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
Preparation
Preps and queues	T:DYK/Q
Prepper instructions	WP:DYKPBI
Admin instructions	WP:DYKAI
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History
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Just for fun
Monthly wraps	WP:DYKW
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List of users ...
... by nominations	WP:DYKNC
... by promotions	WP:DYKPC
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On the Main Page	T:DYK
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.

Removed some of my self noms

After a concern was raised at my user talk page, I voluntarily took the initiative to remove a few self-noms from consideration at the suggestions page T:TDYK — please see diff. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 06:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Please see my note on your talk page, an attempt to talk you out of this course of action. - Dravecky (talk) 06:23, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The Savage hook currently in queue 1 ought also to be removed. There were two DYKs about Dan Savage on June 5, another one in the queue, and another four suggested, all by Cirt, which is clearly inappropriate. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 06:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I dispute the clarity of the inappropriateness. The hook, as approved, should stay. The others can be better spaced out by thoughtful editors assembling queues rather than simply disappeared. - Dravecky (talk) 06:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Request: I respectfully request that the DYK submission currently in Template:Did you know/Queue/1 which is credited to myself, please be removed from consideration. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 06:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

After reviewing the discussion at Talk:Santorum (neologism), it's clear that User:SlimVirgin is not a disinterested party but rather a politically motivated actor. As such, I have restored the approved hooks that they have deleted from the nominations page. A thorough discussion of these hooks and how to deal with them, not merely a browbeating of one editor and an essentially unilateral decision, should take place before any deletion of approved hooks takes place for political reasons. - Dravecky (talk) 06:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

No comment on that, but respecting the request by Cirt, I have removed (replaced) his hook from Q1. Materialscientist (talk) 06:51, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Dravecky, I have no political motivation in this case. My concerns are in the one case BLP, and here that DYK has crossed into active promotion. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:12, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I've only just found out that Dravecky was himself involved in editing the santorum neologism pages prior to the DYKs being submitted, for example, see here. I'm noting this here for future reference, because he has presented himself as uninvolved, and me as politically motivated. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 04:15, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Request: I have removed my self-noms from T:TDYK a 2nd time, diff. I respectfully request that they not be considered. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 06:59, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Out of respect for Cirt, I will let the matter drop for now. I'm still deeply troubled that outside political forces are being brought to bear on a talented content creator and that the system has been gamed to both hide that editor's contributions and the browbeat that editor into backing away from content creation. - Dravecky (talk) 07:04, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm concerned that you think it's okay to have seven DYKs about one writer in the space of not much over a week, in addition to three templates created, one article, and yet another expanded five-fold. That's clearly inappropriate, and if DYK is allowing this kind of thing it needs to be overhauled. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:09, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Spacing of hooks on related subjects is a matter for thoughtful queue assembly, not deletion. DYK does it all the time with sports, bugs, polticians, and plenty of other topics that crop up in clusters. As DYK has nothing to do with template creation and is actually designed to encourage both article creation and expansion, the clarity you have achieved escapes me. - Dravecky (talk) 07:16, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

But thoughtful queue assembly wasn't working, given you had two DYKs about one freelance writer on the main page on the same day, with another one about the same person at the top of the queue, and another four suggested. So clearly something went wrong in this case. This is not the encouragement of article creation and expansion. This is the encouragement of promotion, with articles being created and expanded in the service of that. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:51, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a very troubling display of censorship. --William S. Saturn (talk) 07:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Coming into this discussion only now, I would like to see at least some of approved hooks on the Main page, spaced in time. I hope we don't have to change rules, just encourage observation of the prep of more people to detect unwanted "repetition". - Having said that, I'm going to suggest two more Bach cantatas for Pentecost, simply because Bach performed three each year on three days. Afterwards we will get to the less festive half of the liturgical year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:23, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Even more troubling is that Cirt (who has a goodly number of DYKs), is quitting DYK. To quote his edit summary: "Undid revision 432807806 by Dravecky (talk) = removed my hooks. will not be editing this page again in the future. respectfully request they not be considered." I think the Savage hooks were fine, they just needed to be spaced a bit. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:29, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Preface: I will preface my remarks to note that just three days ago, I was accused of a conservative bias for expressing concerns about a DYK nomination about a liberal organization (weirdly, for a political article, the problems weren't POV; the thing was just way off-topic), so I'm assuming I would not be accused of being a defender of Dan Savage (though there is that expression that if you're getting attacked from both the left and the right, then you're probably doing the correct thing). OCNative (talk) 10:57, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment: This seems like a rather heavy-handed response to a problem that could be solved with a softer approach: for example, we could spread the articles out by using the special occasion holding area. Is there something else that's going on that people at DYK are unaware of? Was Cirt topic banned at some point? Did Cirt offer to avoid a topic at some point to avert disciplinary action? Is Cirt an employee/relative/friend/contractor/publisher/distributor of Dan Savage? Is Cirt Dan Savage? Could someone please fill us in on the whole story?
If there is nothing going on other than what's been described on this page, I'm concerned about the precedent it could set:

• Has Gerda Arendt been promoting Johann Sebastian Bach with her various hooks on that individual's songs?
• Has Basement12 been promoting the Paralympic Games with numerous hooks relating to that private organization, including 22 in the month of May alone (several days have featured multiple Paralympic hooks)?
• Was I promoting Stanford University when I did a streak of hooks on alumni of that private institution (11 in one week in April, including 3 in one day, and even 2 in one set)?
• Was I promoting the Parliament of Canada or the New Democratic Party when I nominated several hooks over the course of one week in May featuring 8 Canadian MPs, including 7 from the NDP?

Please tell me there is more to this story that has not been explained in this thread, otherwise this incident could set an unfortunate precedent. I really do hope there is more to this story that hasn't been explained in this thread. OCNative (talk) 10:57, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

As remarked already on Cirt's talk, I think promotion is a good thing (pro + motion), especially the promotion of knowledge which should be the aim of DYK, imo. I sure hope I have promoted Bach and his cantatas and the Liturgical Year in this sense, and that Cirt will return to promote knowledge. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

OCNative, and others, have a very good point. People tend to edit articles where they are knowledgeable, (or at least they should). Doing lots of work in one particular area may have nothing to do with advocacy or promotion, it may simply be a reflection of which area where someone is knowledge. This edit was particularly threatening, which is surprising because Cirt's response was to simply comply with requests and withdraw completely. I am not sure what more he could have to cooperate completely. But it seems he is all done here, so the issue is for better or worse closed. But it is handling of the issue is very disappointing all the same. Thenub314 (talk) 22:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I want to add that I'm disappointed too in the aspersions cast on Cirt's noms here pending a much better explanation by SlimVirgin of why this content needs to be stifled. I've just finished writing a cluster of noms on the winners of the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards, but I hope this doesn't mean half my noms will get discounted or that I'll be seen as promoting a specific agenda. Rather, it's just what I'm working on right now, and it made sense to do them all together. I think Cirt is more burnt out from the ongoing nightmare at Santorum (neologism), which after surviving three(!) AfDs, is now facing an ugly merge debate that would likewise delete most of its content. Since this was also initiated by SlimVirgin, I imagine we're seeing this spill over here. Khazar (talk) 05:00, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

A quick look at Cirt's user page clears up at least part of it; SlimVirgin repeatedly threatened him with AN/I and ArbCom unless he came here to demand their removal. Since SlimVirgin had just initiated a massively controversial (and failing) merge-and-delete proposal of Cirt's material a few days before, you'd think a more neutral admin could be found to handle something like this, if it was necessary at all. Khazar (talk) 05:21, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Taking this to AN/I would not be a bad idea, but it's SlimVirgin's actions that need to be examined here, not Cirt's. Whatever happened to assuming good faith? Prioryman (talk) 08:17, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. But would Cirt need to bring it himself, or could we do it as concerned editors? Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:24, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

OCNative asked a few good questions that only SlimVirgin can answer. If such a reply is not forthcoming, or if the reply is unsatisfactory, then taking this further from us a group of concerned editors could well be considered. Schwede66 08:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. If no answers are forthcoming, I will join in such a group to bring it to AN/I. Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:45, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I left a note on SlimVirgin's page requesting further explanation of why the deletion of these hooks was necessary. Hopefully there's a simple explanation for this that just doesn't appear on Cirt's user page. Khazar (talk) 13:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Khazar asked me to comment here. First, let me make clear: I have zero interest in Dan Savage or Rick Santorum, and without meaning any disrespect to them, wouldn't know them or their views if I fell over them in the street. My only view in this matter is about how Wikipedia should approach contentious issues about living persons; and in the Savage/Santorum situation I think we're getting it wrong. I haven't been involved in editing the articles in question. My involvement is that I recently opened an RfC to help settle the issue.

As for the DYKs, the background was an AN/I report on May 26 in which several editors said Cirt appeared to be engaged in promotion. Dan Savage and other issues were mentioned. Note: I assume good faith of Cirt's intentions. But promotion or advocacy can occur inadvertently, regardless of intention. I think we are all at risk of that when we're intensely interested in something.

In response to the AN/I, I asked the people complaining about Cirt to give Cirt some space, and I asked Cirt in return to take on board their criticism that some of his edits could be interpreted as promotional. He agreed on May 27: "I will take your advice and try to make efforts to avoid editing in the manner you describe." [1]

I found out days later that he had continued to propose six or seven DYKs about Dan Savage. Two appeared on the main page on June 5; another was at the front of the queue; and I believe another four had been suggested. This seemed inappropriate by any standard, but especially so in light of Cirt's assurances. I therefore asked him to remove the ones that hadn't already been on the main page. That struck me as a reasonable request in the circumstances. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 14:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, SlimVirgin, for explaining. I guess I'd say in response that I don't see what DYK rules forbid multiple NPOV articles on a related topic (which you describe as "inapporpriate under any circumstance"); as several have noted above, it's actually quite common, as editors tend to create articles in bunches. I don't see how the "promotional" effect of promoting six hooks about Savage projects in a week is substantially different than promoting those same six hooks over three years' time; in either case, the information about Savage's book is on the front page for eight hours. The merits of either action aside, I'm also wary of the fact that you've taken on both the RfC described above and the enforcement of Cirt's AN/I comments simultaneously, considering how controversial both have proved to be and that both can be perceived as an effort to delete Dan Savage-related content from Wikipedia. It seems like the DYK issue (if there is one) could have been left to an admin who wasn't involved in a similar high-profile debate with Cirt at another article.

Would you accept as a compromise that editors here re-review the Dan Savage hooks to verify that they're NPOV and re-introduce them with whatever spacing you feel is appropriate? (As somebody's who's already commented in the Santorum debate, I'll recuse myself from the process.) So far as I can see, you don't appear to object to either the content or the hooks themselves, but simply the rate of Savage's appearance on the main page. It seems a shame to delete valid DYK nominations for this reason when it's so easily addressed. Khazar (talk) 15:13, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I haven't been involved in any of this (the RfC or the DYK issue) as an admin. And also to stress again: I have no interest whatsoever in deleting Dan Savage-related content. I would have objected to seven DYK hooks appearing about anyone within such a short space of time.

If others involved in the DYK process feel the Savage hooks could be spread out appropriately, I wouldn't try to interfere with it, though I would disagree with it, because I do feel it's a lot of focus on one person.

I wonder whether there's any interest in reforming DYK, so that it doesn't involve articles having to be created or expanded fivefold. It's leading to this rush of hooks all suggested at once from the same area, and to articles arguably being inappropriately created or expanded simply to meet this requirement. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 15:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that I see the distinction between demanding the deletion of these hooks under threat of ArbCom as an editor or as an admin, but in either case, this plan for their restoration sounds good. Since there appears to be a broad consensus here that these hooks were legitimately introduced to DYK (no objectors save for SlimVirgin), I'd vote we add the hooks back in. I'll leave this to another editor with experience setting up the prep areas, etc., to decide how they should be distributed, ensuring that our viewers can read about two Dan Savage books on two separate days, instead of two books on one day and no books the next day. Would another editor be up for this?

As for Slim's proposal that there be a limit on how often certain subjects can occur on DYK in a week's time or that the DYK requirements be wholly rewritten, I suggest a separate thread be started for this if she wants to pursue the rule change further. My gut reaction is that DYK should encourage content creation whether it comes well-spaced or bunched (as in the above examples of Bach, Stanford, and Paralympics articles), but I'm up for seeing counter-proposals. Khazar (talk) 16:24, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Khazar, another clarification: I have not threatened anyone with ArbCom. Other editors indicated they would file an RfC about Cirt; it was in asking them not to do that at AN/I that I got involved in this. [2] I later told Cirt that he was risking an ArbCom case if he did not listen to the concerns. [3]

Again, why the rush to have Dan Savage's name appear again so soon? He was on the main page twice on June 5. When you suggested spreading out the remaining five DYKs, I assumed you meant over weeks or months. As I said, I won't try to interfere with it, but it does strike me as inappropriate. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; sorry if I misinterpreted the context of your warnings to Cirt. I guess my understanding is that DYK reflects Wikipedia's newest content. If we have a surge of good creation of Bach articles, we run more Bach there. If we have a surge of International Press Freedom Award winners (mine), we run more of those there. If we have a surge of Dan Savage expansions, we run more of those there. If we had a surge of coverage on Phyllis Schafly's books, we'd run more of those there. Since it appears to be agreed that these articles are legitimate content, I see no difference between highlighting our expansions of Savage coverage now and covering it more gradually. Dan Savage's name will appear on the main page for the exact same number of hours this year whether we run all the hooks this week or run them one month at a time. Thanks for your patience in hearing me out, Khazar (talk) 16:57, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a significant difference between repeating Bach's name and that of a freelance writer (or anyone else) who is selling a product or idea. Again, I mean no disrespect to Dan Savage, and have no opinion for or against him; I hadn't heard of him until this situation arose on Wikipedia.

Here's a made-up example from an area I work in, animal rights. Imagine if I were to create or expand seven articles about an animal rights activist, Activist Andrew, all well-sourced, within the space of a few days. I could then submit seven DYKs: ""Did you know that Activist Andrew once had urine thrown over him while rescuing an elephant; did you know that Activist Andrew's Drenched in Urine (2011) sold 2000 copies on its first day of release; did you know that the film Rescuing Elephants is based on Activist Andrew's book about raiding a circus?" and so on.

