Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 18

message: In a somewhat related matter:
...that the Fauna of Scotland includes almost half of the EU’s breeding seabirds, but only one endemic vertebrate species, and that although a population of Wild Cats (pictured) remains many of the larger mammals were hunted to extinction in historic times?
 
Who can read my mind?  House of Scandal 18:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a comma missing bteween remains and many??? :) What do I win? ++Lar: t/c 19:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say the missing comma and the overly verbose DYK hook. By the way, for such things, please post at WP:ERRORS. You'll get fast feedback there. Nishkid64 15:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Speaking of which, I created the header-box for this page mostly on impulse without much forethought. If anyone fancies having a go at re-wording it or deleting it outright, please feel free. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 00:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My god, you have too much time on your hands, HoS. Good read, though. :-P Nishkid64 02:35, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fauna of Scotland Hook

message: Although it is now out on the front page, I think it was probably ineligible. We are getting a lot of nominations coming through nowadays, so we don't even need to consider borderline cases. If they run out of time before any problems are resolved that is hard luck, but not an entitlement to have them on the front page when the problems are fixed. At the moment, even some  perfectly sound nominations are missing out. Unfortunately there aren't enough people checking the noms to pick up problems before they go to the front page and we are running behind, so there is no leeway to wait a day for somebody to fix an article up. Yomanganitalk 11:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair points. I personally believe it was ineligible. Another user posted a link to it from a place where people could see it, so for about 5 hours, the article was accessable from the main space before being moved again to his user space. I had forgotten about this until another person mentioned the previous title of it before being moved to user space (when it was LNBS Main Article: Hurricane Bob (1979)). Hurricanehink (talk) 14:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a fair bit of discussion on this that may be worth reviewing, to be found here: User_talk:Nishkid64#Hurricane_Bob_DYK and in threads near it. I think what happened in this case is regrettable and we should not make it a general principle. If something is too large to be a DYK and it is in articlespace or reachable from article space, it is forever more ineligible except in very unusual circumstances (which I can't think of right now but I am sure there are some)... But I'd let this case slide anyway, just because... this is a volunteer project and we need to be fair but we also need to do what is collegial and kind. In the larger scheme of things this is small beer. ++Lar: t/c 16:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I think we should let this go, as I just think that using terms like "provocative" is not likely to result in us all working together harmoniously. I do agree that better communication would certainly be helpful. ++Lar: t/c 19:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Bondkaka, I saw Dmc5's comment, and looked at the article before making my decision. It had already been expired for nearly 3 days, and the article was "borderline", hence all the discussion about it on my talk page. I also don't appreciate slandering my contributions, as there was no "dishonest" dispute, and all I did was follow DYK guidelines. I still believe it did not qualify for DYK because the article had already existed in the mainspace as a decent-sized article (not a stub) before the expansion/rewrite. Also, as Yomangani said, even if we want back to discussion, it would not have led to the article being put up on DYK after a resolution had been made. The article was expired, and there were many other choices that were available to replace it. Nishkid64 20:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Hurricane Bob etc.

message: This article was nominated less than a day before it was moved by its nominator (and creator) to Next update - and now appears on the Main page. I think the nominiation process will turn into a big joke if happens on a regular basis. Camptown 22:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed that the user added his own nomination after I had already updated the Main Page. I did not want to send it back to DYKT and start some war like what happened with Bob, so I am leaving it there for now. After I saw the user's error, I left a message on their talk page, and hopefully they will see that what they did is out-of-process. Nishkid64 22:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not a big deal, but he fooled/notified you before the Main page was updated... --Camptown 22:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not mean to circumvent the selection process.  I apologize.--Riurik (discuss) 22:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I knew I smelled something fishy in the state of Ukraine! I must say Riurik, it's nice of you to apologize.  The only thing rarer on Wikipedia than people admitting they are wrong is people actually apologizing. Shaundakulbara 00:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: St. George's Cathedral, Lviv 

message: The images in Banjee (and the one now appearing on the main page) are potentially libelous to the persons in the images since the images appear to be of living people and the persons in the image are associated with being thuggish men who have sex with men.  The article does not include Wikipedia reliable sources to support such an association.  DYK rules state that the item mentioned in the tagline should be sourced in the article.  In view of all this, perhaps the Banjeeness of this person should not have been asserted as being true on the Wikipedia main page. -- Jreferee 20:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Banjee

message: Aveline's Hole is currently on the "next update" page.  It is very close to stub length.  If we have plentiful candidates perhaps we should replace it with something more substantial?  Thanks. Shaundakulbara 12:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that it has already been placed on the Main Page. I'll be back later, and I'll see if I can expand it a bit. Nishkid64 14:59, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Aveline's Hole

