Wikipedia talk:Did you know

Did you know?
Introduction and rules
Introduction	WP:DYK
General discussion	WT:DYK
Guidelines	WP:DYKCRIT
Reviewer instructions	WP:DYKRI
Nominations
Nominate an article	WP:DYKCNN
Awaiting approval	WP:DYKN
Approved	WP:DYKNA
April 1 hooks	WP:DYKAPRIL
Holding area	WP:SOHA
Preparation
Preps and queues	T:DYK/Q
Prepper instructions	WP:DYKPBI
Admin instructions	WP:DYKAI
Main Page errors	WP:ERRORS
History
Statistics	WP:DYKSTATS
Archived sets	WP:DYKA
Just for fun
Monthly wraps	WP:DYKW
Awards	WP:DYKAWARDS
Userboxes	WP:DYKUBX
Hall of Fame	WP:DYK/HoF
List of users ...
... by nominations	WP:DYKNC
... by promotions	WP:DYKPC
Administrative
Scripts and bots	WP:DYKSB
On the Main Page	T:DYK
Main Page errors	WP:ERRORS
To ping the DYK admins	{{DYK admins}}

This is where the Did you know section on the main page, its policies and the featured items can be discussed. However, proposals for changing how Did You Know works are currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals.

2011 DYK reform proposals

Numerous threads moved to the Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals subpage:

• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Good articles redux
• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Proposal - minimum character requirement increase from 1500 to 2500
• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Some thoughts from a semi-regular
• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Proposal to replace DYK with new Good article DYKs and demote the current system to a sub page
• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Multiple RFCs confusing, simply remove DYK from the mainpage
• Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals#Brainstorming related to RFC

Separating out reform discussions

Just a note to say that the separating out of the reform discussions to Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals. is not yet finished. If no-one else does it, I hope to carry on doing it tonight. But it is possible the archive bot may sweep up some sections and dump them in the archives if this is left too long. The sections can be retrieved from there, but it would be better if the moving of various sections from here to there carried on. Also, note some people are starting to edit that other page, so people here need to watchlist that page as well. Carcharoth (talk) 08:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Turned out I had no time this week for anything on Wikipedia. What do people here want done with the threads at Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals? Currently, some of the threads that I had intended to move there have ended up in the archives (due to the archive bot). If you want those threads that I moved to the subpage to be archived in the archives, I'm happy to do that. I do think that some list of the reform-related threads should be made and a summary written to help keep track of all this. But what I want first is to get everything in one place, rather than the half-moved stuff (which is my fault really, for starting and not finishing, though that was because I underestimated how long it would take and how much there was). There is a partial list of the reform threads at the top of this page. Carcharoth (talk) 11:35, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

If no-one replies before this section is archived by the bot, I'll do my best to tidy up what I started, probably by just adding the subpage to the archive box above (along with the partial list at the top of this page) and making clear that it is incomplete, and that other reform discussions are present in the archives. Carcharoth (talk) 13:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

imported and translated - bottom line

OK, I read the discussion above, I want to cut to the chase here. If I import and translate (probably machine assisted) an article from another subdomain wikipedia, the article is eligible of DYK as a new article, right? Questions of sourcing and copyvio are no dfferent than for an English work, although they might be harder to identify; but the bottom line is a translation is fine. I intend to import some articles so there will be no attribution issue at all - the entire non-English edit history will be present as well as the import log entry.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 08:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Correct. cmadler (talk) 12:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Eligible for DYK is a low bar to set for your editing; the bigger concerns are 1) are you importing plagiarism or copyvio because you didn't check the sources, 2) are sources accurately represented, 3) are you concerned about importing text from a non-reliable source (that anyone can edit), 4) do you know if you're importing POV, 5) are you fluent in the language you're importing from, 6) if you're not, how do you know if the sources used in the other Wiki are reliable, and 7) are you concerned about all of the potential WP:V (policy) violations of writing articles when you haven't read the sources? That DYK may allow this shouldn't really be an experienced editor's question; is it in line with our core pillar of WP:V, not to mention COPYVIO, is more relevant. Anyone reviewing a DYK hook or article from a foreign language can ask for a translation of the original source per WP:NONENG, and they well should, to check for copyvio and correct representation of sources. By the way, I speak fluent Spanish and I have *never* even encountered a machine translation of anything that was even remotely accurate, so even if there is no other WP:V or COPYVIO breach, how do you know the translation is good? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

PS, I've just discovered the "index" function on the talk page archives here (hurray !!!!). Do an index search on "translat" and you may agree with me that the lax attitude displayed on the current talk page here has not always been the case. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding machine assisted, I have often found that Google will render German or French in an intelligible manner that can be used as a base point. I would never go the other way as I would be sure to create unintelligible output; but I am knowledgeable enough in German and French grammar to be able to untwist what the machine spits out and get the same meaning in English. Obviously, the result needs complete rewriting; but it's often a lot quicker than translating direct from the source without a guide would be. For example (though irrelevant to DYK), I imported a portion of Grand Lodge of British Freemasons in Germany and all of United Grand Lodges of Germany from de.wp and used Google to assist me in my translation. I wouldn't try the same with es.wp as I don't know more than two dozen words of Spanish and don't know enough about the grammar to be able to untangle what I get. The sources there are poor to start with. Checking for copyvios is relatively easy, since the German text that was translated is in the en.wp edit history as I imported the whole history. I find the machine translation is a guide in the same way that an alternative translation can be; but I would always check back against the source.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 13:37, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Sandy is correct. Past discussions have raised issues with blindly using machine translations of articles from foreign wikis. See Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 37#Translations as "new" content from 2008 and Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 16#Translations from 2007. Cbl62 (talk) 02:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

(Just in case you wish to know my experience :). Google translations always require copyediting, but save time. Language is easy to fix, most problems came from errors in facts and references. I have regularly had those problems with FAs/GAs from German and Russian wikis, which are among the strongest for factual/referencing standards. Other wikis often don't even source the texts, even at FA level. German wiki is often Ok, but their prose standards are somewhat different from en.wiki. Materialscientist (talk) 03:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Dick Gordon (currently prep 4)

"got his nickname for first reporting golfer Bobby Jones's retirement in 1930": did he subsequently report in in other years? Suggest "got his nickname for being the first to report golfer Bobby Jones's retirement..." Kevin McE (talk) 12:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)  Done The prep areas are not protected; anyone can fix problems there. cmadler (talk) 12:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible for a nominator to withdraw a hook at this late stage, for rewite? (set to appear in about six hours)? The hook doesn't do justice to my intention, which was to honor the longevity of his career, the basis for his notability and my interest in rescuing the page from deletion. I don't want to edit in the live queue, but I'd be willing to do the work immediately. BusterD (talk) 15:13, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

ALT2: ...sportswriter Dick "Scoop" Gordon earned his nickname for reporting at The Daily Princetonian in 1930, then filed his last sports story for the Villager in 2008?

ALT3: ...sportswriter Dick "Scoop" Gordon filed his last sports column for the Villager in 2008, after earning his nickname reporting for The Daily Princetonian in 1930?

These are two hooks which meet the review process already undergone. I've truncated the anecdote instead of the career durability (from whence the notability derives). As is, the hook is merely trivial and not as interesting, IMHO. Hope this late interjection improves the DYK list of hooks with which it appears. In any case, thanks for the great work you folks do here to maintain the main page and promote pageviews on new article space. BusterD (talk) 15:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict, I see you did what I wanted to recommend, but please sign) It's now in Queue 6, to appear in 8 1/2 hours to my calculation. Only an admin can make changes to the queues. I would propose an alternative hook here and hope. (I had suggested to keep the nomination template open until after it appeared, for such things, but it's not (yet?) in place.) - If the hook won't be changed, don't worry too much, to my experience the hook doesn't have to summarize the article. If it's interesting people will click and read more. Congratulations to rescuing "him" from deletion. I had an article relisted for deletion the second time today ..., --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I've done as you suggested. I've explained my rationale above. FYI, the page was written as a memorial (perhaps by a relative), and I was working my way through AfD lists when I came across it. Searching through sources briefly, it was reading the fellow's writing which inspired me to pursue the rescue. I got lots of help, so the DYK credit goes to the pagecreator (who might actually join us as a wikipedian) and another sports-loving editor who liked the story too and sourced the heck out of it. BusterD (talk) 15:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I replaced it with ALT2. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:38, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! The elipsis doesn't look right, does it? BusterD (talk) 17:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

That then looks distinctly odd: the word usually suggests a much more immediate sequence of actions. and would fit better. Sports rather than sport is US English, and we are exhorted to avoid phrases that are odd to either variety on the main page: can we not just drop the word? Kevin McE (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed "then" to "and". I don't agree that "sports" needs changed or removed. The article subject is an American and standard practice on WP is generally to use the variety of language that corresponds to the subject when possible (e.g., using BrEng for British topics and AmEng for US topics). If we avoided all US- or Brit-specific terms on the main page entirely, we would also have to remove "football" from the Scotland national under-16 football team hook in the same queue (since we Americans don't call it that). rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It's better. Thanks to everyone involved. BusterD (talk) 21:58, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I would draw Rjanag's attention to the whacking great boilerplate at the top of WP:ERRORS, and to WP:ENGVAR. Nobody has said that such phrases can be avoided completely: in this case, the intended emphasis, that Gordon's journalistic career spanned 78 years, would not be compromised by this change. What do you believe is added to the hook by inclusion of the contentious word? Kevin McE (talk) 00:45, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The boilerplate at the top of WP:ERRORS specifically includes the disclaimer "Some spellings, grammar, or terms used on the Main Page may be different or absent in your variation of English." Furthermore, ENGVAR specifically says "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the English of that nation", like I explained above. Anyway, I don't think anyone but you will consider this word "contentious"; I'm waiting to see other comments in this discussion. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:28, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

That is extraordinarily selective reading. The boilerplate goes on to make a suggestion based on the observation which is the only bit you choose to quote:Wikipedia recommends the use of words that are common to all varieties of English. Similarly, ENGVAR also says Wikipedia tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English...Universally used terms are often preferable to less widely distributed terms...Terms that are uncommon in some varieties of English, or that have divergent meanings, may be glossed...Use a commonly understood word or phrase in preference You cannot cherry pick the sentences of a policy that suit you. And I note that, for at least the third time in recent days, you have tried to personalise a discussion about accurate and MoS compliant material on the Main Page. I really think that this is entirely unsuitable for an admin. Kevin McE (talk) 07:49, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "personalising a discussion". Just as was the case in the discussion of #Leal Garcia v. Texas, you raised a complaint about a word you disagree with, and so far no one else has expressed any concerns about it. I have nothing further to say here. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:23, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Seeing as how this has come and gone on the Main Page, it's now largely a moot point. However, since the words are nearly the same, and each is easily intelligible to all, I'd suggest that is more akin to a difference of spelling (e.g. theater v theatre) than to a difference in terminology (e.g. truck v lorry). There is no problem with using the term, and the spelling should follow ENGVAR rules. cmadler (talk) 16:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Queries timely or unnecessary?

I asked a series of questions about the current state of play at DYK in response to a query by Dr. Blofeld at my talk page. I suppose I didn't put them here because I wondered whether they were too wide-ranging, inappropriate, or numerous, to be useful or appropriate at the moment. Do they need to be asked, and should they be pruned or filtered? Tony (talk) 12:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing the link to the questions, as it was pointing to another Talk page. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 12:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd put them up here for wider discussion. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

OK. Tony (talk) 13:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I've spelled out these questions without prejudice so that the community might consider them. I haven't formed clear opinions on some of them, and I haven't formed strong opinions on most. Tony (talk) 13:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a number of these are valid questions that I too have had on my mind, but I haven't raised them yet since I've been waiting for Rjanag to finish his alternative checklist. I'm still not sure what the status of that is ATM.

In relation to the last, however, I'll respond to that now - we don't have the manpower for a directorate such as the one you are suggesting. That's why I suggested an enhanced process for admins loading updates into the queue as an alternative. It's the most we can hope for IMO, but even that has been queried by Yomangani as possibly too demanding. Gatoclass (talk) 13:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I've informally asked around about this and it appears that most administrators are too scared or bewildered to touch DYK. I think that putting together an official proposal for a directorate which clearly outlined the responsibilities of administrators moving hooks and gave a shared responsibility amongst them would help solve the manpower issue quite rapidly. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Should there be an expectation that a single person review every aspect of a nom?

And specifically, now that the expectations of DYK have risen—both in explicit scope and intensity—if the QPQ reviewing system is to continue should it be modified to recognise that an entire review to promotion or rejection by a single (QPQ) reviewer is impractical, given the goals of DYK? Is an explicit set of aspects the way to go for QPQ reviewing?

• The problem now is that the checklist is taking DYK reviewing into territory that is not the domain of DYK, and is too burdensome, while there is as yet no assurance that DYK *is* reviewing for things within its remit-- specifically, that the expansion is based on reliable sources. I have yet to understand how reviewers are determining that the expansion criterion is met if they are not checking (minimum at least) reliability of sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:59, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• I agree with Sandy. I think we need to take a step back and consider, item by item, exactly what should be included in a DYK review. Personally I favor something like Yomangani's suggestion, but I'm open to discussing it. The proper order to do things is first to figure out what is to be done, and then devise a checklist or automate it. Creating a checklist while there is ongoing disagreement over what is to be checked has just created chaos. cmadler (talk) 14:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Adding my comment in support of Sandy. We especially can't expect new users (and there can be users with under 200 edits who still have more than 5 DYKs) to be able to sufficiently check for the trickier aspects of copyright violations and source reliability. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

So who is going to do it? There are very few people who want to check for copyvios. If we don't insist on QPQ reviewers doing all aspects, we are going to end up with dozens of hooks that are only partially verified. Additionally, many DYK contributors do have plenty of experience and should know how to check for copyvio like anyone else. Those who don't know can learn, and DYK can help facilitate that. Gatoclass (talk) 14:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Who is going to do it? The idea that you *must* insist on QPQ reviewing is wrong on every level, as is the checklist, as you have no assurance any of it is being done *correctly* by unqualified, inexperienced reviewers (but we do know that this template checklist is placing an additional burden on DYK). The solution is what it has always been: reduce the volume at DYK, and allow for experienced editors to review for what matters (copyvio, reliable sources-- crappy prose is not a DYK issue, it can be solved by letting others edit, and it is not a policy violation). There is no rationale for this sense of entitlement, that every new or expanded article *must* be on the mainpage, and it has resulted in DYK being a breeding ground for faulty editing. Find a way to limit nominations, and then qualified reviewers will be able to handle the reviews needed, and give them the attention they deserve. A checklist only means unqualified QPQ reviewers are ticking boxes that they don't understand (and some very esteemed qualified reviewers are doing same as we speak, btw). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, why is it so strange to expect that some people will be interested in reviewing DYKs whilst not being interested in submitting them? I mean, look at Tony for a start. Maybe having clear roles for people means they'll find a niche they're good at and like, rather than thrusting people into a role they're not suited to. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

It's strange to expect it because it goes against the history of the project. I've been working at DYK longer than most, in all the time I've been here we have rarely had enough reviewers. I can't see that more reviewers are going to magically appear just because we have a snazzy new checklist for them to play with. Gatoclass (talk) 15:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

And speaking as someone who has reviewed a lot of DYKs over the years, the snazzy new checklist is likely to deter me from doing reviews -- particularly if the checklist takes as much vertical space on my screen as it does now. I have often done partial reviews of hooks. For example, I might determine that article length is insufficient and leave a quick note to that effect. In another case, I might visit the article, read the sources, add some citations to the article to support uncited content, edit text to eliminate content that is too close to the source, and suggest a couple of "ALT" hooks, but leave the DYK unapproved because a large part of the article doesn't cite any sources and I can't figure out where it's from. A template, particularly the more complex templates discussed here, actually would discourage me from doing those kinds of reviews, partly because they make it so hard to skim the list of nominations and partly because they create the appearance that I "own" the review and need to be on call for the next week to monitor the nomination. --Orlady (talk) 20:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

But there's that problem now, I mean look at the backlog! I don't think we've fixed it by making newbies review articles to a level they can't possibly be expected to achieve. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Gato, you say "It's strange to expect [partial reviewing] because it goes against the history of [DYK]". Well, some things need to adapt to new circumstances, and in terms of QPQ, that history isn't very long, is it? There are compelling reasons that QPQ should be retained as only part of the checklist: (1) induction/training of newish editors; and (2) the advantage of having some of the more straightforward aspects done. So why not require for QPQ:

(a) the top four items in the checklist for the original hook (surely nominators need to have a stab at that; they're hardly burdensome—I'm happy if they can suggest why a hook needs to be updated by an ALT, even if they don't say what the wording of the ALT might be); plus

Article length and article vintage.

That leaves space for specialist reviewers to go through filling the gaps. Tony (talk) 16:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm having no problem doing the full monty, as it were, but then again I've got a lot of reviewing experience. I do like the idea of bifurcating the checklist into essentials and non-essentials.

I'm sort of pleased and surprised to see that Sandy feels we went too far with this, and that we now have some clarification as to what she thinks is really necessary. However, part of the reviewing ambit has always been whether, as a whole, this was something we wanted or didn't want linked from the Main Page (I remember once rejecting an otherwise OK hook from an article on some road in Saskatchewan because it was so poorly formatted and written that I would have been embarrassed for us to have it get even one more click than it would have if it had never been linked from the Main Page). I still think reviewers need to keep that in mind. Daniel Case (talk) 19:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Re Tony: I don't think having straightforward aspects of reviewing (e.g., article length and age) checked by QPQ is a huge benefit. That aspect of reviewing is so quick and easy it was never a major burden on reviewers anyway (in a crunch, I or any experienced reviewer could check 50 or more noms for article length, history, and whether the hook was cited, in just a couple hours). The part of reviewing that takes a longer time is checking for text issues (by which I mean plagiarism/copyvio/close paraphrase) and other potential cleanup issues, as well as sometimes getting into lengthy discussions over the hook. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

"I don't think having straightforward aspects of reviewing (e.g., article length and age) checked by QPQ is a huge benefit." That is just about all that QPQ reviewers have ever done. How will you ever know that the other aspects have been checked out unless there's a checklist to expose this with blanks or comments or signatures? This is what the community has demanded: see the RfC. If you want to persist with this "one reviewer owns each review", you can't have QPQ, since it defies a central notion of DYK that every nominator be able to review for all aspects. Tony (talk) 07:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say QPQ reviewers were doing a good job of doing more than that; I just said I don't think QPQ reviewing of that stuff is alleviating a huge burden anyway. I also didn't say there shouldn't be a checklist (I didn't mention the checklist issue at all in my above comment). Also, I don't think anyone here said that "one reviewer owns each review". The question above is should a reviewer be expected to finish a review he starts, not should other reviewers not be allowed to comment on an article someone else has started reviewing. rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, it should be expected that a single person conduct a full review. For most articles (short articles with a short history) this is not difficult; even checking for plagiarism can usually be done within a few minutes by sampling a few sentences and a few sources (I never check every single sentence, I just either check until I'm confident that the nominator knows how to write without plagiarizing, or I check until I'm not—and then I tell them they need to get someone to rewrite it). In the past I have spoken in favor of people being able to do partial reviews on things they are interested/knowledgeable in (similar to at FAC, where some people specialize in image reviews, link reviews, etc.), but have found that in practice that doesn't work well here. Often, once someone reviews one part of an article, other reviewers are afraid to touch it (unless a juicy dispute arises, in which case everyone suddenly wants their hands on it). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with Rjanag; yes, it is perfectly possible for a single person to conduct a full review at DYK, which does not have the same remit as FAC, but it is not yet clear that the correct things are being reviewed for here. DYK should be putting articles expanded from reliable sources that correctly represent the sources without plagiarism or copyvio on the mainpage-- anything beyond that is getting into GA or other territory. Prose, for example, is not a DYK issue, although it should be possible to fix glaringly gross typos and grammatical errors on short(er) DYKs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think that a single person should always be expected to conduct a full review. Just as no one owns an article, no one owns a review. If I find in my initial review that the article does not meet minimum qualifications for DYK (for example, it's an insufficient expansion), it's not worth my time to see if the hook is adequately supported, etc., etc. If someone later fixes the issues with the article that disqualified it (this often happens), maybe I will stop by and review it again, but any reviewer should be able to pick up where I left off, and there should be no expectation that I will make myself available at instant notice to finish the review. (In particular, I don't want to feel like a DYK review obligates me. In the past, I felt that I could help out by doing some DYK reviews the day before I'm heading off on holiday, as there would be no obligation for me to be available to follow up. Lately, it seems like a DYK review creates a longer-term obligation.)
  From a practical standpoint, some of the DYK submitters (both newbie submitters and some DYK veterans who never previously did reviews) who have done reviews because of QPQ have been lousy reviewers, so it is important for someone else to check their work (or do it over). However, I think that it has been beneficial to have those people doing reviews because it may make them more clueful in the future. --Orlady (talk) 20:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Sure, you don't have to finish a review right away, I'm just saying that there's an expectation on QPQ reviewers (or indeed any other) that once you start a review you will finish it. This doesn't mean someone else may not come along in the meantime and finish it for you, but if you start a review you should obviously keep an eye on it to see what responses you get, because it often happens that once you begin, other reviewers will avoid it in the expectation that you have taken charge of it, and it's not fair to nominators to have them waiting an extended period for someone to realize that's not going to happen and finish the review for you. Gatoclass (talk) 23:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

What is the role of the pre-existing system of icons? Should another system be developed?

The question is somewhat premature IMO since we dont have Rjanag's alternative checklist yet. Gatoclass (talk) 14:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Is the watchlisting system working well?

• Too new to say, since editors are still getting accustomed to it. In principle, it's a good idea, but it's possible that we may need to tweak the implementation. cmadler (talk) 14:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• I don't really know what this question means. Just like any other page in the encyclopedia, people can choose to watchlist nominations or they can choose not to. I don't know what you mean by "is it working"—what's it supposed to be doing? rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I like the subpages and watching them for my own noms. I miss seeing the activities on the noms of others unless I make an effort and mark them. Of course I mark the ones I reviewed. But in general, the page is less interesting than before, its history doesn't show areas of interest anymore, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• It is possible to follow changes on a page that transcludes items by using 'related changes' (should be on your sidebar under the toolbox heading) and selecting a particular Wikipedia namespace. In this case, template talk namespace. This method works at WP:FAC if you click related changes and select "Wikipedia" namespace, and it works here as well. Use this link to follow changes over all the transcluded DYK nomination subpages present on the nomination page. Carcharoth (talk) 11:45, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you, learning. Thanks also for pointing me here! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:52, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

It does make it easier to check on the status of noms, and communicate with the reviewer when there are issues, when the nom subpage is transcluded onto the talk page. We lose an incidental benefit of making people go over to the main nominations page in that might see something in another hook that needs to be noted while they're looking, but I don't know how much that actually happens/ed. Daniel Case (talk) 19:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Being able to add a DYK nom to one's watchlist is a big improvement. I now do that with those that I'm interested in and find it to be very helpful. Cbl62 (talk) 21:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Are nominators advised in the instructions to watchlist their nom? Tony (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Do the instructions need to be revised in the light of 1–3?