Would there not come a point where someone wondered why Activist Andrew was suddenly dominating Wikipedia's main page? :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I must say your collection sounds entertaining to me, why not? - Why not??? I didn't even read the article about the author in question (perhaps I should), but think the "inappropriate" above is a Point of View. This discussion seems to overestimate the "promotion" possible by DYK. It's just 6 hours on a page many people never see because they search for something directly, 6 hours during which a quarter of the globe sleeps. So some see one mentioning of an author, others another. - I hope we will not make rules against a topic appearing several times, why limit, as long as the topic comes in well referenced, well reviewed facts? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that strikes me as fine; assuming the articles were well-sourced and NPOV (which would suggest that Activist Andrew had become a dominant and famous figure in his field, as Savage has in his), I'd be glad we have seven new articles on notable topics. Obviously we have to be alert for COI promotion in cases where there might be financial benefit, but I don't think there's been any suggestion that Cirt is Dan Savage or a related employee or publisher. I also don't see how spreading the hooks over a wider period of time significantly alters any perceived financial benefits; each hook is eight hours of coverage either way, whether those hours come back-to-back-to-back or here and there over several weeks. Again, if you want to propose a change to DYK policy, I suggest you open a new thread for it. My first reaction is that it strikes me as counterproductive to limit a project encouraging content creation, but I'd do my best to approach a proposal to the contrary with an open mind. Khazar (talk) 17:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

One rule we should institute is that we do not accept DYK submissions of articles on candidates in an upcoming election. We have had flattering articles on such candidates appear weeks or even days before election day. Beyond that, I broadly agree with SlimVirgin's view as expressed in her activist example. --JN466 17:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I could be wrong, Jayen, but I believe the first rule you propose is already in place. As for the second, again I'd suggest initiating a thread to change DYK policy if you object to its current formulation, but again I'd suggest that as somebody with a long and ugly history with Cirt, you might leave this to a less involved editor. Khazar (talk) 18:40, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

You're correct, the rule was added last October, and good job too. The other part of your statement I find a bit surprising; as far as I'm aware, you don't know me from Adam, and I'd appreciate it if you would give me and my concerns the benefit of the doubt. I think it is detrimental to this project for an editor to place a flattering bio for a candidate on DYK days before an election. It is not detrimental to it to point out that it's happened; that's part of ensuring it won't happen again. --JN466 20:39, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

No worries, I agree with you on the campaign bio. As I said, it's the second part of your comment where we disagree, and I thought it would be helpful for other editors to be aware of the history here. This isn't to dismiss your concerns--as I've said, though I'm skeptical personally, I think it's a conversation worth having--but I do think it's useful for other editors to be aware that those proposing these rule changes have specific histories of taking on Cirt and Savage-related material this week, rather than these concerns arising organically from DYK. (ErrantX below being the exception, which is helping to alter my thinking a bit). I've already said far more than my piece on this thread, though, so I'll try to lie low from this point on. Khazar (talk) 20:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay, we'll have to agree to disagree. As I see it, the encouragement of content creation is not good unless the creation or expansion is editorially appropriate. And that's the problem with DYK. People don't create content, then think to propose it for DYK. They write it only for DYK, expanding 500 words to 2,500 words, whether 2,500 words are needed or not. And that is leading to problems with quality, which I've seen several experienced editors mention in different places, so I feel it needs to be addressed at some point. But this is probably not a good time or place to do that. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:37, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the statement: "People write ... content ... only for DYK." - that's how it sounds to me. I was introduced to DYK by the one who helped me with my first article (which had been deleted), and I found DYK a good tool (!) to make content better known. (One of my articles stayed long enough on the suggestions page to have 900 hits before it appeared. Klaus Mertens, call it promotional, he is alive and singing.) If I would write "only for DYK" I would stop every article at 1501 chars. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:07, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm in exactly the same boat - it's why I got involved with DYK in the first place. I wrote above "Whatever happened to assuming good faith?" Frankly, it looks like another assumption of bad faith to assume that "People write ... content ... only for DYK." SlimVirgin appears to be assuming that Cirt is acting in bad faith to promote Dan Savage or to write articles solely for DYK. I see no good reason to assume either. If someone is interested in a subject, writing a series of articles in quick succession isn't out of the ordinary. I've done that myself. Prioryman (talk) 19:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I have no horse in this fight race, but I was considering raising the sudden surge of Dan Savage related DYK's on the nominations page - not for any political or other reasons, but only because there were an awful lot of them one after another, and the subjecxt risked getting a bit stale. I don't know if Cirt is watching this page (a shame if he is not) but I was going to suggest he userspace draft a set of the articles, shift them across, and do it all in one hook. That would be a really great way to do it. Unfortunate that the matter was resolved like this, but I am happy to see less Savage (ahem) content on the DYK page for the moment. --Errant ^(chat!) 18:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand the concern about staleness, but reading some of the comments above from SlimVirgin, I have to wonder whether personal dislike for Savage is a factor here. I can't imagine we'd be having this discussion if someone had submitted a batch of new articles about Emily Brontë, for instance. As for the DYKs, Khazar's proposal to relist them is a good idea. I'll list them below for ease of reference. I've looked through them and they look very good - well-written and illustrated, lots of good sources. The original reviewers evidently didn't see any problem with them at the time, I don't see any problem with their content now, and I don't see any good reason not to re-list them. Does anyone have any objections? They should of course be spaced out when it comes to the queues, but that is no reason to exclude well-written and interesting articles from DYK. Prioryman (talk) 19:20, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• ... that The Commitment by Dan Savage recounts how his son was initially opposed to same-sex marriage, during a discussion of the author's pending marriage to his male partner?
• ... that the book It Gets Better edited by Dan Savage and inspired by the It Gets Better Project includes contributions from humorist David Sedaris and U.S. President Barack Obama?
• ... that the bibliography of Dan Savage includes recognition with a PEN West Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction and a Lambda Literary Award?
• ... that the musical The Kid based on the book of the same name by Dan Savage won an Outer Critics Circle Award in the category Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical?

Please note: I'm concerned that no matter how often I say I have no problem with Dan Savage, someone else posts that I do. I'd appreciate if people wouldn't continue to do that. I don't even know anything about Dan Savage, except for the latest kerfuffle. My concern here is only for Wikipedia. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:34, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Prioryman missed one:

• ... that the book The Kid by Dan Savage was optioned for television by Robin Williams and also adapted into an Off-Broadway musical?

Now is there consensus to restore these noms or not? OCNative (talk) 05:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there is. Nobody seems to be objecting, anyway, as far as I can see. Prioryman (talk) 11:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the opinion of the editors who posted in this thread and at #Dan_Savage above has changed. It's inappropriate. --JN466 13:26, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Clearly there are still large objections to these nominations. Not least from the crteator of them, who requested that they "please be removed from consideration. Thank you," -- Cirt - Off2riorob (talk) 13:38, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The only actionable objection appears to be about timing, i.e. that there were too many nominations on the same (related) topic within a short period of time. That can easily be resolved by spacing out the nominations in the queues over a reasonable period of time - say one a week, perhaps. The noms have all been passed for inclusion and nobody has raised any issues with the articles themselves. Prioryman (talk) 13:51, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a RF arbitration in regard to this subject called 'Political activism' - this person (Savage) has had his fair spare of time on the front page for the foreseeable. Off2riorob (talk) 22:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Compromise proposals

I also thought we had a rough consensus between SlimVirgin and other concerned editors, but it seems that's no longer standing. Jayen, Off2riorob, and myself are all involved in Savage/Cirt debates happening elsewhere, and the last thing I think anybody wants to see is a third (fourth? eighth?) front opening up here. I remain uncomfortable with editors involved with debating Cirt's material elsewhere to come here to block his nominations once they've been passed and approved by the normal process, and when no content issues are involved; I'm also uncomfortable with the fact that they seem to see this rule as applying only to Savage-related content, and not the examples cited above such as Bach, the International Press Freedom Awards, Stanford University, or the Paralympics. But I've become an involved party over there myself at this point, so I realize my own judgment is becoming clouded. Let me propose a few options and then try to leave:

• 1) We continue with the previous compromise that these hooks will appear, but spaced sufficiently to meet SlimVirgin's request. One a week seems like it would do it.
• 2) We ask uninvolved DYK editors to determine if multiple hooks on Dan Savage are a violation of existing policy/precedent, and if not, how they should be spaced. Editors elsewhere involved in Savage-deletion debates (including myself) will be asked to recuse themselves and abide by what these editors decide. This seems to me the fairest option, as it would cut out external baggage.
• 3) If we are going to see this as an extension of Wikipedia-wide Cirt/Savage issues requiring the comment of involved editors, we could post links at the Cirt ArbCom case and the Santorum (neologism) requesting comment more broadly. This seems to me the least desirable option, however, as these debates are already ugly and time-consuming.

Jayen, Rob, Slim, do any of these sound fair to you? Khazar (talk) 16:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I support both options 1 and 2. As I said above, the only actionable issue here is the timing of these articles, which was the original concern (cf. #Dan Savage) that was raised here. No concerns have been raised anywhere that I can see about the actual content of the articles. There are no discussions ongoing on their talk pages, and they all passed the DYK review stage. None of them even mention the contentious Santorum (neologism) article. As far as I can see, the DYKs have become the victims of a dispute that is, at best, only tangentially related. Spacing the five DYKs out over a period of five weeks (during which 975 other DYKs will run) will surely eliminate any possibility of DYK being swamped by Savage-related articles. In my view, it would be unacceptable to suppress these DYKs because of an apparently only tangentially related dispute over a completely separate article. Prioryman (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor, my answer to the questions posed by #2 is: assuming they've met our normal DYK criteria, the DYK hooks should be run. Normal DYK practice is to space out related hooks at least into different updates, and in this case, if considered necessary, they could be spaced out by up to a week each. cmadler (talk) 20:03, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

This gentleman (Savage) has had his fair share of time spent on our front page for the time being already. I suggest considering the way the community has been divided with this that it is best put on the back burner for two or three months. Also rather than push for something that is clearly divisive and at multiple locations and at arbitration and has been requested by the user Cirt to remove them, its better this is closed down here completely. Off2riorob (talk) 21:23, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

That is not an actionable objection. We don't blacklist subjects because someone doesn't like them. There is, also, no division or dispute whatsoever about these individual articles - they are merely collateral damage from the Santorum (neologism) dispute, in which those articles play no part. Prioryman (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there some kind of shortage of DYK hooks? We do whatever we consider reasonable at the time. What fantastic benefit do you see from your insisting on adding these additional Savage DYK front page hooks at this time, none. Why is it important to you to have multiple Savage front page hooks at this time? Not withstanding your pushing for something that the nominator has requested multiple times to be removed. Off2riorob (talk) 22:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

What's at stake here is the integrity of DYK. The articles have all passed the nomination process. None of them - not one - is under dispute. Nobody has raised any objections about the content of any of the articles. You are demanding that these articles be vetoed because of a political dispute in which you're involved. You're trying to add an extra, arbitrary, non-policy-based criterion to DYK. As a DYK contributor, I find that unacceptable - DYK should be not subject to arbitrary political vetoes. Prioryman (talk) 22:29, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps its the nomination process that is at fault then. The integrity of DYK is demeaned by political activism which has been requested to be removed and you are insisting on replacing it and talking about preserving the DYK integrity, give it a rest - reduce the disruption don't insist on replacing it . Ask yourself b4 you go all integrity of the project proclamations - do you see multiple objections here, has the nominator requested removal? Is this issue disrupting the project at multiple locations, and then ask yourself if you really should be making a stand for these DYK hooks at this time when you have plenty of non controversial ones. Off2riorob (talk) 22:49, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Off2riorob (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for confirming that your opposition is, as suspected, political and therefore not worth taking into account, as it's arbitrary and has no policy basis. It would be helpful if we could hear now from editors without axes to grind. Prioryman (talk) 22:50, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I have confirmed nothing of the sort. I am from the united kingdom and I care less about such US partisan politics. Off2riorob (talk) 22:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Arbitration request

There is an arbitration request related to this thread, filed by User:Coren: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Political_activism. --JN466 00:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Now closed as it's been rejected by the arbitrators. Prioryman (talk) 00:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Nominations good, where are they?

I nominated Death of Selena, The New Girl in Town, and Barrio Boyzz, and were all ready to go. However, Death of Selena, has now been moved to "older nominations" and still hasn't been placed on Did you know..., is there a problem that I didn't check? AJona1992 (talk) 00:14, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no schedule for reviews. Although it might be frustrating to sit and wait for the review to complete, this is normal. Your nominations will be reviewed, and their moving to the "old" section on the T:TDYK page means nothing in terms of their quality or suitability. Materialscientist (talk) 00:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Being in Old Nominations does not mean anything is wrong. All of them have been reviewed, and The New Girl in Town and Barrio Boyzz have already been approved. Death of Selena is waiting on a couple editors. You just have to wait; everything is okay. Hooks go to the queue starting with the oldest, so your nominations will wait a few days. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:31, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh alright, thanks for responding. AJona1992 (talk) 00:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

By the way, there's a way to speed up the review system: review other nominations. The less unreviewed nominations when somebody is about to review something, the more chances that it will be your turn. Just make sure to do it right and consider the details that must be checked, speed up does not mean rushed Cambalachero (talk) 02:43, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Over the past week, Tony's undoubtedly well meant efforts to raise the interest level of hooks (see "The House of Lame" section above) and extend his campaign against what he sees as overlinking to DYK hooks have exacerbated the effect that noms with lots of discussion go unreviewed. See my dual nom for Carlisle House, Soho and Teresa Cornelys for an example. No one has moved to actually review the articles. One other person has suggested an ALT4, but the differences between proposed hooks are not massive. The actual reviewing is just not happening. He also spoke up at Islanding, simply condemning the hook as without context. There was another problem there - the reviewer didn't understand the referencing style used, and I have tried to help out but don't have the knowledge to review the article myself. Tony has given at least one checkmark/tick that I saw, but actually reviewing the articles is avowedly not his main purpose in looking at DYK nominations; he left a comment to the effect, "the checkmark seems to matter here" and at one point commented that he wasn't sure what the specific rules for DYK were. Unfortunately, this effort tangential to actual reviewing is having a chilling effect - and exacerbating the existing problem that since reviewing was introduced as a quid pro quo requirement, nominators opften find themselves looking at articles on topics they don't know very much about or find very interesting. (Tony's personal scale of hook interestingness is a clear illustration of how tastes differ, as discussed in that section above, but of course everyone has their own different interests: I have a very broad range of interests by most standards, see the articles I have created let alone the DYKs I have proposed; but numerous hooks are on topics that make my eyes cross.) I think the suggestions page needs to be refocused on reviewing, maybe with a change to the statement of purpose at the top discouraging commentary not aimed at either accepting a submission or giving ways in which it needs to be improved to be acceptable. I have had a lot of DYKs; I will be sad and angry if this one gets thrown out as stale, but it won't be the end of my world or of my participation at DYK. I believe others are not so sanguine, and may however wrongly feel their contributions are being deemed unworthy when I know that isn't Tony's intention or that of anyone else who comments just about the hook or about stylistic choices. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I reviewed your nom. Sorry it hung around for a while. I think that we should make it a rule that anyone commenting first on a hook should also review the articles. That removes this specific problem :) --Errant ^(chat!) 19:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

That strikes me as a sensible rule too. Khazar (talk) 19:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks! And that seems like a good, easily stated fix for the problem. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:48, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the proposed rule (you comment, you review). Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:20, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposed rule change. Editors may -- and I'm speaking from personal experience here -- quickly notice a glaring problem or a way in which a hook could be improved, but not have time to do a full review right then. Do you really think it will benefit the project to ask such editors to refrain from commenting? cmadler (talk) 15:48, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that we have several editors cruising the page only throwing off comments about hooks without being willing to do full reviews. These comments then discourage other editors from becoming involved in reviewing those articles because it looks as if another editor is already handling it, and the discussion may become quite lengthy without a review ever being done. I've just spent most of my morning trying to catch up on the resulting backlog from this hit-and-run approach, and there's plenty left to be done. (BarkingMoon wisely initiated this, see above).