message: Unfortunately, recently DYK has not been updated frequently — and as a result a number of articles' nominations have expired - past the 5 day date. As of today, January 29 is expired.  The rules are clear.  Unless there is community consensus to change/bend the rules, they should be adhered to. — ERcheck (talk) 21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I do agree, if the the additions are within guidelines. In the situation that brought this to my attention, I had moved an unexpired nomination (on its last eligible day) to the DYK next update and it was reverted by another editor, replaced with an expired nomination. — ERcheck (talk) 01:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to bend it a little when the updaters have been away and a backlog blows up, because I don't feel that good work should be neglected due to tardy admins. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 01:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expired nominations 

message: Any opinions on making the minimum length for a DYK longer? 1000 character articles look short now as we have a reliable supply of longer articles. Yomanganitalk 23:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest upping the minimum length to somewhere between 2,000 - 2,5000 characters. I've seen that many people are denying articles that are 2.2 or 2.4KB long. Nishkid64 01:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 25000 characters? Wow, you are strict. Yomanganitalk 09:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I concur. Personally, I never nominate articles of less thn 3kb (my searching method excludes choices lower than this limit anyway), but 1000 characters is just ridiculously low given the increased expectations of Wikipedia articles recently. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 01:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree...although I normally look at the main body part in determining this and have sometimes rejected 4kb stuff when it is dominated by the infobox and sometimes let by a 2.8kb article if it is basically all text (and not taken up by inline refs). Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 06:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: And I might point out that when the supply has gone down, GeeJo and me too (once) went NP shopping for stuff. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 06:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: ...and perhaps specify that the 2000 characters must be the body of the article rather than including infoboxes, references, titles and images. Yomanganitalk 09:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A little change. 2,000 characters excluding infobox and images, only. I'd like all text to be counted here. Nishkid64 15:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even refs? That looks like a way to pad out the character count to me. Yomanganitalk 15:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, exclude the refs please. Look at something like Harbhajan Singh and the statsguru refs. Those take up at least 0.5kb per ref because of the filters that you input into the stats retrieval. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree that refs should be excluded from the 2,000 count as should text in tables.  Spaces between the letters in the body of the article should count towards the 2,000 characters, however. -- Jreferee 15:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 25,000 chars is way over the top!  But that had to be a typo. Grin. Personally I think 2000 is too much even... a lot of interesting articles barely clear 1000 and yet are DYK worthy. Especially if we disallow refs, captions, infoboxes or other disallowances. I would prefer to stay at 1000, or if we are talking about tigthening, go to 1500 for a while and see. ++Lar: t/c 16:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Those ones might scrape it because they are pure text.....and if the hook is interesting... Having said that 1.5k might be a good point to start, if only to stop arguments with people with 1.3k stubs. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was really looking for a way of weeding out the lots-of-titles-infoboxes-quotes-references-lists-but-only-really-one-sentence-of-content type articles. Maybe we just need to make clear what the 1,000 characters include and suggest that longer articles are likely to be chosen first (all other things being equal). Yomanganitalk 23:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Interest in an article is purely subjection. These DYK guidelines are here to set the standards for all articles that pass onto the Main Page. Nishkid64 15:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Upping the length

message: Previously, article under 1000 characters that were expanded were elegible for DYK.  Now, the article must both be under 1,000 characters and marked a Wikipedia:Stub.  See Suggestions. Isn't being under 1,000 characters enought?  There are many stubby articles that never get marked as a stub.  What is the reasoning behing this new DYK qualification rule? -- Jreferee 16:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ack! let's not get hung up on whether it was or wasn't marked. What matters is that it was tiny, and now it isn't. Certainly I am not going to mark brand new articles as stubs just to satisfy pro forma... I'd like to see that rule/suggestion change reverted. ++Lar: t/c 16:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been like that for a long time as far as I know, but I think it was just poorly worded: it meant under 1000 characters or marked as a stub (a stub could be over 1000 chars). I've reworded it. Yomanganitalk 16:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: As long as the article is 75-80%+ new material, then it effectively is a new material and should count. See Irfan Pathan nominated late Decmber, I expanded it from 5kb to 30kb in two days. I think that's why the 5x rule counts: A smallish article can be expanded into a big article and get on DYK. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't want to be too wonky but I don't think a 5k article is a stub and I don't care if it was expanded 10x or 21x, that article wasn't eligible unless I miss something crucial. DYK is for new, interesting facts, from articles that could benefit from further attention and expansion. A 30K article is a GA candidate, IMHO. That said, I think having a larger pool and talking about what we do in times of glut to decide which is more helpful than refining the criteria to rule more stuff out mechanically. In the final analysis this is a judgement driven process. How good the result is, depends on the judgement of those making the selections (to the next update, and then vetting the next update to transfer to the actual template) ... ++Lar: t/c 17:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah. Irfan Pathan was made into GA the day before it was on DYK! Having said that, the article was for all intents and purposes new, it wasn't just cleaned up and refurbished. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed article must have been previously marked as stub

