support the market-driven approach. There doesn't appear to be consensus for a cap, but there is clear consensus for quid pro quo. And implementing both a cap and quid pro quo is overkill in any event. Cbl62 (talk) 07:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I've been puzzled by your earlier comments positing the two as either/or. Quid pro quo is about increasing reviews, this is about reducing volume (whether it's called "input" or "output"). I see no connection between the two, and like most people here (not Gatoclass obviously) I think we need to introduce several changes to achieve the desired effects. The useful last bit of this discussion has not changed my view supporting a cap at all btw. Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The connection is that qpq reduces the volume per reviewer, because it adds reviewers to the pool. Reducing the burden on reviewers is the goal of most of the proposals - reducing the volume of submissions is only one possible way of achieving that, it's not an end in itself. Gatoclass (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, reducing the number of submissions is a worthy (and I'd say necessary) goal in itself. Our readers are looking for a bottle of champagne each day, not four bottles of lemonade! I'd rather submissions came down through self-selection on the part of the regulars, to give the reviewers more time to spend helping the newcomers. But if people think that some sort of imposed restriction is needed as well, then so be it, it's no big deal. Unless, of course, you think DYK exists for the submitters rather than the readers... Physchim62 (talk) 14:03, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, agree with Lampman (talk · contribs), above. -- Cirt (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, tend to agree with Lampman. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, though I'm fine with trying "quid pro quo" first, as it is a sort of cap and trade alternative to an absolute cap. Either or both are fine with me. The question is what cap? Anything in the range of 10-20 per month is fine with me. Cbl62 (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. No reason to quench prolific writers. I sense a gross logical mistake here "reducing quantity will force them to improve the quality" - No! They will simply do something else on WP on in RL. Writing and quality check/improvement are the top WP priority, IMO. Further, I see no evidence that DYK blunders originate from prolific contributors. Why should they get punished? Materialscientist (talk) 06:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I'm with Material Scientist on this one; prolific contributors contributing "cookie-cutter" articles will simply have their hooks rejected if they are uninteresting. If they can write large quantities of articles that meet the increased length requirements, are reasonably well referenced, and interesting, good for them, and thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! Sasata (talk) 07:50, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - per MS. No matter how much the boring Louisiana politicians bug me, we shouldn't penalize him for writing them. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as per Sasata. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but I fear unworkable - the original object, IIRC, is to encourage newbies to participate and create new articles. Having no limit threatens that objective by crowding out the newbies. Needs somebody to keep track, and to also take account of frequent reciprocal nominations. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Gatoclass. Rd232 ^talk 12:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Of all the suggestions, this is the one I oppose the most (no, I would not be affected by it). A strict numerical cap on submissions from the most active contributors will certainly reduce input, but in the worst way possible: by discouraging article-writing and without regard to quality (i.e., the first 10 or 15 submissions are accepted, the rest rejected). I'm not convinced that there will be a "shift of focus" from quantity to quality: (1) submissions from experienced editors tend (in my experience) to be of a higher-than-average quality, so limiting their contributions would decrease the average quality of DYK submissions; and (2) the shift of focus will be from DYK to other things. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Gatoclass.4meter4 (talk) 20:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I can't see how this would solve our problems. Black Falcon (and others) have summed it up nicely. Lampman's point doesn't seem to be based on any evidence. SmartSE (talk) 00:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This is tackling the problem from the wrong end: it doesn't matter who writes the hooks. Regardless of creator, if the hook and article are good then use it, otherwise select another article. If some editors are flooding in cookie-cutter noms which get rejected, then they'll learn to either raise the quality of their contribs or else not submit weak articles to DYK. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. DYK is about writing new articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Would senselessly confine good editors. The ones contributing lots of article aren't usually the problem. That said, all the Princeton and Michigan basketball season articles were annoying, so perhaps some sort of limit like that, but not like what is proposed. Grsz¹¹ 05:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. We should encourage quality, not quantity. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 11:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but this proposal addresses quantity only. It gives no consideration to the quality of nominated articles. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose First of all I must thank all those who have made positive comments about my DYK contributions. I think that rather than a hard monthly cap, which becomes yet one more statistic that needs to be tracked, that we should increase the minimum article size to 2,500 or 3,000 characters of prose, which has the benefit of cutting many of the bare stubs that pass through. Alansohn (talk) 00:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - raising the bar on submissions to decrease the submission pool makes more sense than hard limits. Haus^Talk 01:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose eh? No obvious reason, no benefits, and no good for some of our best contributors. —innotata 00:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This is nothing less than "You're doing too well, so we must penalise you!" newthink. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 00:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do nothing

not a practical option Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Better than doing something bad, though. cmadler (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK is already a disaster area that corresponds neither to its title, nor to its vocation as a Main Page slot. Doing nothing is tantamount to abolishing it. Physchim62 (talk) 17:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support - may be the easiest way of ensuring a quick death for the present DYK concept. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I don't see how DYK is a disaster and I see a long future for this highly useful endeavor to promote new material at wikipedia. I'm not saying things are perfect here, but for the most part DYK runs just fine in its current state.4meter4 (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Increasing the character limit.

2500 seems fair; reducing the logic, simply the time it takes to write would make contributors spend 40% more time on an article, and 2500 is not that hard to achieve. - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to Lampman, 68% of noms are already over the 2500 limit. Upping the limit would more penalize submitters for whom English is not their first language (as noted in the stats above for the "Norwegian" contributions). Physchim62 (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Limit monthly or daily self-nominations

20 a month seems good to me, max a year at 240 gives those who love to amass DYK's still something to achieve, and by maxing out their contributions, it could free up probably 100 spots for other editors a month. - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those are (IMO) terrible ideas, but I'll respect Theornamentalist's request not to indicate my opposition inline. 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a collection of all the ones (good or bad) that have been proposed so far. I agree, some of them aren't practical.--hkr Laozi speak 03:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I don't see any point in having a vote on these issues, at least, not right now and not in this format. The issues for each are generally more complex than are presented here, and with the exception of matsci's quid pro quo proposal above, none of them have looked close to achieving consensus. Also, I think we should give the qpq system a chance before trying anything more radical. One step at a time. Gatoclass (talk) 03:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec from below) Your abstention from the !vote is noted, as is the habit of new sections appearing just as consensus might be reached on a previous section, an attempt at divide et impera perhaps. In any case your concerns are noted, and shall be duely treated. Physchim62 (talk) 03:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I might leave a few comments anyhow, to try and clarify some of the problems. Gatoclass (talk) 03:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I'm not sure if it is helpful commenting on these proposals because many of them were not discrete proposals in the first place, and they can't be addressed in isolation from one another. I think perhaps I will stick to my original instinct and refrain from commenting upon them further. Gatoclass (talk) 03:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it could help give focus, and the more popular ideas could emerge from the paragraphs of text above. When that's done, we could move on towards implementation and testing.. eventually. - Theornamentalist (talk) 03:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re "One step at a time", I agree. Debating 16+ proposals at once is a surefire way to ensure none of them move forward. 28bytes (talk) 06:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One problem is that the number of participants has dropped a lot over the last week, and though of course all suggestions have complex arguments for or against, discussion has become rambling. This is hopefully a way to attract more participants. Johnbod (talk) 04:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I'm inclined to think the best thing we could do with this discussion is hatnote it. With all due respect to Theo, he hasn't been engaged at any point in these debates until now and I don't think his summary of proposals is accurate, and a number of them are simply missing the point. I can see this whole section quickly degenerating into another rambling discussion about everything and nothing. IMO we'd be better off moving on before that happens. Gatoclass (talk) 07:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Gato that we should give the qpq system a chance before making other moves. I suspect that qpq may have a similar effect as the monthly "quota" system that I had advocated. I see qpq as a "cap and trade" alternative to a true quota. Let's give it a chance before adding more elements all at once. Cbl62 (talk) 07:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Theo hasn't, but I've been here since the (nearly) very beginning of the discussion, and it looks like the listed proposals are derived from the chronology of the discussion that I wrote earlier on in this talk, but admittedly without the discussion of history or the flaws brought up for each proposal. The chronology was never meant as a !vote, just a brief overview of the discussion events for newcomers to the talk. However, I do not debate why Theo sees the need for there to be a straw poll, which was done in good faith, and he does have a point. As 28bytes said, we have a small group of people debating 15+ proposals all at once, something needs to be done.--hkr Laozi speak 07:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My basic concern with this new section is that it has divorced a grabbag of proposals from the actual discussion that took place about them. I mean, if I read a proposal like "Reject boring hooks" - well of course I'd be in favour of that, who wouldn't be? We'd all like to see better quality hooks on the mainpage. But since this proposal is presented in isolation, I can see it just regenerating the same debate it generated the first time.