Assuming that some of the recent proposals are adopted, I think the answer is an obvious yes. Gatoclass (talk) 14:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Which instructions? DYK has a lot of instructions. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• DYK has too much instruction creep and too many pages, and as far as I can tell, the point is being lost (expansion or new text based on reliable sources), so that we sometimes see only non-reliably sourced text padded so that the crit. is met. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Our existing guidelines could do with some rationalization, so the problem of "instruction creep" is not IMO insurmountable. Gatoclass (talk) 23:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think instruction creep is insurmountable, I just think we need a good amount of ruthless chopping and design prioritisation to fix it. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 01:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Should a review template be integrated into the nomination template at DYK?

(Section title shortened from "Should the template—or an equivalent template that does justice to the community-endorsed RfC result—be integrated into the automatic nomination template at DYK?")

• I'm not aware that there was a "community-endorsed RFC result"; my memory may be faulty, but it seems to me that the template was put into place only a few days after the launch of the RFC, and based on "voting" not "discussing", which isn't the way RFCs should be run or interpreted. Perhaps someone can verify time from launch of RFC to implementation, and I believe there were less than 40 respondants. I consider the template to be a very big step in the wrong direction, a wrinkle on top of the last step in the wrong direction (QPQ reviewing). I think the template should be scrapped, as it's already giving a false sense of security while creating too much of the wrong kind of work. Reviewers should be checking that expansion is based on reliable sources; checking the boxes without knowledge of RS or COPYVIO isn't helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify, DYK rules say the article and hook must be "based on" RS. There is no DYK requirement to eliminate from consideration (as part of expansion) information that WP policy permits as per WP:SPS and WP:ABOUTSELF, so long is these aren't the basis of the article or the source for the hook. Sharktopus ^talk 16:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure what you're clarifying, since SPS and ABOUTSELF are not unreliable when used correctly. I'm talking about the grossly marginal sources we regularly see at DYK, even in BLPs-- things like blogs, non-medical sources for medical text, tourist webpages, and the like. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:00, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• As per above, I agree with Sandy on this. The entire RfC process was malformed. First we must reach agreement on what reviewers should be checking, then can we consider any kind of checklist (template or otherwise). cmadler (talk) 14:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• If we are going to have a checklist, it should probably be integrated into the nom template. One possible argument against doing so is if we decided to have a choice of templates as they do at GAN for example. Gatoclass (talk) 15:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • There is no basis for this assertion: the community voted overwhelmingly in favour of the explicit checklist in the RfC text. With the sole exception of the last bullet ("Obvious faults in prose, structure, formatting"), every single item is in the DYK rules, which leave open no doubt. Sandy, you appear to be coming from the angle that DYK should be terminated—throw the baby out with the bathwater—but the community clearly !voted against this. I say, make DYK live up to its own rules: find a way, even if fewer hooks are exposed on the main page for longer as a result. The community has recognised that the checklist is the only way of ensuring that DYK rules are followed. Tony (talk) 16:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
    • As both Gatoclass and Sandy have repeatedly pointed out, the RfC was malformed for a variety of reasons. Further, as several editors have repeatedly pointed out, the RfC asked whether reviewers should explicitly confirm that they had checked a list of items. The specific form of the template was not part of the RfC, and we've wasted an absurd amount of time debating this because you refuse to "get the point". cmadler (talk) 17:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
      • What we have now is a checklist template by fiat. Malformed RFCs also got us into the current mess of ArbCom; I must commend editor Mike Christie for making sure that no RFC has ever been launched at FAC without a thorough discussion *before* so that we knew what the RFC was supposed to measure, the wording was clear, and clear outcomes were obtained. We do not have that here: we have a template by coup, that no one has appeared willing to revert. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A review template should eventually be integrated, but not until there is consensus about which one to use. There are several threads above discussing the checklist issues, and my reading of them is that, while most people agreed in the RfC that a checklist should be used, not everyone agrees on what the format of it should be. The fact that Tony has been adding his checklist to almost every nom in spite of that lack of consensus doesn't mean that it has been adopted. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree but I also think it's a good temporary measure to let people know what they should be checking for. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 00:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Has the role of the queuing admins changed?

Who should shoulder the responsibility of ensuring policy compliance and quality on main-page hooks? Should this be shared among the admins, the reviewers, and the nominators? Should anyone still be permitted to load noms onto the prep pages?

I think that not only should everyone be allowed to move noms to the prep pages but that everyone should be encouraged to do so. It spreads responsibility which can only be a good step towards ensuring that more mistakes are caught (even questions of taste and grammar can be solved quite easily). Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Quality control must be shared between reviewers and admins - admins certainly can't be expected to be responsible for every aspect of every DYK, there aren't nearly enough of them active on this project. Gatoclass (talk) 14:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• The role of the queuing admins has always been a janitorial one, not a filtering one. They happen to be able to edit the queue whereas other editors can't. The point of reviewing, and the prep areas (where usually an article is passed to the prep area by someone different than the reviewer) is to be the filter. Queuing admins never were expected to be fully responsible for what articles go to the main page; that responsibility belongs to every editor who participated in the process (writing, nomination, review, promoting). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• We may have a difference of opinion here. I think the queuing admin has some responsibility for quality control, although they can't be expected to check for everything. This may be due to the fact that when I started at DYK, the queuing admins often moved hooks to the main page within minutes after assembling the set, so there was more of a sense of responsibility in that role. I have always thought that the queuing admin was responsible for at least a superficial review of the hooks -- looking at each linked article for obvious issues, checking the eligibility of the image and making sure it will be protected when it goes to the main page, checking the hook wording for clarity and potential controversy, reviewing the hooks for balance within the hook set, checking the main page appearance, etc. I generally think it unnecessary to look at the review history for the hooks, but I have done that on occasion when I had concerns about a hook. Once I found that a hook in the prep area was basically an advertisement that had been reviewed and moved to the prep area by newbie users who probably were in cahoots with the article creator; IMO queuing admins need to watch for things like that. --Orlady (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Blatant advertising yes; but there have been some things in the prep areas with regards to controversial topics like fringe psychology which anyone not familiar with the field wouldn't be able to pick up on. That's an issue. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 00:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

They need to take on more reponsibility. Tony (talk) 07:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

How exactly? Their names are already plastered all over everything. I really don't understand. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 12:10, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Should there be a normal limit on the number of DYKs in a single hook?

(Original title was "Should there be a normal limit on the number of DYKs in a single hook? It seems that each DYK article in these noms needs to be examined separately."

• Not only should there not be a limit on the number of qualifying articles in a single hook, but where practical, we should encourage nominators to combine related articles into a single hook, since this reduces complaints about having too many related articles on the Main Page within a limited time. Yes, each qualifying article needs to be examined. cmadler (talk) 13:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Per cmadler, I would add however that while every article in a multi should be checked, I think only one should be checked for copyvio, and if checklist templates are used, one reviewer should be able to use one template for multiple articles, although more than one reviewer may help check the articles, ie one template per reviewer rather than one template per article. Gatoclass (talk) 14:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I don't understand Cmadler's point "since this reduces complaints about having too many related articles on the Main Page within a limited time". There are three strong reasons to resist multi-hooks, especially those with eight (or 11, perish the thought):

    (1) it adds significantly to the burden of reviewing, which people are already complaining about (especially Sandy); (2) it dilutes the likelihood that any one DYK article, prepared and reviewed with considerable effort, will be visited; (3) a huge tranche of bolded, linked text looks visually awful and overbalances the neighbouring DYK hooks. I'd hate to have my DYK article hooked in a set that includes an exploding supernova. Tony (talk) 16:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

    • For discussions on the most recent occurance of this sort of complaint, see Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 66#Dan_Savage, Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 67#Removed some of my self noms, and Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 67#DYK with hypothetical COI, the latter of which you (Tony) participated in. This was less than two months ago, speaking of lack of institutional memory! cmadler (talk) 17:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
      • @Tony: Like Cbl62 says below, what "reduces complaints about having too many related articles on the MP within a limited time" means this: suppose I just wrote 30 boring cookie-cutter articles about roads. At 6 updates per day, I could have at least one road article on the MP for five days nonstop (and soon people would come a-running saying, "Why does DYK have such a thing for boring road articles?"). Or I could make, say, 2 hooks with 15 articles apiece, or 3 hooks with 10 apiece, and get them out of the way much more quickly, without giving the idea that DYK has a "thing" for road articles. (Or, if the articles are terribly boring I could just not submit them, but a lot of people seem to feel this is not an option—I think some people think any article that meets the objective criteria is "entitled" to a DYK. At the moment I have no comment on that issue, it has been discussed elsewhere.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
        • "if the articles are terribly boring I could just not submit them, but a lot of people seem to feel this is not an option—I think some people think any article that meets the objective criteria is "entitled" to a DYK." This is at the root of the malaise in the DYK culture. People need to stop thinking of their main-page serotonin surge as a right. Tony (talk) 07:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
          • If there is one complaint I do have with DYK since I backed off active reviewing, it's that we have way too many dull hooks. I like to find something interesting or unusual that can be reliably sourced in every new article I create or expand, but that's not a given. For example, I couldn't find anything in W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite that would have been interesting enough, so I just did the minimal expansion I could. Daniel Case (talk) 16:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

• The issue of limiting multi-article hooks has been proposed elsewhere.[1][2] The consensus has repeatedly been that they should be allowed. On the other hand, practically speaking, reviewers are probably more reluctant to review a multi-article hook, so nominating one almost guarantees your "new content" will have to wait in line longer to get reviewed. Sharktopus ^talk 16:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• As cmadler mentioned, multis serve a useful purpose in minimizing overload on a particular topic. I recall one where there was an outcry about 15 or 20 cookie-cutter articles being submitted on a closely related topic. The issue was resolved by combining into 2-3 multis. Cbl62 (talk) 21:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• It's often not much more effort to review multi-hooks as they tend to use the same sources and duplicate text. I don't believe there should be a limit. That said, I also think nominators should ask themselves why they are putting forward huge multi-hooks. Most of the time I think it is for the benefit of something other than the encyclopedia, the readers, or the articles themselves.Yomangani^talk 22:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A great many of my submissions have been multis and the reason is twofold; firstly, that in researching one topic I often find a bunch of related topics to write about, and secondly, putting them in a multi saves space. I'm quite sure that many of my submissions would get a lot more hits if I submitted them on an individual basis, if only because I could usually come up with better hooks for individual articles, but I submit multis as a space-saving measure. Gatoclass (talk) 01:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a space-saving measure if you think it necessary to submit every article to DYK. I don't blaming you for doing that - it's in the tradition of DYK - but when articles are closely associated and interlinked I don't really see it serving any purpose to put more than two or three up. Anyway, that's a minority view, it's never going to be a rule, and it wouldn't be enforceable if it was, so I'll shut up. Yomangani^talk 01:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Should DYK encourage more work on articles, after main-page exposure?

(Original section title: "Does DYK have a role to play in encouraging further work on articles, after main-page exposure? Should there be more official support for a trajectory from DYK to GA to FA/FL?"

• Not directly. To the extent that suggestions are made during the DYK review, that may form the basis for next steps. But once an article passes through DYK, we are generally done with it. I'm not aware of GA having a post-review role with articles either (beyond periodic GA review) to push them toward FA. I can see a potential value to some sort of organized article trajectory project to help editors with WP:Article development, and DYK would have a role in that, just as GA and FA would, but that goes beyond DYK itself and should be organized separately. cmadler (talk) 14:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Can't see any point to this. If someone is not working to improve one article, he's working to improve another, there is nothing special about DYK articles that they should get priority. Gatoclass (talk) 14:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• The role is to expose the article to wider views, and get it on some watchlists. That's it. Johnbod (talk) 15:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Plus, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, some things can't get to GA or FA. That's ok! They can be good DYKs instead. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• A fine idea for somebody's separate project, as cmadler says. There is a contradiction between claims that DYK is not doing enough to watch out for xxx and claims that DYK should be expanding to promote yyy. Sharktopus ^talk 15:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• No, this is not the purpose of DYK. Do ITN, OTD, or TFA do this? They don't. Continuing work on articles is nice, but DYK's job is not to do every single nice thing that is possible in the entire project. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with Rjanag. Cbl62 (talk) 21:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• It's not the purpose of DYK but it's a cool idea. Maybe not getting it to GA standard but maybe informing the relevant project that it's gone on the front page? Or is that too complex? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 22:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Not all articles have a relevant project. For something like tracking articles for a given project that have been on DYK, the best way to do this would be to add something to the WikiProject banners that go on talk pages (I assume there's a "meta" template for those; someone would have to first edit that to add some sort of |dyk= parameter, and then we would have to edit our bot to fill that in when giving credits). rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Should there be a directorate?

What would be the disadvantages and advantages of having one? If the community decided the latter outweigh the former, presumably it should be elected; how big? What roles? For example, should the directors number four (my guess) and be admins (almost certainly). Should their role be:

(a) to keep all aspects of DYK running well, including nominations, reviewing, archiving, promotion/rejection, transfer to prep rooms, queuing, exposure, and archiving?

(b) to liaise as necessary with other editors who run the main page and its forums to ensure that the needs of the main page remain the primary driving force?

(c) to encourage article improvement after DYK main-page exposure?

(d) to advise if ever necessary on programs in which DYK might participate that benefit the project, whether prompted by WP editors, the WMF, or Foundation chapters?

[I relocated this point from above so I can respond to it. Hope you don't mind. Tony (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)] In relation to the last, however, I'll respond to that now - we don't have the manpower for a directorate such as the one you are suggesting. That's why I suggested an enhanced process for admins loading updates into the queue as an alternative. It's the most we can hope for IMO, but even that has been queried by Yomangani as possibly too demanding. Gatoclass (talk) 13:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Gato, I had in mind status and responsibility more than a significantly increased workload for directors. A directorate might bring the potential of DYK together into a cohesive whole more easily. Tony (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I've informally asked around about this and it appears that most administrators are too scared or bewildered to touch DYK. I think that putting together an official proposal for a directorate which clearly outlined the responsibilities of administrators moving hooks and gave a shared responsibility amongst them would help solve the manpower issue quite rapidly. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I'm wary of the "directorate" idea, though frankly I don't think it's sufficiently defined to form a solid view. Tony posits that the role should be one of "status and responsibility more than a significantly increased workload." What does that mean? The (b)-(d) points above don't seem particularly compelling. Point (a) goes to the core of what DYK admins do, and I'm not sure what the role of a proposed directorate would be in performing/supervising those tasks. Over the past three years, many admins have been heavily involved in DYK at various times. The ones who have remained consistently active in doing the point (a) tasks over the long haul have been Gato, MatSci, and Rjanag. More recently, others like cmadler (if not an admin, should be) have been more active. People come and go as their time and interest levels permit. I do believe there is a leadership role that can be played, and is played, by the long-established DYK admins. For this reason, folks tend to give greater weight to the views expressed by Gato, MatSci and Rjanag -- which I find appropriate. But in the end, decisions are made by consensus with all voices being heard and counted -- which I also find appropriate. My skepticism about a "directorate" is that it seems to run counter to the democratic/consenus orientation of Wikipedia. If a "directorate" were to be proposed, there are many details that would need to be fleshed out before it could be considered. Are there other examples of "directorates" within Wikipedia? If so, can someone provide a link to the by-laws (or whatever they may be called) governing those directorates? What powers and responsibilities would a directorate have? Would they have the power to change DYK policies? Would they act only as a group and by consensus of the group (as in the case of a corporate board of directors) or would directors have power to act individually? How would they be chosen? How could they be removed? For how long would they serve? The latter points may be best addressed further down the road, but there needs to be a clearer picture of the core purpose/powers/responsibilities of the proposed directorate. Cbl62 (talk) 15:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I'm afraid I just don't see how a directorate would work at DYK. Directorates work fine where there is unlimited time to ponder and work to improve articles, as with FAC and GAN, but for a process where you are fielding dozens of articles a day, there simply isn't time for prolonged discussions. I think at best we can do what I proposed earlier, which is to have, in effect, a more detailed checklist for individual admins to sign off on as the hook goes to the queue. Gatoclass (talk) 15:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well I agree with that. I'm just not sure how else to solve the problem of fear, and I think it is a very real problem. We need more manpower! Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:07, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Problems with a directorate idea -- DYK covers a lot more articles and goes faster than GA. Isn't that too much of a workload for four volunteers? Who would be willing to do it, if the main role of a director is to take blame for failures? If Panyd, Gatoclass, cmadler, Rjanag, MaterialScientist, Khazar, etc. wanted to put on a hat that said "director", I would be fine with that. If we get people with plans to remake DYK "running" for election, with their friends popping by to vote for them, I would not be fine with something like that. Sharktopus ^talk 15:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I would support some of the admins above putting on the director hat. I was more thinking that we outlined a specification and people could then register interest for a trial period; maybe with 4-5 administrators sharing the role of 'director'. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd be happy with the current crop of admins who are doing the job. I just think the system is multilayered if it's going to work responsibly and be accountable (e.g., proper archiving, please), and the process needs to solidify around a directorate that will gain respect in WP. FAC and FLC have solid, very successful directorates: they've kept complex mechanisms running properly, they make their systems accountable, they respond to queries where they haven't been solved otherwise, and they represent the process in the project at large. Don't forget that these processes resemble DYK in many ways, including main-page exposure, adherence to rules, nominators/reviewers, promotions/rejections. Tony (talk) 16:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Looking at Tony's list above a, b, c, and d. Item a is about directors who use the mop, as admins do. That would be great. Item b is about directors who liaise with others about Main Page issues. People claiming to speak for the needs of the Main Page speak with many voices. We just went through months of complaint that DYK hooks were too boring for the Main Page, but we also get complaints that DYK hooks are too sensational. We got yelled at yesterday for a hook that did not include a metric conversion and we got yelled at today for a hook that did include a metric conversion. Let the instructions say our directors listen and respond, but not that our directors promise to please every spokesperson talking about the Main Page –that's undoable.
• Items c and d are proposals wrt starting new programs at DYK. Item c demands that directors plot a trajectory for post-DYK articles. Item d asks that directors advise on unspecified new programs that might be suggested for DYK. These seem unnecessary demands to put on directors. If new programs are suggested, including the recent one about post-DYK articles, directors will or won't express an opinion like anybody else. Would we fire a director who was doing a great job with the mop because xe didn't advise yes or no one every single DYK-modification somebody dropped by this talk page to propose? Let's keep it simple. Sharktopus ^talk 18:37, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Just seeing as people appear to be going here anyway, I wrote a draft of the directorate proposal here, based on Tony's suggestions. If people could please edit it with their thoughts that would be awesome. Deleting things is fine, as is adding them. Getting something built by consensus would be brilliant. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 19:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Strikes me as premature. Cbl62 (talk) 22:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Definitely for a) (there was already an informal directorate for this anyway) and maybe b), although as I've been arguing the time has come, the walrus said, to have some sort of overall Main Page directorate or, if you will, czar, and that would work only in that context. c) and d), as noted, are separate projects. Daniel Case (talk) 19:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• Could someone link to whatever rules, mission statement, guidelines, by-laws (whatever terminology is used) for the other "directorates" that have been referenced above at GA and FA? It would be helpful to see what has been done elsewhere to see what might or might not be appropriate in the DYK context. Cbl62 (talk) 21:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• I see no merit in this suggestion. The only purpose it would serve would be to add a layer of bureaucracy and perhaps make 4 (or another equally random number) admins feel like they had a higher status. a) and b) are done already - successfully or unsuccessfully, there is no reason to believe the competency standards would change as a result of having DYK overlords - and c) and d) recast the role of DYK. Let's be careful this discussion doesn't go the way of the checklist RFC. Yomangani^talk 22:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• Again I go back to my fear and bewilderment point. I mean, how many new admins have you seen here? Or casual administrators for the matter? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 22:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• But how does a directorate help with that problem? Cbl62 (talk) 23:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• I don't understand why you think appointing a Directorate would solve that problem. Responsibility for running DYK would inevitably coalesce around the Directorate. Yomangani^talk 23:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• I think clearly laying out the responsibilities involved for potential adminsitrators would help. I could be wrong but I honestly believe that. Does anyone have other ideas? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 23:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

• That sounds like an excellent idea. The question posed here is very different. Yomangani^talk 23:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Can we twist it into being that? That was sort of my aim. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 00:18, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes (I'm sure there is probably a dingbat for an arrow pointing down, but just imagine it)Yomangani^talk 00:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

To the first question (late into this, again): I think if as many people as possible would carry out the four functions described, DYK would be better off than with a few selected ones with a title. This includes the ones aspiring to the title, smile, just do it, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:43, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Although I originally pushed the idea of a directorate, or panel of capable and experienced admins, there is no evidence that such a panel exists among the regulars at DYK, so I no longer think my idea workable. An acountable panel would have to, at minimum, understand sourcing and the gravity of copyvio and sourcing breaches here, and I don't think we currently have membership to make up such a panel and assure mainpage integrity of DYK articles. I don't know what the solution is, but since DYK doesn't seem able to get its house in order, the prognosis seems dim. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

It's much easier to find Wikipedians who pretend to be copyright lawyers, than Wikipedians who really are. Art LaPella (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Being informed that all of us are unworthy is such an effective motivator! --Orlady (talk) 19:19, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• I don't like the idea of a directorate, largely because the need for administrator attention at DYK is so frequent. It's impractical to expect any small group of administrators to commit to the necessary level of activity. The informal arrangements of the past, wherein a large number of administrators each "work" various aspects of DYK regularly but on an intermittent basis, have generally functioned well and do not need to be replaced with a formal arrangement. --Orlady (talk) 19:19, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Should there be a statement of the responsibilities of the DYK admins?