My thinking is that if a hook has a glaring issue, it will be caught in review. If it's not, there's almost always still a full week after the hook's review before a hook hits the main page--plenty of time to point out additional issues then. Khazar (talk) 16:12, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

To the extent that editors are "cruising the page only throwing off comments about hooks without being willing to do full reviews", and to the extent that this is causing problems, I think that's a behavioral issue that needs to be addressesd with those editors, rather than by a rule change that will apply to everyone. cmadler (talk) 15:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Also, pointing out problems with the hook is rightly part of the review - if the hook is misleading, i.e., doesn't match what the article said, discovering that is part of evaluating whether the hook is referenced. And one is very rarely already an expert on the topic before one reviews an article suggestion; so it's much more likely one will find factual problems with teh hook only after looking at the article. Pace Tony, those are the important issues. Whether the hook is worldstoppingly interesting to absolutely everybody is secondary. So is whether it is written in the best possible style. After all, tastes vary - in both topics of interest and English style. Also, the constraints on hooks are significantly limiting (must be a new or heavily expanded article on which the work was done in the past 5 days, and the hook must be within 200 characters - those are both going to mitigate against jeweled perfection). The focus needs to be on reviewing. Other concerns are extra. I'm sorry to say that the recent focus on these extras has had a clearly chilling effect. At least 2 nominators have clearly just stopped checking the nominations page. DYK is supposed to encourage people, and some of the editors submitting to DYK are relatively new editors. Let's make the priorities clear. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:32, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

• That's fine for editors who nominate. I don't nominate. I'm taking no notice of an inept requirement that you can't review a hook without reviewing the associated article. IMV, the requirement for nominators to "review" another editor's article is being abused: I see pretty bad articles that have been passed without comment ... just a "all checks out". It's quick and dirty. If you want to improve the system, I'd toughen up the culture of nominator reviews.

  I stand by everything I said about the Islanding issue. It just doesn't make any sense as a stand-alone to the visitor. It doesn't hook anyone to click on the article link. Weird and inexplicable hooks can sometimes work, but not it they're impenetrable and don't seem to be interesting in the first place.

  Linking: it is indeed a problem that the instructions above the edit box still say "Do wikilink words in the hook and bold the main article." Why? Are nominators being encouraged to ignore WP's style guides in this respect, where here it matters much more than in a WP article that low-value links be avoided. It is rare that I see any need to link an item aside from the DYK article, which presumably contains all the links. The wording should be "Do bold and link the main article." The free-for-all, undisciplined linking of DYK hooks raises three problems:

1. It dissipates the effect of the link straight to the article that is the whole reason for the TFA display. Why do we want visitors to link to other articles first? Aren't those links all on the target article itself?
2. Does anyone check that the countless other articles that are linked to within the DYK blurb are up to standard? Why are they receiving unchecked, unaudited front-page exposure, when only the DYK has been through the proper review process?
3. It makes the main page look like a f....g mess. Tony (talk) 09:58, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

PS And "Whether the hook is worldstoppingly interesting to absolutely everybody is secondary." That's a cheap way to try to win an argument—by exaggerating. I came here to encourage more interesting hooks because, frankly, DYK hooks have tended to be plain boring. You know it. And when you say "So is whether it is written in the best possible style.", are you encouraging poor English style on the main page? If so, please come out and say it. Tony (talk) 10:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I want to add that it's not as though I poke around issuing criticisms without helping: I have made a significant effort to improve hooks, backing up criticism with examples. Sometimes people don't like them; sometimes they improve them; sometimes they accept them. And when I do visit an article, I'm inclined to make improvements to it. I don't see other reviewers doing this. As I said to Crisco on my talk page, why not build into the rules that where a nominator's comments apply to the hook or the article alone, this should be stated? I often do, anyway. Tony (talk) 10:26, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I found Tony's advice about my new nomination Brood XIX very helpful but of course I will be disappointed if that means my buzzing cicadas don't get bumped up to OK by somebody else. (Hint, Brood XIX is already dying out in parts of the US and they won't be back for 13 years!) Tony also caught a problem I missed in one of the two articles I reviewed. I think extra reviewing by somebody like Tony is a very good idea for oversight of a not-very-experienced reviewer and nominator like me. Sharktopus^talk 10:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I know you think you're helping, reforming, Tony. I have tried my level best to be polite while noting that your comments - which are avowedly tangential to the main issue on the suggestions page, which is moving towards accepting or rejecting the articles and their hooks under the DYK rules - are clogging up the works and (IMO) discouraging people. Like it or not, you are speaking for yourself only when you judge what's interesting; I judged it more polite to express that in terms of a general rule. I agree, more eyes on articles, more improvements to articles, and more attention to problems with hooks can only help. But your well meant critiques give the impression of imposing your tastes as an extra set of rules - and come off very harsh. And it isn't fair to not then go on to use one of the 5 symbols in an expeditious fashion, because then the person proposing the hook doesn't know where they stand, and others looking at the suggestion don't know what point the discussion is at (whether, for example, the article needs a bit of help to reach the standard, or whether it's hopeless unless someone who really knows the topic finds lots more to say or some heavy references, or whether it's pretty much ok and the hook is just being polished up). You owe it to the rest of the people working together on that page to make it clear - and to the writer to do a full review so they know where they stand. I'm also puzzled and disappointed you consider people are just rubberstamping articles and/or failing to fix them. It's already clearly stated that reviews should be thorough, and that it's not just ok but encouraged to fix problems with an article when one reviews them. I do that and so do many others. I'm glad you do too. But some people are terrible proofreaders. That's one of the reasons I don't like the quid pro quo requirement, though far from the biggest. But I think you're confusing or conflating several things when you connect that to the defects you see. I would imagine most of the problems with your perception of the DYK sub-project stem from what it is - a way to showcase new work. If you want to help, then help; whether you're a nominator and this obligated to do so by a quid pro quo requirement shouldn't matter. Many people help out here voluntarily; until recently that was the entire basis of the reviewing here. I'm afraid I can't see it as justified to use that as a rationale for throwing a spanner into the works; so I have to assume you are not seeing the effect of the spanner throw. If you would use it judiciously and not leave the engine still stripped down . . . ? - And one last point that I see as connected: DYK is to encourage, and in my opinion some classes of articles we really need to encourage, scientific ones among them. The DYK section of the main page is horribly unbalanced with respect to fields of study and human endeavour. Anyone who puts forward an article on a technical-scientific phenomenon should be praised to the skies, I think. That hook for Islanding was interesting just by virtue of being on such an under-represented topic, I think. I don't have the educational background to have been able to review it, but we should all be really leery of jumping from "I don't know anything about this" to "This is boring." And that, I am afraid, looks like what you're saying. Which is why it's good to have lots of different people reviewing :-) --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

(supporting Yngvadottir) There is a tension between what DYK is supposed to reward (creating new encyclopedia articles) and what we give incentives for (creating a lot of articles and DYKing articles that get a lot of hits). You can write articles faster and get more hits writing about Lady Gaga than about JS Bach, maybe even come up with punchier hooks as well, since Bach doesn't have a meat dress or a PR rep. Sharktopus^talk 13:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

(supporting Yngvadottir) Though I've also done my best to be polite in my interactions with you, Tony, but your comments have done a lot to rub me wrong from the moment you introduced your needlessly-hostile "lame index" to tell editors how "lame" their writing is. (Why not "Interest Index"? Well, because that wouldn't have been insulting enough to the editors involved, apparently.) I respect your diligence in trying to improve hooks for the main page, and I've done my best to increase my own rigor in checking grammar and encouraging editors to make their hooks more engaging per your request. At the same time, I feel like every DYK has four steps now: 1) create article; 2) nominate article; 3) receive review; 4) argue with Tony about what he thinks is interesting/proper phrasing. You're introducing issue upon issue (interest level per the Tony Test, wikilinking in hooks, checking of related articles to the hooks) as requirements without attempting to build a consensus on any of them; rather, you just appear to insult those who don't fall into line with your new rules.

Peraonally, I'd feel better about your efforts here if you'd start working more directly with nominators and editors to improve hooks, notifying them when you've posted concerns and suggesting alternatives rather than dropping a comment and leaving that involved process to other editors. I also wish that you'd agree to the request of multiple other editors to help out with formal reviews instead of this "hit-and-run" approach, as opposed to just calling that request "inept". (I'm getting particularly tired of reading reviews from you on the model of "I don't mean to be rude, but {insult)". Your comments imply at times that you see yourself as the gatekeeper for DYK quality--the one man standing between good hooks and the "f---ing mess" you think the rest of us are creating--but this would be a lot easier if you'd realize we're also well intentioned editors, working hard to try to build quality content within the 'pedia. I hope we can work together better in the future. Khazar (talk) 14:55, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Now that my undue frustration has had a minute to cool, let me add that I don't think any of Tony's concerns are necessarily invalid ones. It would be useful to add a bit of guidance about Wikilinking policies for hooks ( I don't know that I'd go quite as far as he would in their removal, but that can be discussed). His concern about lousy articles getting a free ride to to the front page also makes sense, as do his efforts to add context to hooks that may lack it. And of course he's right that where possible, it's good for us all to focus on creating the hookiest hooks in Hookville, even if we dispute what those hooks might consist of. And, as virtually everyone here has noted whether frustrated with or not, Tony's made a lot of hooks on here a lot better. I guess what I'd suggest is that we try to move some of these discussions to this page, separate them into individual issues, and try to build consensus on them on the level of policy, rather than repeating their battles across a full week's worth of individual hooks. Khazar (talk) 16:23, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

• Tony: Perhaps you'd be willing to help create a guide to help DYK reviewers know what they should be looking for? I've got one started at User:Cmadler/sandbox/DYKreviewguide, and while I've previously issued general invitations to any editor interested in DYK to assist with this, I'll take this opportunity of specifically inviting you to help with the guide. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 15:17, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not agree with Yngvadottir's proposed rule. Every constructive comment is a review, even if it doesn't have a {DYKtick} in front of it, and making a rule that people can't comment on a nom unless they want to pass or fail it would not at all be conducive to collaborative editing. As for the points raised that right now lots of editors are stuck reviewing topics they aren't knowledgeable about or interested in (a point that I don't think is even relevant to this discussion) and that a lot of people comment without reviewing, both of these were true long before the "quid pro quo" system was implemented and long before Tony became active here. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:25, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As for the point that "These comments then discourage other editors from becoming involved in reviewing those articles because it looks as if another editor is already handling it", the problem there is from other people misunderstanding the review process, not from the commenters. There is and has never been a rule that only one editor can "handle" a hook, there is and has never been a rule that other editors can't chime in or even do a full review when some other editor has commented before. This problem can be easily solved just by making newer reviewers aware of this fact, rather than by introducing some new rule barring people from making constructive comments. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:29, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I see your point, but I wasn't trying to say above that editors should be barred from making additional comments entirely; only that they should refrain from doing so until an initial review has taken place, particularly if they're not interested in contacting the article's nominator and working with her/him to fix the issues of concern. Since most noms are reviewed in the first 24-48 hours, that'll still allow about a week for constructive comments and double-checking from other editors. (I regularly add such comments myself).Khazar (talk) 16:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I didn't propose the rule change. But I do apologise if my style in responding to points here has led anyone to think I am using this discussion as a coatrack for griping about the quid pro quo requirement. I think I may have given that impression in responding to the suggestion that there is a universal standard of interestingness in hooks. However, I don't believe anyone has suggested that people should not be allowed to comment on a nomination - the suggestion made was that the first comment should be on the merits of the nomination. I do maintain that the Suggestions page has been getting off track, which is not good for any talk page. Its purpose is for proposing articles and hooks and evaluating them/discussing how to improve them according to the DYK rules. Getting off-topic has a deleterious effect. A lot of nominations have been just sitting while tangential matters are discussed first. Elsewhere on this page people are talking about clearing the resulting backlog. This is not a good thing, and the solution to it is some form of refocusing of discussion on the Suggestions page on its purpose. Whether that takes the form of an added rule or not, I don't care. But nominations have been languishing, and I don't think the solution is to tell reviewers yet again to review things. Reviewers do have a choice of what they review. (And so they should - it would have been dishonest of me to review Islanding, I don't know the first thing about electricity installations. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:06, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

• I can recognise this "it's just a matter of your taste" argument from FAC five years ago. Another version is "it's subjective". Well, sorry, we'd get nowhere if we knocked over critical comments that way. When I point out that a hook lacks a focus of interest, it's usually obvious, or I'm explicit about it. There was outrage at FAC when the quality of prose, and of referencing, became a serious issue. It took a year or two, and some nominators were quite nasty about it. But we held out. People always complain at the start when others come along and make critical comments. Please don't object to critical assessments of hooks (or articles) by reviewers without saying why they are unreasonable.

  I must remind you that these hooks, and the exposure of the DYK article, is on the main page of the fifth most visited site in the world. It is a great privilege to have your DYK hook and article exposed in this way. Most WPians don't get this kind of instant exposure. Quality control needs to be better accepted in the process.

