Template:Did you know nominations/Widener Library

Widener Library

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• ... that the stacks of Harvard's three-million-volume Widener Library are so labyrinthine that one student "could not enter without feeling that she ought to carry a compass, a sandwich, and a whistle"?

• Reviewed: Australia Renewable Engery Authority

5x expanded by EEng (talk), Hertz1888 (talk). Nominated by EEng (talk) at 03:16, 5 May 2014 (UTC).

• Note I've linked stacks to wiktionary -- this is a sense of the word many readers won't be familiar with, and it just needs a very quick gloss, but there doesn't seem to be an appropriate WP article. I hope no one gets on their high horse about this. EEng (talk) 10:10, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I've created a WP stub, and changed the link to point to that. EEng (talk) 16:31, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• Unfortunately this article does not currently qualify for DYK because it is insufficiently expanded. On April 21st it was 2326 B and today it is 7985 B, an approximately 3.5x expansion. It also has a number of citation needed and clarification needed tags but that looks like the work of an unhelpful contributor. Who would have thought an article about a library would be controversial? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:24, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree on the 2326 but where do you get 7985? I get just over 12500 -- footnotes count, do they not? The {{cn}}s are mine -- I figured I might as well keep developing until someone got around to reviewing. I can get rid of them in a day or two. But again, how do you get 7985? EEng (talk) 07:06, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

It comes from the "Page size" tool on the left side of my screen (I forget where I acquired it) and it does not seem to include the footnotes. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Pardon me, but pushing a button on some stupid tool is not a substitute for understanding and applying the rules. Notes are clearly readable prose. EEng (talk) 04:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

EEng, Please open this into an edit window look at the toolbox in the upper right. Do you see DYK Check? That's the standard here on DYK, although others might be using something else. If you add the DYK Check to your skin's .js that puts the DYK Check in your Tools left-hand sidebar. This is how DYK verifies size, expansion, etc. If I pull up the pre-expansion April 21 version of the article, DYK Check tells me it was 2326 characters (0 words) "readable prose size" on that date. The current version of the article is 7961 characters (0 words) "readable prose size" according to that tool. Infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables do no count in size. Footnotes are considered referencing. Eligibility criteria — Maile (talk) 22:22, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't need help figuring out how to use the tool. The question is whether the tool does the right thing. Sorry, but please show me where anything says footnotes are "referencing" -- we're not talking about footnote citations (e.g. "John Author, A Book on a Subject (2004). p.243.") but substantive, readable prose notes that could, if we wanted, be run into the main article, except that it would be an impossible disorganized pile of text that way. Not many articles have such notes, so it's not surprising the tool has trouble understanding this, but we are not slaves to someone's programming shortcuts. EEng (talk) 23:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)