Panyd thinks some statement of what is expected of the admins working here would help with recruitment. I tend to agree with her. Anybody else? Yomangani^talk 00:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Sandy was just complaining of instruction creep so that's a consideration. But it wouldn't hurt to give it a try I suppose. First of all though, we'd have to work out exactly what the admins' duties are, as that is a topic currently up for discussion. Gatoclass (talk) 01:01, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

• It would be easy enough to add a subsection to WP:DYK rules#The DYK process describing the various duties done by various sorts of editors here. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:31, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Leal Garcia v. Texas

Do we really need to construct sentences such as to present puerile double-entendres on the front page. I know its the school holidays, but... Kevin McE (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm obviously missing something there. What is the puerile double-entendre to which you refer? It seems very straightforward to me. cmadler (talk) 13:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

What? What on earth did I miss there? Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 13:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Kevin may be seeing a double entendre as the Leal Garcia v. Texas hook is in the "quirky" spot of Queue 5, and since we usually put the rather "naughty" hooks there... I don't see a double entendre though. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but what is the double entendre he's seeing? cmadler (talk) 13:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, if I twist the meaning of "relationship" really badly I can see imagine some things that we wouldn't want on the main page (orgies, multiple partners, swingers)... brain bleach. But you'd have to do a lot of stretching to get that kind of double entendre out of the hook. Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Crisco, for figuring out what it was. I am also concerned that in Queue Two one of the hooks includes the word "title." Whose puerile effort was this to make people think of a certain three-letter word? Sharktopus ^talk 14:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I am so confused. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 14:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Kevin, not only are we not mind-readers, but most of us don't do cryptic crosswords either. You need to make your comments far clearer and use links like everybody else. Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I've already told him this a few times in a few places. It's probably not going to happen. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

err: acts of congress? Sorry if this was not intended to be a double entendre, or if the phrase is not considered ambiguous in some circles; maybe people should be aware that it can look like euchemism, even if none was intended. However, I extend no apology to Rjanag, who has taken a rude approach to my observations and a very unconstructive approach to my attempts to improve what is proposed for the Main Page. His attitude seems most unbecoming for an administrator. Kevin McE (talk) 21:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Act of Congress. It's a common term in American English. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that's the legal phrase for them....Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 22:12, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Gotta love the variations in our supposedly shared English language. I doubt 1 out of a 1000 Americans would have seen the sexual connotation in "Acts of Congress." Cbl62 (talk) 23:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Nevertheless, as the connotation exists in other realms of Anglophonia, could it be rephrased? Kevin McE (talk) 00:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't believe that even English speakers outside of the US will see that connotation. I'd be happy for another administrator to prove me wrong though. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 00:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a Yank, and this connotation certainly didn't occur to me. "Act of Congress" is a familiar phrase even outside the US. But I think it's a poor hook regardless. Gatoclass (talk) 01:10, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

• blank stare* Never occurred to me... Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Jacquie de Creed

An article which was pulled from DYK at a late stage due to apparent paraphrasing issues. I intend to revisit the article and tweak it, then wish to resubmit it. I also wish to register my displeasure at the disingenuous way I feel this matter was handled. The editor who pulled the article failed to bring the matter to my attention, which I feel is only a polite and courteous thing to do in such circumstances. Although she subsequently posted a comment to the talk page, I believe protocol dictates that those involved in the issue should be informed. Certainly on previous DYKs where there have been issues, editors have posted to my talk page. Is this no longer the case? Are we now becoming like the corporation which announces redundancies to the media before they inform their employees? If so it's certainly a step in the wrong direction. If that is the direction we're going in, I will be taking this matter higher. TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

The editor who removed the article did leave a note on the article talk page (although she didn't specifically say she had removed it, she just said there were issues).

As for resubmitting, I think once an article has been on DYK (even for a short time) it's ineligible to reappear. But there may be loopholes for this situation; we'll see what others have to say.

As to "taking this matter higher", I'm not sure what you mean. Are you going to tattle to Jimbo on us? Sorry, but there is no "higher", in that there's no one who can tell DYK they have to repost your article. DYK is a WikiProject and as such it doesn't have to answer to Jimbo or ArbCom or wherever else you are thinking of "taking this"; it's just governed by community consensus, like most projects. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, my issue with taking things higher is not about whether or not it is reposted, I'm just very angry at the lack of consideration that was shown to me. Maybe it was an oversight on her part that she didn't inform me, who knows? I certainly felt quite insulted by it. I made my displeasure known to her and she has lead me to believe I can resubmit the article once the issues are dealt with, and says this has been done before (though gave no examples), so I would like to do that if possible. Had this matter been raised earlier while the article was still up on the talk page,it could have been saved and all this unnecessary bad feeling avoided, but now the time limit has elapsed and I've missed the boat, so to speak. Can you blame me for being annoyed by that, especially after the amount of work I put into the article? As for taking it higher, well Jimbo wasn't my next port of call, but I might have got there in the end. TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Again, Nikkimaria left a note at the article talk page. I don't think she meant to insult you (and I don't think any other editor would feel insulted at this); she probably just assumed you were watching the page.

As for complaining to Jimbo...let me just go out on a limb and tell you right now that Jimbo almost certainly doesn't care about this particular matter and it would be better not to waste his time with it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe life is too short. I've just had a stressful few days in the real world and so was bound to be tetchy. If I can resubmit it, then great. If not, then life moves on. Not sure whether I'll submit anything else here though (but not because of this incident, but because since the process changed I personally find the whole thing a bit of a head%^&* - the old system was far easier to navigate in my opinion). TheRetroGuy (talk) 22:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

What part of the process do you find difficult? There have been several changes implemented at once, some with prior discussion and some without. If you mean the process of nominating pages (creating a subpage and then adding it here) is difficult, that is the part of the process that I am working on and you can make suggestions to me. If you mean something else, it is probably outside of my control. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

On a separate note: the article never made it to the main page (it was in prep 4 when it was pulled) so it would still be eligible. As far as I can see, the nomination wasn't reinstated on the nominations page though. Yomangani^talk 23:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

A couple quick notes: I did post to article talk, but should have explicitly said that I had removed it from prep. My understanding is that since it was on prep and not on the main page it can be re-added to T:TDYK (as Yomangani mentions); RetroGuy, one example of this is Nels Running, removed from queue under similar circumstances and currently on the noms page. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, common practice when pulling a hook from a prep area or queue is to leave a note here (WT:DYK) and if the problem can be fixed, to return the item to T:TDYK. cmadler (talk) 03:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, here's a note: removed another article for similar concerns. This case is more egregious than the one discussed earlier in this section, so I will not re-add it to T:TDYK. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Another one. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:23, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. If it hasn't already been re-added I'll put it back on TT:DYK and fix the problems that were highlighted to me. Sorry about getting stressed out over this yesterday. It was a very difficult day for me. I had to give away my dog because he was too badly behaved and I couldn't cope with him any more. He's gone to a good home though, but I'm quite sad that I had to make that decision. Then this happened and it was all too much. But I've had a good night's sleep and I'm feeling a bit better now. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been following the concerns raised on these two articles, and I'd like to point to Talk:Patrick Lawlor as an example of how editors can disagree over close paraphrasing concerns. What I think is needed is for those who point out concerns to not only quote from source and article, but to say how they would write things to avoid close paraphrasing. I am about to post there saying that more discussion and suggestions are needed on actual wording for the article, rather than just pointing out similarities and identical wording. Just pointing people to a guideline doesn't really help that much. Carcharoth (talk) 12:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Review checklist templates

Much of the discussion above is about how most of us agreed an explicit review checklist should be used but we don't all agree on what its format should be. Right now most noms have Tony1's template, {{DYKrev}}, shown below:

Please add a comment and signature (or just a signature if endorsing) after each aspect you have reviewed:

Hook

• Length, format, content rules –
• Source –
• Interest –
• Image suitability, if applicable –
• ALT hooks, if proposed –

Article

• Length –
• Vintage –
• Sourcing (V, RS, BLP) –
• Neutrality –
• Plagiarism/close paraphrasing –
• copyvio (files) –
• Obvious faults in prose, structure, formatting –

Comments/discussion:

After some discussion (mostly with Gatoclass—see #Another template and User talk:Rjanag#Review template—although I've had input from a few others as well) I've made {{DYK hook checklist}} and {{DYK article checklist}}. (The rationale for breaking it into two checklists was to allow for separate reviews of individual hooks--in the case of many ALT hooks-- and/or separate reviews of individual articles--in the case of multi-noms).

As I have said many times before, the exact list of checks in this template is not set in stone, and I'm open to suggestions about checks that should be added, checks that should be removed, or checks that should be merged. Likewise, whether or not to link the various checks to corresponding rules/guidelines is also open to discussion; right now, the documentation pages for {{DYK hook checklist}} and {{DYK article checklist}} include explanations of what each field refers to, if any are unclear. The reason I'm posting this now is mainly for discussion about whether the format of this is desirable. Feel free to play with it in your sandboxes; below is an example of what it would look like (with a fake nomination; this nomination is fake and this review is fake, so please don't get worked up over the content of it).

{{*mp}}... that '''[[ice]]''' is made of '''[[water]]'''?
created by some user
<!--
credits
-->

{{DYK hook checklist
|format={{subst:DYKY}}
|citation={{subst:DYKY}}
|neutrality={{subst:DYKX}}
|interest={{subst:DYKY}}
}}
:*Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. ~~~~

{{DYK article checklist
|length={{subst:DYKY}}
|newness={{subst:DYKY}}
|adequatecitations={{subst:DYKY}}
|formattedcitations={{subst:DYKY}}
|reliablesources={{subst:DYKY}}
|neutrality={{subst:DYKY}}
|plagiarism={{subst:DYKY}}
|article=Water
}}
{{DYK article checklist
|length={{subst:DYKX}}
|newness={{subst:DYKY}}
|adequatecitations=
|formattedcitations=
|reliablesources=
|neutrality={{subst:DYKY}}
|plagiarism={{subst:DYKY}}
|article=Ice
}}
:*The article [[Ice]] is still a stub. ~~~~

• ... that ice is made of water?

created by some user

Hook review

Format	Citation	Neutrality	Interest
✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✘ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag

• Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Article review for Water

Length	Newness	Adequate citations	Formatted citations	Reliable sources	Neutrality	Plagiarism
✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag

Article review for Ice

Length	Newness	Adequate citations	Formatted citations	Reliable sources	Neutrality	Plagiarism
✘ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag				✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag

• The article Ice is still a stub. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason I used {{subst:DYKY}} and {{subst:DYKX}} rather than just signatures is that it allows us to differentiate between things that have been checked and marked ok, things that have been checked and marked bad, and things that have not been checked at all (just using signatures alone doesn't provide any easy way to tell the difference between bad things and unchecked things, although people should be able to tell by looking at comments below the table). If people don't like this setup, it's possible to go back to using just signatures (an earlier version of this template, visible at User:Rjanag#Samples, did just that). If people don't like the titles of those little DYKY and DYKX templates, that is also very easy to change, so please don't get hung up on those minor details.

The major difference between this setup and Tony's is that these templates do not encourage lengthy comments within the checklist itself (the idea is that the checklist is a quick visual aid to see the status of the hook, and things that warranted an ✘ have it explained in the discussion below the template); I've found that Tony's template is somewhat confusing in that, say, I leave a comment about a problem in one line, sometimes people respond to me directly beneath that (making the review checklist get stretched longer and longer) and sometimes people respond below the entire template. The other main difference is that I tried to compact the checklist and make it take up less space. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Template discussion

I think I'm seeing mojibake boxes instead of whatever character is supposed to be displayed. As a result, the only difference between the DYKY and DYKN is color, specifically red/green, which is the most common form of color-blindness. I suggest that either images should be used to ensure proper display regardless of what character sets editors have loaded, or more common characters (perhaps as simple as "Y" and "N") should be used. Other than that, I like the concept. cmadler (talk) 19:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I was worried about that; right now it's using the first character in Tick (check mark) and the second-to-last character in X mark; perhaps browser support for these is not as widespread as I thought. Do any of the alternative characters in those pages show up for you?

If those don't work, bold Y and N would also work. I think that would be better than images, which might increase page load time for T:TDYK (although that has been discussed many times and I don't think we ever narrowed down exactly what things had a big effect and what things didn't). rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

So in sum, I think the options are:

• Some other tick and X characters that show up for everyone (do ✓ and ✗ show up for you?);
• Y and N;
• Y and N

rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:01, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I like the Y and N. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 21:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Really, more templates (in the form of {{subst:DYKX}} and {{subst:DYKY}})? Does anyone else feel a bit overloaded with all the code? Why wouldn't it be possible to just write |length={no, x, n, yes, y, etc.} so that they will generate what is necessary. It's not really necessary to know who exactly reviewed each point if everyone is signing their name at the end anyway, right? I can hardly keep up with all the curly brackets, and I registered my account four years ago. Do you really think that editors new to DYK are going to stick around and try to learn it? Or is it more likely that they will take one look at it and run screaming? NW (Talk) 22:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I tried to design a version that just took |length={no, x, n, yes, y, etc.} and added both the check/X mark and the signature based on that. Unfortunately it wasn't possible (see User talk:Rjanag#Technical stuff). If people want both checks/Xs and signatures, this is pretty much the simplest ways to do it in this sort of table format. The other options are to just have signatures without checks and Xs (in which case people could just use tildes rather than {{subst:DYKX}} and stuff like that), or to have just checks and Xs without signatures (I agree with you 100% that signatures shouldn't be necessary, but I don't know if everyone else feels the same way). Both of those are also options I have tried (again, see User talk:Rjanag#Technical stuff) but until I know what people really want out of this checklist, and how they expect it to be used, I won't know what is the best design for it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the mojibake, I edit primarily on two different computers. All the characters display fine using this one; I'll check on the other (where I initially saw mojibake) tomorrow morning and let you know what I see. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 21:06, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Back on computer #1, and of the three pairs in Rjanag's comment at 20:01, 5 August 2011, the first pair show as mojibake, but the second and third are fine. cmadler (talk) 12:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I like it because I think it's less confusing when scrolling down the page. The current adopted system of underlined shoulder headings looks too similar to the main headings to me and I find it a right pain in the proverbial when I'm looking for the right place to click 'edit'. This one at least differentiates. TheRetroGuy (talk) 22:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Logic: I still think if I say Y (or whatever) to Plagiarism, there IS plagiarism. Or not? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

We can discuss these issues (e.g., what the names of the various criteria should be) after the more basic issues are settled. To be frank, this issue is trivial and easily solvable, and right now what I am looking for is input about the format of the template (particularly the issue NuclearWarfare mentioned above about signatures). rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The concept is good, and obviously I have given my opinion about signatures (include a separate box for reviewer(s) maybe?). "Adequate citations" and "reliable sources" should probably be merged in the interests of space, and perhaps even "Formatted citations" too. NW (Talk) 01:47, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of the {{subst:DYKX}} and {{subst:DYKY}} templates being too much... for what it's worth, the documentation samples (at {{DYK article checklist}} and {{DYK hook checklist}}) include <!-- {{subst:DYKY}} or {{subst:DYKX}} -->, so users wouldn't have to remember all that--they can just paste in the sample and use the text that's already there. Likewise, if there is consensus to use this template, it can be preloaded in the page so it's automatically there and users don't have to personally type in {{subst:DYKX}}. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:09, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I like the boxes and the coloured ticks and crosses. I really don't like the unintuitive and hard-to-remember 14-character syntax, which is just as hard as those for the old system of coloured icons. If you have to scroll up and copy a syntax from above the edit-box, it's a hassle. Can't the template provide all but the final letter (y, n) for reviewers to type in, so that a box remains blank without a final letter, or produces the tick or cross with a y or n added, plus the signature via four tildes? And if it's not possible to reverse a previous reviewer's tick or cross, it should be an accepted part of the use of this template that this can be done via written-out objections below. DYK reviewing should be as easy as possible. The signature really must be there or we're back to the old "review all or none of the nom" that has been the recipe for poor reviewing practices (namely, the "good to go", when we know very well the basic policies and DYK rules haven't been checked out—better to admit that partial reviews are appropriate for QPQ and other reviewers). Tony (talk) 08:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"DYK reviewing should be as easy as possible." Support! "The signature really must be there." Oppose. If someone wants to do a fast approval, the kind you despise, that one will do 9 or so signatures (almost as) fast and brainless as so far. I doubt that a mandatory template will prevent that. For those who do a review with brain the template is not needed. It is a good tool (!) if a reviewer does only a partial review, to show the next one what was checked and what not. (I said all this before.) I am not shy to go into lengthy discussions for a review, for example I defended Mykola Leontovych which is now a GA. I was asked (below) to give examples: one I passed: Template talk:Did you know/Highland Cottage, one I received: Talk:Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir#Decent review framed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:39, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

An example of both review ways in parallel: Template talk:Did you know/Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, BWV 9. You can see where I prefer the free style: It's coming as a dialogue, whereas the template has a "teacher/student", "pass/fail" attitude which I want to apply only if necessary, rarely that is. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:16, 9 August 2011 (UTC) It wasn't nec here but I did it table style anyway: Template talk:Did you know/Julia Voss --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:38, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

You seem to want to revert to all of the worst things about DYK non-reviewing, which brought the forum close to being dismantled by the community. Tony (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

But remember how close we are to being dismantled anyway: I count 27 approvals left on the nominations page, 17 of which are done your way. Art LaPella (talk) 14:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Tony on this one - it's useful to see who has checked what via the sigs. I also agree with Tony about the syntax - I've suggested an alternative on Rjanag's talk page which would just involve adding a "y" or "n" to a field to pass or fail it. Gatoclass (talk) 12:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the preloaded template can include, e.g., <!-- {{subst:DYKyes}} or {{subst:DYKno}} --> in every field, so there wouldn't be a need to cut-and-paste. As for the issue of just adding a y or n and getting the template to produce both the doodad and the sig, I already explained a couple times (in a couple places) that it does not seem to be possible; I spent hours trying it and asked several people, with no luck. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Why not just the double curly brackets enclosing just subst:DYK? Then you add "y" or "n"? Tony (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

A variation of this was already suggested at User talk:Rjanag#Review template (2). It's just as complicated (if not more) as what I already have in place, and has other shortcomings as well. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

• Tony1's template has been making me crazy (if for no other reason than that all those bold headings make it very hard to scan the suggestions page), so almost any of these versions would be an improvement.
  Like Gerda Arendt, I would like to be able to sign off some reviews without separately filling each cell in a template. For example, if an article is completely based on offline foreign-language sources, I likely will search for online validation during my review, but I will "AGF" most aspects of the review. In those cases, I fully expect to leave most parts of the template blank and sign a blanket approval statement below the template -- and if an obsessively bureaucratic person insists that I'm doing a deficient job of reviewing, I will tempted to make some evil remarks.
  I think that each box that's filled in needs both a signature (to say who made the judgment) and a symbol indicating what judgment the reviewer has made (because there's often more to communicate than just "yes" or "no", and symbols can help with that). Apparently that means Rjanag's version 1. Judgments that I imagine wanting symbols for are "OK" (or "yes", or a checkmark), "no" (or "X"), "AGF", "NA," and "?". --Orlady (talk) 19:41, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

The template no longer bolds the headings. The community has demanded a checklist, with good reason. Tony (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect, it does still bold the headings; mere minutes after you claimed it didn't, you were going around pasting in more templates with bolded headings. This is just one more instance of your insistence on completely ignoring feedback on this page. This page is full of complaints about the format of the checklist you keep adding and you clearly have no regard for the opinions of anyone at this page, or for the effort I'm making in trying to solicit feedback and actually make a checklist that works the way the DYK community wants it to work. I know you're an editor with some standing around WP, but this behavior of yours is getting very tiring. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

In that case, it might be better to just continue using the same icons we have been using, along with regular signatures, and fill out each field with, i.e., |length={{subst:DYKtick}} ~~~; maybe people will find that more familiar than what I showed below.

I don't see a need for an "NA" parameter unless the checklist is expanded to include a lot of unnecessary things. In the versions I sampled below, every parameter is (I think) one that should be reviewed every time (for instance, even if all sources are foreign-language, it's still possible to check whether they seem reliable--are they books, journal articles, news stories, blogs, personal websites?). I intentionally avoided including parameters that wouldn't be needed every time, like image suitability. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:27, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of skipping the review checklist for some noms: I'm just going off the results of this RfC in which there appeared to be support for a requirement that people explicitly go through the checklist every time, even in these cases. I'll leave it up to others to argue over whether this RfC is valid and stuff like that; I'm not really interested in that, I'm just trying to take what people claim they wanted and actually make it happen. (I'm not sure how much people actually wanted this and how much people were just pile-on-supporting to get their piece of a nice juicy argument, but that's neither here nor there...) rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, Rjanag. And if the review process involves long syntaxes, I think I'll ignore them. Tony (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Samples

I'll try to make this a bit clearer. Here are what the three options are; I'm also including fake discussions below to try to give a feel for how they would actually be used. (Particularly, you can see that even without signatures it's clear who checked what--not necessarily clear at a quick glance, but clear if you read the discussion.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:34, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Version 1: signatures and doodads

{{*mp}}... that '''[[ice]]''' is made of [[water]]?
created by some user
<!--
credits
-->

{{DYK hook checklist
|format={{subst:DYKY}}
|citation={{subst:DYKY}}
|neutrality={{subst:DYKX}}
|interest={{subst:DYKY}}
}}
:*Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. ~~~~

{{DYK article checklist
|length={{subst:DYKN}}
|newness={{subst:DYKY}}
|adequatecitations=<!-- {{subst:DYKY}} or {{subst:DYKN}} -->
|formattedcitations=<!-- {{subst:DYKY}} or {{subst:DYKN}} -->
|reliablesources=<!-- {{subst:DYKY}} or {{subst:DYKN}} -->
|neutrality={{subst:DYKY}}
|plagiarism={{subst:DYKY}}
|article=
}}
:*Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. ~~~~
::*The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. [[User:Some other user|]] ([[User talk:Some other user|talk]]) ~~~~~

• ... that ice is made of water?

created by some user

Hook review

Format	Citation	Neutrality	Interest
✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag	✘ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag

• Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Article review

Length	Newness	Adequate citations	Formatted citations	Reliable sources	Neutrality	Plagiarism
✔ Some other user	✔ Rjanag				✔ Rjanag	✔ Rjanag

• Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. Some other user (talk) 16:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Version 2: signatures only

{{*mp}}... that '''[[ice]]''' is made of [[water]]?
created by some user
<!--
credits
-->

{{DYK hook checklist
|format=~~~
|citation=~~~
|neutrality=
|interest=~~~
}}
:*Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. ~~~~

{{DYK article checklist
|length=[[User:Some other user|]]
|newness=~~~
|adequatecitations=
|formattedcitations=
|reliablesources=
|neutrality=~~~
|plagiarism=~~~
|article=
}}
:*Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. ~~~~
::*The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. [[User:Some other user|]] ([[User talk:Some other user|talk]]) ~~~~~

• ... that ice is made of water?

created by some user

Hook review

Format	Citation	Neutrality	Interest
rʨanaɢ (talk)	rʨanaɢ (talk)		rʨanaɢ (talk)

• Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Article review

Length	Newness	Adequate citations	Formatted citations	Reliable sources	Neutrality	Plagiarism
Some other user (talk)	rʨanaɢ (talk)				rʨanaɢ (talk)	rʨanaɢ (talk)

• Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. Some other user (talk) 16:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Version 3: doodads only

{{*mp}}... that '''[[ice]]''' is made of [[water]]?
created by some user
<!--
credits
-->

{{DYK hook checklist
|format=y
|citation=y
|neutrality=n
|interest=y
}}
:*Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me, so checking off everything but "neutrality". ~~~~

{{DYK article checklist
|length=y
|newness=y
|adequatecitations=
|formattedcitations=
|reliablesources=
|neutrality=y
|plagiarism=y
|article=
}}
:*Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. ~~~~
::*The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. [[User:Some other user|]] ([[User talk:Some other user|talk]]) ~~~~~

• ... that ice is made of water?

created by some user

Hook review

Format	Citation	Neutrality	Interest
Y	Y	N	Y

• Hook fact checks out but this reads like an advertisement for water to me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Article review

Length	Newness	Adequate citations	Formatted citations	Reliable sources	Neutrality	Plagiarism
Y	Y				Y	Y

• Article history looks ok and I didn't spot any editorial issues (checked for neutrality and text issues), but as of now the article isn't long enough. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• The nominator has added some text, the article's long enough now, checked it off. Still haven't checked the other stuff. Some other user (talk) 16:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Biological screw joint (currently Queue 4)

Scientists may have first discovered it in this species of weevil: that is a long way from being proof that it is the first time nature has evolved such a device. And "first ever" is a tautology. ... that scientists first discovered the biological screw joint in the Papuan weevil Trigonopterus oblongus? Kevin McE (talk) 20:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Battlefield Heroes (currently Queue 2)

This is a severe misrepresentation of the interview referenced in the article. The relevant phrase is "I wanted to show that 1,300 years ago, when China was Tang dynasty, that these superpowers had exerted an enormous amount of power over Korea, thus causing a lot of internal conflicts within Korea." The USA was decidedly not a superpower in the eighth century. Suggest that the director of Battlefield Heroes wanted the film to show that powerful neighbouring countries affected Korea in the past, as they do now? Kevin McE (talk) 20:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

So despite being flagged up here, and on WP:ERRORS, a gross misrepresentation of someone's comments appeared on the Main Page of Wikipedia for eight hours. Clearly the processes that should prevent this are not fit for purpose. Kevin McE (talk) 08:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:ERRORS is badly broken. Not enough people with admin privileges watch it. I've reported errors before and waited hours before they were fixed. Prioryman (talk) 09:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Cutting through the...stuff

We need more people. Really. And a happier, healthy atmosphere of growth and learning, rather than finger-pointing and bickering. For this reason I suggest we start looking for some fresh faces, full of happiness and good faith, to bring into here. My suggestion is that we make templates out of this and this and make us some advertising campaigns! But then I am incredibly new here. So feel free to tell me to go to Hades. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 21:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I should probably make one of those for admins as well...Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 21:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I like that idea. I probably will only nominate new member's articles for DYK from now on like I did with an article today. Joe Chill (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been mulling coming back. I only ever used to nominate articles where there was a hook fact I thought people would find interesting. But the new nomination procedure is daunting and there is still a lot of . . . stuff. I left because I was used as a bad example for having almost 50 DYKs. I can be pretty thick-skinned—I know people have differing assumptions and preferences—but I felt I was suddenly a liability for DYK. I believe it was MaterialScientist who suggested we try to recover the old spirit of mutual responsibility and get-stuck-in (my formulation) around here. How can we do that? The way it's been, I would be leery of asking a new person to contribute. The students in the Psych class are an example (I was the one discovered that.) If this page hadn't been demanding so much attention to arguments and if so many people hadn't been driven away, I have to think someone would have spotted the group of submissions earlier. As it is, I am still finding submissions from that group that, while they got accurate and thoughtful feedback on the order of "There are still big problems with this article" and "You didn't complete the process of making this nomination" didn't get any message to the effect of "I see you are very new. I've copyedited the article but it still needs better referencing. . . see the talk page." It isn't DYK's fault that this class group slipped through the safety net, but it's a big blinking red light, in my view. I've been looking in at the submissions page and I see a lot of "The article needs copyediting"; occasionally I've stepped up and done that. It used to be part of the culture to do that, especially with articles by relatively new editors or editors who clearly don't have English as their first language. It saves a lot of grief and talking back and forward, IMO. Similarly with sticking a copy of the obvious ref at the end of the hook sentence. (Reviewing always did include checking a reasonable sample of the references, so unless the hook fact is genuinely unsupported, it's not hard to see where it came from and dot the i's and cross the t's in that respect, too. If we can agree that we want to go back to that kind of spirit and make DYK more user-friendly—right now it is a pretty harsh gauntlet, and remember, most editors' first experience of having an article nominated at DYK is when it's nominated by someone else—then I'd support encouraging people to come back and to try it for the first time. If not, then I don't think it would benefit DYK for me to come back, and I don't think it would benefit new editors to be encouraged to try here. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:59, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Welcome back! I was afraid I had to include you in my sad list but then saw the Sugar Museum and started to hope. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that a new user would have to be insane to try DYK in its current climate, but I also just logged in tonight to see that a new user had been lectured and warned by her appointed ambassador for the "inappropriate" behavior of trying to review one of my pending noms at WP:GAN; when the new user pointed out to her ambassador that the top of the GA page explicitly invited any registered user to participate and that this invitation might be changed if it was inaccurate, she was, of course, met with silence. [3] Maybe it would be easier if Wikipedia just agreed project-wide that new users shouldn't bother, and left it at that? Madness. -- Khazar (talk) 07:47, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Did you see my remarks about the current climate. Nonetheless, the addressee also finds it too cold at the moment. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:09, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

No I didn't. And that poor new user :-( The thing is, what can we do? Here are a couple of radical ideas I have just dredged out of the depths of my underslept brain. Maybe they will knock loose some more feasible radical ideas.

1. Let's form a volunteer directorate of Helpers: people who will check the nominations page for articles that a reviewer says need copyediting/reference placing on the hook fact/re-wording of the hook/other fixable stuff, and go to the article and do it. I'm not sure whether the current nominations system makes it possible to also see nominations where the process wasn't completed so they don't show up on that page, but it would be good to be able to fix that too—as helpful people and bots do with incomplete AfD noms, for example.
2. Let's have a clear statement somewhere right near the top that pages nominated for DYK need to adhere to all Wikipedia's policies: they must be NPOV, adequately referenced, and contain no plagiarism and copyvio, and they should be ready for publication (no empty sections, no unencyclopedic stuff like addressing the reader, an acceptable standard of spelling and English usage), but they may use any form of referencing, any suitable variety of English, and have an infobox or not and a picture or not as seems appropriate to those who work on them. Concerns are being raised about DYK articles that apply to all articles; being new doesn't exempt an article from policy. On the other hand, requiring articles to use citation templates is simply wrong. They are completely optional. It's only suggested that articles use consistent referencing format (a recommendation honored more in the breach than in the observance, IME). There are project and MOS guidelines for specific groups of topics, but Wikipedia articles overall have considerable latitude in style and presentation; however, reviewers don't necessarily know that. Length also falls in here. Policy last time I looked was that the length of the article was supposed to be related to its notability. In practice, it relates to how concisely it can be written up: the requirement is for it to be ready (not finished, but not obviously deficient). The current minimum length requirement for DYK is shorter than the majority of articles I've written, but some science/tech articles have trouble meeting it. In describing a species, for example, it's not appropriate to pad the article out. And it's actually against policy to encourage it. We don't want only certain kinds of articles, in fact we want as many different kinds as possible.
3. If you are willing to do a thorough review of a submission and finish by judging it ready or not, explaining clearly why or why not (so that someone else can see if you forgot something, or disagree), you should be allowed to remove the reviewer checklist, because that obscures such a clear statement. Conversely, if you want to do a driveby review of just one aspect of an article, you should make it clear that that's what you are doing, and either use that item on the checklist or otherwise limit your review. So that others know the article needs the rest of it to be looked at.
4. Have people undertake to liaise with the WikiProjects to get people with special knowledge over to the nominations page fast to review specialized articles like, for example, the recent psychology crop. IMO we don't have enough scientific DYKs, and we have even more of a deficit in tech articles. My impression is that many of the projects are not responsive when you put a request on the talk page for eyes on an article or a group of articles, and we have a problem because DYK has a time limit, and a rapid one at that. So let's work through personal relationships and build a list of contacts and do it that way.
5. Extend the above to challenging members of projects to nominate an article to DYK every week or month, to get more articles on subjects they find interesting—and more articles they deem well written—into DYK. More fun than being in reaction mode trying to deal with AfDs, I think. I wonder if banners would work for this? Not necessarily Wikipetan banners like the ones suggested above, and I'd make them less wide and with less words, along the lines of: "Written a good new article in the past week? Seen a good new article lately? Expanded an article lately? With something interesting to say? Good. DYK wants it!".
6. Informally schedule who fills the next prep. Do you know how to do it—or feel you could manage it if someone showed you how—but you really only have time on Saturdays? or between the hours of 8 pm and midnight your local time on your workdays? If we can get it pencilled in who will normally handle it when, we can have more lead time to fix problems in the preps. And probably get more people to learn how, because they'll be joining an informal team not rushing into a burning building.
7. A mini-WikiCup for new contributors. This was an idea of Kobnach's because this year's WikiCup severely downgraded DYKs, making the Cup a game for the very experienced. Their suggestion was that the New Editors' Cup be for those who hadn't yet achieved autopatrolled, and start on July 1 to be maximally time-offset from the WikiCup. Have it be just a DYK contest, leave in place the strong statement the WikiCup already has that anyone who produces substandard work just to rack up points will be chucked out, and it could be fun. It might be better to have a far lower upper limit on eligibility, because autopatrolled status is now way hard to get unless some sympathetic admin notices you (as one did me). Say: have created a maximum of 20 non-DAB new pages. we have the WikiLove button and lots of creative people to help us create barnstars for participants who give us lots of DYKs . . . this could be really fun and net us very fresh and unpredictable articles.

Yngvadottir (talk) 16:22, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the last suggestion (having a DYK contest) is a good idea. Contests would likely just increase the amount of poor-quality nominations--especially plagiarism/closeparaphrasing/copyvio nominations, which are what started the entire mess that's been going on for the past few weeks. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:26, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Told you they were wild and woolly ideas '-) That one isn't even mine. The thing is, we're always going to get poor submissions. Otherwise there would be no need to review them. I really think we need that strong policy reminder in a prominent place - both the bits about what policy does require, including not infringing copyright or plagiarizing, and the bits about what it doesn't require. If we want to encourage newbies, we have to truly welcome them, and they come in all flavors, from ex-academics like me to young kids, and from people with extensive editing experience here or on another wiki who are just doing DYK for the first time, or writing new articles for the first time (not everyone registers an account in order to create a new article, although it is common) to people with a shaky grasp of keyboarding. We've all seen a vast range at the suggestions page. If they come over the transom, we can work on 'em. If we never see 'em, we can't. And it's not as if the contest would bestow valuable prizes or even tremendous bragging rights. It would just be fun. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:05, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I recently edited the rules page so that the list of rules was closer to the top. That list does include "within policy" as one of the criteria for DYK articles. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I still think it should say briefly and clearly somewhere that DYK articles should adhere to all WP article policies . . . and that they should not be expected to adhere to non-policies (such as particular citation formats). Maybe that statement belongs in the guide for reviewers? (I also note that the lists of admins and non-admins below there is way out of date.) In any event, this section on this page is about attracting new people to DYK. The main thrust of my remarks was and is that when a reviewer mistakenly asks for something more, or different—such as highly polished prose, untypable dashes, or citation templates—this is discouraging, and if someone else sees that happening, they could fix the problem for the submitter if it would improve the article—and ideally the reviewer should do so—and if it's strictly a matter of taste, that should be pointed out at the article review.

Also . . . what about my other suggestions, and let's have some other people's ideas. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Dwarf sphaero for August 9th

Just a friendly reminder to whomever prepares the preps next: we have an article scheduled for August 9th, the Virgin Islands dwarf sphaero. Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:17, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Patriarch Dionysius I of Constantinople (currently Queue 2)

Almost everyone I see every day allows me to see at least part of their flesh, but it offers little clue as to whether they are circumcised. Per WP:EUPHEMISM and WP:NOTCENSORED, perhaps we ought to say that he showed his penis; if we are going to retain the euphemism (which would be my preference), it should be in quotation marks. And I'm intrigued as to what the reference might mean by "but rather a small piece of skip..." Kevin McE (talk) 08:15, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Special care when including information from the Arab/Israeli field

On the 4th of August the following appeared in Wiki's DYK section.

• ... that the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf has been a bestseller in parts of the Middle East?
  

If anyone had checked the Mein Kampf in the Arabic language talk page at that time, they would have noted that the "bestseller in parts of the Middle East" was a controversial claim. Could editors please exercise special care when including information from the Arab/Israeli field, as information is notoriously unreliable in times of war/conflict. Thanks Prunesqualor billets_doux 10:35, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Copied from Talk:Main page. Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:26, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

It's also troubling that the article history shows that (after major battles over POV) on August 4, the day it main-paged, the nominator popped in an extra three paragraphs of anti-Arab POV [4]. Sharktopus ^talk 15:32, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we've had problems like that at DYK before with anti-Arab POV being added while the article is on the main page. I thought some measures or rules were put in place to prevent this happening again? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:11, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "measures". Wikipedia already has a guideline against general protection or semi-protection of articles on the main page, and it's not DYK's responsibility to review all edits to all articles as they are on the main page. We already have a policy not to promote articles that are "unstable" due to being in the middle of an edit war. In this case, it looks like the discussion about the "bestseller" thing only began on August 4 (the day the article was featured, and thus long after it had been reviewed and approved) and, likewise, the objectionsable content (although I'm not sure what makes that "anti-Arab POV") was added while the article was on the main page, after the review was completed. DYK didn't do anything wrong here. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:19, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Questions where being asked about the validity of information in the Mein Kampf in the Arabic language article almost as soon as it was created- (see here). By 24th of July the article's talk page already contained a comment (made by myself) expressing doubts about the statement: " …it achieved best-seller status throughout the Arab world" (admittedly not identical to the DYK claim but similar enough to ring some distant alarm bells I would have thought). Aside from factual reliability and controversy issues- If Wiki has a policy, not to promote articles that are "unstable" due to being in the middle of an edit war, why was this article even considered for DYK inclusion (on the day that the DYK went to press an editor was hauled before Wiki arbitration based on edits made to the article before that date). I think this warrants my original plea ie- "Could editors please exercise special care when including information from the Arab/Israeli field, as information is notoriously unreliable in times of war/conflict." Prunesqualor billets_doux 11:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Rjanag, my rather vague wording was because I can't remember the exact details of the previous incident, and have no hope of finding it in the immense archives of this talkpage. I wasn't suggesting that DYK handled this incident wrongly, nor that there are (or should be) code-based or procedure-based restrictions in place to prevent this happening. What I vaguely recall of the last incident where POV content was introduced just as the article went to the Main Page, was that there was discussion of the possibility of banning one or more of the editors involved from DYK, or "measures" of that nature. However, as I say, I don't remember the details. Anyone? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:06, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Israel-Palestine topics and the local politicians should be excluded from DYK. Whoever approves these hooks spends very little time reviewing the articles relative to core policies especially NPOV/BLP, accepting almost any political rag or opinion piece uncritically as RS. I bet that if had I submitted only the positive (top) part of Eurabia it would have been accepted. FuFoFuEd (talk) 05:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Help needed with Template talk:Did you know/Arthur Seymour

This nom template has some wikicodes missing. I was about to promote this to P1, but don't know what to do with {{DYKsubpage... etc. missing. This is no Template talk talk:Did you know/Arthur Seymour to talk about the template talkpage, so I am leaving a note here and also immediately below the nom on T:TDYK. I don't understand programming. Can someone help fix this, please? Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 11:26, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I seem to have fixed it. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:54, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like what happened (judging by the first version) is that the editor correctly created the subpage but then, instead of using the preloaded template, just pasted in his own code (perhaps some frequent nominators keep filled out versions of {{NewDYKnom}} in their personal sandbox or something and didn't notice the changeover). Usually in these cases I noticed earlier and left them grumpy messages "asking" them to please use the preloaded template. I think what Crisco added should fix this nom. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:03, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Crisco. --PFHLai (talk) 18:52, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Minor help needed here, too.

• Template talk:Did you know/Bruce McLenna
• Template talk:Did you know/Mike Keller

The link to these noms sit at T:TDYK#Bruce McLenna and T:TDYK#Mike Keller without indication if the hook was "Promoted" or "Rejected". I suspect the closing admin forgot to type in "yes" next to "|passed=". Not sure how to fix this after the fact. Can someone help get them fixed, pls? Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 11:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Fixed.

@Rjanag: Could we possibly have a reminder in hidden text in the template, like <!--Enter yes if promoted or no if rejected when closing-->? Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. Added, rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you again, Crisco. --PFHLai (talk) 18:53, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome, twice over. Thanks, Rjanag. Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:58, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Reviewing as a two-way street

Wanted to make the point here that reviewing should be a two-way process. Reviewers are not perfect editors (no-one is) and can end up learning from editors they interact with. What I would hope to see in every discussion about concerns over article (especially the more subjective aspects, such as close paraphrasing) is that the reviewer lays out clearly what the concerns are, and is prepared to come back and discuss with specific examples, and to even propose new wording if needed (though in most cases, you would want the editor to do the rewrite to get a feel for themselves for how to do such rewrites). Equally, if a reviewer is being overly sensitive to concerns (again, especially with subjective ones such as close paraphrasing), that can be a valid outcome to a discussion as well. It should be an open, frank discussion, with everyone learning from it, and improving their writing skills and reviewing skills.

Such discussions also need to reach closure as well, with parts of the article rewritten (if needed) and the reviewer stating explicitly whether their original concerns have been met. This may need a period of close engagement with the article and other editors, but that is what reviewers may need to do if that is what is needed. No-one should review something if they are not prepared to engage to that extent (or at least they should point people to where they can get further help). Drive-by nominations are not helpful, but neither is drive-by reviewing.

The outcome should ultimately be that the editor of the article about which concerns were raised ends up improving as a writer and the next article they work on benefits from this, and the reviewer gains from getting feedback on their review and has examples of rewriting to point to at their next review. Carcharoth (talk) 13:26, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Hear hear! Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Hear hear hear! Related concern -- if a hook/article is rejected with the X tag, the rejecting reviewer should not immediately pull it off T:TDYK. A lot of times people have rescued articles others thought past saving. There should be at least a 24-hour delay between rejection and vanishing, IMO. Sharktopus ^talk 15:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Along those lines, a hook/article rejected by one reviewer usually should not be removed from the page (or "archived", under the new system) by the same reviewer, unless a long time has passed or if the issue is extremely obvious (e.g., the article is clearly not new or expanded or recently moved from userspace). It's usually better to wait and let someone else do it--this gives someone else an opportunity to make sure you made the right judgment, and it looks "fairer" to the nominator. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:16, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

DYK navbox

I'm trying to brainstorm ways to make the DYK rules look less creepy and scary for newcomers, and particularly to make the 4 basic rules easier to find and understand.

Would it be helpful to edit {{DYKbox}} (the navigation box at the top of this and other DYK pages) such that "Additional rules" renamed to "Supplementary guidelines"? I think newcomers are probably confused at why we have 'rules' and 'additional rules', and "supplementary guidelines" would probably better represent what WP:DYKAR is anyway (it exists mainly as a quick way to answer perennial questions and avoid perennial arguments, but as it says at the top of that page it's not necessary to know all those rules to participate in DYK; they are supplementary to the real rules and many of them are just guidelines that are more flexible than the real rules). rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

For that matter, perhaps we could also remove the link to WP:DYKSTATS, which is not necessary for the day-to-day running of DYK. The link to WP:RA, labelled as "Archives", is also not particularly useful I think. (That "Archive" is actually just an archive of every update of the main template; archives of the nomination discussions did not exist before the new system was in place, and now they are sarting to be made at Template talk:Did you know/Archive. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I like all those suggestions. Thanks for thinking of these improvements and even more for making so many improvements yourself. Sharktopus ^talk 23:28, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

The review checklist, redux

At #Review checklist templates above I posted a proposal for a new template to handle the reviewing checklist. Discussion there seems to have petered out, but I would still like feedback regarding this, especially since a lot of people are complaining about the way the reviewing checklist is being handled and the whole reason I've taken time to make this is to try and help those people.

In particular, I'm hoping for feedback regarding whether you guys think it's necessary for signatures to appear within the review checklist itself or not (see the discussion near the bottom of that thread, with NuclearWarfare, regarding this issue). Beyond that, the only real issues are minor typographical ones, so once this signature issue is settled we can discuss the possibility of putting some sort of review template into the preloaded nomination template (so it shows up automatically in every nomination). As I have stated elsewhere, I don't want to include any review template in {{NewDYKnom}} until there is community consensus on what it should be. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Whether signatures are needed

• I think this is important element in the responsibilisation of the review process. Unless it is clear that one reviewer is taking responsibility for the whole review, signatures within each little box should be mandatory. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I've left a sample above (#Samples) of how a box without signatures could be used but still be clear about who did what part of each review. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Whether the checklist should be used in all nominations

I think a review checklist is a good idea for some cases, but for others which can be approved by one person in a few words of prose it's a burden, therefore I vote against an inclusion in every nomination. It's good to have the checklist table and include it if one person can't complete a review or if questions are open. In that case, what do you think of a short signature like in some newspapers - for example I would use "ga" - in the checklist table, and then add one full signature at the bottom? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I think some people want there to be an explicit checklist used every time (that is to say, some people think there should never be reviews like "Everything looks good ~~~~", but that every item of a checklist should always be checked off, even if it seems obvious).

As for the matter of short signatures, this is not really possible because of technical limitations, which are explained in more detail at User talk:Rjanag#Technical stuff. If people want to have Ys and Ns appear in the template, it's either going to have to be without signatures at all, or through a design such as the one I showed samples of in #Review checklist templates above.

