User:Tony1/sandbox3

DYK (Did you know ...) is a forum that has privileged access to prominent spot on the English Wikipeidia's main page. This set of tutorials is provided to help editors improve their DYK-related skills. It is, we believe, only one side of the task of professionalising DYK, alongside reforming its flawed process. in identifying appropriate topics, preparing a new article for nomination, and devising .

Three sets of show-and-tell tutorial exercises are presented here; they involve no text-typing—only thinking through the possibilities and clicking through to just one solution. We work, in effect, part of the way backwards down the pipeline. The first set deals with the message structure of a hook—how to devise an effective "hook" for an article, for temporary display on the main page. The second deals with how to extract an interesting or surprising "hook fact" from an article.

Feedback on how to improve these exercises is welcome on the talk page.

Self-help writing tutorials:

• Exercises in weeding out fluff from article text
• Advanced editing exercises
• Spot the ambiguity
• Build your linking skills
• Using hyphens and dashes
• Copy-editing essentials, part of the Military History Academy

edit

DYK hook as message

Instructions

• For each exercise, we ask you to decide whether the hook can be improved, and if so, how.
• When you're ready, click on the "Hint" box. If it's not what you expected, think through it again.
• Click on the "Possible solution" box.

NB Inserting secondary links is a practice that this page discourages, since they divert visitors away from the DYK article, and the links are normally all prominently displayed. However, if you insist on them, there is quite good evidence suggesting that the bolded DYK link should come first if possible, to give the greatest likelihood of DYK visits. Some of the exercises involve recasting the hook to achieve this.

A

Did you know ... that the Russell Watson (pictured) version of the song "Faith of the Heart" was played four times on Space Shuttle missions?

Hint

XX

Possible solutions

Did you know ... that the recording of "Faith of the Heart" by tenor Russell Watson (pictured) was played four times on Space Shuttle missions?

At least there's a weak reason for linking "Russell Watson", since his picture is adjacent. But "Space Shuttle" is already linked in the DYK article, and is a commonly known thing.

Did you know ... that the recording of "Faith of the Heart" by tenor Russell Watson (pictured) was played four times on Space Shuttle missions?

B

Did you know ... that Bach copied out and performed a Missa in G minor by Johann Hugo von Wilderer, court Kapellmeister and opera composer for Elector Johann Wilhelm in Düsseldorf?

Hints

The bolded DYK links is swamped by four other links and by too much information, so the theme of the hook (and thus the DYK) is confused; two diversionary links come before the DYK link. There are three names in the hook. Try to reorganise the grammar so that Johann Hugo von Wilderer is towards the start. And what information could be removed altogether, since it's in the article itself?

Possible solutions

Reorganise: Did you know ... that Missa in G minor by Johann Hugo von Wilderer, court Kapellmeister and opera composer for Elector Johann Wilhelm in Düsseldorf, was copied out and performed by Bach?

Remove excessive information: Did you know ... that Missa in G minor by Johann Hugo von Wilderer was copied out and performed by Bach?

Now we may as well put the DYK first: Did you know ... that Johann Hugo von Wilderer's Missa in G minor was copied out and performed by Bach?

And why not educate readers about "Missa" when they read the article? without the link-farm: Did you know ... that Johann Hugo von Wilderer's Missa in G minor was copied out and performed by Bach?

C

Hint

XX

Possible solution

Hint

XX

Possible solution