message: So how do we feel about lists, like Blair babe (although the lead section just about counts on its own). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a tough issue.  Perhaps working backwards might help.  Assume that each of the articles on Wikipedia:Featured_lists were less than five days old.  Which, if any, would be acceptable to place on DYK?  If we can figure out which articles on WP:FL have the content needed to make DYK, perhaps we can then fashion guidelines to govern placing lists on DYK. -- Jreferee 02:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This question has arisen before, IIRC, and my view of our thinking at the time was that the article needed ot have significant textual content other than the list. (subtract the list itself and there still ought to be 1000 chars there, so to speak, or close to it...) I think Nightstallion put up some very good EU related list articles that were selected although their names escape me at the moment. To the example... Blair Babe would qualify (barely) on the lead, references, and content, without the list. With the list, it's an easy qualifier. The key point here is that the article is more than just a list. The addition of the dates of ascension, the date the office was lost, the constiuency and so forth makes the list more than just a list of names, too. Both of those things add value and make the article more selectable. It doesn't hurt that the article isn't titled "list of..." as well. c.f List of Michigan covered bridges which has more than just a list of names (the list is 3 cols and has other info) but doesn't yet qualify as it has no significant other content (adding more content would make it qualify based on content although I think it would disqualify based on creation and expansion dates), or List_of_Faux_Pas which is really just a fancy redirect and in no way would qualify. ++Lar: t/c 14:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

text: To recap what I said before, I feel it should, if they are good enough. Many bare lists are not. ++Lar: t/c 12:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I've them in "Next Update" as the double header - it seems silly to split them over two articles in consecutive updates (and I'm for lists being included if they are something more than just a list). Yomanganitalk 17:53, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lists on DYK

message: ...Montelupich prison located in Cracow, which was used by the Gestapo throughout World War II. Prisoners in Montelupich included political prisoners, members of the SS and Security Service (SD) who had been convicted and given prison terms, British and Soviet spies and parachutists, victims of Gestapo street raids, soldiers who had deserted the Waffen-SS, and regular criminals. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Umedard (talk • contribs) 03:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Uhh...what? Nishkid64 18:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My best guess is that this was an attempted nomination, albeit in the wrong place and not bolded. It's a stub, though, with the text of the nomination being the same as the text of the article. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 20:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, that seems logical. Nishkid64 00:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Montelupich prison]] 

message: Would something like Controversy with Harry Potter, taken from a section of Harry Potter to shorten the length of the latter, eligible for DYK, if I made it today? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, unless the vast majority is new content, eg, the 80% rule of thumb. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 02:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okey dokes, that would not be this one. Thanks. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 02:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are new articles split off from existing articles eligible? 

message: I can't see any relevance of having that picture and I didn't find any link to the "Did you know?"-facts. Is it perhaps a misstake? Poktirity 09:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article to which the picture related was removed from the template because there was a report at WP:ERRORS that the "hook" taken from the article was incorrect.  It should have been replaced by another article with another image, but we are only human.  Sorry for any confusion. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Todays picture of the bridge

message: 4 out of 5 of today's "Do you know...?"s regards the USA. I add this just to note that this should be an international encyclopedia. Bye. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Attilios (talk • contribs) 20:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a mere coincidence. We don't purposely do this. People write articles, and we put them up on DYK. It is advised that we don't promote any bias, but sometimes people will unknowingly add too many country-centric items on the Main Page. Besides, there have been multiple occurrences where we had European bias or other bias, but no one seems to complain then. Anyway, if people write about other countries and such, then they will go up on DYK and add some varying flavor to the section. Nishkid64 22:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: American bias

message: Lately, I have seen that many admins have mistakenly forgotten to unprotect images once they are off DYK. Some of these images are , so they can be deleted, but there are others which have been directly uploaded here, and were not at Commons. I was looking through my image contributions, and saw that nearly half a dozen images had not been unprotected days after they appeared on the Main Page. Please remember to do this! It would not be particularly helpful if we kept images protected for no reason. Thanks, Nishkid64 22:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unprotecting images 

message: Expansion? When was it decided that "proposed articles should be over 2.5 KB"? Personally, I think WP:DYK should emphasize more on quality than quantity. Long articles are unfortunately not always the greatest articles... -- Camptown 20:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is some inconclusive discussion above, at #Upping the length.  The general consensus seems to me to be to increase the requirement to 1,500 or 2,000 characters, but only counting the article text, not including cats, infoboxes, references, etc.  I was a bit surprised to see 2,500 added to the criteria - I have been working on somewhere towards the upper end of 1,000 and 1,500 as a minimum.  Having said that, the flow of suggestions seems reasonably strong right now, so perhaps we should go to 1,500 or 2,000 characters now and see what happens.  2,500 seems to much to me. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, well 1500 is the bare minimum, but at one time GeeJo inundated the page by going shopping, and we were only picking stuff with about 3.5k+ (although it also included refs). Having said that, there wasn't an agreement for 2.5k on the main text as the bare minimum. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 02:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, shall we try 1.5 for now? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Well of course, 1.5 is the minimum, although if there is surplus supply....Where does it say 2.5k by the way, so that it can be changed. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ALoan already fixed it. Yomanganitalk 23:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 2.5 KB 

message: There's a template to congratulations creators of articles that make DYK, but is there one people who simply nominate other people's articles? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes - . Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 02:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Also see Template:Did_you_know/Next_update#Credits -- Jreferee 17:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template? 