(edit conflict) I am aware that some people want it in every nomination, and some people - including Yngvadottir (s.a.) and me - don't want that, I heard the term bureaucracy. - If everything DOES look fine - this happens! - why make it complicated? It seems a waste of time and clutters the nominations page. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:54, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

This comes from #RfC proposal: a proper reviewing checklist. I know there is controversy over whether these RfCs are valid, but anyway the motivation for including an explicit checklist in every nomination is that. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• Stating 'I have checked and have not found any copyright violations' has a different value (in terms of commitment to the quality of the process) to 'I think everything is OK'. Perhaps Gerda could give me a concrete example which would highlight her concerns? Furthermore, assuming I have correctly read Gerda's request to be able to not use a standardised template for every (implying some will still use it) what criteria would be used to determine which reviews carried the template and which not? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• Not sure where to put a comment so I'll put it here at the bottom. There have been so many RfCs at this page that with the best will in the world, people have stopped commenting, or not been able to find their way through the thicket. The checklist is IMO a net negative. It clutters up the page, it gets in the way of the kind of responsible discussion of the nomination that the "two-way street" section just above references, and as I said above, pages proposed at DYK should adhere to Wikipedia policies anyway; the nominator should have made a good faith effort to see that they do, and the reviewer should, too. Also a checklist tends to imply that all points are on the same level. Not having plagiarism/copyvio, for example, is a major point of policy. Not having glaring syntax errors is a matter of standards—whether the page is ready. Having well written prose is nice, but optional. Three different levels of concern. I like the rows of checkmarks/Xes better because they take up less space, but if a checklist has to appear at all—and I don't think it should, for the above reasons—I think it should be strictly optional. Second best choice: removable by a reviewer who wants to take the responsibility to do a complete review—part of which is being open to people then making comments on the whole or part of the nomination and review. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Seconding Yngvadottier, I'm arriving here late because there are too many RfCs. But this one seems a practical suggestion. The checkboxes in a row are good. Putting things of different values together as if they were of equal importance is hard to avoid. The option for a reviewer to check of "all of the above" in one place seems good also. Sharktopus ^talk 23:34, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"Daily log" setup

In case anyone didn't know, I recently changed the way individual days' worth of nominations are handled on T:TDYK; see #How to archive days? and User talk:Mandarax#New DYK days. Basically, the setup is now more AfD-like; each day is not a subsection of T:TDYK, but is actually its own subpage transcluded on T:TDYK. In other words, each subpage looks like

===Articles created/expanded on August 7===
<!-- After you have created your nomination page, please add it (e.g., {{Template talk:Did you know/YOUR ARTICLE TITLE}}) to the TOP of this section (after this comment).
When this section is complete, remove {{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 August 7}} from the nomination page (Template talk:Did you know). -->
{{Template talk:Did you know/Skin cancer in horses}} 
{{Template talk:Did you know/Thelma Pressman}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Peter (dog)}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Whorlton Castle}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Muslim Mosque, Inc.}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Battle of Pakchon}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Theropod paleopathology}}

(e.g., see Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 August 7). And once all the old nominations are off and everything is in the new system, the whole T:TDYK page will look something like

==Older nominations=
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 1}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 2}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 3}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 4}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 5}}

== Current nominations ==

{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 6}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 7}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 8}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 9}}
{{Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 September 10}}

This change makes archiving a bit easier (since, technically, new nominations are posted directly into the archive; the only thing that changes is that later on the "archive" is no longer transcluded on T:TDYK). One possible shortcoming I thought of, though, is that it's no longer easy to monitor when new nominations are posted. The old way, I could just check the history of T:TDYK and see the diff of any nomination recently posted. Now, however, all these diffs are going to be in the subpages for the individual days. (For example, nominations of articles created/expanded today are in Revision history of Template talk:Did you know/Daily log/2011 August 7.)

Is anyone concerned by this? I don't know if it's a big deal or not; I guess mainly the issue is whether the convenience of the newer way of archiving (which really just amounts to one or two fewer button presses, since it removes the need to paste a day's worth of old noms into an archive) outweighs the loss of being able to track newly-posted noms. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is concerned. If there is a problem with it later, people will complain about it then. Could we just have a round of DYK support here for Rjanag to proceed with things he thinks are improving the process, with a plan that others will feel free to notify him/us if a problem is created? And the NOBODY will feel free to flame Rjanag if a problem is created, since obviously he is doing a lot of hard work for free here with the best intentions in the world and NOBODY codes perfection on the first go. Maybe you just include an ongoing single thread on this page "Coders' Corner" for announcements and questions and etc. Sharktopus ^talk 23:41, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Prep1

For the Arthur Seymour article, ALT2 was ticked off, but the original hook has been promoted. Given that I have submitted this DYK, I thought I shouldn't meddle with it myself, but will bring it up here. With future noms, I shall strike out those hooks that have been rejected, so that this doesn't happen again. Schwede66 23:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Changed to ALT2. Materialscientist (talk) 00:14, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

You know DYK is dying, right?

The queue will probably go empty by morning U.S. time. There are few articles being approved, and most of those few don't explicitly comply with the RfC. Based on that slow rate, here are the realistic options: 1. Pay lip service to the RfC, and change the Main Page once a day. 2. Enforce the RfC, and change the Main Page once a week. 3. Muddle through, and change the Main Page manually, whenever possible. Art LaPella (talk) 02:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem I see is that one very hard-working admin (Panyd) who was not only updating queues but also doing many preps, is offline. Plural people need to step up to fill her shoes. I am in transit and really can't right now. You don't have to be an admin to make up Preps, and a lot of preps are empty. You do have to be an admin to move items from Prep to Queue. Right now, we have one full Queue and the rest empty. There is a full Prep that could be moved up to Queue. There are a bunch of empty Preps that need to be filled. Another problem is that the number of picture-hooks approved is very small. 03:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Is the problem not enough noms, not enough reviewing or not enough moving to and fro?Volunteer Marek (talk) 08:23, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that DYK is dying. I've spent the last two hours dealing with noms and preps; I don't have a broom, so I can't deal with queues. At the very least we have enough queues and preps for a few days now. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

We have 140 noms and 31 passed noms, the number of noms is down but it's far from the worst I've seen, I've seen T:TDYK with no more than 60-80 total noms, and that was when we had no queues at all and just the single prep area, right now we also have at least three prepared updates as well. However, it's clear that recent changes - especially, I think, the rush to employ Tony's checklist - has had a significant deterrent effect on nominations. More than likely the tougher criteria some reviewers are trying to employ has irritated some contributors too - I myself might think twice about nominating an article in the current environment. I think things will eventually settle down again over time however. But if necessary, we can throttle back the number of updates to two or even one per day until noms start picking up again. Gatoclass (talk) 08:45, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Alas, but for days since the new nomination template was introduced, the counts on the Queue page include a lot of noms that have already been pushed to the queues or rejected. For example, the count for July 25 shows 22 noms, but only 4 of those are still actually waiting on the suggestions page. --Orlady (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I take heart from what you say about past experience—I haven't been around here very long. But I think going below three preps a day would set a dangerous precedent and in turn discourage people from nominating articles (and from reviewing them promptly and clearly). Let's instead see what we can do to encourage people, both to write/rewrite (I've been working on the same DYK-inappropriate article for a while; I'm trying to decide whether to bother to do a DYK-possible one next) to submit to DYK (see above section on cutting through the . . . stuff) and to do the reviewing (see various above sections, especially the two-way street one). Let's get the momentum building again; then it will be feasible (and less rude) to say "This nom shouold wait till it has a more interesting hook," for example. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It appears to me that the critics have driven a stake through the heart of DYK. The problem is not a shortage of administrators, but shortages of submissions and reviews. The new nomination template does seem be discouraging submissions, although I find it actually makes it easier to submit nominations. I imagine that the brutality of some recent DYK reviews probably is discouraging nominations -- when nominations are getting criticized and possibly even rejected for allegedly "obvious" problems in the article such as too many wikilinks, why bother to nominate? --Orlady (talk) 12:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

They forgot the garlic. I agree with both you and Yngvadottir: we need to deal with major problems first and foremost. Copyvio, close paraphrasing, too short articles, attack pages, and whatnot. Boring hooks could wait a bit. Wikification should never be a breaker, unless an article is not wikified at all. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying the new scrutiny is necessarily a bad thing, but there is no way I'm touching the queues in the current environment—frankly, I don't have time and can't be bothered to read through half a dozen articles that are at least 1500 characters long each, then and conduct a review worthy of an FAC before I can can even consider moving anything into the queue. Then if I get it right, people complain loudly that DYK is shite, and if I miss some slight error in the article, people complain even louder that DYK is shite and call for my head on a stake. Sorry, I'd like to help, but that's not my idea of fun! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Hence why I try to be a duck. Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Update - have moved along three preps to Q's and asked at commons for images to be protected (they're usually pretty quick with these). Am off to bed now as late here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:54, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I like the new structure with nominations on their own sub-pages, but am doubtful about the more formal checklist, which is a bit forbidding to a potential reviewer. If 99.6% of articles accepted under the old system had no serious technical problems, and moving up to 99.7% means doubling the review effort or halving the number of nominations, it is not worth it. No checklist will ever catch selective bias, where important aspects of the subject are not mentioned and trivial aspects are given undue weight. My guess is that many articles have this or other serious defects that only an expert would catch. Maybe we are doubling the review effort so we can move from 70.6% up to 70.7% on the quality scale. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Orlady has hit the nail on the head: all the new requirements have made it significantly more difficult to contribute, and that's largely due to the critics' complaints. When articles that qualify under the rules get rejected simply because their hooks are "too boring" or for other minutia that are unrelated to the rules, that's a big downside. Moreover, I don't have much time anymore to do DYKs — I have enough time to write, but I generally don't have enough time to write and then do one or more reviews on top of it. Until policy absolutely requires me to do it, I will not use the new template: the rules don't require it, and it makes this too much like GA or FAC, which (contrary to a few people's opinions) is not the purpose of DYK. Nyttend (talk) 05:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

off-topic discussion

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
More likely from 1% to 2%. I've seen very, very few DYKs on the main page without significant problems, many of them quite glaring. Malleus Fatuorum 19:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC) Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. DYK is a sample of new pages. They have faults. We should try to catch and correct the worst problems, but should not try to make the articles "perfect". If a non-editor sees a clumsy first attempt and thinks "I could do better than that" and then goes ahead and tries, DYK has achieved one objective. If everything is "perfect" we may discourage new editors. Perhaps worse, we may give readers the impression that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information. I am in favor of "good enough", relying on the built-in correction mechanisms to quickly fix the worst problems. Aymatth2 (talk) 22:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC) I'm not talking about "perfect", I'm talking about glaring errors in basic spelling and grammar. Most DYKs are little more than stubs; it's surely not too much to ask a reviewer to actually read the whole shebang? Malleus Fatuorum 23:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC) Some DYK articles are little more than stubs; some are quite long. And regardless of their length, we tend to get 20 or so a day. I'll be generous and pretend that there are as many as 3 other people in this project who are as amazing and wonderful at article writing and competent at article reviewing as you are (although we all know that can't possibly be true); how long do you think you could keep up reading 5 of these a day? rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC) I could read five of those DYK stubs in five minutes; why can't you? Malleus Fatuorum 01:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Good to know it's so easy for you. Anyone is welcome to review articles currently on T:TDYK. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC) And so far as DYK is concerned there are no "built-in correction mechanisms"; FA has FAR, GA has GAR; what does DYK have? Malleus Fatuorum Main page exposure. Yomanganitalk 23:52, 10 August 2011 (UTC) 57.6% to 57.7%? I fix spelling and grammar errors when I notice them, and assume most reviewers do. It is more work to check that every sentence accurately reflects what the sources say. I check the hook, the main points, anything that seems questionable, but not always every assertion. If an article on a wood-boring beetle says it is most active in the summer, citing a book about beetles, I am willing to accept the assertion without going to the library to check the book. It seems plausible. At the library I might find that the article is a clone of a chapter in the book. Perhaps the book is out of copyright but is inaccurate. Modern research may have found that the beetle is in fact hyperactive in winter to keep warm, and dozes all summer. I don't know. The built-in correction mechanism for all Wikipedia articles is that sooner or later someone who does know will read the article, spot the problems and either complain or fix them. Yes, main page exposure will speed up the process. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:46, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Exactly. Besides that, minor errors may in fact assist in the recruiting of new editors as they may want to fix what errors they see. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC) So why not be honest about DYK? Why not rebrand it as "Here are some really crap articles that you may wish to improve"? Malleus Fatuorum 01:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC) I did suggest changing the boilerplate (slightly less brutally). Yomanganitalk 01:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC) (edit conflict) But that correction mechanism is just the normal Wikipedia march towards grey goo, nothing to do with DYK. I've seen countless DYKs on the main page with the most obvious grammar and spelling errors, even today. Inviting new contributors is one thing, but persuading them that it's OK to write crap, because someone else may or may not come along to fix it is a world I simply don't understand. Malleus Fatuorum 01:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC) This all boils down to a difference of opinion. You think (apparently) that spelling and grammar errors make an article a worthless waste of space and an embarrassment to the project. I, and I venture to guess most people here, don't think it's a huge deal. Sure, I correct errors when I see them, but I don't think that every article with a few copyediting errors here and there is worthless crap. If you think so, the Internet is probably not the best place to be spending your time. (Then again, the Internet is a great place to troll and pick juicy fights with people, so I can see why you keep coming back.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC) What I can see is that you can't tell your arse from your elbow. Malleus Fatuorum 02:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Why are you even allowed to edit here with all of your personal attacks? I pointed multiple people to WP:DICK and I got an ANI report filed against me. Why are you still here? Joe Chill (talk) 02:30, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Perhaps because, unlike you, I put the quality of the product before the happiness of the contributors. Once upon a time it was called honesty. Malleus Fatuorum 03:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC) DNFTT. Could anyone eager to stroke the pathetically wet noodle of MF's ego please post their responses to his lame PA on his own personal talk page. Sharktopus talk 03:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC) I see statements above in this thread that strongly suggest DYK culture has not fundamentally changed, at least among the regular core of editors: this is very disappointing. I'm starting to see the benefit of completely reconceiving DYK so that it includes a significant proportion of GAs, and even FAs and FLs, as Sandy, Malleus, and others would clearly prefer. The community has made it clear that it does not want crap on the main page, and what is particularly worrying are statements above indicating that people just don't see the crap, don't see that proper reviewing is the way to achieve this, and equate speed of throughput with success. Even more galling, Yomangani says main-page exposure is the mechanism for improving obvious errors in new articles: it's an astonishing assumption. The community has responded by insisting on a reviewing checklist. One has been produced that complies with the text of the RfC, even if the format could be improved. But the basic fact of a template is inescapable, and I will continue to paste it in unless there is another RfC that reverses the decision of the "Checklist" RfC—incorporating a checklist is the only proper thing to do. Specific concern: "one very hard-working admin (Panyd) who was not only updating queues but also doing many preps, is offline": well, I did propose the establishment of a directorate to coordinate these issues, but the idea was spurned. Orlady said, "The new nomination template does seem be discouraging submissions, although I find it actually makes it easier to submit nominations. I imagine that the brutality of some recent DYK reviews probably is discouraging nominations – when nominations are getting criticized and possibly even rejected for allegedly "obvious" problems in the article such as too many wikilinks, why bother to nominate?" In response, I'm not supporting DYK unless nominator input during the nomination process (and thus the induction and training of newish editors) is central to the process. The choice is clear: professionalise DYK, ensure that its induction and quality-assurance roles are on a better footing, or get it off the main page, as Dr. Blofeld suggested, and give other forums the chance to expose their professional work. Bleating about exposing DYKs for longer (even a whole 24 hours—perish the thought—like OTD, TFA, TFL, and POTD) is the opposite push to keep DYK mostly amateurish. Tony (talk) 02:25, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

on-topic discussion

...a 1,500 character article thrown off in a couple of days is unlikely to give balanced and thorough coverage of the subject. If we want to limit main page links to quality content, a more formal DYK review checklist is not going to have much effect. The checklist just formalizes what reviewers should be looking at anyway. The real problem is that a review by someone like me who knows nothing about a subject and relies entirely on online sources may miss serious defects in an article. The only way to significantly improve DYK quality is to allow more time to develop more complete and balanced articles and to improve the articles based on considered expert review. It takes time to get quality.

Many readers (and some nominators) think DYK is just a collection of curious factoids. We could change DYK to be just that. Forget the "new" criterion, replace it with "B Class", or something like that, and concentrate on debating and deciding on the interest level of the factoids. "...that the Higgins wood-boring beetle is most active in the summer?" "...that Jamie Higgins was booted out of three reality shows before he turned 16?" "...that S.S. Higgins was the first copper-hulled trawler to be sunk by U boats in the North Sea?"

But before we fix it, is it broke? Do we have any statistics on reader feedback? Maybe they like seeing random articles in their embryonic state. Maybe it does encourage new editors. Maybe the occasional poor quality article serves as a useful reminder that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Just use some common sense. Whenever you see articles about local politicians or controversial topics quickly hatched, it's safe to assume they aren't NPOV unless they've been reviewed by a substantive number of editors. Wikipedia is used for WP:ACTIVISM more often than not these days in certain areas (and perhaps that was always the case, but I wasn't around). Pay a visit to WP:AE if in doubt. FuFoFuEd (talk) 05:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Good question about reader feedback. I find the stars at the bottom (article feedback) rather questionable if not downright worthless. Anger management, this version, was rated as 5 five stars across the board by about 8 editors at one point. I'm not sure what triggered the flood of reviews thereafter (I discussed it with one of the editors that seem very involved in the feedback project), but the current stars don't reflect the current article either, because I deleted most of it and added one sourced paragraph. FuFoFuEd (talk) 05:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

So I see a DYK article on Mayor Smith describing his birth, education, business and political career and his views on jobs, the environment, immigration, taxation and so on. All the content is sourced from reputable newspapers and magazines, and seems to be accurate and neutral. In fact, the sources have been carefully selected and it is a vicious and one-sided attack. I would never spot that. It could take a few weeks before anyone who did know about the subject spotted it. If we put recent articles into DYK, that is a risk we run. I find the risk acceptable, although sometimes it could be embarrassing. A formal review checklist will not avoid the problem.

On feedback, I was not so much thinking of article scores as of a general reader survey asking about what they like and do not like, what they expect, what they want improved and so on. If most readers enjoy DYK and have no problems with it, don't fix it. If a fair number of readers do have problems with DYK, then it needs fixing. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:46, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Re: "DYK is dying": I don't know if the feature is dying or not, but I do know this: the new procedure for reviewing somebody else's nomination is so incredibly complex and daunting that it is definitely going to discourage nominations. I just spent 15 or 20 minutes trying to figure it out and then said, "Forget it - I just won't submit the nomination I was planning to submit; it's not worth all this effort." I'm not a newbie; I have 8000 or so edits, and I have had a dozen DYKs accepted, including some where I had to review somebody else's nomination under the old rules. That was do-able. But I'm not a DYK specialist, and requiring people like me to try to navigate this complex new system is a bad idea. Either we will do a bad or partial job of reviewing, or else we will just say "forget it" - as I did tonight. --MelanieN (talk) 03:47, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Chinese Indonesians (queue 2)

"Being bad luck" and "bringing bad luck" are two separate concepts. According to the article, Prince Diponegoro thought that Chinese Indonesians brought bad luck. Kevin McE (talk) 09:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Rephrased. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 10:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Temple Owls (Queue 3)

Mr Killings has a forename, Dwayne. We do not refer to people simply by a surname on first mention. The suggestion that he "directed" the team is also contestable: he is listed as one of three assistants to the coach, Fran Dunphy. Anyone would think that rules of presentation and statements of fact are being stretched to make a cheap pun based on potential misinterpretation of a name. Still, nothing funnier than death, is there. Kevin McE (talk) 09:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Rephrased. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 10:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Followup at main page errors; why isn't there a template to notify article talk, since this happens so often and the errors are left standing at the DYK template on article talk? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:21, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Now that DYK is halfway there on accountability (a record is kept of noms), has anyone notified all of the participants in this mainpage mess? QPQ reviewing doesn't work, but editors and reviewers are more likely to become better writers and reviewers if they are notified of their misses. Since they are such a frequent issue at DYK, there should be a followup template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Paul Speratus

The double nom for Paul Speratus and Es ist das Heil uns kommen her was not even approved a while ago and is now in queue 6. Please add the title of the hymn as he wrote it, linked and highlighted, and leave the English as a translation (which it isn't, saying "all" unstead of "us") or rather a common version. I explained here but things moved too fast. ALT4: ... that Paul Speratus was in prison, sentenced to death by fire, when he wrote the hymn Es ist das Heil uns kommen her (Salvation now has come for all)? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Trying harder: what's now in the queue is not true and (perhaps worse in WP, smile) not supported by the sources. Paul Speratus wrote Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, Catherine Winkworth wrote Salvation hath come down to us, an unknown poet wrote Salvation now has come for all. Please, admin, change! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:12, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Pinged an admin. Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:52, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Please confirm that the hymn name is in italics. Usually, song titles are not italicized, but are placed between quotation marks, like in the current version. Materialscientist (talk) 07:02, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

On First Lutheran hymnal, now on the Main page, the eights songs are italic, this is one of them. A 1524 influential hymn is not exactly what is called a song today. I think it works both ways but should be consistent. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:11, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Changed. I also couldn't find the guidelines for the hymn title and leave this to others :). Materialscientist (talk) 07:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:37, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit notice is not appearing on newer sections of the suggestions page

The edit notice Template:Editnotices/Page/Template talk:Did you know appeared for a while to people who tried to edit each date-specific section of the suggestions page, but it is not appearing on the more recent pages. (I've only checked August 6, August 7, and August 8.) I think it needs to be there -- otherwise it's too hard for an infrequent contributor to figure out how to create a nomination. I would add it myself, but I don't know how... --Orlady (talk) 16:34, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Good catch, I'm on it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It's going to be a bit harder than I thought; I had to ask something at WP:VP/T#Group edit notices.

I guess this is another unforeseen consequence of #"Daily log" setup. If there's not a way to fix it, it may be best just to go to the old way of logging (having each day on T:TDYK rather than in its own subpage). rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:04, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This page is now ridiculously long

Didn't old conversations used to get archived? In the interest of using this page for "discussing improvements to Wikipedia:Did you know", it should be used for current discussions of improvements. Sharktopus ^talk 22:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

They're archived by a bot after a certain amount of time passes without new comments in a given section. There has been a lot of activity here lately, so all the conversations still left on the page are ones the bot considers "active" (i.e., they've had comments within the past 7 days). The archiving is still happening as usual. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Speaking of "current discussions of improvements", I'm still waiting for feedback at #DYK navbox, #"Daily log" setup, #The review checklist, redux, and #Samples. A week ago everyone had so many opinions about so many things; now that some people are trying to actually make some of those things happen, suddenly no one wants anything to do with it anymore... rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Some old specific threads that are resolved can be archived manually - might do that in a moment. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I made an attempt at that, but there was so much stuff I ran out of time and patience. See Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Separating out reform discussions. If you want to finish up what I started there, please feel free. Also, don't forget the list at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#2011 DYK reform proposals above. Carcharoth (talk) 05:43, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Did I review this correctly?