  "the person proposing the hook doesn't know where they stand"—I don't understand why not. I do notice that some nominators just slap up a hook and never return, or perhaps return once; that should be discouraged. "A lot of nominations have been just sitting while tangential matters are discussed first." Why? That's not the fault of reviewers: the nominators put the hooks there in the first place; why blame quality control? The rules should encourage both nominators and reviewers to return multiple times to address reviewers' comments, if necessary. The coloured ticks: I usually don't add one when I'm not happy with the hook or the article and have said so. I'm expecting the nominator to return and fix them, or to say, yeah, I like ALT2, etc. Then I might add a tick. There has been a practice of quick and dirty slap-up, check length of article, accept any old hook without regard to the fundamental aim of DYK, and tick. If the throughput is too high (6 hours is incredibly quick turn-around), then make it three shifts a day, not four.

  Some article are just not good DYK material, I've found. The islanding article is hard to understand; how to make a good hook out of it? The fossil article currently nominated is hard: I've thrown it back to the nominator, who knows the topic. If a nominator can't come up with an accessible, interesting, punchy hook, I say find another article.

  I had in mind producing a click-and-show tutorial page to train editors in producing interesting hooks, according to the rules. I could proceed; however, I'd need feedback, criticism, by regulars. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's important enough to invest some energy in—I think a fascinating skill-set is involved in hooking; otherwise, I wouldn't have delved into the process. Tony (talk) 16:54, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Points taken. Obviously I'm in favor of quality control, and would be glad to help toward that end. Already I regularly read through additional hooks and articles headed for the main page, even when they've already been reviewed, and make changes where I can. But I think part of what's causing friction here is that different editors have a different idea of what that quality control is going to entail. You seem to be raising a number of topics at once in your comments: how thoroughly the DYK articles are being checked; whether hooks on less popular/quirky topics should be included at all; how much context DYK noms should be required to give as to the rules of sports, definitions of technical terms, etc.; whether unreviewed articles should be allowed links in the hook; and even whether anything but the article title should be linked in the hook. And without attempting to build a consensus on these policies first, you've been asking reviewers to debate these with you nomination by nomination, often in aggressive and borderline-insulting language. I'd be interested to hear your proposals in all of these areas, but I think that this page might be a better place to hammer out that conversation than individual nomination threads. (I'd also suggest trying to break them into individual issues where possible for a clearer and more helpful discussion).Khazar (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Tony: A personal reply because your responses are still all about you and your tastes. I'm afraid I have to disagree both that your taste represents what we should all aim for, and that the Featured Article programme is a valid analogy. I do not think you appreciate what DYK is about. One big difference between it and other Wikipedia projects - possibly the most important - is that it has a deadline. Articles have to have been created or massively expanded 5 or at most 6 days before. I too appreciate your motivation, and of course in this collaborative effort, one must be prepared to work with others - and should welcome their input. But you keep demonstrating that you do not appreciate the purpose of the Suggestions page discussions, saying that you generally do not give a tick or other symbol. If you do not do that - or do not look at and review the article itself - you are getting in the way of the collaborative process by interposing your own concerns. I don't think that's the best way to get your objections to the current level of DYK hooks heard, and I am still saying you in essence saying that you are the arbiter of what DYK hooks should look like, or even of what articles should make it to DYK. That is not collaborative, and makes me personally less inclined to accept your judgment that we are doing a bad job of reviewing articles or writing hooks. Also, I have personal experience of working with you on the hook for my recent double nomination. I took your comments under advisement; I suggested compromises and gave my reasons; I accepted a revised hook from you - and you still neither reviewed the actual articles nor stepped back so someone else would. I do think you mean well, but I do not think you read and thought about the DYK rules when you edited them. I don't think you understand why the 5 symbols matter, or you wouldn't be saying you don't see why editors would not know where they stand when you don't use one of them. Please consider the nature and purpose of DYK. Because you are working determinedly at cross-purposes with it and in my opinion casting unwarranted aspersions. And this is an extremely active project with numerous editors looking at the hooks; I do not think a tutorial on how to please you, personally, with hooks would be any improvement over that collaborative process, which is far better suited to interesting a wide readership. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:40, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to just single out Tony because he is not the only user who is commenting without doing a full review. While Tony focuses on the interest level of hooks, KevinMcE focuses on the wording of hooks without doing a full review (often demanding greater context or sports definitions). Similarly, Lightmouse often checks for technical features (such as measurement units in the article) without doing a full review (though lately, Lightmouse has been adding a helpful Unit check preface at the front of the comment to make it clear it's a technical thing). They're each trying to help DYK hooks or articles but just not doing full-on reviews. OCNative (talk) 05:21, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. The featured-content processes would be ghost towns if we didn't have reviewers who specialise. You can't conduct this process, either, unless the environment is more encouraging for editors to come in and specialise. Frankly, the sheer volume of noms is troubling—it's a waterfall that has been allowed to evolve without proper quality control: the first step is to encourage reviewers reviewers who will spend time travelling through the noms picking off just one or two aspects in a whole lot, then return a day or two later to carry it through. Remember, it's a partnership between reviewers and nominators. The review-all-or-nothing idea that has been espoused here as a knee-jerk reaction is guaranteed to keep reviews superficial and totally inadequate—to further shift the quality-control process towards almost total reliance on a perfunctory, mundane task that nominators feel they have to go through for the sake of eligibility. We need a combination of both inputs, but I'm keen to end the fiction that if a nominator has skimmed through an article and hasn't scrutinised the hook for the interest factor (required by the rules), it's "ready to go".

I'm surprised at the level of hostility ("aggressive and borderline-insulting language").

"You seem to be raising a number of topics at once in your comments ...."—Yup.

"One big difference between it and other Wikipedia projects – possibly the most important - is that it has a deadline."—Oh, I know about deadlines. I've been roped into heavy commitments for rolling out the weekly editions of The Signpost, with a lot of humdrum fiddly cutting and pasting, fiddling; where there's a demanding and excellent managing editor (pokes at me over tiny details, journalistic misjudgements, mistakes in copy-editing—and a good thing, too), and where readers complain if the edition is 12 hours late ... not to mention criticising us for other "shortcomings". One reason The Signpost is pretty good, IMO, is because we react positively to critical comments. So please don't lecture me about deadlines.

"your responses are still all about you and your tastes"; "I have to disagree both that your taste represents what we should all aim for"—framing critical comments as "personal taste" was a defensive technique they used at FAC for at least two years, quite ignoring the fact that the basis of the criticisms was technical; almost all DYK critical comments have a technical basis. Of course there's some room to move, some subjectivity involved, but that should be worked out by interactions among reviewers and nominators. The other reaction at FAC was "Go fix it yourself and stop complaining". That was five years ago, and fortunately, the FAC process moved on from that years ago. I can see exactly the same pattern here. Nominators need to take more responsibility for working to improve their articles and hooks, and they need to exercise their skills by more in-depth scrutiny of other noms. I do believe an instruction to both nominators and reviewers is in order, suggesting that it is sometimes necessary to return to a DYK nomination a number of times to address comments. Tony (talk) 08:46, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tony, you seem to have addressed my main issue with "yup" here, so let me repeat my concern and then I'll step out regardless of response. The largest issue I see is that you've declared that several new rules need to be enforced at DYK without building a consensus for them, and you're working to enforce them on individual nominations without discussing them with other editors first. Some of these aren't Wikipedia policy as the consensus on this board currently interprets it. The wikilinking is a good example of this. You raise some interesting ideas about a requirement to check non-nominated articles we wikilink to, or reducing wikilinks in a hook far below the norms of WP:LINK, but rather than open that discussion here in a more formal way, you've made us respond to your proposed reforms on this hook-by-hook in reviews, which is frustrating for other reviewers and not particularly conducive to long-term policy change.

I understand that you feel a new set of rules needs to be developed, and as I said, I think it's a discussion worth having. If you want evidence my good faith, look no farther than the thread "A Thought" below, which I initiated as a spin-off of this conversation specifically to aid with these concerns. This proposal would make lengthier, more collaborative reviews of the type you're looking for more efficient (and therefore possible) by encouraging Watchlisting and longer threads for individual noms. All I'm saying is that I wish you would use this board as a starting point for your proposed changes and build a real consensus first, instead of trying to impose your new rules hook by hook. (Obviously, I'll be glad to abide by the views of the consensus in reviews of hooks; I just want us to get to that consensus first.) Cheers, Khazar (talk) 13:12, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Tony, I understand that you think there are serious problems with DYK. What you seem unable or unwilling to recognize is that DYK is different from FAC. You keep saying you pushed through your changes there. That is irrelevant. Featured articles are Wikipedia's best; DYK articles are some of Wikipedia's newest. There is no reason to apply comparable standards or make arguments from similarity about the two. I am sorry you find my pointing this out to be objectionable. But makes your argument shaky, and it becomes only shakier when you continue to aver that we all must agree with your taste. I do see other people commenting on only one facet of both articles and hooks - but I don't see them setting their critiques up as a pseudo review or a mandatory extra step or saying DYK is fundamentally broken (that it "makes the Main Page look like a f...ing mess"). Nor do I see them stating repeatedly that reviewers are not doing their jobs. Yup, I welcome extra eyes on my articles. As I said in thanks to the person who finally actually reviewed my last nomination, you never know what you've missed. If you see hostility in response to you, I apologise for whatever my share may be - this is a highly collaborative part of a collaborative project, and I don't want to be rude myself right back. But your personal belief that DYK is broken is misinformed and rests on invalid assumptions and has long since crossed over into bullying. I am sure this was inadvertent and therefore continue trying to clarify the situation. I do apologise for my lack of expertise in the forms of rhetoric you expect; styles do differ, after all :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 14:51, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Hardly worth replying if you're going to "step out" regardless.

"which is frustrating for other reviewers"—Where? Who? What is the basis of this supposed frustration?

"I understand that you feel a new set of rules needs to be developed"—I'm not sure about whether new rules are required. The overlinking thing is long-established on en.WP. We have style guides, and if they apply to the articles, why don't they apply to hooks? And last time I looked, there was no rule that you have to link everything in sight.

Watchlisting: it's problematic that you can't watchlist

"I wish you would use this board as a starting point for your proposed changes and build a real consensus first, instead of trying to impose your new rules hook by hook." In what respect am I imposing new rules? Which ones that don't already exist?

"you pushed through your changes there"—well, no, it was me and quite a few others; you're painting me as some kind of obsessive, which is not fair.

"There is no reason to apply comparable standards [to FAC] or make arguments from similarity about the two." I'm not applying similar standards ... I presume you mean to the articles? But these are getting main-page exposure, don't forget. If I see obvious things that need fixing, why am I not allowed to point them out? Or is the whole point of DYK to wave through bad articles and expose them on the main page? You're being very discouraging to me as a reviewer; it's no wonder this seems like a closed shop. Don't you want broader community input into the process?

"you continue to aver that we all must agree with your taste"—where?

Oh, now I'm accused of writing "pseudo" reviews, and imposing "a mandatory extra step" in the process. Ummm ... well, what is the purpose of the reviews?

"But your personal belief that DYK is broken"—I think it needs reforming; where did I say it's "broken". You're dramatising to suppress my contributions.

"has long since crossed over into bullying"—I rather think that you are bullying me, right here and now. Where do I bully, or is bullying just your drama-fest word for critical comments? Tony (talk) 11:08, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Tony, to try to wrap this up, let me just answer the question that appears to me to be the nub here: "In what respect am I imposing new rules? Which ones that don't already exist?"

• You've argued for a much tougher standard on "boring" hooks than previous consensus, I think. Obviously there are hooks that can be improved in this respect, and you know from reading over the page that you and I both work hard to do this, even if we don't always agree. But you've also said several times something to the effect of "some topics are just not DYK material", to which you appeared to receive a lot of resistance and little agreement when you first posted the statement. This is a conversation worth having, yet you seem to have continued to apply this standard to articles as recently as yesterday without bothering to build consensus for it first. For example, two days on a hook about a prehistoric mammal family, you voted to delete, rather than reform, the nomination with the comment: "Hook seems pointless. Blades to molars? Wake me up when it's over." (OC appears to have later switched the icon, but given the unconstructive tone of the statement, it's hard for me to see why (s)he did.)
• Hook wikilinks have previously followed the rules at WP:LINK, I think. You've done a good job catching some overlinking, but your standards appear to be radically more stringent than those at WP:LINK. In recent days I've seen you remove links from hooks that included the name of a director of a cited movie, the city where a monument stood, or the name of a team in a Major League Baseball hook, as well as Major League Baseball itself. Other editors have then had to come by and replace these. To give an excellent "concrete" example, two days ago you took the hook

... that the world's largest concrete monument is a fountain located in Lincoln Park in Jersey City, New Jersey?

And quite rightly and usefully delinked concrete and monument, but also delinked Jersey City, which is (to me) a no-brainer link to include for a Jersey City park; another editor had to then go by and add this back in. This is no big deal in one case, but it's been happening in many cases, and it's against the policy of WP:LINK as I understand it. I wish you'd open a discussion on this issue on this page and take the pulse of consensus rather than revising all the hooks based on your singular interpretation.

• You've pushed for removing links at times by saying that unreviewed articles shouldn't go to the main page; this is a rule I've never seen listed at DYK. It's an interesting subject to raise, but not standing policy as I know it. Again, it's a discussion that's probably better to have in one centralized place and build a consensus on, rather than repeating the debate hook by hook.

You say you're surprised that your edits haven't been received with more open arms, but if I went over to Featured Articles and told them that they were a "f***ing mess", that much of their content was regularly "lame", that they were an embarrassment to the main page, that I knew their rules better than the established editors there and had some important new ones for them too, and that I was going to start applying my new rules article by article, what kind of reception would I get? It's just not how civility works.

