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{{DYKbox}}
{{DYKbox}}


{{for|the area for making new suggestions of articles for DYK|Template talk:Did you know}}
{{for|instructions on how to suggest new articles for the DYK award|Template talk:Did you know}}
{{see also|Wikipedia:Did you know/Learning DYK|l1=Learning DYK: The Unofficial Guide}}
{{see also|Wikipedia:Did you know/Learning DYK|l1=Learning DYK: The Unofficial Guide}}
'''Wikipedia:Did you know''' ('''DYK''') is the project page for the "Did you know" section on the [[Main Page]]. The DYK section publicizes new or expanded articles after an informal review. This publicity rewards editors for their contributions.
'''Wikipedia:Did you know''' ('''DYK''') is the project page for the "Did you know" section on the [[Main Page]]. The DYK section publicizes new or expanded articles after an informal review. This publicity rewards editors for their contributions.

Revision as of 20:56, 22 March 2012

Did you know?
Introduction and rules
IntroductionWP:DYK
General discussionWT:DYK
GuidelinesWP:DYKCRIT
Reviewer instructionsWP:DYKRI
Nominations
Nominate an articleWP:DYKCNN
Awaiting approvalWP:DYKN
ApprovedWP:DYKNA
April 1 hooksWP:DYKAPRIL
Preparation
Preps and queuesT:DYK/Q
Prepper instructionsWP:DYKPBI
Admin instructionsWP:DYKAI
Main Page errorsWP:ERRORS
History
StatisticsWP:DYKSTATS
Archived setsWP:DYKA
Just for fun
Monthly wrapsWP:DYKW
AwardsWP:DYKAWARDS
UserboxesWP:DYKUBX
Hall of FameWP:DYK/HoF
List of users ...
... by nominationsWP:DYKNC
... by promotionsWP:DYKPC
Administrative
Scripts and botsWP:DYKSB
On the Main Page
To ping the DYK admins{{DYK admins}}
For instructions on how to suggest new articles for the DYK award, see Template talk:Did you know.
See also: Learning DYK: The Unofficial Guide

Wikipedia:Did you know (DYK) is the project page for the "Did you know" section on the Main Page. The DYK section publicizes new or expanded articles after an informal review. This publicity rewards editors for their contributions.

The other sections of changeable content on the Main Page are coordinated at In the news, Picture of the day, Selected anniversaries, Today's featured list (currently weekly), and Today's featured article. More general discussion of the main page takes place at Talk:Main Page, and errors are reported at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors.

DYK rules

Shortcut
Further information: [[:Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines and Wikipedia:Did you know/Onepage]]

DYK consists of a series of "hooks", which are interesting facts taken from Wikipedia's newest content, of the format "Did you know that...?" Thus, to nominate something to appear on DYK, an editor must either write or identify new content (see below for what qualifies as "new") and propose an interesting "hook".

DYK is not a general trivia section. DYK is only for articles that, within the past five days, have been either

  • created
  • expanded at least fivefold
  • newly sourced and expanded at least twofold (only if the article was an unsourced BLP)

(As a guideline, an expansion of fivefold or more is acceptable; the decision on whether an expanded article is appropriate for the template will depend on the updating administrator's judgment). For workpages first developed in user space, the date the workpage is posted to article namespace is counted as the first day towards the DYK five-day rule.

Any user may nominate a DYK suggestion; self-nominations are encouraged.

Eligibility criteria

Four basic criteria are used to determine whether a nomination is eligible for DYK, together with a review requirement. Other criteria may arise as a result of community discussion or policy (more details appear at Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines), but the following criteria account for most cases:

  1. New – A nominated article must be new.
    • a) For DYK purposes, a "new" article is no more than five days old, and may not consist of text spun off from a pre-existing article.
    • b) Former redirects, stubs, and other articles in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the past five days are also acceptable as "new" articles.[1] The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles. The length of both the old and new versions of the article is calculated based on prose character count, not word count. Prose character count excludes wiki markup, templates, lists, tables, and references; it is calculated using User:Dr pda/prosesize.js or a similar extension.
    • c) Former unsourced BLPs (such as those in this category) that have been thoroughly sourced and in which the prose portion has been expanded twofold or more within the past five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles. The length of both the old and new versions of the article is calculated based on prose character count, not word count. Prose character count excludes wiki markup, templates, lists, tables, and references; it is calculated using User:Dr pda/prosesize.js or a similar extension.
    • d) Articles that have been worked on exclusively in a user or user talk subpage and then moved (or in some cases pasted) to the article mainspace are considered new as of the date they reach the mainspace.
    • e) Articles that have been featured on the main page's In the news section are ineligible. If an article is linked to at ITN but not the featured ITN article, it is still eligible for DYK.
  2. Long enough – The article must be of sufficient length.
    • a) Articles must have a minimum of 1,500 characters of prose (ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables etc.) The number of characters may be measured using this script (most accurate) or this one or this tool.
    • b) DYK articles may freely reuse public domain text per Wikipedia's usual policy, with proper attribution. However, because the emphasis at DYK is on new and original content, text copied verbatim from public domain sources, or which closely paraphrases such sources, is excluded both from the 1,500 minimum character count for new articles, and from the x5 expansion count for x5 expanded articles.
    • c) Lists: Proposed lists need 1,500+ characters of prose, aside from the listed items themselves.
    • d) In practice, articles longer than 1,500 characters may still be rejected as too short, at the discretion of the selecting reviewers.
  3. Cited hook – The fact(s) mentioned in the hook must be cited in the article. (See more information under The hook, below.) Facts should have an inline citation, and the article in general should use inline, cited sources.
    • a) The hook should include a definite fact that is mentioned in the article and interesting to a broad audience.
    • b) The hook fact must be cited in the article with an inline citation to a reliable source, since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it, since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable. (Note, "extraordinary" is used here to mean "out of the ordinary", not "exceptional to a very marked extent.") Nominations are to be rejected if the claim made in the hook is not present in the source, or if the source is not a reliable source.
    • d) All facts mentioned in the hook must be cited in the article.
  4. Within policy – Articles for DYK should conform to the core policies of Verifiability, Living Person Biographies and Copyright. Nominations should be rejected if an inspection reveals that they are not based on reliable sources, violate WP:BLP, or have problems with the close paraphrasing or copyright violations of images and/or text.
    • a) Articles must meet the Neutral point of view policy. Articles on living individuals are carefully checked to ensure that no unsourced or poorly sourced negative material is included. Articles and hooks that focus unduly on negative aspects of living individuals or promote one side of an ongoing dispute should be avoided.
  5. Review requirement – DYK uses the concept of quid pro quo (QPQ). Reviewing another editor's nomination is part of the nomination process for self-nominations. This makes it more likely that all nominations are reviewed in a timely manner. You may add your nomination before you undertake a review, but before it is approved, please review another editor's nomination and indicate at your nomination which you have reviewed, and (if you know how to do this) provide a link to the diff for your review. New nominators (those with fewer than five DYK credits) are exempt from this review requirement, as is the nomination of another editor's article. For help in learning the reviewing process, see the reviewers' guide.
Nominators should ensure that their submission meets all of these criteria, or it will fail DYK eligibility. Articles with good references and citations are preferred. These sources should be properly labeled; that is, not under an "External links" header.