If someone feels strongly about proposing this as a method of reducing submissions and improving quality, what they would need to do is start a fresh discussion listing all the pros and cons that have already been discussed, and then invite further comment. Or add some new suggestions of one's own. That is how to present a proposal - not just throwing out a catchphrase and asking people to vote on it. It seems to me that is just an invitation to going round in circles. Gatoclass (talk) 07:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The specifics for each of the proposals listed here are detailed in the talk, if you're willing to dig through a 300+ KB discussion. These are just brief summaries of each proposal.--hkr Laozi speak 07:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I recall, nobody ever actually got around to proposing a specific method about how to implement such a system fairly. What is the point of voting on a general principle when nobody has been able to propose a satisfactory method? If someone wants to propose a specific method, we can debate the pros and cons of that, but otherwise, I don't see the point. Gatoclass (talk) 07:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The initial chronology does list the cons that have already been discussed and relative consensus of each proposal (which was not included in this new list). And again, this wasn't intended as a vote, the (initial) list was just a chronology of the various proposed ideas and the flaws discussed by the opposition for each of them.--hkr Laozi speak 08:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm not criticizing the initial list, which may have had some utility in summarizing some of the salient points. It's the !vote that I'm concerned about. Gatoclass (talk) 08:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support this effort; further discussion at this point will only have us going in circles. I see no evidence above that people are voting out of a position of ignorance about the foregoing discussions. Lampman (talk) 11:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well - I assumed after 400k of largely fruitless discussion, everyone was exhausted by it and ready to settle for a modest reform. It seems I was wrong about that - some people would apparently like another 400k of discussion. I admire your stickability, but I find it hard to persuade myself that anything useful will come of it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Gatoclass (talk) 13:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was hoping to catch more of an audience, its just that I've seen similar discussions get quite lengthy and lose steam, and although I haven't taken part in this one, I've been reading it, and see many points brought up in the past that seemed to go nowhere. We need reform! I think we need to take action and be brave. In my opinion some of the proposals, while they would certainly come with strong opposition as does nearly anything changed on WP, would be better implemented for a short period of time to see how they would work and discuss when we actually have data to discuss on. I feel like we could be stuck in theoretical for more time then it's worth. - Theornamentalist (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a pretty useless poll that encourages superficial replies to badly worded suggestions. Take "Increasing the citation requirements", for instance. This can't be given a simple support/oppose. The quality of the sources used in an article is important, but discussions of sourcing requirements on Wikipedia always seem to degenerate into issues of quantity and mechanical adherence to over-simplified rules: the number of sources or the density of footnotes in the text. A single widely-accepted in-depth treatment of a topic is superior to three superficial newspaper articles on the same. A footnote after a paragraph is perfectly fine if it is clear that it supports the paragraph, and the footnote can bundle sources and explain what supports what part of the statement. Insisting on a footnote after each sentence (or more) just encourages close paraphrasing and plagiarism of the type that has been debated above on this page. --Hegvald (talk) 14:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a note, each proposal has a corresponding section with a full in-depth discussion explaining all the details in the talk. It's not "badly worded" per se, it's a summary of all the proposals brought up in each section of the above talk. Admittedly, the editor who created the poll should have linked to each relevant section, but it is there if you want to read it.--hkr (talk) 14:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have read it (even commented in it), and the issues are more complex than these poll questions and brief replies allow for. That was my point, but perhaps I didn't express it clearly enough. Anyway, I moved my comment on sourcing requirements. --Hegvald (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Increasing the citation requirements" is detailed fully in Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Higher_standards_for_sourcing. Each heading is just a summary, and all these proposals are very detailed in their own respective sections, but none of the sections are linked (which is a problem, and should be addressed, perhaps by copy-pasting the details?).--hkr (talk) 14:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see, the replies in the poll quickly degenerated to precisely the quantitative/mechanical issues I find problematic. I have seen it before in debates over deletion (I can find you an example or two if you wish). --Hegvald (talk) 14:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) There is one enormous value to this, which is that it will allow us to put to rest the proposals that are currently widely opposed. That seems to include "Require two reviewers per hook" (5/5 opposed), "Abandon the new article concept" (5/5 opposed), "Abandon or increase the time limit criteria" (4/4 opposed), and "Having a DYK lottery" (3/3 opposed). Others seem to be widely supported, and we should start looking at implementation: "Incorporate CorenBot to scan for plagiarism" (5/6 support, 1 appears neutral), "Require article nominators to review articles" (4/4 support, plus strong support higher up this page under "Matsci's quid pro quo proposal"). Then I'd suggest that we temporarily set aside disputed proposals, and agree to revist those after a pre-determined period of time (1 month?). That will give us time to implement the uncontroversial proposals and start to get a feel for how they work. cmadler (talk) 14:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I think it's becoming clearer which proposals have consensus now. And my comment was in favor of the proposal! Even if it did list my criticisms of it...--hkr (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that many of the above proposals are linked. Nobody is suggesting that having nominators also review articles is a Bad Thing, but neither is anyone suggesting that it's a solution on its own. I think we should eliminate those proposals which are tantamount to abolishing DYK, because any editor who wants to discuss them further can do so at T:MP. Physchim62 (talk) 15:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree this is a useful stage in the discussion, narrowing down the wide range of options & proposals. There are "big picture" options, especially in terms of reducing output/frequency, and a number of specific measures that would go towards achieving this. Perhaps at some point these wider "aims" and detailed measures need to be taken separately. I wish I could agree with Lampman that everyone votiong here seems aware of the discussions above. Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly agree with Cmadler. There are some proposals with wide support, let's give them the attention they deserve. 28bytes (talk) 18:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This section has been up for more than 36 hours now. Unless someone objects, I'm going to go through and close as either kept or rejected the proposals that are overwhelmingly leaning one way or the other (3-1? 4-1?). I would again like to suggest that we take 1 month to implement and test the proposals that have overwhelming support, and that, at the end of that month (let's just say December 15), we reopen discussion on all the more controversial proposals. cmadler (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod left a note on my talk page requesting that I not close any more discussion because it's "too early to do this". Personally, I think it's become clear that some proposals have consensus for/against now, and that is unlikely to change, and that some proposals do not have a consensus now, and that's unlikely to change. It seems reasonable to me to go ahead and close discussions, agreeing to revisit all the no-consensus ideas in about a month. However, at Johnbod's request, I'm not closing any more discussions, and if anyone thinks I misread a discussion as for/no-consensus/against, they are welcome to change or reopen it. I just think it's time to move on and stop talking about ideas that aren't going anywhere now, and start implementing the things for which we do have consensus. cmadler (talk) 14:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Only 30 hours in fact, which is no time at all on these important issues. I've re-opened the ones that were no consensus, but am leaving the ones with a clear result one way or the other. There is plenty to do meanwhile implementing the 4 proposals that passed. The "lottery" one could also be closed. Johnbod (talk) 14:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Might a closure of WT:DYK#unsourced BLP drive be considered? It would be good for it and its preceding discussion not to be drowned out by everything else being discussed. EdChem (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be wary of closing it outright: there seems to be some disagreement as to whether the BLPs are going to treated as new articles or whether there should be some other sort of expansion. Why not bring the section down to the bottom of the page, and note that this point needs to be decided on before it can be signed off. Physchim62 (talk) 15:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please re-open all the polls. Some of us are just getting to this conversation and it is standard to leave open a five day window on these sort of conversations. Two days is hardly enough time to get enough input on any topic, even if it looks like a WP:SNOW close.4meter4 (talk) 20:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One of the points that some participants here seem to have missed is that editors participate in WP voluntarily, and for a wide range of reasons, but they do so primarily because they get some form of enjoyment from it. Personally, I participate because I enjoy building content through writing or expanding articles, responding to questions, and (sometimes!) through discussing content matters with other editors. Submitting articles to DYK is a by-product of that - it's often quite rewarding to have an article mentioned on the front page, but I contributed articles long before I was aware of the DYK processes and hope to continue to do so irrespective of whether anything I do in future goes through the DYK process or not. I do sometimes contribute thoughts on DYK articles and hooks, but I know that there is a group of editors who spend much more time than me on processing DYK candidates, and they do an excellent job - but I feel no obligation to join that group because it's not what I get most pleasure from doing. So, there needs to be recognition that different editors have different roles on WP, and because some editors contribute new articles into the DYK process should not necessarily mean that it should be the same editors processing those submissions. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I think all the polls can be closed now. They have been open for over a week and non-one "voted" yesterday. I think the extra exposure was beneficial though. Johnbod (talk) 11:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've just been commenting and "!voting", as have others; it looks like more comments are desirable, and the closed proposals were closed by people taking an active part in other discussions, after sometimes a very brief time, with fairly few comments and no signs of certain or snowballing consensus. —innotata 00:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK Hall of Lame: back again

The first one's a corker:

... that, according to legend, Monte Titano (pictured) in San Marino was given as a gift to Saint Marinus, a Croatian stonemason fleeing anti-Christian persecution, who established a hermitage there?

The point of it is that a whole mountain was given as a gift to someone. But from the hook itself this is impossible to convey unless the poor reader either (a) knows that "Monte" is Italian for "mountain"; (b) clicks on the link (you shouldn't have to to get the point of the hook); (c) by some chance works out that the tiny little thumbnail is a pic of a mountain—its unusual ridge feature makes it very hard to see this, and there are more suitable pics in the article, or (d) clicks on the thumbnail to see an enlargement (you shouldn't have to divert somewhere else to get the point of the hook). Why isn't it spelled out plainly? Readers will just not bother when a hook falls flat like this.
Why are nine words linked in this one sentence? Isn't the objective to get the reader to visit the themed article, i.e., Monte Titano, rather than splashing lots of other "chain" links into the hook? All of the other links are at the themed article, in full view, easy to access. Has anyone thought about why a reader would want to return to access "stonemason" from the main page hook rather than from Monte Titano?
Why isn't "hermitage" simplified to "religious retreat"? The term "hermitage" is still used in the article (and linked). Readers should not have to go on expeditions to fathom what the hook means.
The nationality of the stonemason is included (Croation), but the location of the mountain itself, in Italy, is still a mystery. Not only that, the location is missing from the lead of the article until you read for 30 seconds or so. Tony (talk) 10:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the off-putting section title you provided, I think ~~these are all~~ some of these are excellent suggestions for improving that hook. If this were in a prep queue I would go ahead and make those changes. Unfortunately since it's on the main page and I'm not an admin, someone else with the bit will need to do that if they agree.