So that you don't feel that I'm trying to drive you away, let me reiterate one more time that I value both your opinion and your work, and I do hope you stick around. I've tried to extend you plenty of olive branches in the above comments, noting that I admired your diligence, that I thought you'd significantly improved a number of hooks, that I'd be glad to join a discussion of your proposed reforms, and that I had even initiated a discussion of major page overhaul that would make the kind of extended nomination review you're looking for more practical. I don't feel I'm seeing much good will in return, but rather repeated suggestions that I and anyone who disagrees with your approach must just not care about quality. (Take a look over the number of hooks I've requested changes to on this page over the past two months, the number of nominations I've rewritten myself for their prose and citations, or the number of quality articles I've sent through myself, and then let me know if you still think that's the case). So I guess if I had to write a wishlist, it would be that you'd A) chill out a little bit and realize there's other well-intentioned editors here you could work with, instead of an army of evil Wikigoblins sabotaging the main page; B) acknowledge that in an area devoted to encouragement of new content, it's particularly important to be constructive with nominators while still maintaining rigor; and C) slow down for a day or two to check consensus on your interpretations of policy, such as the link issue or the "boring topic" ban. I realize we may be past the point where any of these ABCs can happen, but here's hoping. In any case, I'm long overdue for that wikibreak I promised myself (five days ago!), so I'll be out of your hair either way. Cheers, Khazar (talk) 14:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

PS To emphasize one more time how much I do admire some of your reviewing, Tony, edits like this [4] strike me as exactly what we should all be aspiring to here, and the sort of feedback I wish I was more often giving myself. Cheers, Khazar (talk) 15:03, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

That's a good example by Khazar, but I also think you go overboard sometimes Tony, such as I just read where you said link only the DYK article and on the copyediting comments you often seem to want to make these new articles mini-FAs. BarkingMoon (talk) 15:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I checked page views: Islanding, where Tony1 condemned the topic and the hook as hopeless, received 1.8k views (good by any standard). My double nom received 1,000 views for one article and over 1,000 for the other (split over 2 days), more than I expected for 18th-century London articles. I continue to not see Tony1's point that we should avoid links other than to the article itself: context is important for the reader especially in such a short snippet, and I do not agree that the purpose of DYK is simply to get the reader to click on the particular article. I believe it is (a) to encourage and reward new work, (b) to get clicks on anything within the hooks, (c) to make the Main Page more interesting and more representative of the encyclopedia by balancing out the news items on the other side. Moreover, when I look at the Featured Article segment of the Main Page, it's always liberally sprinkled with links. We've had a series of alerts of various sorts in recent months about the project being offputting to new editors and to people who want more collegiality, and DYK is the main locus for rewarding and being encouraging to content producers and not incidental to new editors. (I was completely unaware of it until someone nominated one of my first articles for DYK - and it was shepherded through teh process, with substitution of a less shocking hook for the one I myself would have chosen that was first proposed, all without my knowing. As a result I decided to nominate one myself when it included something I thought was interesting enough. I believe that experience is fairly typical. Now that people with 5 or more DYKs have to review a nomination, we see the newbies self-identifying and their presence is highlighted.) And I see Tony1's response above not getting the point about the purpose of DYK and that Featured Article is fundamentally not comparable. And continuing to aver that his taste is normative and that he will succeed here just because he is right, which is bullying - plain word in response to his earlier demand that I speak plainly. (Condemning people's articles and hooks just because he personally finds them boring and/or hopeless is also bullying, in my book, but I think his conduct in relation to the other DYK reviewers is a less disputable example based on his assumptions.) And conflating me and Khazar, which argues a failure to read carefully. :-) In any event, based on the arguments he's made, I think those statistics on hits for the 3 articles should be taken on board as evidence that tastes do indeed differ and DYK should not throw out its collaborative practice in reviewing and working on hooks and articles in response to repeated assertions that they're not working. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:40, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

• My analogy with FAC concerns the tactics that nominators used for a couple of years to try to discredit reveiwers. They are exactly the tactics you are directing towards me, and they won't work. "And continuing to aver that his taste is normative and that he will succeed here just because he is right, which is bullying - plain word in response to his earlier demand that I speak plainly. (Condemning people's articles and hooks just because he personally finds them boring and/or hopeless is also bullying,"—It's that kind of aggressive language that will make people disregard what you say. Equating critical commentary with "bullying" is the oldest defence of mediocrity, and you can do better than that. And equating technical issues with "taste" is your other method; I don't buy it, and neither does anyone else who wants to raise standards here. Here, most nominators engage with criticism, especially when ALTs are suggested. On the contrary, it is you who seem to be conducting a vendetta against thorough reviewing. Tony (talk) 16:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

A thought

One thing that frustrates me in working on the T:DYK page is its massive structure, which makes it difficult to navigate and track changes. Has it ever been proposed to break the nominations into subpages per AfD, GAN, etc.? While this would slow the ability of editors to skim through multiple nominations, it would make it significantly easier to track individual threads, some of which have been pretty lengthy the past two weeks. It would also remove the burdensome step of notifying nominators/creators/reviewers every time their response is requested, as they could simply track the page for their nom. I find it very tiresome, too, to have to check my nominations on the page every day to make sure no one's added a comment without notifying me, since it's hard to search reliably enough through the history.

I don't know how feasible this plan would be, but I wanted to throw the idea out there and see if more experienced DYKers had any thoughts. Khazar (talk) 17:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

It also takes forever to load and save an edit at T:TDYK.BarkingMoon (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, good. I almost said that, too, but I was worried it was just my crummy laptop. Khazar (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

It's been proposed a number of times, and even acheived consensus in favor last November ([5]) but has never been implemented. (At that time, implementing the quid pro quo requirement that nominators also review hooks was given priority in implementation.) My personal preference is for each nomination to have a sub-page, which could then be transcluded in any number of ways: chronologically (similar to the current page), topically, etc. It will make following individual threads easier, will fix the problem that some (many?) of us are experiencing with load times, will largely do away with edit conflicts, and will create a more-accessible record of previous DYK nomination discussions. Let's talk about how to make this happen. cmadler (talk) 18:05, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I do remember the idea of switching to an AfD-like transclusion being tossed around. IIRC, the main concerns were that it would make adding a nom a little more difficult (creating the subpage, then transcluding it), and that IPs wouldn't be able to nom without assistance (since it would involve creating a page.) Those might not be big deals, though. 28bytes (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Can anyone recall an IP user ever nominating a hook? I can recall perhaps one or two occasions when an editor came across an article that had been expanded by and IP and nominated it, but I don't recall ever seeing an actual nomination by an IP editor. cmadler (talk) 19:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

They do occasionally (I know I've moved a couple into prep where an IP was credited), but that won't be an issue if we go the bot route below. 28bytes (talk) 19:12, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The page length is an issue. However, if we used substitution, would we start archiving nominations? Crisco 1492 (talk) 18:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd be pro-archive. Khazar (talk) 18:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Thinking about it some more, it might be possible to implement this, AfD-style, with a bot. Let nominations happen the way they do now, and a bot will periodically grab the new nomination, create a page to put it in, and transclude it. It could add an "Add this nomination to your watchlist" link at the top of each one. This could essentially happen behind the scenes and not require nominators to do anything differently, while providing them with the ability to watch individual nominations. 28bytes (talk) 18:28, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

So if others are at least interested in this, what's the next step, then? Should I attempt to formulate a formal proposal for a support/oppose vote here? Or should we investigate the programming end of this first, and then come back to make a formal proposal for an up/down vote? Khazar (talk) 18:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the programming end would be pretty straightforward. Shubinator is obviously the expert on DYK bots, so I'll defer to him, but if he's not got the time for it I can pitch in with bot help. The only real thing that would change from an "end-user" point of view would be the addition of the ability to watch individual threads. When building a prep set, you'd just remove the {{Template talk:Did you know/date/(article title)}} from T:TDYK instead of the nomination itself. Let's see if anyone can think of any "catches" or downsides to this before we put up a formal proposal. 28bytes (talk) 18:57, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think something similar to AfD, GA reviews, etc. would work well. Nominator subst's a template on to the top of T:TDYK/Today, using only the article title (first article title in the case of a multi-hook) as a parameter. Template creates some kind of box with a link. Nominator clicks the link to go to a page-creation pre-loaded with the DYKnom template. Nominator fills in the relevant template parameters and saves, creating the sub-page. Bot puts a notification on the article talk page(s), as described above. Something like that, anyway... cmadler (talk) 19:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Whichever approach people prefer, I'll be happy to help with. 28bytes (talk) 01:34, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd be very happy for this proposal to proceed. Schwede66 03:32, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Before voting, I would ask tech-minded editors to comment on feasibility. We usually have 200+ noms, every nom has a few ticks (dyknom templates are commented out), meaning ~600 transcluded templates on one page. I think this will crash due to WP:Template limits. We can ban ship templates and tick templates though. Materialscientist (talk) 04:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. The tick templates should be OK, though, since they're already subst'ed. 28bytes (talk) 04:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, I forgot that ticks are substituted. Then {{*mp}} is to be banned, preferably by software, or crashes will be hard to debug. I'm not sure what happens if we just transclude 300 nomination templates (with zero templates in them). Maybe this would be enough for a crash (?). Materialscientist (talk) 04:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Replacing {{*mp}} with a simple * would make sense, since it's already present in the cleared prep queues anyway. I can poke around and see how close to the transclusion limits the page is already. Template talk:Did you know/Full TOC transcludes the whole page already, so we can play around with a copy of that and drop some more transclusions in it to see what leeway we have. 28bytes (talk) 04:55, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Previous discussions of the issue (this list gets longer every time...)

• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_32#Individual_day_pages
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_44#T:TDYK and Loading Times
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_49#T:DYKT Page too big
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_50#Archive_of_suggestion_page.3F
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_53#Suggestion
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_53#Subpages
• Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_61#Discussion
• Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism_and_copyright_concerns_on_the_main_page#Setting_up_date_subpages_and_archiving (my own proposal)

rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:29, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting those links. Looking over those conversations, the two main concerns I see as downsides for doing this are (1) Art LaPella's point that it wouldn't be easy to do a diff of T:TDYK to see what's changed, since the changes would be to the subpages, and (2) Orlady's similar concern that watchlisting T:TDYK alone would no longer be sufficient to see all the changes that are made to the nominations. I think everything else can be addressed by a well-designed bot, but those two points will require some more thought. 28bytes (talk) 04:50, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• I think Rjanag's proposal to have transcluded pages by date (like Wikipedia:Files for deletion) would avert the template limit problem that would arise from having transcluded pages per nomination. This doesn't solve the problems that Art LaPella and Orlady described, but it would solve the template limit problem and still allow IPs to self-nominate (there's an IP self-nom for List of nutrition guides, History of USDA nutrition guides right now actually). OCNative (talk) 05:07, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

My thought is, if we're going to do this, we might as well go all the way and use the AfD method, so that individual nominations can be watchlisted. As someone who partipicates in both AfD and RfD discussions, I don't really like the fact that I have to "watch" the whole day's worth of RfD discussions when there's only one RfD discussion I care about. I think the transclusion limit issue can be managed, so I'd be hesitant to let that drive the design decision. 28bytes (talk) 05:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should use the AfD method so that individual nominations can be watchlisted. My hope is this would allow more thorough and efficient discussion on each. While I appreciate Orlady's point that the page could not then be watchlisted as a whole, I think on the balance this approach would allow more people to be following their nominations and reviews rather than less, since people with only a few reviews/noms on the page (the majority) could more efficiently track them. Khazar (talk) 13:30, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Here is a quick test of 300 transclusions from User:Materialscientist/Sandbox2. Seems Ok, but maybe I'm missing something. Feel free to experiment. Materialscientist (talk) 05:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Preprocessor node count: 3003/1000000
Post-expand include size: 933300/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 0/500

I'm a bit too sleepy for deeper analysis at the moment, but my first impression is that a bot isn't necessary and may not even help much. IPs can create talk pages, and any subpage of Template talk:Did you know counts. I'm also curious about the transclusion limits and will play around with MatSci's sandbox sometime this weekend. Also, shifting to transclusion might affect DYKcheck, but as long as T:TDYK looks the same, the script shouldn't need major changes. Shubinator (talk) 06:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

My thinking on the bot was that it could be helpful to minimize the disruption involved in a changeover to AfD-style watchable nominations. People would create nomination sections as they do now by subst'ing the NewDYKnom template, and the bot would handle converting that into a transcluded subpage. That would eliminate the need to have to re-write the nominating instructions before phasing in the change. 28bytes (talk) 07:08, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think it might end up causing more disruption though. The bot isn't going to be bug-free, and when it crashes things will get fairly chaotic much faster. If we're planning on changing to manual transclusion at some point, might as well do it at the same time as switching to the transclusion system in general; that way we make all our changes in one go, so there's only one change to get used to. Shubinator (talk) 15:19, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll defer to your judgment on that. But bot or no bot, I do wish we could implement transclusions without making it a two-step process. I find AfD nominations to be a bit of pain unless I'm using Twinkle, I'd hate to make the DYK nomination process unnecessarily harder for people if it can be avoided. 28bytes (talk) 15:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

If we go with the page per nomination scheme, without a bot it has to be a two-step process. Shubinator (talk) 06:57, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice to have these transclusions; it would make returning hooks from the queue a lot easier, especially if we archived on a day by day basis like at AFD. Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

However, loading Material Scientist's test page (with 300 nominations) took a while. Editing should be easier, but loading it still takes a good 2 minutes here. Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I'd be opposed to setting up AfD-style transclusions (by nomination, rather than by date), although I'll have to re-check the past discussions to refresh my memory about the various issues. 28bytes, I don't entirely agree with your summary of what the most major arguments were (although maybe that's just because of my personal preferences); Orlady's point seemed like a non-issue to me, given that watching T:TDYK doesn't seem extremely useful even now. The points that I remember driving several of the previous discussions were 1) it would be hard to proofread a bunch of noms in a single edit (I remember Art used to do that a lot, although now it seems like he's editing the queues rather than T:TDYK directly), and that it might make it difficult to grab multiple hooks for the prep (I don't remember the details of that argument off the top of my head, though, and it seems like something that can be worked around).