The hook

Format
  • The title of the new article must be in bold and linked to the new article.
  • Entries should start with an ellipsis of three unspaced periods (not the ellipsis character …) and a space, and the first sentence should end with a question mark.
  • Use {{*mp}} to get bullet points on the Main Page.
  • The hook itself should be concise: fewer than about 200 characters, including spaces. While 200 is an outside limit, hooks slightly under 200 characters may still be rejected at the discretion of the selecting reviewers and administrators.
  • A hook is subject without notice to copy-editing as it moves to the main page. The nature of the DYK process makes it impractical to consult users over every such edit. Watch the suggestions page to ensure that no issues have been raised about your hook; if you do not respond to them, your hook may not be featured at all.
  • About eight hooks are usually selected at once, depending on page balance, so the items selected fit with whatever else is on the main page at that time. Check by using the links on T:DYK/P1: "See how this template appears on both today's Main Page and tomorrow's Main Page." to see if the DYK template balances the rest of the main page layout.
Content
  • The hook should refer to established facts that are unlikely to change, and should be relevant for more than just novelty or newness.
  • The hook should be neutral.
  • The "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article and cited with an inline citation since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. Many submissions fail to meet one or both of these criteria.
  • Articles and hooks that focus unduly on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided.
  • Articles and hooks featuring election candidates up to 30 days before an election in which they are standing should be avoided, unless the hook is a "multi" that includes bolded links to new articles on all the main candidates.
  • If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way.
  • When you write the hook, please make it "hooky", that is, short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article. An interesting hook is more likely to draw in a variety of readers. Shorter hooks are preferred to longer ones, as long as they don't misstate the article content.
  • Other editors may propose changes to the suggested hook as follow-ups.
Selecting nominated hooks
  • A suggestion rather than a rule: try to avoid selecting your own suggestions. Use common sense here, and please avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. DYK is meant to be something that is motivating to editors creating new content.
  • Keep suggestions NPOV and attempt to have items from different fields of interest in an update.
  • Try to avoid country- and topic-centrism. Wikipedia is a general-interest encyclopedia with a global audience. No DYK installment should have more than two entries relating to one country, topic, or issue, and no more than one is even better.
  • While we strive for accuracy and neutrality in all articles, articles dealing with living persons are especially sensitive, in line with the Biography of living persons policy.
  • Select articles that cite their sources. Uncited articles will not be chosen.

Images

  • Pictures and videos accompanying the DYK hook should be:
    1. freely licensed (PD, GFDL, CC, etc.—not fair use): the main page can have only freely licensed pictures;
    2. suitable, attractive, and interesting at a 100 × 100 px resolution;
    3. already in the article; and
    4. relevant to the article.
  • The first item in the list must have an associated image.
  • The standard image and video code is <div style="float:right;margin-left:0.5em;"> [[File:filename.jpg|100x100px|ALT TAG]]</div>.
  • If there are no suggestions with appropriate images, you can usually use a flag for a topic with a national connection.
  • Fair-use images are not permitted. Please find a related free image (PD, GFDL, CC etc.) as an alternative.
  • The first item "hook" should be modified to include (pictured) (or perhaps (pictured, flag of Zdxyrastan) or whatever) in the appropriate place to make the connection to the image.
  • Administrators: when you add an image to DYK, it is automatically protected, so simply add an {{mprotected}} notice to the image description page (or {{C-uploaded}} plus a copy of the author attribution and the licence tag if you have uploaded a temporary copy from Commons).
  • Sounds: Sounds accompanying the DYK hook should have similar qualities to pictures, and should be formatted using {{DYK listen|filename.ogg|Brief description}}

The DYK process

DYK is run by volunteers who work together to process DYK suggestions so that they appear on the Main Page, as guided by rules and regulations which are decided by the DYK participants through consensus. Most tasks relating to DYK can be undertaken by any interested editor, but some require an administrator.

DYK made its first Main Page appearance on February 22, 2004. The article, pencil sharpener, was developed by Raul654. An April 2004 archived copy shows DYK located in the space now occupied by In the News. Credit recognition for article creators started on November 24, 2004, DYK began placing DYK notifications on article talk pages on January 13, 2006, and nominators started receiving credit on May 13, 2006.

The DYK process spans several pages:

  1. Did you know... template (T:DYK) – the template that appears on the Main Page to show the hooks
  2. Nominations (T:TDYK) – where new DYK suggestions/nominations are proposed and discussed
  3. Queues (T:DYK/Q and subpages) – prepared DYK hook sets are placed in these queues by an administrator, and moved from the queues to the live template by a bot
  4. Prep areas/sandboxes (T:DYK/P1, T:DYK/P2, T:DYK/P3, and T:DYK/P4) – where suitable DYK candidates are prepared, before being added to the DYK queues
  5. Rules (WP:DYK and WP:DYKAR) – rules and instructions about how DYK works
  6. DYK talk (WT:DYK) – where general discussion about the project takes place
  7. Errors (WP:ERRORS) – to report DYK errors on the Main Page

How a DYK suggestion makes its way to the main page

A DYK hook suggestion goes through five steps from nomination, through appearing in the "Did you know ..." section on the Main Page, to removal from the Main Page.