For future reference, this page shows the hooks that will be going on the main page in the future; there's usually a lead time of at least 36 hours, so checking those for problems will give us a chance to fix them before they appear on the main page. Thanks, 28bytes (talk) 11:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that someone has removed "Croatian" from the hook, I think as part of the usual nationalistic wrangles. Johnbod (talk) 11:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The mountain is not in Italy. As identified in the hook and in the first sentence of the article, it is in San Marino. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 11:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Has this been changed now? We have another Religion in San Marino hook up. Points 3&4 are pants frankly, & I'm not that impressed by 1 & 2 either. Johnbod (talk) 12:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's all moot now, this was the previous set of hooks that was replaced during the normal update 45 minutes ago. 28bytes (talk) 12:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why I would reiterate to anyone interested in helping DYK improve hooks that the best time to do so is before they go up on the main page. 28bytes (talk) 12:50, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(e.c.) Hence the feeling that threads like this aren't meant to be constructive. A constructive contribution would comment in the 36 - 60 hours the hooks spend at T:DYK/Q, or at T:TDYK, and not be launched as a 'gotcha' when the hook is most of the way through its time on the main page. EdChem (talk) 12:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, since the OP has never edited TT:DYK, I simply assumed he was unfamiliar with the fact that the future prep set queue was available for anyone to view and comment on before going to the main page. I'd prefer if he'd pitch in and help review or improve hooks on the nominations page rather than just telling others to fix it, but he's certainly within his rights to point out problems. My only point was that pointing out problems earlier, before they go on the main page, would be in everyone's interest. 28bytes (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to comment after the fact, but I've never explored the DYK process. I can only see what's on the main page. There is a feeling in many threads above that everything is tickety-boo with DKY hooks. The purpose of my comments was to point out why this is not the case. It is just the first one on the list. I don't dare to look further. Systemic fixes are required, not just fixes to this particular example. Tony (talk) 15:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Tony, no one is saying there aren't problems. I'm sure you see both above and below this section kilobytes and kilobytes of discussion of what the problems are and how we might fix them. 28bytes (talk) 16:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Tony, I have to emphasise, you really should go through the DYK process first before saying that "systemic fixes are required". It's not that systematic aren't required, but a statement like "I've never explored the DYK process" is very concerning.--hkr (talk) 22:58, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's far easier to make broad, sweeping judgments about a topic you don't understand than about a topic you know in detail. --Orlady (talk) 23:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - And it's far easier to see the inconsistencies from outside the process than from inside. Physchim62 (talk) 23:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

←I desperately need to go through the process ... yes. But looking at the product, in a way, is all that matters from the perspective of pointing out areas in which, down the chain somewhere, things need to change. I want to add that I find the newness restriction (five-day-old articles) means we are showcasing relatively raw articles, or using only those that have been prepared elsewhere and thrown into article space in a mature form. Is the motivation to encourage article creation (rather than refinement) still as important as it was a few years ago ... we have 3.2 million of them. And effective hooks need a large pool of articles if a constant stream of interesting facts is to be used.

My other immediate issue, easy to fix, is that the hooks seem to be stuffed full of wikilinks. The problem with this is not that they trivial, but that the only link we want people to follow, initially, is the themed link. That link-target will presumably have all of the other links in it, usually at the opening or in the first part of the article. I pointed this out in relation to "stonemason" above. And "Croation". In fact, in all cases other than Monte Titano. Readers are much more likely to follow links in the full context of the article than from a short hook that is speckled blue/black on the main page. The appearance issue also counts, apart from the logical use of linking. The analogy is at The Signpost's Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-01/Features_and_admins︱F and A page, where in the blurbs for FAs we tend not to link anything but the article name. Why? Because we want readers to go straight to the article to find out more, not to host of different articles. Tony (talk) 05:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly Tony, if you had followed the San Marino link you would have known not to make your erroneous point #4 above! I agree there is some overlinking, but a linked "hermitage" is better than a very vague and probably not accurate "religious retreat". Johnbod (talk) 08:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I'm not debating the merits of the other arguments, but some of the points are invalid or slightly pedantic.--res Laozi speak 09:12, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but very few people comparatively speaking read the Signpost. There are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions who see Wiki's main page, and you can't assume they are all interested in the same thing. We are an educational project after all, if someone is curious to know more about Croatia or stonemasonry, we should accommodate that. Gatoclass (talk) 05:49, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The exact absolute and relative readership of Signpost:Main Page is irrelevant. In the example above, it was just ridiculous to stuff that one sentence full of links. I count six... surely a maximum of three would do fine. The objective of the hook is to lead readers to the article just created, but if the reader goes elsewhere than the intended article, that represents a lost opportunity. Yes, I am assuming that once they have drifted away, the majority don't come back – it's a reasonable assumption to make. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Naughty readers, not going where they're supposed to! Perhaps we should just remove all links except featured content from the Main Page... Oh and we can petition the developers so the Search box is removed from the Main Page, that way readers will have to click on a link to featured content to be able to do their search! And then if we remove all the links from all the other Main Page sections except DYK, we can guarantee that each hook will get, on average, 140k hits (that's about the same as a fairly popular ITN story at the moment)! Problem solved!

Sorry, minor stylistic elements like the number of links in a hook are utterly insignificant compared to the catastrophe which are DYK's click-through rates. Why does the average DYK hook get less than a thousand hits? Because DYK is treating its readership with contempt in the creation and selection of hooks. Simple as that, sorry. Physchim62 (talk) 10:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are they really such a catastrophe? I've taken a look through some FA page hits recently - I was shocked at how low their numbers are. But an FA hogs a quarter of the page and is up for 24 hours. If you really think the job is to score as many page hits as possible, wouldn't it be better to just scrap FA and use its cyberestate for something more interesting? Gatoclass (talk) 17:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That everything else gets less than ITN is no reflection on the rest if people choose to use WP as their newspaper. I didn't think Phschim made his point on this last time it was discussed - despite a worse position on the page total DYK figures seem to average higher than TFA - and personaaly I wish he'd avoid hyped-up language on this matter. Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK as a whole – that's 32–36 different hooks on different subjects, gets slightly more hits that TFA, a single article with a long prose summary of the contents (probably sufficient information for most readers), obviously on a single subject (and so inevitably not to the interests of the majority of a random group of people), plus three plain links below it (which also get considerable numbers of hits, far more than most DYK hooks). The damning comparison is with OTD: DYK has a hugely resource-intensive process to produce all these hooks, and yet OTD hooks (from a process run on a shoestring) are still twice as popular with our readers. People aren't using OTD as their newspaper, after all! And it is arguably in a slightly worse position than DYK on the Main Page. I'm sorry if Johnbod gets upset when I call a spade a spade, especially as he has worked hard to try to get a practical improvement in the situation. Physchim62 (talk) 18:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ITN vs DYK is an invalid comparison because people are searching for the event through other means as well. Phys, you may have a point, I don't really know... but the use of hyperbole turns people's ears off. Try stating your points with more seriousness and less drama. You may be surprised. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:36, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OTD gets twice as many hits as DYK? You've actually done some research on that? I just picked a day at random and compared the total number of hits - OTD got 65k over 24 hours and DYK got 39.2 over 12, which would average out at 78.4 over 24. So on that particular day, DYK came out ahead, and I have to say with a pretty ordinary collection of hooks. Are you sure you're not just making this up as you go along? Gatoclass (talk) 19:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well yes. Here are some statistics for click-thorugh rates covering ten days in January for all Main Page sections. The median click-through rate for DYK hooks was 1.0k; there were 39 sets of hooks (one day only had three sets), so we multiply that figure by 3.9 to get a notional click-through rate if the hooks had been allowed to stay up for 24 hours: that give 3.9k "hits"/24h. Over the same time period, the median click through rate for OTD hooks was 7.8k/24h, exactly twice as high. Note as well that the median click-through rate for the entire sections (that is, summing the click-throughs for all the hooks) over that period was 64.9k for OTD but only 44.3k for DYK. Physchim62 (talk) 14:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you want to be fiddling with "medians" when you have absolute numbers to compare? Sorry, but I'm rather sceptical of this result. Gatoclass (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because using medians is a standard statistical technique for dealing with data sets which have a "high-end tail": that is, no hooks will get fewer than zero hits, but some hits will get an unusually large number of hits. The arithmetic mean gives more weight to the exceptionally high results than the median. To illustrate this, let's compare the arithmetic means for that ten-day period: DYK 1.535k hits per hook, OTD 10.477k hits/hook. You still see the same effect, although now OTD hooks are only 1.75 times as "popular" as DYK hooks (after accounting for the difference in visibility time). Physchim62 (talk) 16:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that many of the hits on ITN items have nothing to do with the main page, but are generated by people who are looking up items that are in the news. I'd wager that the same thing is true of OTD items, albeit to a lesser extent -- news media and other non-Wikipedia outlets highlight significant events of the day, and that undoubtedly leads some people to the relevant Wikipedia articles. On the other hand, when a brand-new article on an obscure topic gets 2,500 page views on the day it appears in DYK, you can be very sure that almost all of those hits are attributable to DYK. --Orlady (talk) 02:05, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I quite accept that a straight comparison between DYK and ITN is impossible, for the reasons stated. To give an example, one ITN story has generated hits equivalent to more than the number of hits on the Main Page that day! Obviously that has nothing to do with anything ITN was doing! But ITN does run more obscure or quirky news stories from time to time: see Gävle goat or hijra for a couple of examples. It's difficult to set a hard criterion for what is a "quirky" ITN story, so I shaln't attempt to make a more formal comparison. And ITN falls flat on its collective face from time to time, but I tend to 'define' that as an ITN story that only generates a peak of 10–15k, far from the sort of numbers that DYK sees as normal. Physchim62 (talk) 14:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should be spending too much time analysing what is essentially a side issue, but I can't help observing that OTD contains articles which are normally on well-known and "high interest" subjects, while DYK articles these days are almost all by definition not on such subjects. Johnbod (talk) 02:28, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"the catastrophe which are DYK's click-through rates"—well, it's plain as day to me that the poor click-through rate is caused by diluting the object of the hook among many other links. Those other links are at the target article. If you don't direct the readers to it, of course they'll react just as they've been proved to react when confronted with too many choices in real life—they're less likely to choose anything; it's a turn-off. Honestly, when I look at a messy blue/black hook, I'm wondering which link is the subject. If you link just once in each hook, you will not only get higher click-through rates, but you will make it look a heck a lot more attractive to readers. Tony (talk) 02:14, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Implementing ideas

This section is for discussion of how ideas which have attained consensus above, can be implemented. cmadler (talk) 14:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incorporate CorenBot to scan for plagiarism

One comment I saw was that Google would not permit text in Google Books to be checked. I'd be curious to know why this is. I would think they would want to help Wikipedia prevent plagiarism. 28bytes (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Google will permit text in Google Books to be searched, just not automagically by bots like CSBot. It's a point worth making that it can often be helpful to run a text search directly in Google Books, as even the main web interface does not always cover Books to the depth that a specific Books search will do (question of resources or marketing, not sure which). Physchim62 (talk) 18:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Accepting the limitations of CorenSearchBot, does anyone have ideas about how to incorporate it into the DYK process? cmadler (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Encourage editors to manually use online plagiarism checkers