If we go forward with it, someone will need to design new templates (or at least instructions) for the process. I think {{NewDYKnom}} will still be usable on subpages, though. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:18, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I fiddled around with MatSci's sandbox and came up with these numbers after adding more complexity:

Preprocessor node count: 3588/1000000
Post-expand include size: 1195554/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 535/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 0/500

Looks good to me; we can also probably use {{*mp}} without worrying about the transclusion limits. Shubinator (talk) 06:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

• What would be the next step(s) toward making this happen? cmadler (talk) 17:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

A completely different approach to reduce loading time was (thanks to Voceditenore) to replace the pictures by links to them, as in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/DYK Archive, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry, I haven't waded through the entire thread. To me, it is essential that reviewers and nominators be able to watchlist single noms. What is the disadvantage of whatever they do at other processes to achieve this? And I don't like the idea of the pic being separated. Tony (talk) 04:45, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with Tony on this; linking rather than displaying images is not a good solution. Even if it has an appreciable impact on the load time, it does nothing to address the other concerns (watchlist, edit conflicts, section edit problems, etc.). I'm convinced that a sub-page per nomination is the best solution, I'm just not sure how to implement it. cmadler (talk) 13:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Asking again: what is the next step toward implementing this? cmadler (talk) 16:32, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I have a few thoughts, but I would like to discuss their feasibility with Shubinator first before posting them here. But if anyone else wants to post a proposal of their own while I'm working on mine, that's fine with me. 28bytes (talk) 16:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
      • It won't be difficult for me to update {{NewDYKnom}} (and the various instructions associated with it) for subpages once you guys have decided what the format of the submissions page is going to be. (In fact, as far as I can tell so far, it should be basically possible to use it exactly as is, just on a subpage rather than on T:TDYK itself.) Just let me know. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

To prep composers

If there is a shortage of pictured hooks, one way around is to go through ample articles and suggest a picture (authors often forget that), sometimes from a linked, but non-bolded article. Sometimes just by reading a hook it is clear that some article in it should have nice pictures. This is to avoid putting stubs as leads only because they happened to have a picture at T:TDYK. Materialscientist (talk) 02:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Technically, stubs shouldn't be passed anyway, right? (Although it seems to me that what constitutes a "stub" is less and less clear these days.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:34, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's my understanding that an article that passes they DYK prose size check is not a stub and should have its status changed to start or C. Or is this incorrect? BarkingMoon (talk) 10:39, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I used "stub" as a figurative term for a short article (with a dull hook and or/picture, I should add). Articles eligible for DYK are defined as non-stubs. Materialscientist (talk) 10:56, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

My general rule of thumb for a stub is <3000 bytes w/o sections is a stub.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:59, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

A typical (non-DYK) definition is that stubs have less than 10 sentences. I haven't ever checked, but I'd guess that a DYK that barely clears the 1,500-character limit (and has reasonably typical prose) is a time and a half that size. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

On occasion, I've reviewed articles that reach the 1500 byte threshold, but do still do not seem to cover the subject enough not to be considered what constitutes a start class article. In these instances I have either informed the editor of my concern or tried to expand, rather than just changing from stub to start class. Really case by case, then hard 1500+ = start class IMO Calmer Waters 02:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no mechanical stub definition; see the Croughton-London rule. Reviewers should evaluate whether a nominated article is a stub, and either (temporarily?) reject the nomination if it is, or ensure that the article is correctly marked as a non-stub. cmadler (talk) 15:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:Perfect stub article disagrees with Grutness: It is possible to write a very brief, but reasonably complete stub. In terms of "mechanical" definitions, however, I basically agree with Grutness: The size of the page does not determine whether the page is a stub. It's judged primarily according to the amount of prose. As a result, identifying stubs can't be easily automated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:35, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to be boring, but pictured hooks are in Special occasions for both 13 and 14 June. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There are lots of pictured hooks right now. What there's a dearth of is good quirky ones. BarkingMoon (talk) 20:51, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Can't make Bach quirky every time. But 13 June is soon. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Brood XIX is quirky and it has a picture of a giant insect with gleaming red monster eyes. Helpfully, Sharktopus. Sharktopus^talk 02:08, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Intending this in as light-hearted a way as is possible. One thing that might help on both the pictured and quirky front would be if prep loaders tried to avoid unilaterally pissing off literally a dozen editors who have worked together in an attempt to do both. Especially when it comes to articles with dozens of plausible hooks and matching images. —WFC— 01:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

There simply aren't enough slots to use every hook nom'd with a photo.BarkingMoon (talk) 01:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

A robotic response that has both missed and demonstrated my point. Sometimes there will be a dearth of pictured hooks, sometimes a dearth of quirky ones, and sometimes surpluses of either or both. If we are trying to cut down on the droughts, we should think long and hard about how we treat those that might or will be rejected during bumper harvests. —WFC— 02:05, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

A robotic response that missed my point.BarkingMoon (talk) 02:38, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

"Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" (now that's a robotic response that misses the point) - Dravecky (talk) 03:09, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Query

Since I'm being pilloried above for my suggestions in hook reviews, I'm posting a question/suggestion here, hoping for your advice. Since hooks are by their nature a bit less formal than, say, the FA text that lies above them on the main page, I think it would be acceptable to use contractions, but judiciously. This current nom stood out as possibility:

... that in one of Uruguay's hill slopes near Fuerte San Miguel, there is an outpost which includes a wall and small window, but otherwise appears natural, like a cave or animal shelter?

"there's an outpost"? Tony (talk) 15:07, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, sorry you feel pilloried; never my intent. Anyway, your "judicious use" exception here seems sensible. Cheers, Khazar (talk) 15:12, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

No problem with the contraction, but perhaps the whole hook could be reworded? I don't read Spanish, so this may not match the meaning of the source, but maybe something like: ... one outpost of Uruguay's Fuerte San Miguel has a small window constructed to look like a cave or an animal burrow? Thanks, cmadler (talk) 15:52, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Cmadler, my Spanish is not perfect, so I think we'd need someone else to translate besides me, but I think your alt hook suggestion strays from the source. Cheers, though, for offering an ALT! --Rosiestep (talk) 01:41, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Queue update overdue

According to the time table at T:DYK/Q, the queue update is 32 minutes overdue. That time table says it should have happened at 14:00 NY time and it's already 14:35. Or is the table wrong? BarkingMoon (talk) 18:32, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

As the time stamp sig above is 18:32 and the table also says it's due at 19:00UTC, methinks the table is wrong.BarkingMoon (talk) 18:34, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, the table said the next update was at 19:00 London time. London isn't at UTC right now (daylight savings). Shubinator (talk) 07:15, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Manually updating. Thanks for noticing. Will look into what happened when finished, if not addressed Calmer Waters 18:44, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

It was missing a <!--Hooks-->. Admins should watchlist User:DYKUpdateBot/Errors. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:22, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK with hypothetical COI

Everyone seems to agree that there is no problem with creating lots of DYK about Bach or bugs or other non-controversial items. We have often had questions raised about people (allegedly) using DYK to "promote" political POV or book sales, etc. If the articles and hooks are neutral, do we need policy to prevent "promotion"? And if so, what further policy? Would spacing hooks out in time make things better or worse? The policy issues that have been raised by recent discussions should be considered in a neutral, hypothetical way. Could we start such a neutral discussion here? Sharktopus^talk 15:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the clusters that have been objected to are a function of recentism (and perhaps other aspects of institutional bias). I don't think the encyclopedia needs an article on each book written by any contemporary writer, but it's pretty inevitable that such will get written. And that is where the clusters that look like promotion - of book sales or a political point of view - are coming from. (As has been pointed out, there have been few or no complaints about the frequency with which DYK features Bach cantatas, or English churches, or Olympic athletes, or footballers and teams of either kind.) I don't think there's a solution to that except the weak and passive one of continuing to encourage editors to consider institutional bias and work to fill in gaps elsewhere in the encyclopedia. To forbid or turn down nominations based on excess coverage of one topic or person would be unfair. So I think requiring them to be spaced out - no more than one a day on any contemporary person or their works, and if possible in different timeslots on the different days - would be the best solution at DYK. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

• (ec)Current practice: Assuming that the hooks and articles are suitably NPOV and meet all DYK requirements, they should all be used as promptly as possible. It is recommended to space topically-related hooks into different updates in order to have balanced updates. We have discussed -- and I thought, reached consensus -- on a special rule that a hook about a candidate in an upcoming election will not be run within the 30 days prior to that election (sorry, I can't find that anywhere in the rules, perhaps someone knows...), but beyond that, we try not to take political considerations into account. Where possible, related articles are combined into multi-article hooks, to reduce the total number of appearances of a single topic. cmadler (talk) 17:02, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
• Suggestion: Where related articles can't be combined into multi-article hooks, I suggest that the ideal spacing would be every n+1 updates, where n is the number of daily updates. For example, since we are currently on 6-hour updates, there are four updates per day, so the ideal spacing would be every fifth update. This way, the related articles don't appear consecutively (giving continuous Main Page exposure to the topic), and the related articles don't appear at the same time on consecutive days (where they are likely to be viewed by the same readers). The exception to all this, of course, is when there's some link between the topic and the date. cmadler (talk) 17:02, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I'll add another thought to this. I think the ideal spacing is every n+1 updates, as I described above, but of course, reality gets in the way of the ideal all the time. Spacing slightly longer than ideal would be fine, and there's generally not a problem with shorter spacing. What we don't want -- I think there's just no need for it -- is to hold hooks for spacing a week apart (or longer), as someone suggested in the current case. I just don't see any benefit to intentionally spacing hooks more than about n+1 updates. cmadler (talk) 20:17, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
• Spacing out DYKs sounds eminently sensible. What would not be acceptable, I think, is the proposition (advanced in an earlier discussion by one editor) that a particular topic should be blacklisted because it is "controversial", even if there is nothing wrong or objectionable with the DYK article itself. I suggest that as well as adding a policy point about spacing out DYKs, we should also add a point about invalid arguments against particular DYKs, along the lines of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. It would be helpful if certain lines of argument could be ruled invalid at the start, to save everyone time later. Prioryman (talk) 19:47, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Definitely space them out. I'd assumed that was done by the admins who queue them and put them on the main page. Tony (talk) 08:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Articles on related topics are normally spaced out as updates are prepared, simply by virtue of the requirement for each update to contain a variety of content. Beyond the requirement for a varied update, editors composing updates usually try to pull the oldest verified hooks from the nominations page, occassionally deviating for hooks with a connection to a specific date or for the first and last hooks of the update (image and quirky/funny/upbeat, respectively). I think the question here is how far related articles should be spaced out; is it sufficient simply to make sure they're in different updates (which is currently the only thing we have systemized), or do they need to be separated by a specified number of updates? If the latter, then how far should they be spaced? cmadler (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I am loath to support a formal rule requiring spacing of "similar articles" because the primary function of such a rule would be generating a steady stream of debates about whether various pairs or groups of articles are sufficiently similar for the rule to apply. Do we really need to fill this talk page with discussions on the closeness of biographies of people living in the same country, participants in an athletic event (e.g. 2012 Summer Olympics), naval ships, or animal/plant species? --Allen3 ^talk 21:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point, but it only seems to be arousing concern in the case of living people and their works (books, but the issue of lots of DYK exposure in a short time being interpretable as promotion might arise with paintings or buildings I imagine). The n+1 rule of thumb seems eminently sensible - how about we apply it only to living people and their works? I do think trying to suppress nominations on such grounds would be unfair and against the principle that we all edit what we feel like editing. I would extend that even to encouraging bundling nominations into multiple-hook articles: the editor may not have all the articles ready at once, and even that strikes me as unfair pressure. But in an ideal world the best solution would be to have more DYK submissions on under-represented topics, to dilute the clumps further than they already are. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

[Edit] link wrong?

Is it just me or has this happened to others. Yesterday I tried to review John Arthur (philosopher), but when I hit submit, I realized my comments were placed under Jaime Areizaga-Soto. I moved the comments to the correct hook and then for good measure, I also reviewed the Soto article as I assumed it was my mistake and I should have been more aware of what I clicked. Then today, I tried to edit Bullskin Creek Site, and I noticed when I clicked the "Edit" link, it actually took me to the section below it, "Special occasion holding area". I tried it a couple times with the same results. I found that clicking edit next to "Henryk Kuna" actually brought me to the Bullskin Creek Site hook. It appears as if the "Edit" link for any section actually brings you to the section below it. Has anyone else experienced this?--v/r - TP 19:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Nah, it's not just you. Common occurrence with a heavily-edited page. Sometimes you just need to hit refresh. 28bytes (talk) 19:26, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll just have to pay more attention to what actually comes up when I click it then.--v/r - TP 19:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I raised this only a few weeks ago. It's a continual nuisance. Is there no other way of organising the page so nominators and reviewers can click edit and get the right subsection, and better still, can watchlist a single entry? Tony (talk) 08:28, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

See the discussion above for more on possible solutions to these vexing issues. - Dravecky (talk) 08:33, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help if the explanation given above would appear right on top of the page: "refresh before editing"? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:45, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Apprentice as captain?

That's what I understand reading in Prep1: "... that an apprentice who served on board Empire Deben was the captain of Canberra during the Falklands War?" I am also surprised how different the new name of the ship is from the former, and wonder if the old name should be mentioned somehow, in brackets, or "formerly"? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

As I understand it, Empire Deben and Canberra are two different ships. Dennis Scott-Masson was an apprentice on Empire Deben in the 1940s and captain of Canberra in the 1980s. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough: Empire Deben and SS Thuringia (1922) are the same ship, or not? Also I am more concerned about the time, the same person served as an apprentice on the ED and (later?) as captain on the Canberra. I would not know how to word it, but as it stands the "apprentice ... was the captain", and I don't think that is right. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I've reworded the hook in Prep1 to read: "that an apprentice who served on board Empire Deben later became the captain of Canberra during the Falklands War?" Sorry, Empire Deben and SS Thuringia are the same ship, but I don't know if the hook needs to reflect this. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! (You can't help that this is a hook which doesn't say anything important about the article, not even mentioning it.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:07, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the problem is about the piped link. This is done to ensure that the count in the DYK template is correct, otherwise we'd be scrabbling around to count how many hits a redirect got, not the article. The ship was built as Thuringia. The choice of which of the three names to house the article under was not easy, but I decided against Empire Deben as being only 3 years under this name. Thuringia just won out as she spent all her career under that name as an ocean liner, whereas General San Martin was a barracks ship for a good portion of her service under that name. I don't think we need to mention that Empire Deben had previous names in the hook, which relates entirely to when she was operating under that name. Mjroots (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the piped link is fine in that case. cmadler (talk) 16:38, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Please don't misunderstand me, I am not against a piped link, but I don't understand why a hook was chosen about the short time under the new name, and not even about the ship then, but a connection to a different ship. I would have preferred a hook on the ship (!) during the long time as Thuringia, as more characteristic. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:56, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, you're always free to suggest an ALT hook if you wish, although it's too late for this one. Mjroots (talk) 07:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Citations to organisation's own website?