message: I've compiled a list of new article announcement pages. These are generally associated with some kind of project, portal, or notice board. I hope they can be useful for finding articles for DYK.--Carabinieri 10:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea, Carabinieri. I did not know this actually existed. Thanks, Nishkid64 18:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, good idea.  I added a sources for DYK nominations thread on the rules page.  The list of new article announcement pages is on Carabinieri's user page.  Should this good idea be made part of the DKY project and moved within the project? -- Jreferee 19:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems a good idea to me. Carabinieri willing? If so, move it somewhere, perhaps Wikipedia:Did_you_know/New Article Announcements ??  ++Lar: t/c 16:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've gone ahead and moved it.--Carabinieri 17:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New article announcement pages 

message: One of our most prolific contributors and another potential updater. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 05:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Steady on. There's still about a week to go before the RfA finishes. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 05:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Lol. Good luck, BigHaz. =) Nishkid64 18:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's the RfA. -- Jreferee 17:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Congratulations. A unanimous verdict. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 00:47, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  BigHaz 

message: moved by ffm yes? 00:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please note that Wikipedia is not censored.  And besides, if you're referring to the thing about homosexuality, I fail to see how that can possibly be as disturbing as the ITN piece about 68 people killed by a train bomb in India.--Phil500 (Talk / Contribs) 07:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What is safe for children and what is not will vary for each person you ask. So censoring any topics that are "unsafe for children" is just not possible because each editor will have a different definition for this. Whether it is sexuality, violence, or whatever that is taboo just really varies.--Carabinieri 16:14, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it highly disappointing that anyone would consider an article on homosexuality "dangerous to children". —Cuiviénen 17:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: And besides, what about "Random Article"? APL 17:14, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: just ignore it. kids should know what they should/shouldn't click on.--24.109.218.172 17:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree with Yousaf. Whoever is choosing the topics for DYK seems to be fascinated with homosexuals. In recent weeks we have learned about the Atlantic House, a famous gay bar. We have learned about banjee boys. We find that some people thought Jesus Christ was a homosexual. Now we get to read about someone putting gays in a Nativity scene. Is any of this remotely worth while? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Harold14370 (talk • contribs) 23:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Is there a gay cabal yet?  If not, someone needs to work on exposing it.  ;-)  ShadowHalo 23:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Harold, FYI, Banjee was on DYK nearly a month and a half ago. Some people would find your attitude offensive. If people make articles on homosexuality, then so be it. They will appear on DYK. Nishkid64 15:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Which articles are in question here? Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 03:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avoid any contervisal topci at mainpage 

message: DID YOU KNOW ...that according to legend, Joseph Stalin remained in Moscow during World War II partly due to a prophecy from Matryona Nikonova, who he covertly visited while she was hiding from his government?
How about "whom he covertly visited"? -Alekjds talk 06:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Been off the Main Page for nearly 24 hours, but in the future, please post such errors at talk:Main Page where they will be handled relatively quickly by admins passing by. Nishkid64 02:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A minor grammar point 

message: Should the DYK rules be changed to include something like "Select articles that specifically cite the source(s) for the hook. Articles having uncited hooks are unlikely to be chosen."  The DYK for the Józef Łukaszewicz article brought up this issue. -- Jreferee 00:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The issue for that article was not the uncited hook, but that the citations were in Polish. This violates the spirit of Wikipedia:Verifiability, which states that "Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, English-language sources should be used in preference to foreign-language sources, assuming equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly." DYK's short time frame makes it especially difficult to verify non-English sources. Novickas 22:50, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:V says English sources are preferred, if they don't exist, Polish sources are entirely acceptable. - Mgm|(talk) 00:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It's already implicit I feel. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 00:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Still a good thing to note for those newbie admins :-P. I would think most admins check to see if the DYK hook is referenced, but it usually is fairly obvious (from the article) if it is. Nishkid64 02:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The live DYK template is protected, so changes to the DYK template can only be undertaken by an administrator. -- Jreferee 17:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indon, we do have DYK rules. Jreferee was just proposing a new rule to add to the current list of rules. See T:DYKT for DYK rules. Also, admins check to see if the articles moved to Next Update qualify DYK in the first place. If not, they will remove and send it back to T:DYKT. Nishkid64 20:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry to chime in late but I think we should have this as a suggestion/guideline/strong piece of advice not a rule. It's a good thing to ask of contributors but as a rule it may be too hard to discern. In fact there was quite a bit of a row about this a while ago IIRC. ++Lar: t/c 20:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New rule proposed

message: Um, this is going to sound strange, but I just received a message saying that I created or expanded an article called  Leo J. Ryan Federal Building, when I have never even heard of this article.
So unless I have finally lost my mind, someone else should be credited with this DYK.
(I wonder how this happened, this also raises other concerns by the way - it means that if someone was trying to fraudulently credit me with the article, and succeed, then it can happen in the reverse, if you see where I'm going. Perhapes some sort of system should be implemented?) Anonymous Dissident 23:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your post.  The Auk class minesweeper DYK article for which you should have been credited was listed just above the Leo J. Ryan Federal Building article in this project's to-be-credited thread. It seems that a mistake was made when the items were credited. Someone should be along shortly to correct it. -- Jreferee 07:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah that's exactly what happened. Sorry about the confusion, that was my fault.--Carabinieri 11:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unless I've Finally lost it... 

