Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 15

message: Shouldn't the Prigat item read:
...that in 1943, Prigat, a small and newly created juice manufacturer at the time, sold 775,000 syrup bottles to the British Army in the Palestine Mandate?
Considering that the state of Israel (where the current link goes) didn't exist in 1993. --Jfruh (talk) 03:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prigat item and Israel 

message: Why is it never written what does the image represent?! --Eleassar my talk 11:14, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The image is always illustrating the topmost entry, and ideally "(pictured)" should have been added right after the relevant link when DYK is updated. The alt text for the image occasionally gives slightly more detail. I'm not sure that much more can be done in the limited space that the template occupies. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:27, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: My shot at a DYK from the article on The Joint Expedition Against Franklin.  This is my first shot at this, so i am open for suggestions on how I can improve!  Thanks.
...That The Joint Expedition Against Franklin was a small Civil War battle that occured on the Blackwater river near Franklin, Virginia in which 7 United States sailors were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor.
Chris Kreider 18:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: oops, wrong place.  I will move this to the right place.  Chris Kreider 18:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did you Know 

message: Well, we have been through this before, but I still feel that it is required to flag this off, given that we are woefully short of updating admins. I'd prefer reguar updation of DYK to notification - ppl may feel that it is an inconvenience if they are not notified but would be devastated if their nom doesn't make it to DYK. I believe that updating article talkpage alone should be enough as long as we can promise better turnaround and more frequent updation of DYK. If people still feel that the article creator and the nominator (groan!) need to be notified, may be some non-admins can take up that work to help the updating admins. The minimum mandatory requirement for an updating nominator should be updating the article talkpage and nothing more. It is very beneficial for someone like me who works from a slow internet connection but would like to extend a helping hand. I believe we can also attract more admins to update in that simpler scenario. Please see the burnout rate among updating admins and think about it. Another idea I have, is to create an admin pool for updating DYK - with name of admin, the times he can update and the days he can update. If we have three admins covering each slot, we will definitely have regular turnaround of DYK. If we find that some slots are not taken, we can go to WP:AN and make an appeal for those slots - specific requests and a simpler process generate a better response any day. Else, we will keep discussing the same issues till eternity. FWIW, the discussion topics were the same from at least March 2006, when I started becoming inactive here. --Gurubrahma 05:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say that the stamp-collecting part of DYK is a great incentive to contribute. I think a better way would be to conscript some aspiring admin to do an apprenticeship by doing the "clerking" like for RFCU and RFARB. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 05:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would it not be possible for some kind of bot to do this? It seems that as long as you know the contributor, article name and date the actual task is quite mechanical. --Cherry blossom tree 11:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

text: It could do and theoretically could be easy. I wouldn't use the bot myself, except for the article talk page. Sometimes I like to have a personal word with the author of the page.Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

text: It is not exceedingly difficult, but it is time-consuming.  I find it takes about 30 minutes to update DYK (review the suggestions page, check the edit history of likely candidates to make sure that they are new enough, review the articles to check that they are long enough and have references etc, check that one has a suitable image, check whether the image needs to be uploaded from commons, protect the image and add a protection template, review the nomination text and tweak where necessary, save and check the new entries look OK on the Main Page, update the suggestions page, add the (same) template to five or six talk page).  Perhaps I need more practice to become more efficient (or perhaps there are corners that I could cut) but that is quite long enough to spend doing a relatively mundane administrative task!  Adding templates to the user talk pages of the selected article's creators and nominators adds another 5 to 10 minutes to an already lengthy process.  Part of the problem is that user talk template is different (you have to match creators/nominators with their articles).  Yes, I agree it is nice to get that the warm glow when you see a DYK message on your talk page (and I often miss seeing my actual nominations on the Main Page because they are up and then removed while I am away from Wikipedia) but I can like without it.  It would be easier if there was a generic "you have an article on DYK" template, without specifying the article, or perhaps we would reactivate the "holding area" so someone other than the updating admin can do the notifications? -- ALoan (Talk) 14:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Hey that idea has a lot of merit. It seems worthy of an experiment Someone maybe could mock up what it might look like? ++Lar: t/c 00:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it's a good idea too. A few thoughts: We'd have to be careful about preparing a template before midnight UTC and using it after, since if the featured article and on this day lengths change then we'd throw the balance off. I think unprotecting the template would be good, since it would give us a bigger pool of labour to work from. I think in most cases whoever puts it on the main page would just have to check the history to see that whichever users updated it were trustworthy (and ensure that the image is protected) rather than examining each article individually. It would also allow someone to do part of an update, leaving it for others to complete if they didn't have time. --Cherry blossom tree 00:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've knocked up a trial page at Template:Did you know/Next update. to view it in the context of today's Main Page, go to Main Page alternative (Next DYK). To view it in tomorrow's, go to Main Page alternative (Tomorrow & Next DYK). GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 19:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Radical (may be not) proposal for getting more DYK updaters 