Reviewing Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI), I gave it a ?no because it was unsourced except to BRRI's own website, and because many parts were entirely unsourced. In response to my concerns, the nominator has added two citations from other websites (first and second citations) and used the BRRI website to cite what was missing. Technically, I suppose that our requirements have been passed, but I'm concerned about promoting an article to the Main Page that lacks both substantial coverage in a print source and substantial coverage in an online source independent of the subject, especially since the hook itself comes from BRRI's website. What say you to the idea of promoting this article as-is versus requiring more work first? Aside from sourcing issues, the article doesn't seem to have much of any problems: it's long enough and new enough, and I suspect that it's notable because it's apparently both a major part of Ghana's academic world and a player on the international West African academic scene. Nyttend (talk) 22:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I was very tempted to AfD this, but having done some searches, yes I would agree with you that the organisation may well be notable. But if that's the case, then the nominator should be doing the work to include references, not just leave it as a piece mainly sourced to the organisation's website, with a token nod to two other online refs, both of which are dubious. This should be in there if we're taking the existing refs seriously. I see no justification for promoting this until more work is done. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes, topics are notable, but very poorly covered online. Some organizations, particularly in the developing world, fall into this category. I think we should accept such references, as long as they don't make any controversial claims. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

When Europe sleeps

Q4 has three hooks related to Europe - to appear when Europe sleeps. Yes, one is mine, Paulinerkirche, with dynamite, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, we might reshuffle the queues later. At the moment of upload to Q4 all sets were Europe-related. Materialscientist (talk) 23:28, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

You'll find hooks of interest to all parts of the world that run while that part of the world is asleep... but then other parts of the world get to learn about them, too. (At least, that's how I comfort myself when an article about a radio station in Iowa runs from 1-7am, Iowa time.) - Dravecky (talk) 04:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

You are right in general. But specifically for the Paulinerkirche I just received a comment which made me wish it would appear "before the eyes of the world again", which means with a picture at a different time of the day. That may mean a later day. The church of Luther, Bach, Mendelssohn, Reger ..., with a tradition of university services since 1409, was demolished in 1968 and not rebuilt, a few more days are no problem. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:58, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Separately made duplicate articles

Earlier tonight, I created an article on Ron Bruder. Not long after I finished the bulk of the work, I ran a more intensive Wikipedia search to see what other articles were referring to him so I could add wikilinks in them and found that there was an article already on him at Ronald B. Bruder (what it looked like prior to redirection). Somehow, it hadn't popped up when I ran a Wikipedia search before making my article in the first place. I started a discussion at the Help Desk here to ask what should be done, since the other article was mostly unreferenced and written like a resume and also seemed to have a COI problem based on who the creator was. I was directed to merge any relevant content. After looking it over and snagging any references that were different from what I had, I ended up just redirecting it, as the information was either already covered in the one I had made or it was unsourced and, thus, shouldn't be copied. Therefore, none of the content from that article was actually merged. Because of this, it's pretty much like i've written an entirely new article, since the content is practically entirely different from the other one and written entirely by me without having looked at (or known about) the other one. Therefore, is it out of line for me to ask whether this can be counted as a new article and thus qualify for DYK? Silverseren^C 07:41, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that the article is substantially new, and should therefore be eligible for DYK. It seems to be a similar situation to an article being recreated to replace a copyvio. Mjroots (talk) 07:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Listed. Thanks for your response and help. Silverseren^C 08:54, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

But we've long held that overhauling an existing article, no matter how poorly written, requires 5x expansion to qualify at DYK. This cae is certainly unusual but the replaced article was not a copyvio, was not unsourced (9 sources listed including CNN & NYT), and was about one-third longer than the "new" article that replaced it. Silver seren's work here is laudable but I can't see how it's eligible for DYK under even a loos interpretation of the rules. - Dravecky (talk) 09:29, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Dravecky. It's great work, it's a big improvement, but it's not eligible for DYK. cmadler (talk) 14:25, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Or rule the unreferenced, CoI attempt to be not an article? Tony (talk) 14:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Only it wasn't unreferenced. It had 9 fairly solid references from CNN, The New York Times, and such. - Dravecky (talk) 15:25, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

• This is a new article created by SilverSeren, it is not a rewrite of the previous article. The 5x expansion rule is for rewrites. Sharktopus^talk 15:45, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
• Given that SilverSeren didn't even know about the existence of the other article until after it was written, then the new one sounds very much like a new article to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Except that Wikipedia did already have an article on this topic. Ignoring intent and considering only actions, it's the same is if an editor did a complete rewrite on an existing article, then moved the article to a better name, leaving a redirect in place. If it had been done in that order, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The end result is the same; Wikipedia had an article on a topic, now we have a better article on the same topic. Despite the manner in which it happenned, that's not a new article. cmadler (talk) 18:13, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
    • What we have here is a legitimate difference of opinion about whether or not a newly-created article is a new article if it is newly created but another article covering the same topic in a very different way already existed. I have the greatest respect for the people whose opinion differs from mine here, but I just don't see it their way. What is see is that "ignoring intent, and considering only actions," SS wrote a new article on a notable topic. This is different from doing a complete rewrite of an existing article because 1) it is much harder and 2) writing new articles is what DYK gives kudos for. Sharktopus^talk 18:50, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced

5x expansion, fine, but unsourced information, as almost the entirety of that other version was, shouldn't count towards prose. If you take away all of the unsourced information, you're left with,

"Ronald B. Bruder, a serial entrepreneur and social entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Bruder is the founder of Education for Employment (EFE), a network of locally-run non-profit organizations dedicated to creating economic opportunities for unemployed youth. The network currently operates in the Middle East and North Africa - the region with the world's highest youth unemployment rate. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of The Lighthouse International. Prior to founding EFE, Bruder was a serial entrepreneur mainly focused on real estate development. In 1977, Bruder founded Brookhill. In 1995, Bruder formed Dames & Moore/Brookhill."

That is 655 characters. The article I wrote, which is completely sourced from top to bottom, is more than 5x that. Silverseren^C 19:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Additional Rule A4: "Fivefold expansion is calculated from the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was (copyvios are an exception), no matter whether you kept any of it and no matter if it was up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article."

And this means expansion from the actual article, not the fantasy version from which you wish you were expanding it. Sorry, it's good work but it's just not going to get through DYK. - Dravecky (talk) 20:07, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

So, essentially, that means that an IP address can come along to a small, sourced article, and throw in a bunch of unsourced information. Then if another editor comes in later and removes all of the unsourced information and then expands the actual sourced stuff 5x, it doesn't count as a full 5x because of what the IP address did? That's horrible, horrible policy. Silverseren^C 20:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, sadly, that's the way I've always read it. Or someone can add irrelevant stuff based on confusion, and unless it's in a clearly marked separate section, it's going to cause trouble for the counting. Also as I understand it, the 5-day limit discourages people from doing an emergency fix to a stub and coming back a month or a year later and expanding the article, because that first fix (such as when I went through Berlin U-Bahn station one-liners adding pictures) counts as the start of expansion. It is harder to get an expansion through the goalposts than a new article. Fair or not. And not always to the benefit of the project - I don't think one-line articles are much better than redlinks or redirects, I think we should discourage the creation of sub-stubs. But those do appear to be the rules. Is there any way to increase the length of this article by incorporating a section or two on the organizations and companies he's been associated with? Yngvadottir (talk) 20:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, but there's no way I can get it 5x times what all of the unsourced information was in the other one. It's at about 1.5x at the moment. I don't think there's enough information in the world about him to reach 5x length. Not for now, at least. Silverseren^C 20:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I remember a Bach cantata BWV 132, which was mostly a copy of the text, but not formatted as a quote. I deleted the text - as requested by the project Classical music - before I expanded. An exception was made then not to count the former text portion as a base for the 5* expansion. It made sense to me, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:37, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

19 June

Two hooks waiting in Special occasions, sorry to be boring, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, prompt! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

William the Conqueror

This hook is presently at T:DYK/P4: "... that William Hopkinson Cox, who was Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky from 1907 to 1911, was believed to be a descendent of William the Conqueror?" But we're all descended from Charlemagne, so by the same reasoning, we're almost as surely descended from William the Conqueror. We might change it to "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror", but including the weasel word "believed" would be difficult, and the claim still isn't unusual; my wife's ancestry has also been traced back to William the Conqueror. That much genealogy was less common in 1911 than it is with the Internet, but "... ancestry has been traced back to William the Conqueror, even though there wasn't any Internet yet" sounds too much like "Gee whiz, Batman!" Art LaPella (talk) 21:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree, that's an overly spectacular statement.BarkingMoon (talk) 22:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Queue 3

The thumb for that queue will be the same in the OTD section so that'll have to be changed (either the hook or the picture, the main article has some nice pics). –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 17:03, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

It is still too early to panic about this concern. The image for Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/June 19 was put in place by a user with two edits and the admin who takes care of SA/OTD often does his work between 22:00 and 24:00 (UTC) of the day before. Best course of action is to wait a couple of hours and see if the daily maintenance at SA/OTD resolves the problem for us. --Allen3 ^talk 17:25, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

OK. If the OTD and DYK has the same thumb at the same time something then should be done. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 17:38, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Daily SA/OTD maintenance has resolved the issue. --Allen3 ^talk 21:15, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Change thumbnail for Prep 2?

The thumbnail for prep 2 was a nice side view of a decim periodical cicada but I am thinking this head-on headshot would be more dramatic. I have made the change but in case I should not have done so, I'm asking for feedback. Sharktopus^talk 21:48, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Italicize movie article titles

In the body of an article, to italicize something, you just surround it with ''italics''. But how do you italicize the actual title of the article? I mean the part that shows up above "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" at the very top? See The Legend of Lizzie Borden for reference. Tks.BarkingMoon (talk) 23:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Add one of those templates at the top of the article: {{Italic title}} or {{DISPLAYTITLE}}. The latter is more flexible, e.g. when you need to italicize only one word, but you'll need to add the coded article name into the template. Materialscientist (talk) 23:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks.BarkingMoon (talk) 00:00, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Temporal balance/variety

I'm becoming concerned that subjects like quiz shows, fruit producers, fossil dentition, and Bach cantatas might be appearing too often. I remember a thread somewhere that discussed this; what was the outcome? Editors who start multiple articles on similar topics should not expect them all to be given main-page exposure. The main page is more important than the local efforts of individual editors. Tony (talk) 10:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the flow of nominations on similar topics is not that bad and that we can dilute and disperse it, which the the art of composing the sets (keeping in mind what topics are in the nearby sets). Some preps are filled up too quickly, with hooks on the same topics. Materialscientist (talk) 10:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm relieved if you guys are managing it. I really feel the instructions should say something about thematic moderation by nominators, without being too hard and fast. Tony (talk) 10:41, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

This is precisely why I thought of lighthearted contests like this one, which got some folks writing on different things....Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:16, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Repeated: so far I could say something new about each Bach cantata, and I will stop if that is no longer true. Today I finished "my" first annual cycle. Bach wrote 5, but - relief - only 3 survived. Also repeated: for the next round I will no longer ask for them to appear on Sunday, anytime Saturday (before) to Friday (after) is fine. Exception: holidays like St John 24 June, Christmas etc.. Happy BWV 129 (and there is also Paulinerkirche, for variety), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:36, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I love it all! And I love Gerda for the work she does in the classical music area. For one thing, wiki is too full of pop crap (of the things Tony mentions only quiz shows fall into that). Gerda you go girl! Keep it up! All that being said, I do agree with MS and Tony that we need to spread out similar hooks...slight topic shift...wiki is dominated by males under 30 who are computer and video game savvy, there are too many articles on video games, Pokemon characters, etc ;-) BarkingMoon (talk) 11:44, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

<--Bach cantatas? How could we possibly have too many articles about Bach cantatas? ... But srsly, if you want to thin out DYK, thin out bad articles, don't discourage good ones. Sharktopus^talk 11:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

My inner life revolves around Bach cantatas. But I don't want too many in too short a period on the main page. And any day, please; I'm very pleased for the cultural grid they represent to be loosened out of their celestial-dictatorship context, at least as far as the symbolism of the christian Sunday. I do like the variety—a quiz show or two every now and again is fine; just not a run of them. Popular and high-brow have to be mixed on WP, I think. As long as the hooks draw them in and the articles are pretty good new ones. Tony (talk) 12:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

When I say "bad articles" I don't mean pop culture. (After all, "Sharktopus" is not a Bach cantata.) DYK submissions span the range from well-written to barely-literate, from important ideas to ephemera that evades WP:NOTABLE by mining op-eds and funny "news." But articles I think are junk produce tons of hits for the same reason that more people relax with BoingBoing than read Britannica. Sharktopus^talk 13:40, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

And I've come back to say that Ghana is hitting the main page big-time. Can we get the prolific nominator to space them out a bit, and possibly to widen her/his scope to surrounding African countries in the meantime if DYK noms are so important? Tony (talk) 13:17, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, we should be doing everything in our power to encourage that prolific nominator to contribute to this under-represented area of Wikipedia. Only if someone were contributing so many that every prep included a couple of Ghanas--and that is not what is happening by a very very very longshot. I am very uncomfortable with this suggestion, and in general with the way really good encyclopedia-type content is getting put down in a focus on hooky hooks and variety. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and the purpose of DYK is to encourage people to create good encyclopedia articles. The people who are writing good encyclopedia articles should be encouraged, not embarrassed by public criticism of their themes or enthusiasm. Sharktopus^talk 14:03, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I have to strongly agree with Sharktopus. It's like lately there are efforts to stifle good productive editors. All we need here is to spread out hooks in the queues if they are very similar. BarkingMoon (talk) 14:24, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately this is a volunteer project, and one can only do so much to influence content. Having someone write about Ghana is just great, and I suspect that using sticks rather than carrots in interactions with the editing community will only lead to lowering of morale and loss of contributors. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:29, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Cas, et al, Indeed. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. As long as people aren't disruptive and produce good content, things can be worked out. Of course, here the problem is getting people to agree on what is disruptive ;-) BarkingMoon (talk) 15:42, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) I have to agree with many of the responses above. I suspect the perception of preponderance of certain topics is affected by one's level of interest - someone said not long ago that we had an awful lot of lead hooks about English churches, and I've noticed a certain fondness for US college sports, but fossil dentition over-represented?! But I think Tony is thinking of the "COI" thread above, and its predecessor, and in both of those the point has been made that many people write articles in clusters on a particular (group of) topic(s). Whatever. The solution is not discouragement, it's encouragement of more articles on a greater variety of topics, to dilute the concentrations and offer something for the widest possible variety of interests. And in fact DYK works extremely well in fostering and drawing attention to a variety of articles. It also demonstrates over and over again how diverse readers', as well as editors', interests are. To compare 2 articles from my own list of DYKs: both Jelling stone ship and Techno Viking are in the hall of fame, but the former is the one with over 13k hits. You just never know what people will be interested in :-) (I also wanted to set another powerful example beside Sharktopus '-).) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

No doubt I'll be mauled for saying this. DYK is being used by a lot of editors who have expertise in a certain field to gain publicity and attract editors at the initial stages. The problem arises when too many start-up articles on the same narrow set of topics are nominated here too fast, and when editors are allowed just to drag out a sentence from their post-stub that is patently not hooky. Both practices are mutually supportive: I can see this from having intensively reviewed over the past few weeks. I mean no offence to the Ghana expert, who I strongly encourage to keep churning out those articles and improving them—and to selectively nominate the odd one that contains hook interest; just not every one of them.