message: For the love of god, can we lay off the damn Eurovision DYKs? Are there so few new articles created (and posted to TT:DYK) that we have to see something about an incredibly stupid (personal opinion) song contest (fact) almost every other day (also a fact)? -- Kicking222 02:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well , T:DYK and WP:TFA main page displays reward good work - those who will get off their metaphorical posteriors and put the effort into creating quality articles with references, etc. That's a good merit-incentive system. Please help by giving us better supply by writing better stuff or digging for it. Merely complaining will not help. It's not as frequent as anybody thinks either. I can prove it. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 07:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Additionally, I should point out that they'll be coming even less frequently now for three reasons. Firstly, now that I've been adminned, there are other things which will be occupying my time as well as the creation of new articles. Secondly, I've got a big year at uni ahead of me, so my normal speed of creating 5 articles/day (note I said creating, not getting them to DYK standard) will have to drop if I'm to get good results. Thirdly, I'm now in the process of writing Portuguese entries - and without meaning any disrespect to the Portuguese entrants over the years, they're the country which I find it the hardest to get motivated about. There are 40-odd Portuguese entries, of which 5 or so have been written up to date, so that's going to be a long time between drinks. Eurovision entries are far from the only area of human knowledge which have turned up on DYK a lot, but they seem to be the only area which generates this kind of complaint every now and then. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 08:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: About 6 articles appear on DYK every 6 hours (e.g., 24 articles every 24 hours).  The DYK process is not topic centric.  The six articles are chosen by selecting those that show the most effort among those that first meet the minimum DYK requirements. Some credit might be given to some less represented areas on Wikipedia (e.g., articles related to Africa), but otherwise the DYK process rewards effort among those articles meeting the minimum DYK requirements.  If someone is cranking out one well developed Eurovision article after the next for a given time period, it raises the DYK bar for that time period for the other DYK articles. -- Jreferee 18:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: I know this has been stated before, but...

message: I've had a few occasion, while I am in the middle of making the update to the Main Page and completing credits, where the Next update page is being changed as I work.  In order to prevent an edit conflict/losing information in the process, I've protected the next update page while I am working on it.  (I'm not as fast as some of the DYK admins.)  
— ERcheck (talk) 03:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on process for updating 

message: Did you know...
:::that I created Frank Brickowski back in May 2006. Why is this article a did-you-know in March 2007? I thought the rules were it has to be less than 5 days old.. --Downwards 07:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It shouldn't have. We allow old stuff if the article has been expanded so that it is 75% new. I'm not sure that's the case here, as it was 3kb at end of Feb and 6.5k now.Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 07:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Not sure if it did qualify. Does the 5 days start on Feb 28 or March 5? No insult offended of course, it's a grey pick. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 23:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It looks like the article exceeded 1,500 characters at 16:49, 5 March 2007. -- Jreferee 02:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, but that 5x rule seems to dictate that if it is predominantly new, it can be picked anyway. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 03:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Did you know?

message: the rules state 6-8 articles per update depending on how it fits on the main page. currently there are on 5 artilces on the main page. --Parker007 19:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On the rules page, I revised the sentence from "An update to the DYK template typically adds five to eight new suggestions" to read "An update to the DYK template typically adds about five to eight new suggestions." -- Jreferee 01:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 5 - sometimes; 6 - usually; 7 - once in a while; 8 - if we're really lucky :P. Nishkid64 02:11, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, got into double figures once when the TFA was short, ITN was long, and when I had a lot of trimming to do because of backlog! Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 03:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Nope! You dun good. I think it would be very disheartening to a budding contributor to be told his or her first nomination missed because it was only 1450 characters long or whatever... Keep doing what you're doing, in my view, as long there's no appearance of bias by skirting the rules for seasoned contributors or yourself... which you're not doing near as I can tell. ++Lar: t/c 02:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was one of the guys who pulled that 1400 thing....I don't usually think of myself being too legalistic, but generally I go for relatively long base standards, unless the article is an ALoanesque miniature gem of high culture, and normally I make comments like "...somewhat borderline. An expansion would compel an admin to choose this article" to extract a bit more from the user. Of course, I should probably use the softer and proper explanation first of choosing the best of the plate and nudging the writer to improve the standard, even though the new rule was introduced to cut short filibustering by guys who want their 1.1k stub to pass. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 03:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, thanks for the affirmation - always nice on a Friday morning!  I figure that I am problably not doing anything too wrong if people don't complain.  I am more likely to extend a but of latitude to new contributors rather than the old ones - the old ones know what to expect and usually hit the mark. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  # of DYKs each update 