Obviously, this is something to be incorporated into the proposed reviewing manual. Does anyone have a list of a handful of the best online plagiarism checkers? cmadler (talk) 14:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More transparent logs, better accountability

There have been several different suggestions about how to do this. My preference, assuming it can be mostly/entirely automated, would by a subpage for each hook nomination, transcluded onto daily pages, much like AfD, etc. That would allow editors to watchlist single nominations, rather than having to look through an entire page, as is currently required. cmadler (talk) 14:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Require article nominators to review articles

That's this one isn't it? Gatoclass talks of "Matski's proposal" in a later section header, but if it was Matski's I can't see where. Johnbod (talk) 15:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of spamming, I'll copy here an implementation suggestion made above. The {{NewDYKnomination}} template could be modified to output a link that a reviewer can use to check the nominator's contributions to T:TDYK, like so: check this user's TTDYK contributions. This would make verification easy. It's not perfect, since right now the link shows contributions to all template_talk pages instead of just T:TDYK, but it's a start, and I'm looking into a way to limit it to just T:TDYK. If people think this is a good idea, I'll put a modified version of {{NewDYKnomination}} in my user space for testing. 28bytes (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think it's a big problem that the search covers the whole of Template talk space, as template talk pages don't usually get many comments. See my results, for example: I've made fifty TT edits in 18 months (and I found a DYK I'd forgotten about!) Physchim62 (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Great. Since the proposal says there must have been a review within the 5 days before the nom, by the time a review is done the nom's quid pro quo review will often have moved off the main suggestions page to a queue etc. How will the check cope with that?

I think people should include the quid pro quo article title in their nom, and it may be necessary sometimes to AGF. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even if their review has moved to the prep queue or beyond, the contribution will still show. Here are mine and yours to show how it would work. 28bytes (talk) 15:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but those links won't identify which hook or hooks were reviewed for this particular nom. You might be looking at older reviews. Gatoclass (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

True, but both their nominations and reviews will show there. I was assuming that the quid pro quo would allow someone to, for example, review 8 hooks over a week, then submit 8 nominations the next week if they wished, rather than having to go nom-review-nom-review-nom-review. Is that not the case? 28bytes (talk) 15:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would be too difficult to do. I think you would need to do your reviews within a reasonable time period, for one thing your hook wouldn't be promotable until the review has been completed. Gatoclass (talk) 16:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK. In that case, I misunderstood. I assume then, that previously self-nomimated hooks and articles will be grandfathered in? In other words, if you've self-nom'ed 50 hooks in the past but done no reviews, to nominate #51 you would just need to do one review? I'd kind of figured that was the case, but that should probably be spelled out explicitly in the rules for clarification. 28bytes (talk) 16:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, heck yes! We're not going to make people do reviews for their old noms, that would be an impossible task. No, once the system is implemented it will apply to future nominations, not to old ones. Gatoclass (talk) 16:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict): That's one possibility. I was thinking that newDYKnom could be modified to include a string with "review1= review2= " etc. for every article in the hook, and that the nominator would then just add a link to every article he reviewed. Possibly though we could do both, that way we could see what reviews the nominator had reviewed for this hook, and also check easily that he actually reviewed it in cases where the hook has already been removed from the page. Gatoclass (talk) 15:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I suggest that the following wording be used:

Editors who have submitted five previous DYK hooks are required to review at least one article for each subsequent article they nominate. Nomination of articles created or expanded by a user other than the nominator is exempted from this requirement, though such nominators are strongly encouraged to do so anyway.

Any thoughts on where this should be added into the rules? Also, there was a suggestion to add a "check contributions" link (check this user's TTDYK contributions) to the DYK nomination template; could someone who's comfortable with such things do that? cmadler (talk) 15:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we will need an entire new page. It's about time we wrote a guideline for reviewing in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 15:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re the link, I can do that. If there aren't objections, I'll knock out a test template for it this weekend. 28bytes (talk) 15:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If DYK implements AfD-style subpages for each hook, transcluded onto daily pages, as discussed above, that would make this easier in all regards: easier to track (just point to the subpage you reviewed), and easier for a reviewer to stay engaged in the discussion of a hook. cmadler (talk) 15:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like overkill to me. I think the suggestions in the previous section make more sense. Gatoclass (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't have time to follow this whole discussion. But I also thought, that a new parameter in newDYKnom might say "nominator reviewed=", filled by article name. Such a parameter could be included right now, first on a voluntary basis, for a transition period and try-out-time. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, while typing up my suggestion below, Gerda had already made it.. such is life. - Theornamentalist (talk) 15:48, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In place of checking contributions, I was thinking that maybe a required parameter to the DYK nom template be added. In it, the nominator would place a link to a nomination they reviewed in the short past, which after saving would appear something like this:

... that Robbie "The Flame" Olivier and Ashleigh "The Thunderball Kid" Grimshaw faced off at Cage Rage 27 - Step Up for the Cage Rage British Featherweight Championship?

Created by Paralympiakos (talk). Self nom at 23:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC). Reviewed nom.[reply]

or a small linked graphic that would be easier to spot. The reviewer of this nomination could simply click the link, check to see that it is recent, and then proceed to review this nomination. It would be acceptable to not have a review under your belt to nominate before the nomination; leaving the parameter blank could give:

... that Robbie "The Flame" Olivier and Ashleigh "The Thunderball Kid" Grimshaw faced off at Cage Rage 27 - Step Up for the Cage Rage British Featherweight Championship?

Created by Paralympiakos (talk). Self nom at 23:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC). Review by Paralympiakos needed, click here for rules.[reply]

I think that this would be pretty transparent and easy for reviewers and nominators, and any confused new editor would be given leeway and/or help. - Theornamentalist (talk) 15:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My concern about that approach would be for hooks with multiple articles. For example, something like this would be a huge pain for both the nominator and reviewer (but especially for the nominator), whereas a single link to all of that nominator's DYK contributions would be effortless for the nominator, and one click for the reviewer. 28bytes (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The single link might also work better with regard to new-to-DYK editors (first 5 nominations). cmadler (talk) 16:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But the problem with that as I said before is that there's no way of identifying if the reviews were done for this particular submission. A list of edits at T:TDYK simply doesn't achieve that. You have to have a list of reviews nominated by the author to doublecheck against his edits. Gatoclass (talk) 16:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Admittedly growing in complication, but if we were to gain consensus on separating noms in the way we do AfD's, we could potentially have a "what links here" within the nomination next to the link like:

... that Robbie "The Flame" Olivier and Ashleigh "The Thunderball Kid" Grimshaw faced off at Cage Rage 27 - Step Up for the Cage Rage British Featherweight Championship?

Created by Paralympiakos (talk). Self nom at 23:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC). Reviewed nom.(check links)[reply]

and if TT:DYK link was given priority, the reviewer could check to see if the review has been linked in any other nominations. Even though the additions seem to be piling up, I think checking these two things would take the reviewer no more than 10 seconds (well, however long it takes to load) and it would not be too big of a deal. - Theornamentalist (talk) 17:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let's not bring the "format DYK like AfD" proposal back into the discussion just yet; there are serious problems with that approach (IPs wouldn't be able to nominate an article they'd expanded, for one thing) and the logistics would take a while to work out. I'm fine with adding either "contributions" or "reviewed nom" link (or both) to the new nom template, but I don't want us to get derailed by scope creep. 28bytes (talk) 17:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We could have a separate sublist for IP nominations, transcluded under the same section with the other nominations, so aesthetically readers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And a bot could turn these IP nominations into separate pages after they've been added. It's true that there needs to be work on the specifics and the technicals, but it is feasible, and would make sorting through the DYKs a lot easier (and editors can watchlist specific nominations!).--res Laozi speak 23:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've started AfDs manually (pre-Twinkle) and it's a bit of a pain. With the current DYK nominations process, you open the date section, paste in a template, fill it out and save it. Walk me through the new (proposed) process. What steps would a nominator need to take to submit a nomination? 28bytes (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Like so:

"If you do it this way, don't forget to add your nomination to the top of the page of Template talk:Did you know."

That's about it. That's one extra step, and the ability to watchlist specific DYK nominations more than makes up for it. Anon IPs can list their nominations on a transcluded sub-list, which can be turned into separate pages, either manually or by bot.--res Laozi speak 00:45, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DYK Contributions link

Here's a test of my idea. I've copied the NewDYKnomination template to my user space, and modified it to add a DYK contributions link. Here's what it would look like on the nominations page:

Batman

... that Batman is right behind you?

Created by 28bytes (talk · DYK contribs). Self nom at 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fairly unintrusive visually, I think. Comments welcome. 28bytes (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not technically DYK contributions, just all contributions in the Template Talk namespace. For people who are active in template coding they might have lots of non-DYK contributions there, although for the most part I suppose this link would at least make it easier to locate their DYK contribs. It would take up less space in the edit window if you made a template for that link, something like {{DYKcontribs|28bytes}}. Although, to be honest, if we are going to require that people leave links to their recent reviews along with their nomination, I'm not sure this link would be necessary. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I'm trying to find a link to just the TTDYK contributions but am not having any luck so far. (I had made User:28bytes/TT contribs for taking up less room and providing better maintainability but couldn't get the transclusion to work right, so I just subst'ed when saving the NewDYKNomination template for this demonstration.) Personally, I think a link like this would be preferable to requiring a nominator to copy and paste a diff into the template, because their most recent reviewing activity should show right at the top of the contribs list anyway without them having to do anything. 28bytes (talk) 19:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't guarantee that the reviewer of their submission will check right after. The only reason I am supporting linking the difference is so that a particular review is bonded with that nomination. Speculation, but someone might look at TT:DYK and just think "eh, they've been editing the page, guess one of them is good for a review". Ha I'll have to copy the parenthetical enclosure you've made with your suggestion, it looks nice. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It ain't pretty, but this is more specific. Shubinator (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

... that Batman is right behind you?