message: Another option would be to work one update in advance, leaving the next template-batch on a subpage for any admin who happens along after the update-time. This'd have a few benefits:
#Since the entries would already be checked and the picture protected, all the next guy would have to do is to copy/paste it to the template and add the notices. 
#The next template can be worked up at any time during the next six hours, and any errors removed before they hit the Main Page. 
#The template could perhaps be left unprotected since it's not on the Main Page, so non-admins could have a go at it (not sure about this idea, since it'd mean the updating admin would still have to check all the entries before pasting them in)
#An alternate Main Page could be made substituting in the subpage for DYK, making it easier to match up the lengths of the two sides.
Any opinions? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 11:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey that idea has a lot of merit. It seems worthy of an experiment Someone maybe could mock up what it might look like? ++Lar: t/c 00:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I think it's a good idea too. A few thoughts: We'd have to be careful about preparing a template before midnight UTC and using it after, since if the featured article and on this day lengths change then we'd throw the balance off. I think unprotecting the template would be good, since it would give us a bigger pool of labour to work from. I think in most cases whoever puts it on the main page would just have to check the history to see that whichever users updated it were trustworthy (and ensure that the image is protected) rather than examining each article individually. It would also allow someone to do part of an update, leaving it for others to complete if they didn't have time. --Cherry blossom tree 00:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've knocked up a trial page at Template:Did you know/Next update. to view it in the context of today's Main Page, go to Main Page alternative (Next DYK). To view it in tomorrow's, go to Main Page alternative (Tomorrow & Next DYK). GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 19:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another option

message: Can someone with some time go through the DYK's archive articles and sort it by date and break it off from the rest of the DYK's featured daily and group it by a monthly basis and include the picture that was also featured with the DYK article. For an example of what it should look like reference the other main page's archives, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_of_the_day/November_2006
I think it would vastly improve the aesthetics and feel of the DYK archive and lead to better usage. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.225.125.176 (talk • contribs) 12:16, 15 November 2006
:That is a good idea, but it would be quite a large amount of work (you could also haved point to WP:TFA and its subpages, which I think was set up that way before the POTD archive).
:The main problem here, I think, is that DYK is set up with daily subpages like TFA and POTD so it can be changed every day (which makes it easy to point to the relevant daily sub-page) but rather is updated several times each day, on an ad hoc basis.  Quite a lot of investigative work would be required to go through the archives and work out which articles were nominated when, not to mention editing all of the archives and setting up new pages by date.  The traditional response to somone asking for lots of work to be done by other people would be . -- ALoan (Talk) 12:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update DYK's Look and Feel 

message: How did Revolution make it into DYK when the article is over five years old as a stub and almost four years old as a non-stub? —Angr 07:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Spirited argument by User:Piotrus, I guess. I wasn't updating the template over the weekend when this appeared (busy doing academic work), and given its iffy nature and the fact that we're doing fairly well for nominations at the moment, I probably would have passed it over, at least until it had garnered some more discussion. No harm done though, so long as this isn't called back as precedent at some point in the future. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 13:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I pointed out on T:TDYK we will never fool our readers into believing that revolution is a new article in English Wikipedia. Besides, the expansion was not very substantial and the article still lacks a lot. I don't think we should add common terms to DYK, even if their coverage was expanded. For instance, I would not like to see gate on WP:DYK, because the article has been clearly there for ages. --Ghirla -трёп- 13:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revolution? 