message: User:Alex Bakharev runs a bot that looks through new articles and filters out the ones that are related to a certain topic. He then lists these at the new article announcement pages for that topic. I asked him if he could modify the bot so it would filter out articles that seem to meet DYK criteria in terms of length, presence of an externanal links or references section, which indicates that the article is sources, and the absence of cleanup tags. He's now added this automatically generated list to the suggestions' page. I am not sure if that's the best place for it. What do you think?-- Carabinieri 09:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds like as good an idea as any at the moment, and a quick and thoroughly unscientific sample of (3 of) the articles the bot has deposited there seems to show that it's working properly. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 10:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So how exactly are we going to manage this? Should we remove hooks from the list and then place them under a certain day with a DYK-appropriate hook? This seems like the best plan of action to me. Nishkid64 20:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that sounds sensible. Are we going to look through these as a matter of course or simply top the nominations up if we're running short? --Cherry blossom tree 23:40, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Should these perhaps be put on a subpage? I imagine this section might become kind of long after five days. BuddingJournalist 01:37, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New articles 

message: Today's first DYK item added by User:ERcheck is focused on Jāzeps Vītols and Saint Petersburg Conservatory, none of which are properly referenced. I believe this breaks one of the rules. 74.113.107.4 20:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The bolded term is the article that should be properly reference. To verify the content of the article, you could go to the references section and click the links showing the sources of the information provided in the article. Nishkid64 20:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The information in the hook was in the article and verifiable from the references (see Naxos profile). — ERcheck (talk) 23:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mar 11, 2007 User:ERcheck insertion 

message: I know some people don't see the point of writing articles, and they think bringing existing articles to FA is much better. However, I just wanted to let you know that you could put the same effort into writing a new article, and just as easily bring it to FA. A few weeks ago, The Four Stages of Cruelty, an article for DYK passed FAC and was featured on the Main Page. Just today, Act of Independence of Lithuania, an article that appeared on DYK nearly 4 weeks ago and passed FAC, appeared on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article. I just want to say that if some people can bring their new articles to FA, then others can to. Working on new articles can be treated equally as working on existing articles, since you're putting a lot of work into both, and both can easily reach coveted status given the quality of the article. I just wanted to point that out for some of people who feel writing articles should not be a concentration of many Wikipedians. Nishkid64 23:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Act of Independence of Lithuania is a good example of how a small team of editors are aiming for FA-class - right from the very beginning. --Camptown 01:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. :) Nishkid64 01:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Harbhajan Singh too. :), and hopefully Chappell Ganguly controversy soon also. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 04:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I love starting new articles and expanding the gaps in Wikipedia's collection of information. I try to go into every new article with the thought that I will one day take it GA or FA, despite time constraints and resources obviously not making that possible. It means little things at first, inline citations etc. That way if I leave an article, stub, start whatever, it has the skeleton of what could become a GA or FA. IvoShandor 12:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encouragement 

message: Do articles that have been on a userpage for a while, being worked on by several people over a few weeks, count as 'new' when they are finally moved to the article page?  i.e. can they be put up for DYK?  I can't seem to find any information on this - maybe I'm being blind!!! 82.32.238.139 18:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes - I am not sure if there is a note about this somewhere, but in the past we have only counted from the date when they are moved into the main article space. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks 82.32.238.139 18:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a whole debate about this when an article on Hurricane Bob was added to DYK, and then subsequently removed by me because of the whole userspace-->mainspace moving date (although, this debate was a bit more complex) We seemed to have agreed that the date the article is moved should be counted as the day of creation. Nishkid64 00:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  To Wikipedia:Did_you_know#The_DYK_Rules, I added For those workpages first developed in user space, the date the workpage is posted to article namespace may be counted as the first day towards the DYK 5 day rule. You may wish to consider adding  to the top of the workpage. -- Jreferee 15:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Definition of 'new' re: workpages

message: Thanks to cascading protection, actually protecting locally uploaded images is no longer necessary. Commons images still have to be c-uploaded, unless you're a Commons admin too. Do we need to still keep the "PROTECT THE IMAGE!!!!!" instruction in the template? howcheng  {chat} 03:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I fixed up the notice. The other bits are useful, so I'm leaving them there, but I removed "Protect image" stuff, since cascading protection has solved that issue. Nishkid64 17:23, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image protection no longer necessary 