Created by 28bytes (talk). Self nom at 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC) • Verify (review/1 use)[reply]

Note not different from what I suggested earlier, just using 28bytes style from above. The "1 use" can come or go, currently the only way I can think to check that it is only used once is through "What links here", but that would require making DYK like AfD noms, which I understand is not a popular issue and is certainly not a quick fix. btw 28bytes, that article arose from reading your userpage a couple days ago, ha. - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- That's funny. I was wondering if that was the case. I have List of Atari 2600 games watchlisted (obviously) so when I saw that you'd linked a new one, I clicked over to read it, then went to see if there was a DYK nom for it. 28bytes (talk) 22:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also:Reviewing Guide

(edit conflict) I assume we will need a new guideline for reviewing. I was thinking of knocking up a draft in the last day or two, but didn't get around to it yet.

I think we'll need to have some specific actions incorporated into the review process. It should include checking the article for plagiarism and copyvio. It should also include, I think, a requirement for reviewers to "stay engaged" with the review process for a hook until that hook is either promoted or rejected. We don't want to have a perfunctory process where someone just leaves a comment as a "review" and then does nothing further. I personally stay engaged with almost every review I do, which is to say, I follow up to assist the nominator in resolving the outstanding issues, so I don't think this would be too onerous a requirement. Gatoclass (talk) 15:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think one way we could do that (and could work as part of the "transparent logs" proposal), is to have separate pages for DYK nominations, that are then transcluded on the main page. Similar to what the X for Deletion proccesses have initiated. This way, it's possible for editors to watchlist the DYK nominations that they've participated in.--res Laozi speak 23:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's been suggested before by myself and others, but apparently it is a bad idea due to it further increasing load times. (search for "15:27, 1 November 2010" on this page and you should find some links). SmartSE (talk) 01:01, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Rjanag wasn't opposed to the idea, but he did bring up the loading times issue, as you mentioned. I don't think that transclusion will increase loading times by a noticeable amount, and any effect is dwarfed by the effect that the sheer size of Template talk:DYK has on loading times. And the net benefits of the idea (being able to watchlist specific nominations, more transparency, easier access to logs), outweigh any of the potential negatives. --res Laozi speak 01:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like this concept: improves responsibility for reviewers, and makes the process more user-friendly (being able to watchlist specific noms would make following up on comments so much easier). The Xfd model seems to work over there, we could have a similar index-by-date page. Would this system make prep-area moves more difficult? The Interior (Talk) 19:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone started on the reviewing guide? If so, where is it (so others can help)? If not, I'll probably start it shortly (and post a link here). cmadler (talk) 14:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not finding anything, I'm starting on it in my sandbox at User:Cmadler/sandbox/DYKreviewguide. Feel free to jump in. cmadler (talk) 15:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overlinking in hooks

Somewhere in the masses of discussion, the issue of whether we should include links for other articles in hooks was mentioned. Despite the way it was raised, I thought the point was worth a considered discussion. Only linking the 'hook' article(s) will draw attention to the article being highlighted, and any other links in the hook are almost certain to be included in the article as well. However, it removes the option of piped links for acronyms (like MMA, for example) or readers going directly to articles they choose. It seems to me that this topic is worth covering in new draft guidelines. Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 10:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's the least of our worries at the moment. I certainly would not support only linking the hook article - Tony, who introduced the subject above (Hall of Lame Revisited) neatly demonstrates, without intending to, why this would be a really bad idea. But we sometimes have too many mundane links in hooks, & at other times too few. Johnbod (talk) 11:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand my neat illustration. Maybe I'm being thick. Tony (talk) 12:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One of the links you complained about would have told you that San Marino is an independent country, not part of Italy. You then went on to complain that the location in Italy was not mentioned. Looks neat to me. Johnbod (talk) 13:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm ... I'm thinking about how readers of the main page actually read these hooks. I do not think they are as "studied" in their approach as this implies—I'd approach hook writing with the goal of trying to get across the gist in the five second it takes to read the anchor sentence; and I would try not to require the reader to hit a link to find out the basics. I'd expect on the eastern ?something of the Italian peninsula (a phrase I think the article uses, got no time to look right now) to be recognisable to most readers. I'd add that to the sentence and unlink "San Marino". I just do not think readers read hooks in a zigzag to and from wikilinks to get that info. What will happen is that they'll pass over the whole thing because it falls flat on first appearance. We could, actually, organise a test of volunteers to determine just how they do read the hooks. I'm pretty sure I'm right (how arrogant). Tony (talk) 14:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of course people don't normally hit all the links, but if they are uncertain, or as ignorant as you were here, then they can. The linking should be just the same as in normal article text but, like articles, tastes differ & some have too few and others too many. Johnbod (talk) 14:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that only one of the hooks in the current queue (including prep areas) lacks internal links apart from the title article, so it would be a substantial change. Mikenorton (talk) 15:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why we should prevent Main Page readers from clicking on links that interest them. It's up to DYK to come up with hooks that make people want to click on the bolded article. Nor am I convinced that it makes any practical difference to the click-through rate. I looked for an example on DYK of a phenomenon we see at ITN: that, when there is a person's name linked in the hook, it gets a big peak in hits, sometimes more hits than the "featured" link. I found "referring to Che Guevara T-shirts and other clothing, Aleida Guevara said that Che 'probably would have been delighted to see his face on the breasts of so many beautiful women'?" The featured hook got 10.2k (significantly better than average, even for the top slot) while Aleida Guevara got 8.9k. You can't simply say that the 8.9k hits would have got to the featured link: what about people who simply didn't want to read a whole article about Che Guevara T-shirts? Or the people who read both articles? Physchim62 (talk) 19:33, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think this is a non-issue. IMO we should be linking as many articles as we reasonably can on the mainpage, as we are an educational project and we should be making our information as accessible as possible. Gatoclass (talk) 20:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Gatoclass -- it's not necessarily a bad thing when people click on "other" links in the hook. It's quite reasonable that people would click on Aleida Guevara -- wanting to know who she is. My experience tells me that it's not just people's names that get more attention than the intended target -- it's anything in the hook that people are curious about. One of "my" DYK hooks was "... that the element promethium was discovered in 1945 by Manhattan Project chemists Jacob A. Marinsky, Lawrence E. Glendenin and Charles D. Coryell?" -- although the featured new articles were about people, it was hardly surprising that the article on promethium got far more hits than the articles about the people. Regardless, the hook caused some people to poke into corners of Wikipedia they might never have visited otherwise. --Orlady (talk) 01:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. I just noticed that the figures for my last DYK, 2 days ago, were (day before:dyk day): "... that the "secretive character" of the Beggar Looking Through His Hat (pictured), attributed to 17th-century artist Jacques Bellange (21:1,700), may have appealed to its former owner, American KGB spy Michael Straight (36:3,100)?" Is that a bad thing? Should I have omitted the 2nd link? Of course not! Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Upside down queue

Whoa, where did this come from? I realize I don't spend a lot of time here, but as someone who spends a lot of time on the nom page, how did I manage to miss this change?

Anyhow, I like the idea, but it does make entering a nom much harder, imho. I have to hunt around for the proper area.

Is there any reason this couldn't be automated? When you click "enter a nom" a small page shows up just for that nominator, where they can select from one of the templates and enter the data in fields. Then it figures out where it should go on the page.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:23, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 59#Thoughts on DYK noms, including the declining rate. It's impossible for templates to conditionally place an edit in a particular spot. Shubinator (talk) 17:32, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use a template then. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussions (just a small point)

Since most of the above discussions are about overhauling DYK, should they be moved to a separate page when archived or whilst they are currently going on? Or split up between the many current archives? Simply south (talk) 18:17, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We must be getting something right!

The current set on main page, headed by "Americanization School" has the best overall set of hooks I can recall seeing for a long time. I don't understand the NBA one at all, but that's normal and no doubt plenty do. I also lived in Polkerris] for 6 months which redeemed a rather less interesting one, for me anyway. Johnbod (talk) 00:51, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A lot depends on the effort that goes into creating a balanced update. I know there are lots of people who think that DYK should be more "interesting", but what many of them don't realize is just how many editorial decisions have to be made to build a quality end product. Unless you have some really dedicated people around who are willing to make the effort, update quality inevitably suffers. Gatoclass (talk) 07:20, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Average of less than 1000 views per hook?

I have begun an investigation to consider whether the claimed statistic of less than 1000 views per hook is supported by a detailed analysis of the views of the articles in a hook. I started with a preliminary look at three hooks in which I was involved. No claim of these being representative is made, but I found the preliminary results sufficiently surprising to think them worth sharing. The details are at User:EdChem/DYK clicks. I think the results support putting the effort into examining all hooks of a single day. Before I go to that effort (as it is time consuming), I invite comment on whether my methods strike others as reasonable / supportable, and whether the potential data are worth taking the time to collect. EdChem (talk) 11:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How are you doing this? By looking at the spike in page-view traffic? That might be reasonable, but you'd need to look at quite a few hook-days to get reliable trends. Whatever the number, I can show you exactly how to triple the numbers instantly. Tony (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These are the stats I collected in January. Physchim62 (talk) 13:34, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have now collected and input the data for one complete update set of nine hooks. Obviously more sets need to be analysed to see if the results are typical or not, but the short version is: This single set of 9 hooks attracted 21,100 views for the bolded articles, and a further 21,954 for the non-bolded articles. This is from a 6 hour period, yet the totals approximate those for a full day from Physchim62. There are, of course, many possible explanations, the most obvious being the set I used was atypically effective. Note that I consider the non-bold views under-estimates because in cases where a clear estimate of additional views can't be made, I have taken them to be 0. Also, in most cases, I have deducted the average daily views for the rest of the month from the 'spike' in views, so that only the extra views reasonably attributable to DYK views are shown. In other cases, the views show clear patterns over each seven-day period, allowing an estimate of the expected views absent DYK on a given day to be made. I have generally gone for a conservative estimate, so that it is possible that there are more DYK-induced views than I have estimated. Undoubtedly, much more data are needed to support a conclusion, but I am sceptical that the estimate of less than 1000 views per hook is at all accurate. EdChem (talk) 14:19, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are including hits on non-bolded hooks, which I did not: all the figures in my table would be higher if non-bolded hook hits were included. However, in terms of "project effort" in creating the hook, only the bolded link counts (unbolded links are rarely checked for anything at all). Also, our treatment of multi-article hooks are different, and EdChem seems to be looking at and arthmetic mean (I used medians). Physchim62 (talk) 14:28, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Physchim62, though I don't concur that non-bolded views should be disregarded (as I think it is clear they come from DYK), I have carefully presented views from bolded and non-bolded articles separately before presenting the aggregate. Even on just the bolded views, the two update sets I have now looked at average about 2000 views per hook (across 2 consecutive sets and 18 hooks, bolded views = 35,624 and non-bolded views = 42,803), and no single hook has less than 1000 bolded views. The complete data set (2 updates, 18 hooks) remains too small to support any definitive conclusions, but do you accept that my data are (so far) inconsistenet with your 'less than 1000 views per hook' result? Remember that I am discounting views by (typically) the average views for the article for the rest of the month, so am only counting views over and above what might have otherwise occurred. As for means v. medians, I recognise the statistical reason for preferring medians, but I am so far presenting mostly raw data. When there are sufficient sets analysed, the resulting data can be analysed to see whether it is sufficiently close to normal to justify description by mean and standard deviation, or instead by median and inter-quartile range. EdChem (talk) 05:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to measure total DYK impact, you should also include hits on the photo featured with the lead hook. I have sometimes found spikes of 10,000 hits or more on the photo. Cbl62 (talk) 06:31, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For example, the Ophiophagus hannah image accompanying the one you started to work on had 3,200 hits while on DYK. Cbl62 (talk) 06:33, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Cbl62 - I was including image views in the non-bolded views, though I can see how a case can be made that they be included as bolded views for the lead article of an update. EdChem (talk) 11:55, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are three reasons for my choice of methodology, one statistical, one Wikiprocess-related and one practical.

