Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 8

message: It is also clear that it is a disruptive change that is confusing contributors and making it harder to work, and that your reasons have been refuted by others. Please change this list back, Brian. This is the last time I am going to ask, I have asked nicely several times, and I am at the end of my patience. The right thing to do is admit you were wrong to make the change, wrong to refuse to change it back in the face of sincere opposition, and stop being bullheaded. Please, I implore you. Undo the damage you have caused, by changing it back.  ++Lar: t/c 12:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have restored the previous order of newest article creation/expansion date first. Please do not revert this restoration to how things were before the reordering without a clear consensus to do so. ++Lar: t/c 22:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine. I'm not interested in ordering anymore. Feel free to correct the 3-5 misplaced entries that you'll receive daily around 24:00 UTC +/- 5:00, which will be misplaced by 24 +/- 5 hours. Or don't. I'll be focusing on the interest of the factoid, not its place in time. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-13 22:56
Gosh - I have not been watching closely recently, so missed this rather significant change. I appreciate Brian's boldness in an effort to make a positive change, but this kind of singificant change needs rather more discussion before it is implemented.  
It is rather upsetting that Brian would make such a major change, and then show such unwillingness to revert and discuss.  There is clearly no consensus, and, despite its logical attractions, the change goes against the conventions on other project pages.  Even WP:FAC has newest-at-the top, and has done since practially the year dot, but that does not stop the occasional person bottom posting, and there are enough editors around to fix the occasional errors. Blah eyeballs blah shallow blah. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is now very clear there is no consensus for this change 

message: Should there be a shortcut to Template talk:Did you know? It's a bit annoying to have to go via WP:DYK. Perhaps a shortcut like TT:DYK would work?smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 11:09, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forget TT:, it seems to link to a foreign language Wikipedia. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 12:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's too bad. I thought all the language links were lowercase. SOME shortcut to the template and template talk areas would be a savings that I would use all the time, so good thinking. Any other ideas? ... anything short and easy to remember and type would be fine by me. (what about WP:tDYK and WPT:tDYK... the lowercase t carrying the connotation that it's the templates themselves you're going to??? Just and idea, I'm open) ++Lar: t/c 14:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, T:DYK already seems to link to the template, so perhaps T:TDYK for the talk page. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 14:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, so it was only the TT link that's duffed. Of course that's the one that the most editors want to use, as it's where you go to do nominations... T:TDYK doesn't seem too bad to me. or maybe T:DYKT (or both) ++Lar: t/c 15:24, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've set up both of the above; they should work with all capitalisations. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 15:42, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm happy with either (or both). No more double navigation if I'm not on my watchlist page is a good thing. Well done guys. --Cactus.man ✍ 15:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've updated the quicknav box: Template:DYKbox to include the new shortcuts. Thanks for the improvements. ++Lar: t/c 17:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: It has not been brought up there that I know of but wow, what a good idea. Thanks for surfacing that! ++Lar: t/c 19:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done, as you have seen.  There is no language listed at List of ISO 639 codes with an ISO code of "wp" or "wt" so perhaps it all works... -- ALoan (Talk) 20:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortcut 

message: I think that we should give DYK updating admins fairly wide latitude in selecting things, as long as they were selected in good faith, and as long as they adhere to the guidelines for selection as much as practical. Specifically I do not think that picking strictly the oldest items is necessarily a good approach. Please review the following exchange between Brian and myself, which I found unnecessarily questioning and combative. While I welcome comments and feedback, as any good editor does, I do not think this level of questioning is appropriate, nor do I appreciate being called a dick. I would appreciate comments on this from editors (other than myself and Brian) on whether this level of questioning was appropriate or not. I stand by my picks. 
Further, (and this is something I just noticed) I stand by the specific wording I selected for my picks. Note that ANTARES was selected using the "irony" wording, which was disputed by Brian (see the June 10 section in this history version). I did not find the argument convincing (nor did the suggestion nom as you can see from the version and left it selected that way) Brian changed it to his preferred wording shortly afterwards (which I feel is inappropriately owning the template, and further, carried the argument to the article talk page: Talk:ANTARES (telescope). The article author is a relatively low edit count editor who is making significant contributions in esoteric scientific areas, where we need all the help we can get. I do not think that this level of advocacy is the sort of thing that will encourage contributors to continue to contribute DYK article nominations. So I'd like comments from other editors about that as well. ++Lar: t/c 15:39, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editors and their perogative in making selections, driving away contributors 