message: Hi, I would wish to know that can we nominate the DYK entry which has been added by us or only admins. can only nominate. Sushant gupta 05:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyone can nominate any article - in fact there are usually more self-nominations than ones by other users in my experience. As long as the article meets the criteria, you can nominate it. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 05:50, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Not immediately. Over the next few days, people will have a look at it and see if the article or the "hook" needs any improvement. If it does, they'll either do it themselves or suggest that you do it, so keep the suggestions page on your watchlist. After a few days, as long as it's all in order, it'll find its way onto the main page. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 07:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we nominate the entries created by ourself 

message: before "that day" :)... are people working on "special" articles? If you are, great. If you aren't... here's a reminder! ++Lar: t/c 12:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By "that day", do you perhaps mean Palm Sunday? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This year I do. But not every year. Some years it is just a day. Maybe it's silly of me not to actually say the day I mean... (the Googlebots will find it anyway...) if anyone's confused (ALoan's reference is a good clue), drop me an email. I'm actually going to be on holiday on the day so... See also  ++Lar: t/c 13:27, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll try to work on some article. Unfortunately, I won't be around during April Fool's Day, so I'll be missing it. =( Nishkid64 14:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Less than two weeks to go 

message: How does the DYK entry find its way to the main page. I mean the admins. select the entries or anyone can do this work. Sushant gupta 03:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The instructions are written out somewhere, but I can't find precisely the right link to give you at the moment. The way that it works is that anyone can move a valid article to the Next Update template and mark who needs to be thanked for it and so on. The actual updating to get the entries on that template onto the next page needs to be done by an admin, who also checks to make sure that all the entries on that template are the right length, age and so on. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 05:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The link How a DYK suggestion makes its way to the Main Page may give some additional information. -- Jreferee 17:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re:DYK entries 

message: Received the following DYK notice on my talk page that Indian copper plate inscriptions would appear today:
	On 22 March, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Indian copper plate inscriptions, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.
  --howcheng  {chat} 06:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article was indeed featured on the Main page on March 22 01.58 - 08.15 (Wikipedia Time). --Camptown 13:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry! I don't want to seem dumb but I don't see it in the diff you provided. It is not there. It was on the template last night when I went to bed for March 22 and I received the above notice today. Thanks! Sincerely,  Mattisse 13:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Trust me, it appeared on the Front page for 6 hours and 17 minutes - It's the last entry on the 01.58 revision, so when you were notified, the article had already been on the front page for more than 4 hours. --Camptown 15:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry about that ... sometimes I squeeze in updating the Main Page and I don't have time to do the notifications until a few hours later. howcheng  {chat} 16:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Got notice of DYK for today but article has disappeared & is not there! 

message: On top of all else, would it be possible for people to archive WP:DYKA more often? I just created 8 archive pages -- that's roughly 400 DYKs! howcheng  {chat} 00:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Was it really that large? I thought it was only 200. :-P Anyway, I'll try to give a hand with the archiving periodically when I poke around DYK. I remember in January, I had to archive 10-15 pages (maybe I'm exaggerating; I know it was a lot though) of DYKs. Nishkid64 00:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I did the last archiving about 3 weeks ago - I created five new archives then, but mine seem to be about twice as large as yours! -- ALoan (Talk) 10:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, the heading says each one contains about 50, so that's about how much I throw in. Do we want to change the number? Fifty does seem kind of low, because that would be at the most 10 updates, or 2.5 days' worth. howcheng  {chat} 16:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't it poossible to make archiving automatic? Bondkaka 11:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, and I think MiszaBot II is our solution. Anyone have any objections? howcheng  {chat} 18:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Speedy Support. This is would useful. =) Nishkid64 20:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: User:Parker007 added the thing about "priority articles" in this edit. Are we all OK with this? Kind of makes sense to me, but it seems like it would be a PITA to find out which articles are "priority". howcheng  {chat} 18:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a PITA to find which articles are being created as a part of the Missing Articles WikiProject. I made almost all of my DYKs from the Missing Biographies list, and I just removed the article from the list once I had completed the article. It seems like a waste of time, and I'd rather stick with the traditional method of just choosing DYKs by date. Nishkid64 20:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it seems there are so many lists on the Missing Encyclopedia Articles project that it would take a long time and I don't see it as all that important, since there are clearly articles on notable topics that are omitted from these lists (perhaps because they are relatively recent or they suffer from systemic bias), as well as some that are considered non-notable (e.g. suggestions for non-inclusion). Perhaps the suggestion could be listed (in the #Suggestions part) that priority would be given when there is a large volume of suggestions, but I think that's pretty much what's already done. I also don't see the point of having the MEA template there. Rigadoun  (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any point to this. If were were discarding good entries then perhaps, but just about everything worthwhile ends up on the main page anyway. Skipping ahead some entries isn't much of a carrot and it will just create unnecessary confusion in the administration. --Cherry blossom tree 21:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems like an additional and unnecessary step to me as well. The intentions are good (since there are topics we don't have articles on and yadda yadda yadda), but actually determining what goes where is an addition of a step I don't think we need. As it stands, if I see an article which qualifies and and is down the bottom and think "You mean we didn't have an article on this?", I'll stick it into the Next Update or onto the template without hesitation. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 21:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately my connection is too slow to be doing any updates at the moment, but if I was I'd be ignoring any "priority" for articles. Just because somebody made a list of redlinks doesn't make them any more of a priority than a redlink somebody just thought of and filled this morning. I'll remove this addition (if I can wait ten minutes for the page to load) since it doesn't seem to have much support. Yomanganitalk 23:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No need to do this. It was already removed from T:DYKT. Nishkid64 23:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, that's dedicated, but shouldn't you turn off your laptop in theatre? Yomanganitalk 23:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Lol, I put up the notice a day before my actual surgery. I'm going in tomorrow morning. Wish me luck. :-P Also, it was someone else who removed it lol. Nishkid64 00:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Priority articles 