It is impossible to eliminate double-counting if you include more than one link. How many of your summed hits correspond to the same reader viewing several of the linked articles? The Main Page sections are insignificant compared to Wikipedia traffic as a whole, so we are not trying to use the Main Page to increase total traffic; all four of the sections (to different extents) are (among other goals) trying to get readers to read articles they wouldn't otherwise have read, and that objective is best measured by an estimate of individual readers.
The various process to create the Main Page sections concentrate the vast majority of their resources on the bolded link, not on the others. Hence, to see whether a given process is an efficient use of project resources, it is fair to concentrate on the part of the output (the "featured" article) on which the resources have been spent.
It is already very tedious to get a large enough data set while only looking at the bolded link; including the non-bolded links greatly increases the workload, and so reduces the availability of statistics.

I'd also say that I don't think the inclusion or exclusion of non-bolded links would significantly change the relative hit rates in my January analysis. I only used the bolded link for each of the sections (and only the most popular bolded link for multiarticle hooks). Physchim62 (talk) 11:47, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So the first set of hooks in which only the hook-article is linked will get many many more hits. Is this not the whole point? Tony (talk) 06:36, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- PS I can't work out from Psyschim's table what the underlying hit-rate of each hook-article might be, compared with the spike on the day caused by the hook. Are the data retrievable only on a daily basis? If so, beware the effect of time-zones. The previous or following day might be part of the spike. Tony (talk) 06:40, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as DYK is concerned, you can see a smaller "day-after" effect on the spike, but only for the final set of hooks in the UTC day. This is presumably due to server caching of the Main Page by ISPs. I didn't take it into account in the January stats because it is so much smaller than the variability in hit rates between hooks; I'll try to include it if I do a new set of stats as long as I can come up with a way to make a similar correction on OTD. For TFA and ITN, there is a much larger "day-after-peak" effect, because the article is still linked from the Main Page, so I treated this separately. Physchim62 (talk) 12:10, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I presume you're using Heinrick's thing, which now seems to be working consistently for the first time in god knows how long. Tony (talk) 12:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC) PS, there'll be a day-before effect, too. Tony (talk) 12:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, stats.grok.se There's sometimes a "day-before" effect on ITN, both because of the subject matter and because of the way ITN works, but not for the other sections. Why do you think there should be? Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the hooks are posted first thing in the day, UTC, there will be some spiking in North America on the previous "date". Tony (talk) 14:10, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, because the statistics are collected per UTC date, not local date. The only way you can get a "day-before" effect is if significant numbers of readers are looking at an article before it is posted on the Main Page. That happens (sometimes) with ITN, because news media are talking about the topic before the ITN story goes up, and (depending on the topic) readers are looking for information on Wikipedia on the basis of news reports. I don't see why it should happen with the other sections, and I haven't seen any evidence for it. Physchim62 (talk) 14:36, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More reviewers needed

The great debate above seems to have distracted attention from the actual running of the project, we are currently down to only 18 verified hooks with a number of queues empty. Can we get some more people reviewing please? Gatoclass (talk) 06:54, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think as many people come here, so maybe we should ask on the suggestions page. For instance, when you review and approve someone's hook, take that time to ask them to review another if they haven't recently. I know there are a few users who nominate hooks every day but never review or comment on anyone else's. - PM800 (talk) 09:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not about to start leaving notes all over the Suggestions page for people to get involved. We are (supposedly) in the process of establishing a quid pro quo system of reviewing in any case, so nominators will be getting more involved eventually, but in the meantime we will have to continue relying mainly on our regular reviewers, who do actually read this page. Gatoclass (talk) 11:12, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We lost our most productive contributor in maintaining reviews and preparing sets, etc, in Rlevse. At the same time, wholesale change for the project was suggested / demanded by various editors, some with reasonable comments and suggestions, others disparaging the project and its contributors. The suggestion for including recently (and comprehensively) sourced BLPs, possibly with a 2x or even 3x expansion requirement, has been left to linger and die despite broad support. My own nomination as a test case has been neglected to death which doesn't exactly improve my motivations (and I was already feeling disillusioned following the harrassment across this page). The stats analysis arguing for <1000 views per hook appears to me to be methodologically flawed, but no one else appears to have noticed. Speaking just for myself, I recognise the need for more reviewers / reviewing, but I am struggling to summon the will to contribute to the effort needed. Maybe I am not the only one feeling discouraged. EdChem (talk) 11:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we are all feeling a bit exhausted and irritable after the last few weeks of discussion. But the show must go on. If you need a break, by all means have one, hopefully someone else will step up to the plate in the meantime. As for your "ignored" proposals, they may have some merit that can be revisited sometime down the track, but in line with your own feelings, I think a lot of people are tired of discussing the various proposals at the moment and could use a break from it. Gatoclass (talk) 14:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll tackle some reviews when I get home tonight. @Ed, keep your spirits up. I for one appreciate your efforts here. 28bytes (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Queue 3 correction

In the sixth hook of Queue 3, "feet" should be "foot". (I was fixing it in Prep, but got an edit conflict as it was moved to Queue.) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 22:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed by changing the hook to use {{Convert}}. --Allen3 ^talk 22:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hub Hart in queue 3

The Hub Hart article in queue 3 has an apparent inaccuracy. The hook reads ...that James "Hub" Hart started his Major League Baseball career a few months after he was named an All-American for football? The problem is that he does not appear to have been an All-American in football. The various All-American selections have been collected at 1904 College Football All-America Team with citations to the sources. Hart was not on any of the lists. The sole source cited in the article for the supposed "All-American" selection is based on a 1982 article written by a Georgetown undergraduate student in the school's student newspaper, "The Hoya." Erroneous identifications of players as All-Americans is rampant. I suggest that this hook be returned to the Suggestions page until this is sorted out. Cbl62 (talk) 04:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Further evidence that the hook is wrong. Multiple lists of All-American football players from Georgetown make no mention of Hart. See Hoya-Saxa list of Georgetown All-Americans, Hoya Football list of Georgetown All-Americans, and NCAA list of Georgetown All-Americans (pages 13 and 32). Cbl62 (talk) 04:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Returned (that queue was lacking a quirky hook anyway ..). Materialscientist (talk) 04:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Implementing quid pro quo

Following up on the #Require article nominators to review articles discussion above, do we want to wait until new-and-improved nomination templates are in place before starting the QPQ requirement, or should we just put a notice up on the nominations and rules pages stating that it's in effect and to please add a comment with your nomination to indicate which hook you've reviewed? 28bytes (talk) 05:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Getting people used to the idea before building it into the template (i.e., the latter suggestion) makes more sense to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:55, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, how's this?

User:28bytes/DYKEditNotice You can view the whole edit notice as it would appear when editing the page here: User:28bytes/DYKEditNotice. Thoughts? 28bytes (talk) 02:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like it, this seems like a good transition. How do you propose we should link it, directly to the article or to the edit on the nom page that shows the difference? I think that asking for either would be good, although linking to the article might be fine for now, and much easier for us instead of having to find the difference, which some new editors may not be entirely sure of doing. I think we should introduce a new parameter in the nom template for it like:

{{subst:NewDYKnom | article= | hook=... that ? | status=new | author= | nominator= | reviewed article= }}

... that the Loyal Parliament of 1685 put high taxes on sugar and tobacco?

Created by Moonraker2 (talk • review: Batman). Self nom at 06:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
or

... that the Loyal Parliament of 1685 put high taxes on sugar and tobacco?

Created by Moonraker2 (talk • review). Self nom at 06:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, ha this is pretty lame to ask, but I can claim ignorance on this... is someone working on the whole AfD like nom page? - Theornamentalist (talk) 05:38, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The more I think about it, the better of an idea I think it would be to show the difference, and 28 I think this can be achieved using the method you had suggested for checking T:DYK edits, maybe somewhat like this when someone is adding a nomination to the page in the last sentence on top:

DYK uses a template for nominating articles.

Please use one of the below strings to post your DYK nomination, using the "author" and "nominator" fields to identify the users who should receive credit for their contributions if the hook is featured on the main page. Check your recent DYK contributions for the "reviewed article" parameter and link the difference.

Do not wikilink the article title, or the author and nominator usernames; the template will wikilink them automatically.
Do not add a section heading if you are using the template; the template will add one for you.
Do not include a signature (~~~~) after the template.
Do not use fair use images in your hook suggestion.
Do wikilink words in the hook and bold the main article.