This is my first time reviewing an article with the new set up. Did I review Template talk:Did you know/Charybdis (IRCd) correctly? Joe Chill (talk) 01:40, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. I wouldn't sweat the review setup too much right now, since the precise format of the review setup is under discussion (see e.g. #Review checklist templates). rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by your edit summary of shameless advertising? I'm not assuming anything bad at the moment. Joe Chill (talk) 01:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

(I just mean trying to get more people to comment on my threads above) rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

DYK in wrong category, 2001 instead of 2011

Earl Best, the Street Doctor, should be in Category:Passed DYK nominations from July 2011, not Category:Passed DYK nominations from July 2001. However, I see I'm not supposed to edit the page. What now? Trilliumz (talk) 03:20, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I just fixed it. Sorry about that; looks like a typo when it was promoted. These errors should be less likely to happen now, because the template now preloads the date (this was one of the first nominations to be posted under the new system, so many of those kinks weren't worked out yet). rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to ban Billy Hathorn from DYK

There is no copyright violations. The challenge on Bill Noel was dropped, and the one on Phil Preis apparently has one paragraph in dispute. I didn't even create the Preis article but added to it. No errors have been shown in any of the articles to my knowledge. Everything is sourced and documented. Plagiarism is passing off the words of others as one's own without any attribution. All is atributed. Billy Hathorn (talk) 23:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

---

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators%27 noticeboard/IncidentArchive714 § Billy Hathorn concerns

It was suggested at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Billy Hathorn concerns that User:Billy Hathorn should be banned from DYK, and I agree. I propose that Billy be indefinitely banned from editing all DYK project pages for reasons documented higher up in this discussion, in the AN/I discussion, and in the many past discussions linked from AN/I. He may request that the ban be reconsidered any time after 3 months, and no more frequently than every three months, upon demonstrating an understanding of WP:N (particularly as relates to biographies), WP:RS, WP:COPYVIO, and WP:PLAGIARISM (including close paraphrasing), and the DYK community will reconsider the issue at that time. cmadler (talk) 20:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

• Makes sense to me. Billy has made some good contributions here (some of his DYKs that I reviewed were OK, or at least I was able to make them OK without enormous effort), but the positive value is now greatly outweighed by the problems created by his poorer-quality contributions. I can imagine one exception to the proposed ban: If another contributor happens to nominate one of Billy's articles for DYK, he should be allowed to participate in the review discussion. --Orlady (talk) 20:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I didn't consider the possibility of another editor nominating Billy's articles. I would go so far as to say that, as part of the DYK ban, his articles should simply be deemed not eligible. cmadler (talk) 12:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed with Cmadler. Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support, perhaps with some of the conditions Orlady suggested at AN/I: Billy be required to create articles in his userspace for others to review first, and submit images to FFU. Daniel Case (talk) 01:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• Comment While I'm sure any discussion here should be limited only to Billy's DYK-related activities (this is not the place to ban him from all unsupervised article creation) it would be beneficial if the discussion were made a top-level item in the talk page's table of contents and moved to the bottom of the page for ease of location by interested editors. I was surprised to find this discussion ticked away so far back on the page, given the forward chronological flow. - Dravecky (talk) 01:38, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Moved section to a top-level item at the bottom of the page, as suggested. cmadler (talk) 12:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Not just as nominator but also as "maker" of an article somebody else nominates. Maybe reconsider in six months, if he can show he's reformed. For now, I don't want to see re-working his work and then giving him credit drain off even one reviewer's time here. Sharktopus ^talk 17:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Since comments here seem to have petered off, and there seems to be support for a DYK ban, I'll turn the question around: is any at DYK opposed to a ban of Billy Hathorn from DYK, both as a nominator and as creater/expander of an article nominated by someone else, open to reconsideration after 3-6 months if Billy demonstrates an understanding of the applicable issues? cmadler (talk) 11:52, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

He's got (at least) three nominations up now (who's watching the store here?), I continue to find sourcing, copyvio or plagiarism issues, his nominations and reviews demonstrate amply the problems with this new templated checklist (not limited to the fact that his nominations aren't identified), and not only should he not be nominating DYKs considering his history of not understanding Wikipedia sourcing policies, he is not qualified IMO to be reviewing them either. How do we check off the list that sources are reliable when text is not cited? How do we determine that expansion/size crit. is met when articles are padded with uncited text? Anyone can check the templated checklist: hopefully DYK will have reviewers checking that list who understand Wikipedia policies. I support a ban from DYK all together: nominating and reviewing, and ANI action should be next if copyvio continues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:01, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• He has three submissions on the nominations page at the moment: Template talk:Did you know/Dan Taylor (rodeo), Template talk:Did you know/Biff Baker, U.S.A., Template talk:Did you know/Chris Roy, Jr., so if he is banned somebody should tell him. Yomangani^talk 10:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the heads up. I have rejected all three and left a note on his talk page. As Sandy says, his three reviews should probably also be re-done, but I will leave it to somebody else to flag that one, as I have a work/travel day to get started on. Sharktopus ^talk 12:00, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Update, I did also flag his 3 reviews as needing to be redone. One review in particular he had marked the "plagiarism/close paraphrasing" checklist item as "NA". Good grief. Sharktopus ^talk 12:24, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
      • He marked one as N/A where I was able to find the source, there were numerous issues including uncited text and text not representing the sources correctly. When sources aren't given, there's nothing wrong with asking the nominator to quote some of the source (although it's not that hard to find them). And I'm curious why there are so many nominations without signatures identifying the nominator. The checklist is still silly-- anyone can check anything, as Hathorn is doing. Scrap the checklist; address the problems: QPQ reviewing doesn't work, accountability is needed, DYK is pushing through too much volume and needs to reduce the number of queues, and experienced reviewers should be reviewing for DYK criterion (is expansion based on reliable sources, are sources accurately represented without copyvio) before crappy stubs gain mainpage exposure. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
• The nominator is separately identified only in cases where the nominator is not already listed as one of the authors. Sharktopus ^talk 12:36, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• On his nom pages I saw no author or editor or anything: what did I miss? By the way, I slightly disagree with your post to Hathorn; DYK has not come under criticism *because* of Hathorn. The problems have long been prevalent and long criticized-- he is only the latest example, the difference being that DYK was more reticent this time in addressing the problems than it has been in the past, and the problems were exacerbated by QPQ reviewing. Hathorn is not the cause-- he's a symptom and byproduct of a broken system. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - I haven't actually seen that much evidence that Billy is a serial plagiarizer, and a "three month ban" sounds too harsh to me for someone who after all is a prolific contributor. My suggestion would be a temporary ban while someone helps explain to him the issues involved. I don't see any reason for a long ban provided he clearly demonstrates that he understands what he is doing wrong and makes a commitment to reform. Wikipedia is not in the business of punishing users for past sins, but if someone has a problem the solution is to educate them to do things properly, only if they prove incapable of learning should we be talking about extended bans. Gatoclass (talk) 13:14, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• I haven't actually seen that much evidence that Billy is a serial plagiarizer, ... Nothing short of amazing-- is it that you haven't looked, or you don't think cut-and-paste is copyvio? And what steps has DYK taken to do said education? And what is your take on the years-long efforts to rehabilitate and educate this user? You did read the ANI links, no, and review his talk page ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:36, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say there wasn't any evidence, I said I hadn't seen much - no evidence, at least, that he's been doing this for a long period - although the probability is that he has. I didn't read the AN/I threads, and there is no evidence presented on Billy's talkpage - just a few assertions. Certainly I accept that he's been caught engaging in close paraphrasing in a number of recent articles, but when I looked at his CCI, very few of his contributions had actually been checked. Regardless, that is not the issue. The issue is what to do to ensure he does not continue to close paraphrase or engage in copyright infringement. Billy is one of Wikipedia's most prolific contributors, I don't want to drive him away with draconian sanctions, I want him to keep contributing, but in a way that conforms fully with policy. Gatoclass (talk) 14:03, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, you chose your words carefully! It seems like you are burying your head in the sand... so is it that you chose not to look so as not to find? I'm not sure there's much we can do to help him wise up. We're all adults here, and if he still doesn't 'get it' after a 3 month DYK ban, that ban can be extended and widened. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:23, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

So you don't want to drive away a serial plagiarizer and routine violator of copyright just because he does so prolifically? Why not ban him until he cleans up the mess he made? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.253.133.40 (talk) 21:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Dear anonymous, step up and sign up or shut up. Dear Gato, you are a great collaborator and a compassionate human being. I happen to disagree with you on the topic of Billy Hathorn. My wish is not to "punish" Hathorn or drive him away. My concern is for our finite resources here at DYK of reviewer time and energy. I haven't seen any signal from Hathorn that he appreciates how much extra effort has been spent here reviewing his articles, and rewriting great chunks of them. DYK reviewers spent the time, Hathorn got the credit, and DYK got the incoming torpedos. DYK needs reviewers' time. If somebody wants to spend time mentoring Hathorn, god bless that somebody. He has not responded to many requests in the past to stop copy/paste creations. Maybe an interruption in DYK credits will be the signal he needs to get serious. Sharktopus ^talk 01:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

An interruption to his DYK credits - fine. A three month-to-indefinite ban - not.

I appreciate the fact that Billy has shown little interest in cleaning up his act in the past - however, I think it's also the case that there has been little in the way of a sustained attempt to get him to do so. A ban on his articles at DYK should be a useful way of getting his attention and impressing on him the importance of this issue. But a long pre-emptive ban, which is essentially punishment for past transgressions, would be neither helpful nor appropriate in my view. He should be given a chance to rectify his approach first, if he proves unwilling or incapable of doing so, that's the time we should be talking about extended bans. Gatoclass (talk) 03:23, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

If temporarily banned, it shouldn't be lifted until those hundreds of articles are checked and cleaned. CCI is a copyright area that in particular has an enormous back-log.--NortyNort (Holla) 04:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

There's a thought: ban to be reconsidered not after three months or six months, but at the conclusion of the CCI? cmadler (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

How many other users are banned from contributing to Wikipedia until their CCI's are complete? It doesn't seem to be the prevailing practice, so I don't see why Billy should be singled out for sanctions. Gatoclass (talk) 04:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support I've already said so earlier. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:23, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - does anyone know if Billy Hathorn plans to respond here? I've been holding off until I see some sort of response from him, but I've seen nothing so far. That doesn't impress me. If someone is a prolific contributor, they need to make sure they aren't making work for others, and if they are, that they respond to those concerns to either rebut them or acknowledge them, and that if they accept that the concerns are valid, that they then make changes and improve as an editor over time. I've looked at his contributions to article talk pages, and there are very little. Does he always discuss article concerns when they are raised? He has only ever made nine edits to the Wikipedia talk namespace. Over 5 years, a massive 94.62% of his edits (95064) are to article space, with around 8000 in other namespaces. What seems to be needed here is less editing and more discussion of areas where people have raised concerns. Carcharoth (talk) 09:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. One of the problems with Billy is that he's difficult to engage. He tends to respond only minimally if at all to concerns of other users, he's totally focussed on content creation. That's why I said that something needs to be done to get his attention, such as suspending his right to submit DYKs until he does respond appropriately. Gatoclass (talk) 10:22, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Consideration should also be given to removing his name from the showcase Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs as it would appear many of the articles have copy vio problems. Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:54, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Ummmm, don't look now, but if you removed all of the copyvio DYKers from that list, DYK might be known as Plagiarism Central. Oh, I forgot ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC) PS, Gato, oh, you didn't bother to look, but you see no evidence of long-term plagiarism. Do you see anything wrong with your logic? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Have you asked those editors you think are copyvio DYKers to address the problems you saw in the articles they submitted and the problems in the way they write and edit? If not, then they have no way of knowing that you have these concerns. I realise that your concerns are that DYK as a system is enabling this sort of editing, but surely you can see that without specifics it is difficult to assess such claims as the ones you are making. It would help greatly if for each example of a "copyvio DYKer" you have a diff where someone pointed this out to them and also a diff where it was pointed out to the DYK editors. This would be far more helpful than generalised hand waving. Carcharoth (talk) 12:30, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't support removing anybody's past DYK trophies. This thread is about banning Hathorn from DYK with the purpose of motivating him to change and saving DYK reviewers from wasting time until he does. Please let's keep this thread on-topic so it can converge. Discuss other matters in a different thread. Sharktopus ^talk 13:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

@Sandy - my previous comment was inaccurate, in fact I did read the AN/I thread, but since you've chosen to make an issue out of it, I've gone back through all the threads presented to ensure I didn't miss any, and my opinion is still the same - quite a few assertions but not much concrete evidence. Once again however, I have to wonder why it is you want to focus on a couple of casual comments I made rather than on the issue at hand, which is what to do about Billy.

Since I'm still not sure of the extent of the problem, I'm reluctant to go with draconian solutions that may have the effect of driving a prolific contributor from the project. We need to tread carefully here. Billy may just need some firmer guidance than he has received in the past, the acrimony generated on this page over the last couple of weeks has already driven a number of valued contributors away, I don't want to see yet more collateral damage. Gatoclass (talk) 13:17, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

@Gato: Yes, he may well be a 14-year-old kid who loves creating articles, whether for the DYK brownies or for its own sake. He probably reads about a topic elsewhere and then searches to see if there's already an article, and sets about copying it into WP only making small adjustments. He's been active on WP for five years, so by that first assumption he would have been about 9 at the time. He doesn't engage on talk pages, including his own, and I don't know if anyone has attempted to email him. As you seem to be all too willing to continue assuming good faith in light of the revelations, perhaps this is an additional avenue for you to pursue? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

As I understand it, he's not a "14 year old kid", he's an academic, so he surely has the capacity to contribute appropriately if he puts his mind to it. Gatoclass (talk) 02:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Then why does he not understand the idea of copyright? Malleus Fatuorum 03:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Why ask me? I can't read his mind. But I don't think it's important to know why he does something - what matters with regard to this project is that he conforms to our standards and policies, and not to some other notion of what is or is not acceptable. Gatoclass (talk) 04:32, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Quite. And he clearly doesn't, so let's get rid. Malleus Fatuorum 04:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

If it's true that he's an academic, then there really is no excuse. By not communicating and continuing to contribute copyright violations after repeated warning, he is not demonstrating any modicum of emotional maturity compatible with this project. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record, WP:Close paraphrasing is not even a guideline, it's only an essay. Does Billy even know it exists? Has anyone pointed it out to him? Should we be slapping bans on somebody who has apparently only breached the recommendations of an essay? Perhaps the situation isn't quite so black and white as you think. Gatoclass (talk) 04:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes Billy has been informed of the existence of the essay, and has been provided with a link to it and to other relevant pages. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

That diff is from only two weeks ago, and it's clear he is yet to be persuaded he's done anything wrong. I already acknowledged that Billy is harder to engage than most, but he has demonstrated an ability to modify his approach in the past, so there is reason to believe he can do so again, provided of course that the problems are pointed out courteously. Gatoclass (talk) 05:47, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support ban. Take a strong line on this. Tony (talk) 12:12, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support Having had cause to interact with him in the past, I have to think that the proposal below is more than likely going to wind up an informal indefinite ban, as Billy simply dosen't communicate very well. That aside, I don't want him anywhere near an edit button of any type in at any page until we can be sure he's no longer a walking copyright problem. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal by Demiurge for a temporary ban

This discussion seems absurdly disjointed. On the one hand, we've got people who agree that Billy shouldn't contribute any more articles to DYK until he is prepared to discuss the problems properly; but don't want an "indefinite ban" or even a lengthy one. On the other hand, we've got people who advocate a lengthy or indefinite ban because Billy won't discuss the problems properly. So, rather than make this contentious decision now (three months, six months, indefinite, indefinite+20days, whatever)... why not simply agree that no more nominations of Billy's articles will be accepted until he is prepared to discuss the problems properly? Call it "indefinite" (until conditions are met), call it a temporary injunction, call it what you want, but basically everyone here is already agreed that it needs doing. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:47, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• I support Demiurge's proposal--which is a de facto temporary ban, of course. Drmies (talk) 04:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support Demiurge's modification/clarification of the initial proposal to ban Hathorn's articles. I think we had near unanimous support for the previous unspecified ban proposal. What I understand this to be saying is that the question of undoing the ban can be proposed here by anybody at any time to see if consensus has changed, which will presumably happen after some acceptable demonstration by Hathorn that future articles will be informed by Wikipedia policies regarding CP/CV. Sharktopus ^talk 05:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support. I've rejected his three nominations already. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support. as potentially being more constructive in arriving at a satisfactory outcome for all concerned. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
• Clarification Needed Is the ban contingent on him fixing the problems and demonstrating that he's no longer a cause of concern, or just on discussing the problem? Sven Manguard Wha? 07:32, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is proposing that Billy go through all his past contributions to edit them in conformity with WP:PARAPHRASE before he is allowed to nominate here. The proposal is basically that Billy acknowledge he has read and understood PARAPHRASE (and other relevant pages) and that he agrees to ensure that future noms of his will conform to it. If it turns out he isn't doing that, his DYK privileges can be suspended again until he shows sufficient evidence of having "got it". Gatoclass (talk) 08:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support - Gatoclass (talk) 08:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
• Support - good enough for me. cmadler (talk) 10:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Ban of indefinite duration enacted. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 18:22, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

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.

Renewed general discussion of Hathorn issues

Mystified why Gatoclass continues to focus only on the copyvio aspect of Hathorn's DYKs, when the other aspects are just as problematic (failure to use reliable sources after five years of editing? padding of articles with irrelevant text? is that to meet the DYK size crit?). I don't know why he's still allowed to edit at all, particularly since he won't discuss and the cleanup effort will be massive (and will never be done). The DYK aspect is that DYK enabled this to occur and never even noticed it, but the real ban should be beyone DYK IMO. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:16, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that there should be a ban beyond just DYK, but we can't do that here. I requested the CCI, which is now open, and I attempted to get a broader ban at AN/I, but the section keeps getting archived there. cmadler (talk) 14:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe that consensus is already quite clear that people support Demiurge's proposal, above, but if others want to continue to engage with that proposal, could they add !votes to the section above? Sharktopus ^talk 15:16, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Are we going to start penalizing editors because they occasionally add content that someone thinks irrelevant? As for use of iffy sources, outside the hallowed halls of FAC, there's rather a lot of it going on. As long as the important info in an article is reliably sourced, it's of little consequence whether an article contains a source or two that doesn't pass muster; certainly it's far from sufficient cause to start talking about banning people. Gatoclass (talk) 15:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I've de-archived the Billy Hathorn thread at AN/I. Since he's now indefinitely banned from DYK, there's nothing more we can do here except make sure the issue doesn't die there. cmadler (talk) 19:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

He still has at least one nomination on the board. His name somehow got added to hidden text. Speedy closure of Template talk:Did you know/James M. Flinchum welcome. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I've not yet figured out how to reject/archive nominations under the new template/sub-page system or I'd do it. cmadler (talk) 11:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. Yomangani^talk 12:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Another question has arose

I nominated an article that I started for DYK Ants of Kansas. I was told by someone who is experienced in species articles that it still counts as a list. If it still counts as a list, but has enough content for DYK, is it allowed? Joe Chill (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

The relevant rule is Length: lists are allowed as long as they have 1500 characters of prose.

Yours looks like it does, although some people might think the Ants of Kansas#Kansas ants section looks like a list in prose format. Personally I think it's ok. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I use the handy dandy page size tool - 1,533 characters. If someone says that the Kansas ants section is a list in prose, I will try to ease their concern. Joe Chill (talk) 19:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Are species articles not very popular on DYK?

I'm asking because I have noticed that species articles on DYK seem to not get very many views while on the main page for DYK. My question is - what type of interesting hooks do you think that I can use for species articles that can grab an average reader's attention? I thought that the hooks on articles I worked on and nominated for DYK were really interesting especially in 2010 with ".. that when in danger of predation, the harvestman Leiobunum rotundum can self-amputate its legs, but they will not regenerate?" and "... that the beetle Dermestes maculatus attacks and eats live turkeys?". A spider that self amputates its legs to escape predators even though they will be gone for good! A beetle that eats LIVE turkeys! Pretty cool in my opinion, but their views while on DYK weren't impressive. Joe Chill (talk) 01:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Getting a lot of hits is very enjoyable, but creating a good article that improves Wikipedia is really what DYK is supposed to promote. Those hooks you mention would certainly have motivated me to click on them! I've had numbers of hits that pleased me on biology hooks, not just for penis-fencing flatworms and zombie ladybirds but recently for Timema stick insect species that haven't had sex for a million years. Yet there have been articles I was proud of creating that got incredibly low numbers of hits. The score measures something, but it doesn't measure everything. Sharktopus ^talk 02:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I am proud of my DYK articles no matter how small or big they are. I am also proud of my stub articles because I know that I accomplished creating an article that is notable and didn't already exist on such a huge encyclopedia. I guess you're right that a lot of hits is just an extra bonus. Joe Chill (talk) 02:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Surely DYK's remit is new articles, not good articles? Malleus Fatuorum 02:51, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I think he meant good as in well-written, not GA, though I'm never sure what people mean when they say 'good' (I suspect you meant good, not GA and would have said GA if you had meant that). I sometimes wish GA had a different name. But while some newly created articles are no more than stubs that just meet the criteria, some people do try and produce really nice, long, comprehensive and well-written articles straight off. I found Oscar Clayton a delight to read. The other thing is that if you expand a stub fivefold, that tends to produce a better article than what was there before (well, hopefully). I've always thought that expanding existing articles should be encouraged more, as long as that is done correctly of course (see what Sandy wrote elsewhere about padding that sometimes happens). And people should be encouraged to take good DYK articles further, and those that create stubby article and then don't do anything more with them after DYK should be encouraged to work on them more and discouraged from building up too much of a backlog of stubs that they are leaving to others to expand, though giving others some time (e.g. a year) to pick up a stub and run with it is reasonable. After that time, though, the initial creator really needs to bite the bullet and go back and work on it. I have a back-catalogue (if you like) of stubs, and I'm slowly starting to work through them, trying to improve them. I suspect nearly every editor here has stubs in their early history that they created and never went back to (click the 'articles created' link on anyone's contribs to see what I mean). It's how most people start off with article creation here on Wikipedia. Carcharoth (talk) 09:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it's natural that biology articles, some history articles, articles about churches, and even some political articles, will draw less clicks. On the other hand, as has been said, the clickthrough numbers aren't a total measure of the value of a hook or article. If the main page was filled solely with articles related to royalty or celebrity marriages, recent sports events and favourite flavours of political controversy, then I might well have wandered off in disgust long ago, and maybe a few others would take the same view. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

To answer Joe Chill's question, bioology articles often get low hist everywhere - look at the TFA statistics. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