message: It occurred to me last night when I was doing the Main Page update that although we try and balance the countries/topics that are represented on DYK so that it's pretty random, it seems to me that the potential audience for certain articles would be greatest during that country's waking hours. For example, Seaport Centre was in this update, which was done at 10:45 PM on the West Coast of the US last night. This article is about a building in Redwood City, California. This sat on the Main Page until I did another update this morning at 8:59 AM. This 10-hour time span (which is long, but that's beside the point) was when most people in the US were asleep. Assuming that it had gone off the Main Page after six hours at 4:45 AM (West Coast, or 7:45 AM East Coast), then it would have gone completely unseen by most people who would could be expected to be interested in reading the article. Meanwhile, this time span was between 5:45 AM to 4 PM UTC or 11:15 AM to 9:30 PM in India. After all, the goal of putting the articles on the Main Page is to get them read, isn't it? I create a number of articles about people/locations in the US for example, and I can't imagine someone in India is really going to be interested in Eilley Bowers (one my noms), who got on the Main Page at 2:33 AM in California and would have gone off earlier if it hadn't been a Saturday.
So I'm proposing a rule of thumb that when we assign nominations to the next update, we try to do it so that they are likely to be read by the audience that would most appreciate them. I don't mean load up the ENTIRE update with articles appropriate to the time zone, but maybe give more of an emphasis to them (maybe like half of them). Naturally, this would only happen when we don't have noms that are about to expire and when we have enough of a variety that we can do it.
So I created a new template . This is what we would actually edit to update the timestamp. This one in turn calls either  or , which looks like (I got this nested-template idea from how the POTD is currently done):
This could then serve as a guide to people doing the next update so that they would pick articles appropriate to the locations where most people could be expected to be awake and using Wikipedia. In this example, emphasis might be given to Australian and US/Canadian articles.
Thoughts? Flames? howcheng  {chat} 17:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Add England, of course, and maybe South Africa and New Zealand. I'm not sure I agree with the whole idea, though, because I like to see a variety of articles listed from all over the world, to remind us that (as opposed to most other encyclopedias) this really is a more global project. It may not be a bad idea to have this template there, for thinking of timing for particularly special articles like the example you give, but I disagree with making half of them (say) U.S.-oriented. Plus anyone up late or early in the other time zones may get a negative view of WP's apparent parochialism. Rigadoun  (talk) 20:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's another step towards being too technical about things. Yes, it would be nice for editors to be able to see things in their own timezones, but it just seems to me that we're in the business of letting people know about interesting things wherever they might be in the world - I for one couldn't care less when an Australian DYK turns up unless it's something I'm really interested in. If something turns up about (say) Swaziland, though, I'm more interested. Maybe I'm perverse like that. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 23:35, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with BigHaz, people aren't necessarily more interested in things happening in their timezone. --Carabinieri 16:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't mean to imply that people are more interested in things within their time zones; just things within their own countries. And of course there are individuals who are interested in all sorts of things, but I'm talking about more in general -- or maybe it's just Americans because we're so self-centered (: ... When it's the middle of the night in any given location, the potential audience for an article in that country is a lot smaller. Honestly -- English heraldic articles? I couldn't care less. Obscure persons from the histories of US states? I can't imagine Brits or Aussies or Indians being interested either. So for example, when it's daytime in Europe and there's room for 6 entries, I'm thinking at least 3 focused on Europe with the remaining spots for the rest of the world (assuming there are actually 3 soon-to-expire European hooks to use). Over the course of the day, articles from all around the world will end up on DYK; we'd just be tailoring them for the greatest potential audience. BTW, I didn't have England in the box above because England is at +0 UTC, so it seemed kind of obvious. (: howcheng  {chat} 05:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, I did know that, really. :) I guess I just figured since it's halfway between India and America, it would appear there. Rigadoun  (talk) 17:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Personally I like to see DYKs on things I don't know about (so am normally less interested in things about whatever country I'm in or have been in, although many DYKs are so obscure that it makes no difference). I'm against anything that makes the next update any more daunting for an editor to update, which this does. Yomanganitalk 18:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Priority articles take 2 

message: Your urgent DYK help would be most appreciated here. -- Jreferee 21:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Help please