message: All right - I'd like to try and exercise my brand-new admin powers by having a try at updating DYK from the prepared template. However, the local image used in the new update - :Image:HinduSwastika.svg - behaves strangely: it can be viewed, but trying to edit it (to add the  tag) comes up with an empty page. Any ideas? Sandstein 05:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, of course, it's because no one has uploaded the file on Wikipedia yet. Sorry, it's early in the morning here... Sandstein 05:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've completed the update - please excuse any mess I may have made of things. One problem, though: I can't find the templates to be used for notifying contributors or for marking the discussion pages. Can anybody please add them to the guide to updating DYK - and help me out with actually adding them, since I've got to leave for work now anyway? Thanks! Sandstein 05:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Sandstein. Hopefully I'm not stealing your thunder, but I've found and added one of the templates you're after. The one for the article's talk page is . The one for the creators/nominators I can't find, but I've just copied the relevant code from one of the notifications I've had before - inexact, but at least it gets the job done. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for helping me out here! Sandstein 07:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not a problem. Just a quick heads-up, which is that if any of the articles were nominated by people who didn't write them, I didn't do anything about that. The authors have notifications and the articles have boxes, though. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 08:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For future reference, the talk page notices are at the bottom of Template talk:Did you know. :) GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 08:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I knew I'd seen them somewhere. Always in the last place you look and all that. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 08:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating problem? 

message: Is it considered an conflic of interest, if updating the dyk next update and you add an article you suggested?  I am inclined to skip over my own article as I would rather not even give the impression that I am doing it just so my article gets shown?  Anybody have any suggestions on the proper procedure for this? - Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I seem to recall that when Lar was actively updating DYK, he would generally rely on another admin to review his own nominations. Even if your evaluation of your own work is honest and accurate, there would indeed be a strong perception of COI (I know this came up over the summer, and some accusations were exchanged, but I can't provide a diff). However, if you are concerned that your piece might get overlooked, it shouldn't be objectionable to ask another admin to review it (in a neutral fashion of course, not "Hi, would you please add my nom to the update?"). Doc  Tropics 19:40, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, I would tend not to pick my own nomination.  Do you have any particular update or updater in mind? -- ALoan (Talk) 19:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to admit that I'm very guilty of doing this recently, though I do have the somewhat plausible excuses that for most of November my nominations have made up a huge proportion of the non-stub suggestions (Since November 20, I've written the nomination for and submitted 55 articles that have hit the Main Page, an average of about 5 per day), that none of my nominations are of articles I've created, and that I've been making sure the template is updated every 6-8 hours, to the point of staying up to update and doing so again before leaving the house in the morning, which has meant that not a single article without an attached complaint has expired recently. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 20:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

text: No, no don't put your own noms on.  Not cool.  I'd pull out the diffs but we discussed this ad nauseum in the summer -- Samir धर्म 07:31, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When the choices look like this, am I better off just not updating the template for a week or so? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 06:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

text: That's OK, I did a GeeJo clean-sweep update once. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 06:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why don't we limit it to not putting articles that you authored on the template?  -- Samir धर्म 06:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflict of Interest 