message: I'm slightly confused by the recent changes to Template talk:Did you know. Where do we put new nominations? Jude (talk) 01:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It says on the project page The title of the new article should be BOLD and placed on top as the first item. ... it looks like someone's been putting them on the bottom, or just went through and reordered it all for some reason. Can we go back to the old way please? ~Kylu (u|t)  02:06, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there has been a change. See this thread: Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Ordering. We are currently discussing this and your input would be appreciated. I had feared it would be confusing to users as well as the updating admins, and am sorry for any confusion it may have caused you.  ++Lar: t/c 02:21, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh. I must've missed that while scrolling down... thanks! I'll check it out. :_) Jude (talk) 02:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

text: "most people"? I don't think that's correct at all. You seem to want to have the whole argument over again. That may not be a good approach. Why not look forward instead, and look to how you can do things differently, and less contentiously, in future? ++Lar: t/c 02:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I have to I agree with Lar. This change was pushed through without consensus and many people are confused as a result, me included. Kimchi.sg 03:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It is not good to introduce such major changes without prior discussion with other editors. I don't really care which kind of layout will stay, however. --Ghirla -трёп- 17:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm slightly confused... 

message: I created a subst easy to use insta-template for The DYK Medal. :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor self-endulgence 

message: :Did you know "...that although the Constitution of Singapore had been revised in 1958 to implement self-government for the then British colony of Singapore, self-government was only officially achieved with the Singapore general election of 1959?"
Does the Singapore entry seem obvious to anyone else? A region declares self-government, and then holds elections to determine its leaders... there's not much of a gap between 1958 and 1959... So, what's interesting about this fact? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-06-16 01:33
:Most countries achieve self government as soon as they secede, using an unelected government. (I can't actually think of a counterexample other than Singapore) I think waiting a year and not being selfgoverned is quite unusual, which is why I picked it. The hook made perfect sense to me, but you may have wanted to speak out about the hook or the article itself prior to it being picked, assuming it was nominated in sufficient time for you to comment. ++Lar: t/c 12:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Singapore entry

message: Several editors have reported (in the comments block near the clock where we sometimes in the past put "Hey, I intend to update later" or "we're running short, slow down updates" etc. sort of messages) that the update clock:  might not be working completely right. The symptoms I saw were that it was claiming wildly wrong times when in preview. I almost didn't save it the first time I saw that, but I did, and it seemed OK once saved. You may have seen that in the edit summary for an update I did a few days ago. I note that this morning (or about 1500 UTC) I saw that Cactus.man had left it unchanged with an edit summary note that it was wonky for him. I went in and tried to correct it and I backdated it to a time that may not be completely accurate but it did seem to both preview and save correctly for me. As of right now it is saying the last update was 4 hours ago, which is what I intended it to say, given that I was guessing at what timestamp to use.  Thoughts? maybe this is a transient problem of some sort? Cactus.man said he was going to contact the author so I think it's useful to gather additional input.. ++Lar: t/c 13:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be fixed for now, but the underlying problem still needs to be resolved. This is the strangest error I have seen to date. A few days ago Omniplex made updates to  and  to mathematically compute these values from the new  'magic word' (e.g. ) rather than using a large 'switch' to look them up from  (e.g. ). That was a good improvement and the way he did it is correct... but for some reason the actual mathematical computations sporadically produce negative results for no apparent reason. That's why you were seeing the correct result sometimes and bizarre stuff others. Even if you hardcode in the value it seems like one time in five it will come up with a wacky negative rather than the expected result. Some sort of problem in the computation logic behind the scenes. I reverted to the old method of getting the hour and minute until we can identify / fix the problem. --CBD 13:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks CBD! So then it's not preview/save related, but one in five and it was just random that I thought it was preview related, doing another preview would (80% chance) have shown the right value?... Appreciate the fix! ++Lar: t/c 14:29, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So it seems. If you check out the Template talk:CURRENTMINUTE page you will see what I mean. I set it up with two examples that show 'minutes' correctly most of the time, but if you refresh the page a few times they will evenutaly show negative results. Sorry this template keeps getting 'improved' into erroneous results, but I'm glad that it has been worth keeping anyway. I suspect that the incidence of problems will decrease as these newer capabilities in relation to time computation become more established. --CBD 15:03, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks again to CBD for the interim patch. I did apply the usual numerical update to the template but it just kept showing a refresh time a day before the current time when I did it. Way beyond the scope of a mere mortal like myself. --Cactus.man ✍ 15:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update clock issues -  [[Template_talk:Did_you_know#Refreshment]] section,