If you are only interested in the hits, anything related to sexuality will draw clicks. For Batara Kala, for example, we used one of his origin myths (conceived by a fish swallowing Shiva's sperm) and received nearly 11,000 hits. However, you would probably want to vary it a bit. Unique quotes, like calling someone a "damn fool", seem to work well too. Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:25, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Pictures usually help a lot. Interesting ones. I tend to find myself only creating and nominating articles for DYK these days if and only if I find a picture of them somewhere. Though in general, I find that having a picture encourages me to expand an article more, whether it's intended for DYK or not. Then there's the time factor, DYK's coinciding with the best times on the western hemisphere will usually get more hits.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 06:40, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I've actually looked over the top 30 or 40 most viewed while at DYK articles once and wrote about it somewhere else. Surprisingly it's not sports, celebs (not many of those anyway) or sex that sells views. It's "war and morbidity", followed by "cute animals doing cute thins" followed by "food". Sex actually doesn't do all that well - probably because there's a buttload of competition out there on the internets.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Insects aren't cute - too bad. Joe Chill (talk) 11:49, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

...so *some* species articles - of interesting, gross, or cute animals - do indeed get lots of hits.Volunteer Marek (talk) 06:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Another thing that sells is stuff from other cultures, if it is not the same as what is common in western cultures. Cat rice had lots of hits, mainly because the name is ambiguous (it would probably be read as "rice made from a cat", even though it really means "rice that is portioned for a cat"). Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The full binomial names certainly don't add click-appeal Jebus989^✰ 13:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Building preps

Hi everyone. I was wondering if somebody could help with the building of preps. I have done a few recently, but some approved hooks I've had to skip because I reviewed them or because they were my nominations. I will do some more reviewing, but I'd appreciate if someone other than myself built one or two preps (including the ones I am not allowed to pass) Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a go at lunchtime (4 hours), unless I can't get back online; it will be a good opportunity to learn the new process. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 07:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Hassocks. I have to go to bed now, but there seems to be about a queue's worth of approved hooks in the older articles. Any help would be appreciated. Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:07, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I filled up Prep 3, but am about to lose internet myself. More help still needed! and many thanks to Crisco for stepping up. Sharktopus ^talk 17:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Now I've got the new method figured out (not too difficult, really), I hope to go back to doing this more regularly. Sadly my browser was crash-prone today! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 23:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to both Sharktopus and Hassocks. I have done quite a bit more reviewing today, so hopefully we won't have to deal with the queues running out. Help with preps is still appreciated, naturally. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:31, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Slalom (Queue 2)

"The first" means the first: "the very first" is redundant hype. Kevin McE (talk) 08:10, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Changed to first, thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 08:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Medal of Honor DYK 8/10

"... that US Army Master Sergeant Ernest R. Kouma won the Medal of Honor (pictured) in the Korean War for singlehandedly killing approximately 250 North Korean troops?" One does not "win" the MOH. You receive it. It's neither a contest nor a competition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.163.255.1 (talk • contribs) 14:38, 10 August 2011 UTC (UTC)

Copied to WP:ERRORS. —Bruce1ee^talk 14:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Wha'?! Wait! Everything is a contest in Wikipedia. You win DYKs that you can strut, that's fo sho. FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, despite being cited from the official army records, the body count is one of the least reliable aspects of this encounter. Kouma's tank was fighting a delaying action and was forced to withdraw after the fight with the entire US position abandoned. The body count for actions like this in the Korean war is historically very unreliable, with an order of magnitude differences between the body counts in the same action by the opponents' official histories. [5] [6] [7] Some secondary sources do not mention the body count in this action: [8]. FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Prep 3 issue

Sorry to raise this here, but I appear to have had no choice, because the hook was promoted almost instantly after the first review, giving me no chance to comment. The current hook for an article I wrote and nominated, referring to a Willamette River railroad bridge, or Did you know/Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 5.1, is inaccurate or at least misleading. (It was shortened from all of my suggestions, all under 200.) Portland, Oregon has eleven "Willamette River bridges" and three alone are railroad bridges. The hook needs to include "of BNSF Railway" or "of BNSF", because without that the name given in the current hook is an incorrect name. See my comments at nom (made 12 days ago) for more. The newly created hook is 170 characters, so I see no good reason for leaving out "of BNSF Railway", which would make it 190 (or 182 without Railway). I know the current shortage in the queue is rushing things, but I checked the nom just 6 hours ago and it had yet to receive its first review; now, it's already in Prep with a significantly changed hook! (Note: I'll only be online for about the next 20 minutes, if any questions arise). Thanks to anyone who takes this up. SJ Morg (talk) 20:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Anybody can edit a hook in prep but since you are distressed and about to go offline, I have removed your hook from Prep 3 and will replace it onto the nominations page for more discussion. Sharktopus ^talk 20:09, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. SJ Morg (talk) 20:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced it on the noms page (or at least I tried to; putting a hook back was so much easier in the old days) and suggested a new alt hook that I think will address the issue. --Orlady (talk) 20:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Awaiting an OK from the author. I will happily move it to Prep (but not Prep 3, which I just refilled) once that happens. Thanks so much, Orlady, for your helpful intervention. Sharktopus ^talk 20:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll on signatures in the review template

Discussion at #Review checklist templates (and related discussion at #The review checklist, redux) seems to have come to a halt without any firm conclusions. As best as I can tell, editors are divided about whether signatures are necessary in the review checklist or not. To speed things up, I'd like to just do a quick poll to see what people think about this issue; for examples of what I'm talking about, see #Samples above. If you have an opinion, please sign your name in the Support or Oppose section, or leave a comment.

Also, please note that this poll is only to get feedback about the matter of whether signatures should be included. If you have other issues with it (for instance, with the specific items that are included in the template, or with the names of those items), those issues can be addressed after this.

Thank you, rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Summary of advantages and disadvantages

• A checklist with both ticks/crosses and signatures makes for more transparency, as users can see who has checked the individual fields. Disadvantages are that the checklist is more cluttered and difficult to read at a glance, and that the list requires the individual fields to be filled out with {{DYKyes}} or {{DYKno}}) instead of a simple "y" or "n".

• Regarding the checklist with only ticks and crosses, its state will be much easier for reviewers who are looking for uncompleted checklists to assess quickly, and this checklist will require only a "y" or "no" in each field to complete it instead of {{DYKyes}} or {{DYKno}}). The disadvantage is that it won't be apparent who is responsible for filling in the checklist fields unless the reviewers leave notes or else the history is checked.

Support checklist with ticks/crosses and signatures

1. At minimum one signature, for accountability. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   With respect, I don't think that's a !vote in favour of signatures in the checklist. I think it's a given that reviewers will be signing off on their reviews below the checklist, but that's not what this poll is about. Gatoclass (talk) 05:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   I will give a little clarification. If one does the entire review on one's own, a signature at the bottom would be enough. If one does only a portion of the review, one should note that somewhere (either by signing what was reviewed or noting at the bottom). Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   Ok, thanks or the clarification. I think that sounds most like what I had in mind with version 3. Anyway we'll see what others think about it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

2. As per Crisco 1492; items should be signed when the review is partial, but one signature is sufficient when the review covers all aspects. cmadler (talk) 10:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
3. I support, under the conditions stipulated by Crisco and cmadler. SJ Morg (talk) 11:38, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
4. Agree with Crisco and cmadler, good idea. Sharktopus ^talk 12:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   I hate to say this, but what you guys are !voting on is not actually one of the options. You can't have both a signatures and doodads checklist and a doodads only checklist, it's a choice between one or the other. A sig of course can always be added below the checklist, but for the checklist itself it must be either one or the other type as it's not possible to have a checklist which can output both types of fields, and only one checklist can be added to the nomination template. Gatoclass (talk) 13:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   No reason not to offer the choice of either. If an editor does the whole review, they can use the doodads-only checklist and then sign the review. If an editor does only part of the review, they can use the signatures-and-doodads checklist and sign the appropriate parts. cmadler (talk) 14:46, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   Well if somebody wants to use the no-sig checklist for their own reviews, there is nothing to stop them doing that at any time, although I doubt many people will bother. The point of this poll is to determine which checklist should be added to the nomination template as the standard checklist. Gatoclass (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

   It is technically possible to have two different templates people could choose between, although I think that would make things unnecessarily complicated (we have people asking why DYK has both preps and queues, I bet we'd also get people asking why there are so many different versions of the checklist). It's also possible for the template to be somewhat flexible in that it could not by itself output doodads but people could just directly type in, e.g., "{{subst:DYKtick}} ~~~" or just "{{subst:DYKtick}}". Although, like I said above, these votes actually sound to me similar to the idea I had with version 3 (doodads only), in that people can sign off below the template. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Support checklist with ticks and crosses only

Comments

With or without signature, checklist doesn't work

I can't find the blooming subpage, so I'll replay the entire DYK section here. Multiple people looked at this; the hook appears to have been written by someone for whom English is not a native language. The checklist doesn't work; accountability from a real person before something goes on the mainpage is still missing (I've been too busy for days to check for copyvios, but I doubt that they're not still there, considering one only has to look at the most recent reviews to find issues still). PS: AGF on foreign language sources, when translations are frequently plagiarized? For goodness sakes ... we're talking about Wikipedia's mainpage. Is there no burden on the nominator to prove the text is mainpage worthy? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

What the heck is this about? This poll is not about Tony's checklist, it's about two alternatives proposed by Rjanag. Please don't confuse the issue by dragging Tony's checklist into the discussion, we can debate that after we've settled on the best version of Rjanag's. Gatoclass (talk) 14:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Moreover, please note that the discussion that Sandy is upset about is still on the nominations page. The discussion has not been concluded. Nothing has happened. --Orlady (talk) 15:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Sandy, several points for you. They're going to be a bit snippy but I can't say it isn't about time:

1. That nomination doesn't have a subpage because it was posted before the subpage system was started. I think this is the fourth time I've had to explain this simple concept to you, and I think already told you last time that I didn't want to explain it to you again.
2. Like Gatoclass asked above, what is your complaint even referring to? Are you trying to say the hook needs editing? Use your words. We can't tear apart DYK and remake it in the wonderful image that you want if you can't even be bothered to explain what you want.
3. No offense, but you're a broken record. You've already told me over and over that you think the checklist is a waste of time, but unfortunately right now many people here want one. But hey, if you don't want it, you are welcome to get SHOUTED at by this guy who wants to block anyone who doesn't like the checklist. Personally I don't care either way, I'm just trying to make a better one for them if they decide to use it. See, unlike you, I actually care about trying to do something constructive here, rather than just dropping by every day to tell us all how hopeless we are.
4. I already said above that I opened this poll for feedback on a specific issue and that issue was not which things should be included in a review or how a review can be conducted; those issues can be discussed later or elsewhere. If you can't be bothered to read the text of a conversation you're jumping into and you can't be bothered to make even the most basic attempt to understand simple concepts that have been explained to you over and over again (see point 1 above) I don't understand where you find all the time to tell everyone how much they suck and I don't understand why you keep dropping by here.

To everyone else: sorry for the snippiness, but I hope you can understand I am fed up with this. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Irrelevant to this discussion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Vojihna ... that the military commander Vojihna, after successful conquests, was one of the first of Serbian nobility that received the court title caesar by Serbian Empire Dušan the Mighty (r. 1331-1355)? Created by Zoupan (talk). Self nom at 17:37, 23 July 2011 (UTC) Please add a comment and signature (or just a signature if endorsing) after each aspect you have reviewed: Hook Length, format, content rules: 246 ch. ALT1 is down to 228. Needs further trimming. Source: Doesn't seem to be anywhere in here. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Interest: On the low side. I suppose it can pass, but trimming it might give ideas on how to make it punchier. Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) Image suitability: None. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) ALT hooks, if proposed: ... that after his military conquests, commander Vojihna was one of the first of Serbian nobility to receive the court title caesar from Serbian Empire Dušan the Mighty (1331–55)?Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) ALT2: ... that Vojihna was one of the first of Serbian nobles to receive the court title caesar from Serbian Empire Dušan the Mighty? Article Length: Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) Vintage: Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Sourcing (V, RS, BLP): Ref tag for "In 1359, Helena abdicated and took monastic vows, under the name Elisabeth."?Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) This should probably use the cite family of templates. Also, don't cite every single sentence. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Neutrality: Looks OK. Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) Plagiarism/close paraphrasing: AGF on foreign language sources. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Copyvio: Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Obvious faults in prose, structure, formatting: I ran the dash script; you're encouraged to use it. Suggestion: images 240px (at least the map, which could be 260px, frankly). Could you fix "that" ("who") in the opening sentence, please? Could merge stub-paragraph start of "Origin". There are other stub-paras, too: merge now and split later if necessary? Tony (talk) 01:14, 26 July 2011 (UTC) Referencing should be cleaned up. Hook fact needs to be stated directly in the article and cited. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC) Comments/discussion: He was an emperor, not an empire. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.253.153.25 (talk) 12:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Warning: Deliberate Breaching of RfC Consensus

The bulleted checklist that has been included in DYK nominations for some weeks now has the explicit endorsement of the "checklist" RfC. While it is not the only checklist that could be produced in line with the community's overwhelming decision, it follows the wording of the RfC text closely: text that the community has endorsed.

It has come to my attention that User:Rjanang has been unilaterally, without consensus, (1) removing the template from DYK nomination pages, without substituting another template that does justice to the community's insistence on a checklist; (2) fiddling with the original template (created by Carcharoth) by inserting "noinclude" to blank it out in display mode; and (3) revert warring over the past half hour when I attempted to reinstate the checklist. This is despite Rjanang's noinclude admission that the RfC produced "consensus to include a checklist". Rjanang has used several spurious reasons to justify his actions. Among them are "there is no rule that the decision of every RfC needs to be implemented immediately" and "You don't have consensus to force this version of your checklist on everyone, until you actually ask if there is consensus for it." The latter is despite the fact that the checklist comprises what the community decided on, plus a few DYK rules for convenience and thoroughness, and which need to be ticked off explicitly in any case.

The proper course of action for Rjanang would be to hold an RfC to reverse or modify the community's overwhelming decision only three weeks ago that a checklist is required before main-page exposure.

If Rjanang's behaviour persists, I will launch an AN action against him within 36 hours, since he is clearly going against strong community consensus, and in a way that again renders DYK liable to serious breaches of policy. I believe that nominations stripped of the checklist (or any template that satisfies the consensus of the "Checklist" RfC without replacing it with another checklist that also satisfies the community's demand should 'not be moved to a prep room. They are, in effect, rendered illegitimate by his actions.

Another alternative would be to terminate DYK altogether. I'm not averse to that option, even though I've put considerable work into shoring it up against the many editors at WP who are complaining vociferously about it. Tony (talk) 06:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Previous discussion is at Template talk:DYKrev#noincluded. I have nothing to say that I didn't already say there. rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Tony has been informed on numerous occasions that his RFC on the checklist was malformed and a breach of WP:POLL, but he has continued to play WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT over that issue. Moreover, there was never any consensus to use the particular checklist that Tony is using, nor was there a consensus that it be used immediately and without further discussion. My opinion is that the checklist has made T:TDYK quite chaotic and difficult to read, and been a leading factor in driving many of our most longstanding contributors away from the project. I support Rjanag's position that the use of the checklist should be suspended until all the outstanding issues have been resolved and there is clear consensus on the use and format of a checklist, doing otherwise is just going to lead to further chaos. Gatoclass (talk) 06:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • (e.c.) **Gatoclass, you make those assertions without backing them up with facts or references. They are not credible. Go back and examine the RfC, and observe the > 3/4 majority that demanded a checklist. This will go to ANI if there are further reversions, and I am about to warn nominators individually that there nominations are likely to be ineligible for main-page exposure if their nom page does not include a required checklist. Silver seren, until another RfC overturns the first one, the requirement for a checklist remains. Materialscientist, I'll disregard the implied personal attack and assumption of bad faith. If you think proper reviewing, as demanded by the RfC, is unwieldy, we'll need to close down DYK. Tony (talk) 06:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Truly extraordinary Tony, that you think it appropriate to threaten other users here if they don't agree to immediate and unconditional surrender to all your demands. I've been increasingly concerned with your attitude over the last couple of weeks, to the point that I myself have been considering applying to AN/I to have you blocked for disruption. If you are foolish enough to take this matter to AN/I, that's precisely what I will be proposing. Gatoclass (talk) 06:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• I think another RfC about the new DYK template would be useful at this point in time, considering that there have been a number of complaints about it since it was put into use. An RfC on whether editors wish to continue using it would be helpful in determining if it has been successful in its intentions or not. Silverseren^C 06:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I think a new RFC would be premature, since as you can see from the above section we are still in the process of refining an alternative checklist. At the very least we need to have a couple of alternatives to choose from rather than a yes/no !vote for just one. But we can't do even that much until we have settled on what those alternatives will actually look like. Gatoclass (talk) 06:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) Tony, this all does look like a few editors were dropped here with machine guns to shoot the regulars, scare newcomers and either terminate or hijack the project. This all goes back to being friendly and accepting criticism. The checklist is unwieldy. It helps reminding issues to check, but also does clutter the page, and the same old errors are passing through as before. So please take it easy. I might add suggestions to the list a bit later, just one note for now - I suppose "vintage" is a dubious and obscure term, especially for non-native speakers. Something like "nomination date" sounds better to my ear. Materialscientist (talk) 06:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Everybody calm down a bit. There's no need for the section header to be in all caps. It's the tone of threads like this that drives contributors away. (Now back to my bot coding...) Shubinator (talk) 06:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• • I note that the Proper reviewing checklist RfC has been archived and explicitly excluded from the links on this page to RfC reform proposals. That looks like an agenda-driven omission to me. DYK regulars appear to be in denial. That's too bad, I'm sorry: the community determined in no uncertain terms that a checklist must be used. Perhaps you need reminding of the text:

RfC

DYK quality assurance and archiving

Extensive discussion above shows that there are serious quality and policy-compliance problems in the current DYK process, and that many editors are concerned that plagiarism and close paraphrasing, sourcing issues, verification issues, copyvio, and wrong facts are regularly going through under the radar. This RfC is to determine whether there is consensus for two changes to the process as partial steps towards fixing these problems.

The RfC does not cover issues that might need to be resolved if one or both of the current proposals gains consensus. These include whether:

• there should be a directorate;
• nominators (after their fourth successful DYK) should still be required to review another editor's nomination when they nominate a DYK;
• a template should be created to provide for the explicit checking off of the explicit requirements listed in the first proposal, below; and
• the system of pasting in coloured ticks and crosses should be binned or modified.

Implicit in the proposals is the likelihood that the maximum four six-hour shifts per day of five to eight hooks (≥ 32 DYKs) will more often than now be altered by the queuing admins to longer exposures and fewer shifts per day, and be treated as normal practice. This would not be necessary if there is a sudden influx of reviewers and more nominators who can manage the time to respond to the issues they raise. However, please note that the primary consideration of the two proposals is effective quality assurance and compliance with site-wide policies, not reduced flow. ...

RfC proposal: a proper reviewing checklist

Proposal: "No DYK article should receive main-page exposure unless the article has been checked and explicitly passed for:

1. adequate sourcing, including verifiability, reliability of sources and BLP policy;
2. neutral point of view;
3. plagiarism and close paraphrasing;
4. other copyright violations, in files and text; and
5. obvious faults in prose, structure, and formatting."

These checks are in addition to the existing requirements concerning hook length, hook source, article length, and time since article creation/expansion.

_______________

The template that User:Rjanang has taken upon himself to remove (twice in some cases) was designed to precisely do justice to the text that !voters endorsed with a resounding majority. Tony (talk) 06:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the RfC was archived by a bot (who I don't think has an agenda), as all discussions at this page are eventually; it's still visible here. The moving of proposals into Wikipedia:Did you know/2011 reform proposals was handled by User:Carcharoth, who I don't think has any agenda and who left several messages at this page beforehand asking for input about which proposals people thought he should move and which they didn't. If you think he had some agenda, though, you're free to check with him. rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:06, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

As it specifically says there, the RfC was not to be about the inclusion of a checklist template, just that DYK noms should be checked for those things. Thus, there is no consensus for the current arrangement of the template and users are free to change it (or even blank it) if necessary in order for there to be more discussion in order to improve it. As I stated above, there appears to be extensive problems with the current template that are not helping matters or DYK process. Silverseren^C 07:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) OK, granted (I endorsed the proposal too), but it seems to me that that the nub of the dispute is simply whether this particular template is the best way of going about it. I don't see an endorsement above of a particular template and I was a bit surprised to see the one you came up with suddenly appearing on every DYK nom. Tony, nobody's disputing the valuable contributions you've made to this discussion, but I do think it would be helpful to reach agreement on how this checklist should be documented. Let's have that discussion and come up with something that works for everyone. Prioryman (talk) 07:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I see that the points I was about to make have been pre-empted by several other users, in which case I will confine myself to simply endorsing their comments. Gatoclass (talk) 07:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that Silver seren is playing with words. For sure, generally speaking as a project, there is no deadline. However, as events have proven time and again, the inertia for continuing to do things 'the old way' remain strong. It was only a few days ago, in the background of severe bludgeoning from certain quarters about "Plagiarism Central", that Tony was held out to be the extremely constructive and helpful 'saviour'. I note Rjanag, in editing the template as he did, was reacting to some [persistent] complains from the regulars here about the complexity of the procedure.