message: The Next Update trial's been running for a few days now, and I figure it's about time to start finding out what peoples' opinions are. Its original aims were to:
#Cut down the time required for an admin to update the main template
#Avoid any major errors hitting the Main Page, by having a wider pool of people check over a set
#Get more people involved in DYK
How do you feel it's working with regards to these aims? (I'll post my own opinion in a little while) GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 15:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 1.)I am not an admin, but I am going to assume that it is alot easier for an admin to post a well prepared dyk.  2.) I think with more people involved, there is a better chance of catching the errors.  After while, you start looking at hooks as, "How can I make this fit nicley"  If you arent setting it up, just viewing it, or getting ready to publish it, I assume it might be easer to have the errors, "Jump out". 3.) Get more people involved with dyk.  It got me involved, and Now, I try to tell everybody I know to get involved when they are creating new articles.  It at least got me, do not know how many other people it got though.  Overall, from my opinion, as a non administrator who has just taken a recent interest in DYK, I strong approve.  -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 16:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I have a question: I've not been involved in DYK for a bit, but part of the fun of updating DYK was choosing which articles to place on the main page.  Are you supposed to place these suggestions on the main page then add ones you like for the next update? -- Samir धर्म 07:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can if you wish, the idea was that you weren't forced to. If you only had time to change round the template, you could do just that and leave the work of selecting nominations for others. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 16:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok.  Looks like a good idea to me then -- Samir धर्म 06:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: It allows non-admins to get involved as well. I would rather people not assume that you can put your own noms onto the template - having said that, if someone else then does the update, then there isn't too much of a problem. But I would prefer that people not put their own onto the staging area, as it then puts another in the position of having to remove it (if necessary) - Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 01:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could this be stated explicitly, especially if this becomes the actual process, rather than just a trial? savidan(talk) (e@) 01:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Do we have to have a debate about that as well? (see the archives) ....Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 01:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's rather bad form to put your own noms on the template -- Samir धर्म 06:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Baka put his own on the waiting list. And there's still space on today's version. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 06:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw Geejo do it before, so here starts the finger-pointing game. Anyways, perhaps we should discourage it. I will say however that when I update, I am more stringent in "grading" DYK's than most other users (judging by the number of stub-like articles that seem to appear nowadays). If your own nom is about to expire, that may not be a bad idea to put it on "next update".Bakaman 03:35, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on the trial 

message: DYK…? needs a rethink. It's irritated me since I started reading it. Such a section should include facts that are in some way surprising or thought-provoking, not just obscure. The way it is now, the only thought likely to be provoked is: "Why should I care?" 
For example (using facts that happen to come to mind right now): 
"Did you know that Nicephorus was a Byzantine emperor of the 9th Century?" [present style; Dull] 
"Did you know that Nicephorus was the only Byzantine emperor killed in battle, apart from the very last emperor?" [Mildly interesting] 
"Did you know that after the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus was killed at the battle of … in 811CE, his skull was made into a drinking vessel by the Bulgar khan Krum?" [Much better] 
Patrick Neylan 00:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I agree. The hooks that are suggested by nominators aren't set in stone by any means - they can be changed if they're wrong, but also if someone else can think of a better fact stemming from the same article (I recently suggested that a particular Congolese accused war criminal was more interesting as a psychology student-turned-general rather than as an accused war criminal, for example). Obviously not every single hook will be policed in this way, but surely the simple solution is to have a look at the suggested facts and see if there isn't a better hook that can be fashioned. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did You Know… is a bit rubbish 

message: This has probably been suggested before, but perhaps the new article requirement should be eliminated and replaced with DYK required from each top portal field of interest (arts, sciences, humanities/social sciences, people, miscellaneous, or whatever) that is not from a FA or GA. The usefulness of DYK is lessened when snippets come from arbitrary topics which may never be expanded and leave older (yet not fully developed) topics of high interest to be left in lower visibility.
In essence, readers would be greeted with facts from every field and lead to articles that are already a bit developed, but just need a little bit of advertisement to make them great articles. falsedef 03:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, such a change would so drastically change the scope of DYK that it wouldn't really be the same section. What you're proposing seems to be more of a Collaboration of the week, turned over on a six-hourly basis. Most changes made to DYK items are basic copyedit – something most new articles are very much in need of and easy enough for anyone to do even as a first contribution to the project. Given that this isn't really the type of editing needed by most established entries, I'm just not sure that articles under this proposed scheme would get the right kind of editors to improve them in such a short space of time. Projects like this are better suited to a longer time-scale, which is afforded by the various collaboration and peer-review systems already in place. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 19:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  DYK by Portal field 

message: I am working on the next update, and i regularly use the alternative main page.  It usually is pretty good at updating.  I cant get it to take the changes I made to the next update template.  Not sure if it is a problem with my browser cache.  (I did shit+ f5) or if anybody has reccomendations on how to force it to take the updated next update template!  It would be much appreciated.  -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 17:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've replaced the wikilink with a purge-command URL. Let me know if you still have problems. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 03:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  alt main page not updating 

message: This line:
...that John Singleton Copley's painting, Watson and the Shark (pictured), was based on a real-life shark attack that occured in Havana, Cuba in 1749?
needs a comma after "Cuba". Thanks. --Pharillon 21:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please add a comma