  1. First, an editor suggests a DYK hook, along with the article(s) from which the hook fact is derived, on the DYK nomination page, Template talk:Did you know. The nomination is reviewed by volunteers to ensure they meet all the DYK criteria; during this time, reviewers may also suggest improvements to the proposed hook. The first person to comment on a hook should always review the article against the DYK criteria and sign it off using {{subst:DYKtick}} if appropriate; this prevents extended discussions over the format of the hook from holding up future approval.
  2. If the suggested hook and the article(s) meet the requirements, any editor may add the hook to one of the DYK template preparation areas, or "preps", and then archive the nomination/review discussion. The "preps" are unprotected copies of the main DYK template that is displayed on the main page; they are used to assemble new DYK updates ahead of time, so that updates are ready to be posted in a timely fashion. In general, the oldest listed suggestions are selected for the prep areas first, to ensure that they don't go stale before they are chosen. DYK hooks added to the prep area are not final, and may be edited or rejected by any editor, although the edit warring policy applies to the prep areas just like any other page. If any hook is removed from the prep area, its corresponding nomination should be un-archived and reopened for discussion.
    • An update to the DYK template typically adds five to eight new hooks (the number depends on their length, and the need for spacing balance on the Main Page; checking how things will look using the links given in DYK template prep area page for versions of the Main Page can be very beneficial). Therefore, a prep area is ready when it has the appropriate number of hooks.
  3. When an update is fully prepared in one of the prep areas, an administrator will copy the prep area into one of the queues. The admin moving the hooks to the live template may edit or reject any hook at their discretion. The queues are also copies of the main template, but are protected so they can only be added by administrators. DYKUpdateBot cycles through these queues, updating the main template with the contents of the next queue, at a rate of one queue every 6-8 hours. The main template is transcluded automatically into the Main Page; therefore, every time the bot posts an update from the next queue area, the list of hooks shown on the Main Page is also updated.
  4. DYK entries remain on the Main Page for at least 6 hours, with up to 4 updates per day. The timing of this 6-hour changeover is coordinated through manual modifications to ParserFunctions arguments in a {{DYK-Refresh}} template located on the DYK template talk page. DYK entries listed on the Main Page are not final. Non-admins may report errors to the Main Page errors page, so they can be addressed. Admins may edit, replace, and remove entries in the DYK template while it appears on the Main Page.
  5. Old DYK entries are archived at Wikipedia:Recent additions after they leave the main page.

How the participants communicate

The DYK project talk page is the main location for discussing issues that affect DYK, including changes to DYK's rules and regulations, questions about the rules and regulations, and other issues that arise.

Discussion about particular DYK suggestions generally appears on the suggestion's nomination subpage, which may be found at the general nomination page, T:TDYK, although wider issues raised by particular suggestions are also discussed on the DYK project talk page.

There is also a dedicated IRC channel, #wikipedia-en-dyk connect.

Sources for DYK nominations

Any editor may submit DYK nominations from any source. Some potential DYK nominations may be found at

Preparing sets and updating the template

See Wikipedia:Did you know/Guide.

Admins
  • If a factual error is reported when the hooks are on the front page, try to replace the hook with another fact from the article, rather than just removing it.
  • In the case it has to be removed, try to replace it with another hook from the suggestions page.
  • If it is the first hook and hence has an associated picture, you must replace it with another hook with a picture.

Errors

Notification of DYK errors regarding what is currently on the main page may be posted at Errors in Did you know.... DYK errors on the main page may be addressed by an admin through changes to the DYK template.

DYK participants

Administrators

Any editor may volunteer and assist with DYK, simply by contributing to the department operations. There is no hierarchy, and no particular editor or administrator has authority over others, though some tasks can only be performed by administrators. The following administrators have significant DYK experience, and currently are active in contributing to DYK's operations:

"WP:DYK/A" redirects here. For approved DYK hooks, see Template talk:Did you know/Approved.

(Edit this list)

Actively involved

The following admins are (or would like to be) actively involved in the DYK process.

Willing to help

The following admins are not actively involved, but are willing to lend a hand if needed.


Non-administrators

The following users who are not administrators are actively involved in one or more aspects of DYK, including reviewing and vetting nominations, updating the template, and discussing DYK issues: (edit this page)

The following users are frequent nominators and contributors to DYK:


Notes

  1. ^ For step-by-step instructions on how to calculate whether an expansion is fivefold and whether it is within the past five days, see User:Rjanag/Calculating fivefold expansion by hand.

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Did_you_know&oldid=483425086"