These are just not hooky, yet are currently nominated. I believe they should be rejected:

• ... that in 1963 the Building and Road Research Institute of Ghana relocated to the KNUST campus so that the institute's staff could lecture at the university due to university under-staffing?
• ... that both the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute and the Building and Road Research Institute of Ghana were formed out of the West African Building Research Institute?
• ... that Motor Transport and Traffic Unit of the Ghana Police Service was established in 1952?
• ... that the Ghana Standards Board was established in 1973 and has a function of inspecting all goods that enter through the six entry points of Ghana?

This next one is getting there: I wouldn't oppose it, and I'd comb through the article to identify anything to make it the required "punchy". I fixed a few glaring issues in the article, which were for some reason missed by the nominator-reviewer. Why?

• ... that Presbyterian Church of Ghana, a founding member of the Christian Council of Ghana, was formed in 1828 by Basel missionaries from Germany?

This next one might have balls, but not yet: the hook is all too bureaucratic in its theme. There might be more interesting things in the article, which desperately needs more than my quick-fix copy-edits. Such articles are not yet suitable for main-page exposure, and it is idle to suggest that nominators who tick off other nominations have done more than a 10-second flick through and word count:

• ... that Saltpond Oil Field in Ghana which was discovered in 1970 is managed by SOPCL, the country's oldest crude oil producer? Tony (talk) 05:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

You know, what is SPOPCL, and who cares? (To be brutallly honest.) I'm seeing things from the perspective of visitors to our showcase page. Tony (talk) 05:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

To be brutally honest, visitors to our showcase page could not give less of a crap how many articles about Ghana were in Queue or Prep last week. "Variety" on a scale of days or weeks is invisible to anyone but a DYK insider. And the appeal to "variety" has now degenerated into another distasteful slamfest against regular contributors, another demand that people set aside their own interests and expertise to pursue clickthrough as predicted by Tony1's interests.

DYK is not about hooky hooks, it is not about clickthrough, it is not about pointing fingers at others for wanting DYK credits, it is about articles. The person who writes articles about Ghana is doing exactly what DYK is meant to motivate people to do, and to the extent that you demotivate that person, you are doing exactly opposite what DYK is meant to do. If you want hookier hooks, go forth and write good ones. That way you will be benefiting DYK according to your own views of what it should do instead of annoying crusty curmudgeons with teeth and tentacles. Sharktopus ^talk 12:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Where are my own "interests" at issue? Did I mention what my interests are? Because you're using this presumption to discredit my points. My aim is to minimise boring, pointless hooks and to improve the vetting of articles. You seem to attack me for this. And are you endorsing these hooks and articles for main-page exposure, especially the first four I've cited above? That is what I'd like to know. Tony (talk) 13:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Your aim to minimize boring hooks is peripheral to the aim of DYK, and the means you are repeatedly using to seek that goal are disruptive to the aim of DYK. Many others besides me have already made the point that it is a bad idea to put contributors on public pillory as bad examples of what you don't like, but in vain. Although your service to DYK in the past is considerable, I understand short topic bans can be used to stop disruption when it is ongoing. Sharktopus ^talk 13:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I put a lot of work into helping people, the hooks are better, and all you can do is ask that I be topic-banned. Why not topic-ban Sharktopus? Tony (talk) 14:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

If Sharktopus is disruptive here, repeatedly failing to hear what others are saying, a topic ban on Sharktopus should be considered. Sharktopus ^talk 15:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Tony, you just can't seem to get it that "closer to Tony's tastes" does not ipso facto mean better or even "hookier." You don't need to mention your interests - you are defining interesting hooks as hooks that interest you. That isn't how it works. "... that in 1963 the Building and Road Research Institute of Ghana relocated to the KNUST campus so that the institute's staff could lecture at the university due to university under-staffing?" looks great to me. Far more interesting than "... that Saltpond Oil Field in Ghana which was discovered in 1970 is managed by SOPCL, the country's oldest crude oil producer?" or for that matter the Basel missionaries - that one touches on an area of profound non-interest of mine. My taste is as valid as yours, and neither is predictive of the typical Main Page visitor, because there is no such beast! Moreover, you keep insulting other people who review articles. It's a lot more than "idle" to "suggest" that people "who tick off other nominations have done more than a 10-second flick through and word count". I simply do not see why you are so convinced that articles are receiving rubber-stamp reviews. Or why you single out nominators in particular. Nominators are not the only ones reviewing articles. This only makes it all the more irksome that you have stated taht you don't want to spend the time to actually review the articles. If that's changed, good. But you are hardly the only one who puts a lot of work into helping people, and you're pretty much alone here both in being repeatedly rude and accusatory and in maintaining that large numbers of hooks are boring. Or that some of the specific articles and topics you have cited as examples are inherently boring. And that's even without getting into once more what Sharktopus just re-stated - your being on a quest that is peripheral to what DYK is about and that suggests you haven't considered or are not fully aware of what DYK is for. And the deleterious effects of this quest in not only clogging up the process but potentially discouraging people - people who are doing just what we are supposed to value here, creating and greatly improving content. And people who in many cases are relatively new. This is not a case where tu quoque is appropriate. It's a case where what you want is at odds with what we do here. I appreciate the work you have been doing as I appreciate everybody who helps out. But effort does not equal usefulness. And "boring to Tony" does not equal "fundamentally boring and unworthy of Main Page exposure". To say it once more! Yngvadottir (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

"you keep insulting other people who review articles"—I think your "nominate and review in return system is not working well. It leads to quick, shallow reviews. The proof is that others have to come in to review properly. Have a look for yourself. As for "taste", you are very welcome to come in and disagree. I am only trying to assist, and a look through the prep rooms shows a considerably more interesting field of hooks than what I was complaining about in my "House of lame" thread a while ago. The nominators are attracted by reviews that offer suggestions and ideas; it is only people who occupy this page who seem to get their backs up. Yngvadottir, "repeatedly rude and accusatory"—well, that's your framing of critical input. Show me where I've been rude, please. "Maintaining that large numbers of hooks are boring"—large numbers? Compared with those that I've praised and encouraged? Please look again. Sure, a few times I've had to say "the hook is boring"—I stand by it. Someone's gotta say it. Can I draw your attention to the appropriate rule, which has until now not been at issue in this process. "And "boring to Tony" does not equal "fundamentally boring and unworthy of Main Page exposure"." Well, you're free to come along and disagree; the angst seems to be manufactured here rather than by nominators, and very often I make helpful suggestions for improving a hook. What is wrong with doing that. Occasionally, the article contains nothing that is hooky: I say so. Tony (talk) 15:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually I squealed loudly about the quid pro quo requirement, I still think it's asinine, it drove away at least one regular DYK contributor, and I'm snickering at your assumption that everyone here, particularly me, likes it. I believe that once again, you are oversimplifying the positions of those who disagree with you. For rude - and aggressive, below - I suggest you re-read my response to your statement that all of us are giving articles only a 10-second evaluation and word-count. There are also any number of examples of you labeling hooks/articles "simply not good enough", in varying dismissive vocabulary. Several of us have pointed this out factually. Your shameful treatment of Islanding is one of those you have already stated you stand by, but it remains shameful, because you justified it simply by your ignorance of the topic. You should have read the article and educated yourself - or kept quiet. You do it again above - "Someone's gotta say [the hook is boring]". Nope. Only you feel you have to say it - because you personally feel the hook is boring. Stating this as an obligation is dismissive, it's hostile, and it's rude to the person who wrote or expanded the article. Also, to get back to policy, why are you again and again assuming bad faith about nominators? You wrote earlier of DYK "being used by a lot of editors who have expertise in a certain field to gain publicity and attract editors at the initial stages". You seem to think the person writing about Ghana is somehow gaming the system. I cannot see this as justified or in line with the principle of assuming good faith. Maybe that's why you consider justified, comments that come over as hostile. Again - if you're helping, good. But I don't agree with you on a good 90% of what you're saying, and I see it as damaging, in the main. That I gotta say. We can revisit quid pro quo in another thread, if you wish. It's been in place for 6 months now and maybe it's time. But I think teh whole "You're nominators and I'm not" thing is a red herring at best and an assumption of bad faith and battleground attitude at worst, so it should be separated from your main thing, that you don't like a lot of hooks and a lot of nominated articles. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Sharktopus' statements. I feel that lately the whole mood of DYK has changed, and instead of encouraging new content, like the Ghana-themed articles (which fills an important gap), contributors are told to focus entirely on what, in Tony's view, will produce more "clicks". That seems to mean avoiding anything that Tony personally finds "boring" or "lame", as well as only having a single link in each hook. I feel hesitant to nominate articles to DYK in such an aggressive atmosphere. Manxruler (talk) 15:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Diffs to "aggressive", please? Or do you mean "critical"? Tony (talk) 15:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, my feeling is also that temporal balance/variety is only going to be noticed by very regular DYK readers. I think it's most useful to show as much new content on the main page as we can (given that it fulfills our requirements), in order to promote and encourage further editing/integration of as many articles as possible. If much of Wikipedia's newest content for a week happens to be about Ghana, I'm fine with DYK reflecting that; ditto Bach, paralympics, etc. I've found that when my own DYK articles go to the main page, they always come back improved--additional sources I wouldn't have thought of, minor proofreading that I missed, foreign language help, etc. For example, when my DYK on journalist Muhammad al-Saqr went to the main page, another editor helped find a second article on the same person at Mohammad al-Sager, which I hadn't found as the latter happened to focus on his banking career. I had searched high and low through my sources, and even brought in an Arabic-speaking editor, without finding this alternative transliteration, but once properly merged, it made for a much better article. In click terms, my nomination was a dismal failure (less than 400, I think), but in terms of improving Wikipedia, that front page appearance was a big win. (Al-Saqr/Al-Sager has won international awards for his reporting and also served as chairman of the Arab Parliament for three years, so he's not exactly a minor figure, either). So while I can see where Tony's coming from, I think this potential good--giving as many qualified new articles a showcase as possible, and encouraging the creation of as many new quality articles as possible--clearly outweighs the potential harm--a four-times-a-day DYK reader being frustrated by the number of Ghana articles. Khazar (talk) 17:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

For some time, in a bouquet of flowers the colours had to be evenly distributed, then it became a fashion to arrange them by colour (for example: a bunch of blue right, yellow left, white in the middle). I like both, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

comma

Now in prep2, the Culture Centre (pictured) has a comma after New Caledonia which separates the subject from the rest of the sentence, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:25, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Removed. Materialscientist (talk) 11:34, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I added one to Celestial City, Imeko, now in prep2, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Queue 4 (before Prep 1), Empire Defender

The original hook appears, but the approval was given (only) for ALT2, something like ... that the cargo ship Empire Defender was seized by Britain twice, – in World War I under a German flag, and again in World War II under an Italian flag? (or was it the other way round?) - Please, Tony, strike out overlinked etc alternatives. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Looking now. Tony (talk) 12:25, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't find it. Tony (talk) 12:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Master of precise language, what is "it"? Prep 1 has as the last hook the one that you disapproved as overlinked etc., is that "it". The approved hook (if that is "it") is in the diff of the suggestion page when it was moved to prep, but I don't have the time to look it up now on Christian Sunday. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Head spinning. Is there a way of linking to what you want me to look at? Tomorrow? Tony (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Back from a nice walk: sorry about your head. I linked, above, it's called Prep 1, spelled out Template:Did_you_know/Queue#Prep_area_1_.5Bedit.5D. It's still there. The move was performed by Allen3 today 8:44, move to prep. Neither you nor I should change the prep, though, because we were involved. I meant to say that in the future you better strike out rejected hooks, like this, to prevent a prep assembler to see green light and take the hook, without reading the fine print. The approved hook was almost exactly what I remembered above, - that made my day! "twice" was italic, with an extra space which escaped me when I copied. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:50, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Prep 1 is now in Queue 4, Template:Did_you_know/Queue#Queue_4_.5Bedit.5D, I still hope the improved hook can be used, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:04, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Changed to a tweaked version of ALT2. Materialscientist (talk) 22:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Prep 3, Lincoln Park

The hook was changed from "Jersey City boasts ..." to "Lincoln Park boasts ...". Learning English: Can a park really boast? - Please consider Prep1, above. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

If you are learning English, perhaps you are unaware of definition 3 at Wiktionary:boast#Verb: "3. (ergative) To possess something special. The hotel boasts one of the best views of the sea." Art LaPella (talk) 19:27, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. The phrasing in the source is different, though. For a city and a hotel, I imagine the people behind it, less so for a park. But taken, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

More about it here: "Some have objected to the use of boast as a transitive verb meaning “to possess or own (a desirable feature),” as in This network boasts an audience with a greater concentration of professionals and managers than any other broadcast vehicle. This usage is by now well established, however, and is acceptable to 62 percent of the Usage Panel." Art LaPella (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:57, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Find Me (Christina Grimmie album)

I need a second pair of eyes to look over this nomination please. Technically ALT2 seems ok, but I'm not sure whether the citations are suitable. —Bruce1ee^talk 11:02, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Links in hooks

This is a side topic of the discussion about variety, and is a copy of my comment on the suggestions page where it will disappear soon, so please forgive my personal examples: In general, a link serves(!) many purposes: it is an offer of explanation of a term which may not be known (example canticle), it "defines" a term which doesn't need quotation marks then (example Feast of St. John the Baptist), it provides the long version of something shortened (example Bach). Of course I don't have to link Bach and his cantata to someone who followed the cantatas for a year, - but to a first-time reader I want to provide this little service. - As for Lincoln Park, I agree that it is not good to link New Jersey, but I voted for linking Jersey City as being part of the article name. Now we have Jersey City, New Jersey in the queue, well, why not? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and Bach is linked to at the DYK article, right at the top of Bach cantata and in every article on specific cantatas. Tony (talk) 14:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

No doubt about that. You and I know what Bach means, but how about others around the globe? Also which Bach? To spell out Johann Sebastian takes too many chars, you can abbreviate, and the mouse over it gives you the complete info, without even clicking. Sometimes I would prefer to link Bach cantata right away, but look at that article's talk to find out why I don't, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

As you know, "Bach" means JS by default, unless CPE or WF et al. are specified, or the context for such is already established. The link to the composer's name, if the seven-year-old doesn't know what it means, is in the DYK article, right at the top. Tony (talk) 05:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)