One might continue arguing about the legitimacy of the disputed template, but there's no shying away from the fact that the community is explicitly wanted each article to be checked for those issues appearing in the checklist. It is the procedure that is the cause of this apparent malaise, not the template itself, which is but a vector. Implementation can't be put off forever. In view of the seriousness of the problems, it ought not to be put off at all because the form isn't exactly right or has everyone's endorsement. With the incessant criticism about the template, the adoption of a 'consensual version' of the checklist which could take the rest of the year... I'm pretty sure it's not the response hoped for by the community. I could be wrong, but my reading was that an urgent fix was necessary. My suggestion: grin and bear the template for now, pending an 'agreed' version that satisfies the concerns addressed at the RfC. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

These "urgent fixes" have already led to the resignation of four of our most longstanding DYK admins, not to mention the other contributors who have left, including at least one quality contributor who has retired altogether. This kind of haphazard approach to change, as users try to force their own vision onto the project without regard to practicality or consensus, is leading the project to disaster. Well perhaps that is the intention, but if so it is not a goal that has the community's endorsement. Nothing is lost by slowing down the process of change and proceeding more carefully; the same cannot be said for the alternative approach. Gatoclass (talk) 07:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Put the blame anywhere except where it belongs. The patient was suffering from an ailment. Previous attempts at self-medication didn't fix it, so it became a chronic and more aggravated condition. The new medicine, it seems, is making the patient worse à la House for now. Look at the self-medication if you want to point fingers. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the example of a Vicodin-addicted felon who always gets it wrong the first few times when not sexually harassing nurses or unprofessionally berating his colleagues while acting outside the law or medical ethics is an apt one. Nobody is disputing that the 'patient' needs 'treatment' but the exact form of the template to be used was not the subject of the faulty RfC. - Dravecky (talk) 09:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Well caught... I did say that the problem lay with the self medication, didn't I? ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Aside from the issue of the RfC being malformed, the RfC merely stated that reviewers must have "checked and explicitly passed" an article on five points. That does not necessarily suggest any template, much less this particular template. Rjanag has been hard at work creating a more compact template that still meets the RfC's requirements. Beyond that, it would be entirely sufficient for a reviewer to type (or copy and paste) "I've checked and explicitly passed this article for sourcing, NPOV, plagiarism and copyvio, and obvious faults in prose." That meets the RfC's requirement, and it takes up a lot less space (and is a lot less difficult) than your (Tony's) massive template. cmadler (talk) 10:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Support for this! (said several times). Also: run a RfC in summer when nobody is active, run several at a time so people don't bother to even look, let alone vote, if you want to push something. Learning, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, there's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, and there are certainly methods that don't involve excruciating pain for the animal. ;-) What's being suggested above isn't so bureaucratic, and is more like the 'I hereby do solemnly swear that I have exercised due care and attention in my review, and so be it' type declaration. One of the key advantages of the "massive template" is that the review using said template doesn't have to be all performed by one person. It allows the job to be split up, and it's transparently and obvious if something hasn't been checked, and equally obvious who claims to have done which part. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Also said before: in that case, a review not completed by one person, a template showing what was reviewed by whom is a good tool. But, to my experience, those are only a few. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Opposed to the new templates and instruction creep

While I understand and even support splitting each nom into a subpage, and the requirement of "submit one, review one", speaking a rather prolific DYK creator (350+) I want to express strong objection to the new complex templates. I saw this monstrosity added and thankfully reverted from a DYK, and I was strongly hoping that the addition was some sort of weird experiment that will not be seen again. DYK reviews are no GA reviews, they are supposed to be quick. I refuse to spend more than one minute on them, and if you introduce this complex template, I will most likely stop bothering with nominations. Please stop pushing so much instruction creep into what was once a relatively simple process; at least not without a better advertised poll among DYK creators, and analyzing some numbers on how the current creep is affecting DYK nominations. Recently, another DYK writer told me that he stopped nominating DYKs because the rules became too complex, and I fear few do-gooders are merrily creeping DYKs out of existence. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 07:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• I also happen to agree that this quid pro quo reviewing wasn't working. I would quite happily say goodbye to it, but the community still saw a value in it. Without QPQ reviewing, you can submit any number of articles without the need to reciprocate; reviews will be done by editors who want to review. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps that isn't a bad thing. Not everyone is competent to review; forcing everyone to do so inevitably means that people who aren't any good at it will end up doing it and making mistakes. Prioryman (talk) 07:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

"DYK reviews are ... supposed to be quick. I refuse to spend more than one minute on them"—In that one statement, Prioryman, I think you've given those who want to close down DYK the greatest propaganda coup they could wish for. Tony (talk) 12:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

You need to read more carefully, Tony. Piotrus said that, not me. Prioryman (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Piotrus asks for a "poll among DYK creators". Herein lies the problem. Template:Nono Presumably there are plenty of non-problematic DYK creators under the easy system. But how do you propose those shortcomings are dealt with if only the opinion of the existing club of "DYK creators" matters? FuFoFuEd (talk) 15:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow, I had only one DYK article that was considered too close to the original sources. I would have fixed it, but guess what - I took a break from Wikipedia. I never told other editors to fix it which one of them that fixed it didn't complain about it till yesterday. Joe Chill (talk) 18:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I have redacted a claim that two specific editors are examples of problematic creators. I think nearly everybody in Wikipedia considers some other Wikipedians to be problematic, but RfCU and ANI are the places where such allegations can be made appropriately, giving the people thus named a chance to defend themselves. Sharktopus ^talk 02:48, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Moving toward consensus on improvements to WP:DYK

I'd like to start by expressing great respect for the contributions of both Tony1 and Rjanag. I hope that the intelligence and generous spirit that has motivated both of you in your efforts to improve Wikipedia and DYK will also guide you toward a satisfactory conclusion of your current disagreement.

Tony1 created a checklist in response to many requests for something like a checklist on this talkpage. As was to be expected, many people had ideas about improving it after Tony had done the work to create it. Rjanag, who had been doing the coding to implement the new page-archiving feature, proposed quite a few different ways of implementing the checklist, with discussions evident here, here, and here.

If I could summarize a hopeful consensus for this thread, it is that the review template should include some checklist for reviewers, but not necessarily the format created by Tony1. For example, there seems to have been consensus in the discussions cited that using a table format, as proposed by Rjanag, saves white space and usefully segregates longer-form comments into a space separate from ticked-off requirements. Instead of waiting until a new-form review checklist has consensus, I propose that Rjanag insert one of his own updated review checklists into the review template. Something not perfect will be better than nothing. Sharktopus ^talk 14:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Good suggestion, there's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Good idea, but I still believe it should be removable; or better yet that the reviewer should have the choice of using a template or not (that would also be the best way to determine which format people like best). There's also more than one way to do a thorough review. Also, see above section, where the idea of abolishing QPQ comes up yet again. If that can be revisited, some of the argument for a template - reminding people of what-all they should check - may become moot. Both the QPQ discussion and the whether to have a template discussion drew limited participation and consensus seems likely to have changed with respect to both issues. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:03, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Re Sharktopus: I do intend to add the review template to {{NewDYKnom}} at some point, but, per Template talk:NewDYKnomination#Review template, I'd prefer not to do so until there is a clear consensus about which template to use. Unlike some other people in the discussions above, I don't want to look like I'm forcing my preferred version of a template on anyone. More seriously, since it's a protected template people wouldn't be able to revert that addition without wheel-warring, which I think makes it even more important to secure clear consensus here before adding it. The whole reason for the silly shouting thread above was someone wanting to force his preferred template on all reviewers without any regard for the community's feedback. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

With respect, even the most carefully pre-vetted checklist will have things people want to change once it comes into use--so giving your in-process checklist a public tryout will bring consensus much sooner. Also, inserting a checklist will short circuit any claims that you are defying previous consensus to have some checklist. As a practical matter, and also in the kindly interest of reducing further dissension, I ask you to insert your own preferred checklist into the current template, with whatever disclaimer you wish regarding its provisional nature. Sharktopus ^talk 22:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I just don't agree that it's appropriate of me to insert my preferred checklist into a template that everyone has to use, when even I haven't yet figured out how people want the checklist to work. I think it would do quite the opposite of reducing quarreling. Given that everyone is already complaining about Tony forcing his checklist on everyone, I don't see how myself doing it is any different.

As for "short-circuiting claims that I am defying previous consensus", I hope I made it clear through my lack of participation in most of the discussion above that I am not concerned about those claims anyway. It seems pretty obvious to me that no one other than Tony has a problem with what I did. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:55, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Hilarious crediting

I find it amusing that User:mbz1 was credited for Mein Kampf in the Arabic language when the version she wrote [9] bears little resemblance with the version approved [10] (and even that still had some issues). FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Standard procedure is to give credits to the editor who nominated the article and/or any editors who played a major role in creating/expanding it (what qualifies as "major" is basically up to the nominator, who is usually the one who chooses whom to credit). The major exception to this is in the cases of articles that were cut-and-paste copyvio when created, then cleaned up by someone else; AFAIK in those cases credit doesn't go to the creator. rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:09, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Then that's one more thing that's broken in your standard procedure. If someone writes an article that says "Creationism is the truth", and then someone changes it to "Creationism is not the truth", the first person deserves all the credit according to your standard procedure. FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I've long held that nominations with substantial POV issues should be summarily rejected, we should not reward users who attempt to misuse DYK to push a political platform, and its an imposition on everyone who feels obliged to try and fix these articles before they appear on the main page. Gatoclass (talk) 07:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec, re FuFoFuEd) Well, obviously, people use common sense.

Anyway, I'm not sure what your intended purpose was in opening to this discussion, except (I think) to complain that someone got a DYK bauble (ohmygod, they're, like, such a big deal) for having written a version of an article you didn't like? rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

More like rejected by consensus at WP:RS/N. [11]. FuFoFuEd (talk) 07:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Not wishing to be a very slow broken record, but replace the word "credit" with "notification" and the problem goes away. Yomangani^talk 09:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

New subcategory of mid-level admin needed?

With all the problems finding admins to curate DYK queues and other Main Page elements, I wonder if it might be time to propose a new subcategory of mid-level admins so that we can get more people working on maintenance. I don't know how fine-grained the permissions are on admin rights, but I would have thought that it would be possible for the developers to create an intermediate level of user between ordinary editor and full admin. It would be useful to be able to give trusted individuals the ability to edit through protection and to protect/unprotect pages and images, but not the other admin rights such as being able to block users, delete edits etc, so that they can carry out the purely janitorial role of Main Page maintenance. You could perhaps formally call them "janitors" or "maintainers" to distinguish them from the fully empowered admins. Because their rights would be limited and they would be required to operate only in certain areas, they should not need to go through the bureaucratic monstrosity that is RFA. What do the rest of you think? Prioryman (talk) 08:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not currently possible on en-wiki and not going to be enabled anytime soon. See WP:PERENNIAL#Hierarchical structures and WP:Limited administrators. rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

People who show themselves to be sensible and trustworthy, and need the tools, should be ok to get through the RfA hoop. I am happy to consider discussing and possibly nominating people I feel have a good chance at passing. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem is with the "sensible" part - why would anyone who's actually sensible want to go through the "RfA hoop" (wide as a needle's eye, flaming hot fire, suspended over a pool of caymans, with caltrops and salt dust spread out on the other side)?Volunteer Marek (talk) 03:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Can I please have my nomination withdrawn?

I have been asking for Template talk:Did you know/Ants of Kansas to be closed, but someone just has to keep on replying to me. I guess it was a mistake to say how much I am not pleased with DYK (not related to the DYK nomination) on the nomination page because apparently that means that my main interest on Wikipedia is complaining despite my other contributions. Joe Chill (talk) 15:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I've closed it (though it is still waiting for an assessment from Wikiproject Complaining) Yomangani^talk 15:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Wat Tyler Cluverius, Jr. (Queue 5)

"that before his death in 1952, Wat Tyler Cluverius, Jr. was the last surviving officer of the sinking of the USS Maine?" That strikes me as an excrutiating truism: can the underlined words, which add nothing to the meaning, be deleted, or at least reconfigured: "that Wat Tyler Cluverius, Jr., who died in 1952, was the last surviving officer of the sinking of the USS Maine?" Kevin McE (talk) 16:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed! I fixed it just now -- belatedly, since it went to the main page a couple of hours earlier. Thanks. --Orlady (talk) 19:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Sexism

Is it too much to ask that we not include blatantly sexist statements in DYK like "Did you know that Flat Horse dance may represent male virility or female irrationality?" Lest we forget, DYK already has a long history of misogyny thanks to the reign of King Bedford.[12] Perhaps we could be a bit more thoughtful in the future. Kaldari (talk) 17:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It did not occur to me that this hook would be read as DYK's endorsing "female irrationality." But then I just got yelled at yesterday for a hook that mentioned "the ten plagues of Egypt" without mentioning disputes about the Book of Exodus. Bear in mind that a hook about the ballet Swan Lake might say it represents magical swans; few people would interpret that to mean that DYK claims magical swans exist. But your interpretation is also a possible one. Could you suggest an alternate hook that you would like better? Sharktopus ^talk 18:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Think of it this way: If the hook had said "Did you know that Hoohaa dance may represent white virility or black irrationality?" do you think it would have made it to the main page? There are plenty of other interesting hooks that could have been made from that article. At the very least, we could have changed it to "Flat Horse dance has been said to represent male virility or female irrationality". Kaldari (talk) 18:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Edited on main page. Kaldari could have fixed the problem by editing it there, too. (Wink) --Orlady (talk) 19:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Orlady! Kaldari (talk) 19:52, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Also thanks to Orlady, and thanks to Kaldari for bringing to our attention something that may well have been offensive although it was not intended to be so. Sharktopus ^talk 20:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't intended to be sexist; it was just an amalgamation of Spiller and Richter's interpretations of its meaning. Perhaps subordination would have been a better choice, but it seems that Richter's main point was the irrationality. Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I read the article so I understand where the hook came from. The problem was lack of context given in the hook. While lack of context may sometimes be useful for creating humorous or intriguing hooks, it can also lead to hooks which sound quite offensive on their face. Kaldari (talk) 16:55, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Very well. I will try to keep an eye on things like that (if I see them). I hope the revised version was acceptable. Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:DYKproblem

Could someone update Template:DYKproblem so the text that says "your nomination's entry" links to the nomination sub-page rather than to the section of T:TDYK? I can't do it because 1) it's protected, and 2) I'm not exactly sure how to make the change. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 18:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Template for noms

The above was done fast and efficient, thank you! The template for noms results, if "diff" is filled, in a lot of blue clutter. Could that be reduced to a piped link to, let's say, "diff". Or can we even drop it, now that we have the subpages? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean; could you show me an example? I agree that a diff is probably not necessary anymore. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry

I have said a lot of bad things about DYK, but members have convinced me that this is a worthwhile project. It just needs a bit of work which may take time, but it is worthwhile with consensus discussions and members who really know what they are doing. It shouldn't have taken a few members to convince me of that. I will continue nominating articles for DYK especially new members' articles. I have nominated several newbie articles for DYK and articles by members that have been here awhile, but have not stepped into DYK territory. One of the members that has been here a while and has never participated in DYK thought that an article that he started and I nominated wasn't good enough for DYK, but some editors and I showed him that he was wrong once the article was approved. Joe Chill (talk) 22:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Nice work. Now as to whether DYK is actually a "worthwhile project", I'll have to reserve my judgement ;) Kaldari (talk) 00:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Can a hook be rejected by never receiving a full review?

I proposed a hook for an article that was created on August 3. I know there are still 18 days before that date would no longer appear on the nomination page, but it brings up one question. If my hook is never approved or denied, will it basically be pocket vetoed or does it remain until a decision is made? Ryan Vesey Review me! 22:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I would hope not. My understanding of the removal rules is when a review has been made and issues pointed out which the nominator/author hadn't fixed or replied to for a certain amount of time.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:31, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Under the current rules, no, no hook can be rejected without receiving a view. This has been discussed before (see, e.g. Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 48#What is DYK for? (long, sry)) but there has not yet been consensus to remove unreviewed nominations. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

So in my specific example, a partial review was made. I corrected the problems. And the rest of my article and hook were not reviewed. My hook will then remain in place until it has been reviewed and I have had sufficient time to correct any proglems? Ryan Vesey Review me!

It's hard to say anything specific without seeing your example. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I was trying to make sure it didn't look like I was pushing my hook. The example is Template talk:Did you know/HMS Phoenix (N96). Ryan Vesey Review me! 23:58, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

This won't be rejected without a complete review. You could try bugging the guy who did the partial review to see if he can finish it (that's done sometimes), or just wait until someone else comes around to finish it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:05, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll take a look. Sorry, I've been focusing on the older nominations. Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:10, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Main issue: copy vio on main page

Frankly, I've lost track of all the proposals, polls, particulars, problems, predicaments, quips, qualms, quandaries, queries, qoncerns about ques and qriticisms, rebukes, ripostes, replies and remonstrations, statements, side discussions, serious and silly scrapes, and all that else that has been raised lately.

In the interest of refocusing the discussion: in my opinion the most serious problem with DYK is the potential appearance of (links to) copyright violations on the main page. Other stuff like some minor grammatical issues or spelling errors in the articles themselves (in the articles themselves, not hooks) as long as it doesn't rise to the level of "embarrassing" are secondary. I guess another serious matter is the potential for POV pushing in hooks etc. but that appears to be more minor and mostly confined (so far) to the I-P dispute; there, it's probably enough that reviewers are aware and pay special attention to the articles in this area.

So the questions is how to best ensure that no copy-vio-articles get promoted. The checklist was supposed to be a way to remind reviewers to check for that, though now it has taken a life on its own. Some other possibilities potentially are:

1. Get User:CorenSearchBot to also automatically run through all articles currently in the nominations page. Currently it just runs through newly created pages but this will miss any copy-vios added to x5 expansions, and to articles which are created initially but expanded after a pause of a day or so.
2. Somehow get Duplicate detector [13] to check all nominations. This can be done just by including a link somewhere to it and asking reviewers to run it on the most used online cite in an article (if there aren't any then AGF). Maybe it would be possible to write a bot to somehow do this but that's outside my expertise.

Any other ideas?Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:54, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Those are fine ideas. CorenSearchBot is regrettably out of order and has been since July, but once it comes back online I hope we can use it here. I have found DuplicationDetector very useful in checking DYK articles. One caveat is that it will flag as "duplication" direct quotations enclosed in quotation marks and properly cited to the source. Therefore the reviewer should check the article before flagging it as a copyvio/CP. Sharktopus ^talk 01:09, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, still need human eyes - DD just suggests some things to watch for (another false positive is long titles of sources).Volunteer Marek (talk) 03:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that Template talk:Did you know/mChip is a blatant copyvio. The article is now listed at the copyright problems page and the article has been blanked with a copyright notice. I'm guessing that it is safe to close the nomination. Joe Chill (talk) 03:10, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I have rejected all nominations by that author and moved the involved articles to their userspace with a request to rewrite them ASAP. (This is a compromise solution aiming not to scare a prolific newcomer contributor). As far as I can see, there are no nominations of this author in preps/queues/archives. Materialscientist (talk) 04:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Otis (song) in Queue 2

Could an admin please change Otis to "Otis" in Queue 2 (last hook)? Otis is the name of a song, not an album. Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Done, but that is a very poor hook. Band releases a song? What on earth is unusual about that? The hook should be replaced. Gatoclass (talk) 04:44, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The original was "from The Throne", but Kevin MCE changed that too. At the very least, we have "... that (person name) was released by (word possibly meaning government)?" Better than "... that "Highway to Hell" was released by AC/DC?", which would not be able to be misinterpreted. If we have another quirky approved, it could be changed. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I have replaced the hook with a new one. Gatoclass (talk) 05:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Looks nice. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Apologies if I got the inverted commas/italics convention wrong: my recollection was that all works (songs, paintings, scultures etc) were to be italicised. But of course I would change the preposition: does anyone claim that any linguistic convention is being followed by saying (track) is released from (band) ? Kevin McE (talk) 08:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

By is probably the more appropriate. An album might be from (maybe, at least Billboard thinks so), but I doubt a song could be released from someone. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:31, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Quite so: is the latest release from (which could apply equally to a single) is a very different grammatical construction than was released by Kevin McE (talk) 08:57, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

True, true. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

An article you may want to read

Churnalism. FuFoFuEd (talk) 04:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

And one you might want to read: meta:What is a troll?. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I call. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Kenneth Shadrick (prep 2)

There seems to be no real evidence of causality between the theft of some kit and the decision to join the army. His parents had power to veto his signing up, so there was, we assume, some deeper level of conversation than "I don't like it at school: the big boys took my stuff". The nearest we have to a causal link is "It was probably the football uniform, his father decided, that started Kenny on the way" [14]: starting on the way is not a firm cause, or a claim to such. Kevin McE (talk) 10:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Gatoclass has addressed it. Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

His edit is an improvement on what was there before my edit, but I think still overstates the situation. "Starting someone on his way to doing something" is not the same as "doing something because of..." Kevin McE (talk) 12:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

What about: "... that Kenneth R. Shadrick, the first U.S. foot soldier reported killed in the Korean War, joined the Army after his football uniform was stolen?". The inclusion of the football shirt theft implies a link but the hook is strictly factual. Yomangani^talk 12:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

What is hooky about that? The current hook is a simple statement of fact - that it was thought [by his Dad] that a stolen football uniform led to his son joining the Army and getting killed. The hook is accurate, factual and hooky, and that is all that is required. Gatoclass (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I changed it to: "... that after Kenneth R. Shadrick became the first U.S. foot soldier reported killed in the Korean War, his father traced the tragedy back to a stolen football uniform?" I don't think there can be much argument about that. Gatoclass (talk) 12:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I prefer Yomangani's proposal, but this one is OK by me. Kevin McE (talk) 16:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Health of DYK

• House has made his diagnosis; it's not just the new nominations format or the new reviews that are causing the patient to be sick, it's a combination of both. DYK has seen a lot of treatment recently, and the life-support is wearing thin. Question: Can DYK stand on its own yet, or do we require further intervention?

Translation: We've discussed what's wrong with DYK up the wazoo, and it is showing signs of improvement. We have a somewhat decent amount of reviewed hooks under the newer nominations section, but the total number of nominations is down. A goodly number of DYK regulars are MIA, including some admins. Is DYK stable enough running as it is, or should we do something more drastic, like reducing queue rotation? Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:29, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll repeat a comment I made above where it may have been missed: the new procedures, new requirements, and new template are going to prevent me, and many other editors, from submitting DYK nominations at all. I came here yesterday to submit a nomination, but I was completely baffled by the new template for reviewing someone else's nomination - which the rules require me to do. There are no instructions, I couldn't tell what I was supposed to do, and after 15 or 20 minutes trying to figure out what was required of me I said "the hell with it, I just won't submit my nomination." I suspect there are many like me, occasional DYK submitters, who are turned off by the complexity and incomprehensibility of the review template and the added burden of doing a full review of all the sources in the article. If you want to continue to get DYK nominations from regular editors like me, as opposed to DYK specialists, you need to either relax the requirement to review another submission, or else return to a simpler process. --MelanieN (talk) 15:46, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

You could ask another editor to nominate for you. I've seen it done a few times since the new review template started to be used; people who usually collaborate instead have one as maker and one as nom. Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but it seems like that would add still another burden to those few of you that are comfortable with the new system. It's really not important to me; when I create an article it's because I want to create the article, not because I want to chalk up another DYK. If I ever have one that I REALLY think needs to go to DYK I'll let someone know - if there still is a DYK feature. Good luck to those of you trying to maintain it. --MelanieN (talk) 16:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

A low number of approved hooks and of reviewers is nothing unusual; this has happened many times in the history of DYK, and DYK has kept plugging away. We certainly don't need to hastily implement more drastic changes and we don't need people from the FA crowd to come "rescue" like they seem to think they are. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

True enough, but it is rather frightening when one can scroll halfway down the page and not find a single unreviewed article, only "promoted by", "rejected by", and problem articles. Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:44, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The whole process seems to be ridiculously bureaucratic and rule-bound now – as well as baffling – and I too really can't be bothered with it any more. A shame, it used to be a nice place and fun. The arrival of the jobsworth literal police was a harbinger of this kind of nonsense, I guess, the ones who frowned on hooks such as "... that A. Forward was a forward". Ericoides (talk) 18:56, 12 August 2011 (UTC)