New Article: {{subst:NewDYKnom | article= | hook=... that ? | status=new | author= | nominator= | reviewed article=}}
Expansion: {{subst:NewDYKnom| article= | hook=... that ? | status=expanded | author= | nominator= | reviewed article=}}
Nom with image: {{subst:NewDYKnom|article=|hook=... that ?|status=|author=|nominator=|image=|rollover=|alttext=| reviewed article=}}
Nom with sound: {{subst:NewDYKnom|article=|hook=... that ?|status=|author=|nominator=|sound=|soundcaption=| reviewed article=}}
Nom with video: {{subst:NewDYKnom|article=|hook=... that ?|status=|author=|nominator=|video=|videocaption=| reviewed article=}}
Other parameters: |article2=, etc. |author2=, etc. |ALT1= |comment=

See Template:NewDYKnomination/guide for more detailed instructions on usage of this template.

You may notify the nominator of problems with {{subst:DYKproblem|Article|header=yes|sig=yes}}

- Theornamentalist (talk) 06:05, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I guess my preference would be what Rjanag suggested, i.e. put the notice up in various places, then work out the details of the template. That being said, I've got no problem with expanding the template to include a "reviewed" parameter. Ideally it would be optional, and if left blank would spit out some text like "(please replace this text with the name of the nomination you've reviewed)" or something like that, to allow for people submitting a nomination, then finding one to review, then returning. My guess is that nominators will want to do it in that order, but I could be wrong. 28bytes (talk) 06:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think most nominators would want to submit their articles first, and then work out which article or articles they want to review, so I don't think it's a good idea to have a blank "substitute" text. Instead, New DYKnom should output a string like "review1=[[]] review2=[[]]" etc., then the submitter can just paste in the header of each nomination he reviews. Gatoclass (talk) 08:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a good approach to me. 28bytes (talk) 08:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, looks good. Anyone want to be bold and implement it?--res Laozi speak 08:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We might also want a toggle of some kind, so the string only outputs if you have more than five DYKs. Gatoclass (talk) 09:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's possible with the way the template is designed right now. It would require some pretty big reworking (somewhere there would have to be a list of everyone with more than 5 DYKs, and even then I'm not sure if template parser functions would be able to handle it). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this is to be introduced, then there should be a bit of prior notice. I'd suggest create an edit notice now warning of the change to come, and introduce the change after two or three weeks, to get people used to the idea. The edit notice could be worded to suggest that editors voluntarily review an article in the meantime, to get them used to the system. Mjroots (talk) 10:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why wait? It has been discussed here for about 2 weeks. Start it from tomorrow's noms (ie noms for Nov 19) and add a bit of explanation at the top of each new day for a week to get the regulars used to it. Johnbod (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Problem is there are DYK regulars that didn't participate in the discussion. I think we should spend a week or so getting the word out (through Signpost perhaps?), before actually enforcing it.--res Laozi speak 13:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many regulars never contribute here except to complain about the treatment of their noms. Maybe they read the page, maybe they don't. The way to reach regulars is through the suggestions page as suggested above - they probably don't read Signpost either, though of course it should be mentioned there as general PR. Johnbod (talk) 13:22, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I say implement it now. It's clear from discussion that if/when an editor makes a nomination and hasn't yet done a review, they can subsequently do the review and note it in their nomination. My understanding is that when a nomination is made without a review, it would just go on hold, similar to any other fixable problem, and only if it's not addressed would the nomination be rejected. So there's no harm in implementing it even if some people are not yet aware. Also, I'm sure there is portion of editors who, no matter how long we discuss it and how many different notifications we put up, will always plead ignorance. We've been discussing it for quite a while, it's time to implement. cmadler (talk) 14:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with implementing it quickly, but I think we should get NewDYKnom set up to handle it first. Gatoclass (talk) 14:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also I think we should start it on a new day, in order not to create confusion. So the current hooks will not require a qpq, but from day X they will be required. Otherwise we will have to be chasing people up to review for submissions they've already made, which is likely to end up a hassle for all concerned. Gatoclass (talk) 14:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly agree that nominations made before this is implemented should be exempt. No ex post facto quid pro quo! cmadler (talk) 15:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about bringing it in on 1 December. That would give time to make announcements in the Signpost and via an edit notice at T:TDYK. Mjroots (talk) 17:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

December 1 sounds reasonable to me. I agree, which the sheer volume of text coming through this page recently, it's not reasonable to expect every regular (much less occasional) contributor to have read about the new requirement. How about this: we add "Starting December 1" to the above edit notice (example below) and put it on the nominations page and edit notice today or tomorrow? That should give us some time to work out the details with the template while giving everyone else a heads-up of the change. 28bytes (talk) 18:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User:28bytes/DYKEditNoticeDec1

Implementing quid pro quo (arbitrary break)

On the template end of things, once you guys work out what you want (i.e., section link to the article reviewed, diff, or whatnot), let me know and I can add it to the template; if it's just a diff or link it will be pretty easy. In the meantime, this can all be handled easily using the template's |comment= parameter. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone clarify what exactly constitues a review? Do you have you approve on? Just comment that there is a length or source error? Grsz 11 18:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gatoclass was working on a "how to review" page (IIRC), but I would think you wouldn't have to approve one per se, just determine whether or not it meets the eligibility requirements and point out any problems found. I think if someone dug into the nomination and found problems with it, that would count as a review. (Slightly off-topic, but in the "how to review" page I'd love to see a comment to the effect of "please be thoughtful. Don't drop a 'the hook is boring' comment in and leave. If you think the hook is boring, help suggest a better one. Take another look at the article to see what interesting facts there are about the subject that might make for a better hook." Most people will do this anyway, but there's always the occasional wiki-lawyer who will insist that the rules didn't specify that they actually had to contribute a useful or thoughtful "review".) 28bytes (talk) 18:25, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification needed in notice... if I self-nom one hook with five articles, must I review one other hook or five? If it's a dual nom, must we both review an article? What if one nominator has more than 5 self-noms and the other doesn't? You know I am in favour of this proposal, but see the potential for tedious wikilawyering. EdChem (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can there be more than one nominator? I know you can nominate an article that you and others have worked on, but I thought there was just one nominator field in the template. 28bytes (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say a dual or multiple nom/credit only have to collectively review one nomination; one nomination in, one nomination out. I think even a self nom with 5 articles should only have to review one nomination. Sometimes a review with 3 articles which are easily checked or cited is faster than one whose hook contains multiple citations, or throughout many pages of a book. So let it be said, "one nomination in, one nomination out". - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@28bytes and EdChem: There is only one nominator for a given nom, since only one person hits the "save page" button when nominating. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're referring to a nom with multiple editors (i.e., multiple people worked on creating/expanding the article and one of them nominated) then it seems to me that the person who nominates the article should be the one to review (he's the one who's participating in DYK). But if you guys haven't decided how to handle these questions yet, well, that's exactly the sort of reason not to be so hasty to implement the proposal before it's figured out. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that the nominator of the hook (ie the person who posts the hook to T:TDYK) is the one who does the review. However, I think the nominator should review one article per article submitted, because sometimes people submit long multis and they can require a lot more work to review. Gatoclass (talk) 03:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a problem with requiring one review per article as opposed to one per nomination. DYK nomination templates can get very unwieldy, and they're harder to track.--res Laozi speak 03:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how a multinom will get any more "unwieldy" just by adding a string with "review=[[]] review2=[[]]" etc. As for "tracking", I don't see the problem. You just click on the link to confirm the hook has been reviewed, what's so hard about that? Gatoclass (talk) 03:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be easier on both the nominators and reviewers if multi-article hook submitters found someone's else's multi to review. We should probably strongly encourage that, if not require it. Nobody wants to click on eight different links to confirm an 8-article hook submitter has reviewed eight separate (single-article) hooks. 28bytes (talk) 03:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are very few big multis so I hardly see this becoming a major problem. Gatoclass (talk) 04:14, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@Hongkongresident: DYK policy shouldn't be dictated by what is or isn't hard to code into a template. Do what's right for the project, and the template will follow along (or if the template can't handle it, then it can be done outside the template). The rest of Wikipedia would have a field day if they found us making unreasonable policies simply because our template coders don't want to do extra work.

@28bytes: proposing that multi-hook article submitters should have to review other multi-hooks is unworkable. What if you have a good 8-article hook to submit and there are no other multi-hooks on TTDYK (after all, they are the exception to the norm)? You're just screwed. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, sure, if there aren't any to review then it would be pointless to require them to review one. I'm just trying to think of things that would lessen the burden on the nominators and reviewers, and if there are multiple-article nominations that can be reviewed, it seems sensible to encourage other multiple-article nominators to review them. I'll concede that a requirement to do that could be counter-productive, though. 28bytes (talk) 04:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At any rate, I'll drop the suggestion if it's contentious. I'd be happy with adding "nominations that feature multiple articles require an equal number of articles (not hooks) to be reviewed" or something to that effect to the notice. That should resolve any ambiguity, assuming we go that route rather than the "one nomination in, one nomination out" approach. I agree with Gatoclass, this is a small minority of cases, so there's not much point getting too elaborate if a simple sentence or two will suffice. 28bytes (talk) 05:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that article for article seems fairest. EdChem (talk) 13:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Rjanag, I'm not too familiar with template coding, as has been made obvious, but if it can be done, I have no objections.--res Laozi speak 05:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Previous discussion also supported article-for-article reviews, rather than hook-for-hook. cmadler (talk) 14:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've updated the proposed notice box below. 28bytes (talk) 15:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The previous discussion did not support article-for-article reviews. The initial proposal was hook for hook. A user suggested article-for-article, a few editors agreed, but there was never a detailed discussion or consensus on it. I'm not opposed to the idea, but there are a few minor issues that need to be addressed. For example: If a person reviews an 8 multi-article single hook nom, does that count as having reviewed one article or one hook? If you've reviewed one 8 article single hook nom, are you allowed to self nominate 8 separate hooks of your own?--res Laozi speak 16:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, now that you mention it, that is a possible complication. Maybe we should just stick to hook for hook after all? I'm not totally set on the article-for-article idea, and hook-for-hook certainly would be simpler .... Gatoclass (talk) 16:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I stand corrected, there was not consensus on doing it article-for-article, and the initial proposal did seem to be worded as hook-for-hook. cmadler (talk) 17:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we do a straw poll on "article-for-article" vs. "hook-for-hook"? Either approach is fine by me but I agree we should probably establish consensus for one or the other before proceeding. 28bytes (talk) 17:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. They both have legitimate pros and cons. cmadler (talk) 19:15, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another issue

And here's another issue that needs to be addressed: When do reviews "expire"? Can you pull out a review you made a year ago for a DYK nominated this month? There needs to be a time limit. But then, how long? A day? A week? A month? Half a year? And can you used reviews made before the proposed December 1st implementation date?--res Laozi speak 16:08, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The idea is that you do your reviews after you nominate your article. So, you can't use reviews that are older than your nomination to meet the requirement. Now that you mention it though, this will probably have to be explicitly stated in the review guide to avoid confusion. Gatoclass (talk) 16:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, understood now. Thank you for clarifying. But this does bring up another issue. If users are required to review after they've nominated, wouldn't that discourage editors from reviewing multi-article nominations? As multi-article nominations require more work, for essentially the same amount of credit.--res Laozi speak 16:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really any different from the situation already. No one has special incentives to review multi-hooks, but somehow it gets done. Large multi-hooks are rare enough anyway that I doubt it much matters who reviews them. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One more potential problem: There needs to be a criteria for hook reviews. Saying something subjective or brief like: "I don't like the picture" or "The subject is boring", which is a statement that can be made without looking at the article, shouldn't (or should?) count as a review credit. If we're going by review credits, then there needs to be a guideline on what's acceptable and what's not. Otherwise, DYK could be flooded with reviews that are meaningless, pointless, or entirely irrelevant.--res Laozi speak 16:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "review" requirement will have to have a few specifics. cmadler is working on a review guide now. Gatoclass (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I had thought reviews could be done before the nomination. I thought I saw somewhere that someone had suggested within a week prior, which I think is a reasonable limit. If that were the case, then nominations made on 12/1 could use reviews done on 11/24 or later. cmadler (talk) 17:25, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it will create problems if users are allowed to use earlier reviews. For one thing, they are more likely to have already been promoted, which means more problems verifying them. For another, I think it will be more natural for someone to want to submit his article first and then decide which hooks to review. If you reverse the sequence, it may encourage more hasty reviews. And then, if you allow older reviews, it will be more difficult to tell whether or not the user has nominated this review previously. The nominator may also lose track himself. Gatoclass (talk) 04:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Implementing quid pro quo (another break)

User:28bytes/DYKEditNoticeDec1a I added the clarification for multiple-article hooks. Since the article-for-article method was not unanimous, any strong objections to doing it this way? I also added a link to the "How to review a nomination" section; we can update this link when and if there's a full-page reviewing guide. Thoughts? Any further issues that need clarification/discussion before adding this? 28bytes (talk) 15:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me, except for the line about users who have "nominated" more than five DYKs. IMO, it should be users who have received more than five DYK credits - otherwise we might be inviting incompetents to do reviews. Also, I would think it would be much easier to check on the number of credits than the number of nominations. Gatoclass (talk) 15:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

~~Er, I'm assuming there was consensus for this (there sure doesn't look like it at quick skim above, though, I may have missed some, I quit reading this page for awhile in all the brouhaha...). But~~ I'm not sure requiring "you have to put on your hook which one you reviewed". That seems like it will (a) clutter up the noms, and (b) seems vaguely peacockish - "look what I did!". It seems to me that assuming good faith might be a better idea - although I do see the problem that if reviewed hooks are promoted then it would be hard to verify...a realisation that just took the wind out of my sails of my initial "strongly against this" motion when I started typing this comment. Ah well, carry on then! - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not peacockish (actually, I find the idea that reviewing DYK noms could ever been seen as peacockish -- that would have to be a heck of a review!), it's simply enabling verification that this (new) requirement is met. It's being built into the DYKnom templates, so it shouldn't clutter things up too much. cmadler (talk) 17:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Putting it in the template should make it quite nominal. I withdraw any objections (and I think "hook for hook" is the way to go). :) - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 18:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar in Prep Area 3

One of the hooks in Prep Area 3 currently says:

... that in spite the construction of modern office and apartment buildings and the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Colonia Roma still contains 1,100 of the mansions built there in early 20th century?

That should say either "despite the construction" or "in spite of the construction". --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, thanks. But note that anyone can edit the prep pages, so next time you can fix it yourself if you like :) Gatoclass (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another Queue Three grammar issue?

"...then played three years in Major League Baseball..." in the Hub Hart hook seems to me it would read better as, "..then played for three years in Major League Baseball...". - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 16:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Missing alt text for picture in Queue 4

The picture for the lead hook in Queue 4 has no alt text. I try to review these at the Prep stage but I missed this one. I suggest 'alt=Mainly black butterfly with a row of blue-green dots on the edge of the hind wings and white dots on the fore wings'. Mikenorton (talk) 19:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These ought to be caught before prep. They shouldn't be approved or promoted without alt-text. The template leaves people nasty messages if they don't use alt-text, which sometimes helps (although some people put in bad alt-text just to avoid the nasty message); the real problem (which is what happened in this case) is when people nominate without an image and then add one later, without alt-text. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alt text added. --Allen3 ^talk 19:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Allen3. Rjanag, I agree that too many nominators just repeat the rollover text as the alt, which is hardly helpful. Mikenorton (talk) 23:56, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hook-for-hook or article-for-article?

Regarding the above discussion for implementing the quid pro quo proposal, at least two options have been discussed for handling nominations that feature more than one article.

Article-for-article: For example, if a nomination includes four articles, the nominator must review four single-article nominations, or two two-article nominations, or any equivalent combination.
Hook-for-hook: For example, if a nomination includes four articles, the nominator must review any other nomination, whether it is a single-article nomination, a ten-article nomination, or anything in between.

There are pros and cons to each approach outlined in the discussion above, but we need to gather input and settle on one or the other. I'll start.

Article-for-article, although I have no strong objections to the hook-for-hook approach. 28bytes (talk) 20:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hybrid - I base this on the idea that we should encourage multi-hooks, and that a multi-hook takes more work to review than a single-hook. So I propose that an editor nominating a multi-hook only needs to review one hook, but that an editor reviewing a multi-hook gets credit per-article. That will help to 1) create an incentive for editors to nominate related articles in multi-hooks and 2) avoid a disincentive for editors to review multi-hooks. cmadler (talk) 20:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hook-for-Hook I've reviewed a single article hook that took me ten minutes. Time spent is not equivalent to number of articles in hooks. Plus I think AforA is more complicated. Finally, multi-article hooks tend to draw in a reviewer... at least a decent amount of time. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hook-for-hook, simpler. The basic unit of DYK is the nom, not the article; setting up a bunch of formulae for dealing with multi-hooks seems to introduce a lot of extra complication, when hook-for-hook reviewing already would address the main complaint (people nominating and not helping review—it shouldn't matter if the amount of articles they nominate and review is not exactly the same, as long as they are making contributions in both areas). rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hook-for-hook. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 23:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hook-for-hook - For simplicity's sake, although if you've just reviewed say a 15x hook common sense should probably allow you to nominate more than one. Mikenorton (talk) 00:01, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After momentarily wavering last night, I think I still prefer article-for-article, as on reflection I don't think hkr's scenario above presents any real problem. You can still link individual articles in a multi from the section header, which is simple enough. Gatoclass (talk) 04:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Article for article Royalbroil 05:00, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Article for article possibly up to a maximum of say 4. What was the record we had? 15, or more. Johnbod (talk) 05:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. I could be convinced of either position. However, I believe that we may need a working definition of what a "review" is. Some hooks (for example, much of Alansohn's output) are dead-easy to review and approve. If I were trying to game the quid-pro-quo system, I would choose those for easy credit. On the other hand, for some nominations (even single-article hooks) it takes a substantial review effort to get to the point of saying "The hook needs a source." IMO, the quid-pro-quo arrangement should "count" a review effort such as that, and should not require the reviewer to stick with the article and hook through an ensuing series of article revisions and alternate hooks. By that definition, one single-article hook could require many "reviews." However, if "review" is defined to require that the reviewer stay with the process until its conclusion, that will only increase the number of people who volunteer for "easy" reviews, without making much impact on the more difficult reviews. Is my definition of "review" consistent with what the rest of you are thinking? --Orlady (talk) 05:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we can start parsing reviews for difficulty level. But yes, I do think we will need to set a few ground rules on what exactly constitutes a review. Gatoclass (talk) 10:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Article for article makes the most sense. Question I don't recall a case where one editor reviewed less than all the articles in a hook. Is there a good precedent for how to make this clear? Would a new type of tick icon be useful for this? Haus^Talk 06:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think people have always understood that if you review a multi, you are reviewing all the articles for compliance - otherwise you would obviously not be able to approve it. So I really don't anticipate much need to state this explicitly. Gatoclass (talk) 10:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Prep 4/3

In prep 4 I read "... that the city of Guanajuato, Mexico is filled with narrow alleys", so Mexico is filled with narrow alleys? Missing a comma. I also confess that I would prefer the Verdi Requiem, now in prep 3, to go with that picture rather than with a battleship, although that of course is also a way to remember the dead. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:08, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Added the comma. Materialscientist (talk) 10:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 1,519: / Line 1,519: @@
 *'''Article for article''' makes the most sense.  '''Question''' I don't recall a case where one editor reviewed less than all the articles in a hook.  Is there a good precedent for how to make this clear?  Would a new type of tick icon be useful for this? <span style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;"><span style="color:Blue;" >[[User:Haus|Haus]]</span><sup><small>[[User_talk:Haus|<span style="color:Green;">Talk</span>]]</small></sup></span> 06:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
+: I think people have always understood that if you review a multi, you are reviewing all the articles for compliance - otherwise you would obviously not be able to approve it. So I really don't anticipate much need to state this explicitly. [[User:Gatoclass|Gatoclass]] ([[User talk:Gatoclass|talk]]) 10:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 == Prep 4/3 ==