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[edit] Minimum article length proposition

Propose to create a blanket rule of minimum 300 words to DYK articles. It is extremely hard to judge exactly how much text comprises "1.5 kb" (The current mandatory minimum).

This entry is an example of an article that fulfills all DYK requirements, but it seems a little short (at 255 words). Setting a minimum word count will make it easier for reviewers to judge whether or an article is acceptable. Occasionally "borderline stubs" do make it onto the main page. Instating this requirement would eliminate any further length-related problems. --Flewis(talk) 09:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

1500 characters is 1.5kb. 1500 characters is the current minimum; the 1.5kb is an arbitrary figure that we decided to remove but no one got around to actually removing. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 09:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
How about a straw poll (1500 characters or 300 words). That way the guideline will be decided by the community. --Flewis(talk) 10:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
A word can be of any length, so if there are a lot of long words in the article it may go well above the 1500 character limit but still fail to come within the 300 word limit. But the quality of the article may still be good. On the other hand, if a lot of short words are used, then again it may pass the 300 word limit, but the context of the article may be rubbish (BTW, I'm not saying that quality of an article depends on the length of the words, just trying to point this out). Either way, there seems to be a problem. How about we discuss this rather than go for a straw poll straight away? Then we might be able to spot any problems with the help of others, and hopefully it'll help us to come to some conclusion. Chamal talk 10:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I suggest "300 words or 1,500 characters of text". -- Philcha (talk) 10:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
While we are talking about it, here's another one: This page, expanded on 25th October is a 5x expansion if you count the words. But it is not if you count the characters, it is short by about 40. Unless we decide on one method to do this, 'borderline' hooks like this are going to be in trouble. Chamal talk 10:32, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) How about: The article itself must contain 300 words (regardless of whether a new article, or one that has been expanded). Other than that, I agree with Philcha: "300 words or 1,500 characters of text" --Flewis(talk) 10:40, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The article given as an example is fine. I have submitted articles of similar length, e.g. Clipping the church. I don't see what use a word limit would do, to be honest. – How do you turn this on (talk) 10:52, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Would that article pass as a stub? Possibly. Adding a definitive word minimum, will ensure that no definitive stubs will appear on the main page. --Flewis(talk) 11:13, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
The question here is practically one of what exactly DYK represents. Quality: A well written article that just misses out on GA status? or Quantity: Hundreds of interesting hooks which link to a paragraph of information? --Flewis(talk) 11:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Dyk also does two other things: it publicises short articles that the creator has expanded to the limit and others could expand further; and it rewards creators of articles with a little fame and therefore encourages editors to keep working hard for the little buzz that gives them. Both of these reasons are of benefit to WP and therefore too onerous a word/byte limit is undesirable. Malick78 (talk) 11:50, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Did You Know is for new, or recent expanded articles. NOT Good Articles. They're there not to showcase our best work, but our newest work. A one-line stub is out, but 1500 characters isn't short. – How do you turn this on (talk) 12:21, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Just "our newest work?" I wish it was as simple as that - because the DYK will easily be automated then. The Main Page is a sensitive place in many ways. (Did you know that even some FAs will never get featured on Main Page? User:Raul654 made this clear himself.) *Any* link that gets bolded on Main Page will have to have certain degree of quality, be it DYK, OTD, or ITN. 1,500 characters isn't short? Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more; actually the minimum length requirement used to be a bit higher than that a while ago. Besides, we already have more entries than we can handle easily - as a result we almost always struggle with backlog. I've never seen any shortage of entries since I started the DYK maintenance; it's been rather quite the opposite. As soon as we eliminate the length requirement we will be overwhelmed with flood of submissions. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
No, not just our newest work, as I said, recently expanded articles too. Obviously ones that don't meet criteria aren't included, but what is DYK's purpose, other than to showcase new articles? Adding a length requirement seems a bad idea when articles can still be high quality, but have just 1,499 characters. – How do you turn this on (talk) 13:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) it is also a great way of destubbing and improving the quality of the profusion of short stubs - anything under 150 words for a semi-notable subject is often pretty straightforward to expand. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:47, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

FLewis, it's actually very easy to count 1500 chars, there's a little program you can add to your monobook.js page called prosesize, I think you just have to add the string {{subst:js|User:Dr pda/prosesize.js} . It gives you a link in the left hand column you can click which instantly counts the number of characters in the currently displayed article. You can find the full code for the program here. Gatoclass (talk) 13:39, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Lots of word processors can do it like Microsoft Word. I'd be happy to give you directions - just ask on my talk page if this works for you. Royalbroil 00:02, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

1.5kb has been removed from the rules. Good riddence. -- Suntag ☼ 07:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm still unclear why a 300 word minimum would be inherently superior to a 1500 character minimum. Unless there is a clear benefit to changing, I think we should retain the current approach. That said, one rule I think could be tweaked is the 5x minimum. I think that works well in most situations, but a moderately long article (say 4000-5000 characters) would generally be very difficult to increase 5x, and so editors may have less incentive to improve those. Sometimes leeway is given to these articles and an increase close to 5x gets accepted. But I would suggest formalizing this, as a 5x increase or a 10,000 character increase. That way, any article 2,500 characters or less would still need to meet the 5x rule, but a 5,000 character article could be DYK eligible if increased to 15,000 characters (3x). I think this would have several advantages:

  1. It would encourage improvements to moderately sized articles
  2. A 10,000 character increase is pretty substantial, so it would not dramatically increase the number of articles eligible for DYK
  3. A 10,000 character increase would insure that a substantial amount of new content has been added, and so the pre-existing article is therefore worth being showcased in DYK. Rlendog (talk) 03:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I tend to favor Rlendog's idea. I am not certain how many others will like it though. --BorgQueen (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
My worry would be the extra work. However if a tool could be written then we might be able to do more than just check a simple 1500 character limit. Note when I say "simple", I do realise that the 1500 char limit is checked by the tool with some very clever programming ... (as our rules are not as simple as they appear at first reading). In summary. Yes it would be good to also recognise other substantial improvements, but it could get complex. What if we have a 20,000 character entry with the low amount of reffing of some of our 1500 character entries? Who is going to read all this? So .... Yes ....but Victuallers (talk) 16:10, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Radical suggestion

It was suggested above that new GAs be included in DYK. The main objection seemed to be that this would swamp the DYK nomination list. To solve this problem, I suggest we scrap the current "new articles/recently expanded articles" criteria for "new articles/recently GA-promoted articles". The 5-fold expansion criterion is a ridiculous emphasis on bulk over quality, that goes against the basic principles of Wikipedia, and leads to endless quibbles over counting methods. Asking instead that the article be recently promoted to GA will be a wonderful incentive for editors to - not simply expand articles - but improve them. Lampman (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, very good idea...but there are not enough new GA's to accomplish this! —Ed 17 (Il Viquipedista)— 17:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Let me clarify: new GAs would only be featured in addition to newly created articles - the vast majority of DYKs. Lampman (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I very much prefer to keep DYK for new and newly expanded articles. I would strongly suggest that if something like this were ever implemented, that thought be given to whether or not an article can be in the DYK section twice or not. If an article were in DYK when new, and then made GA, could it be in DYK again? I would say no, but this would need to be clearly in the rules if a change like this were made. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 17:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we follow D1 of the unwritten rules: "No items that have already appeared on the Main Page[...]" Lampman (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with this proposal, I think this might discourage editors. Most of my work at DYK has been in articles expanded from stubs or poor-quality start-class articles, and I don't think the articles I've expanded are low-quality just because I didn't nominate them for GA; a lot of people take a stub or very bad article and improve it up to something moderately useful and well-written but still too short or superficial to be GA. If anything, the best way to respond to your concerns would be to change the strict "5-fold expansion" guideline to a guideline more focused on expansion and improvement of content (rather than bigger length or character count). Even that, though, is probably not necessary, as people working at DYK should exercise good judgment in verifying submissions (in other words, if an article has been expanded five-fold but still has major problems with sourcing, point of view, writing style, etc., or is just plain bad, it's easy enough for an editor to mark it with something like This article's hook is unsourced or too long or there are other content issues and leave a comment saying it meets the length requirement but has other insurmountable problems).
Also, the whole idea of including GA-promoted articles would ruin what I understand to be one of the main purposes of DYK (and correct me if I'm wrong on this), which is to feature content that most readers have probably not seen before on Wikipedia. The GA review process often takes a week or two, or longer (I'm sure it varies by reviewer, but in all GA reviews I have been involved with, from either side of the table, it's taken one to two weeks), the article often sits at GAN for several weeks before being reviewed (again, this might vary by topic), and there's no telling how long and how gradual the article expansion was before the article was submitted to GAN. So if you featured new GAs on the front page, you'd be featuring content that has probably been on Wikipedia for one or more months. Sure, if the article is somewhat obscure (as many GAs are) then it probably has only been seen by a small proportion of readers, but it's still not "new" in the sense that DYKs under the current criteria are. —Politizer talk/contribs 17:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The specific issue of "a guideline more focused on expansion and improvement of content (rather than bigger length or character count)" is a perennial, oft-rejected suggestion, whose usual response resembles this quote from "Unwritten" Rule A3: "... we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article." Art LaPella (talk) 18:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I see...thanks for the clarification. What I was mainly trying to get at was just that it seems like most "endless quibbles over counting methods," which Lampman cited as one of the main arguments in favor of allowing GAs instead of recent expansions, could probably be avoided by using some common sense and not worrying about adhering exactly to the 5x limit (i.e., an article that was only expanded 4.5x but has some really nice stuff could maybe be accepted, and an article expanded 10x but full of junk would probably be rejected). That's probably more feasible than a new guideline. Anyway, I just think that disagreements over how to measure expansion shouldn't be enough to get rid of all recently expanded articles from DYK. Regardless of whether or not we want to have GAs in DYK, I think there's also a lot of good content in recently expanded non-GAs and they shouldn't be gotten rid of in favor of GAs. —Politizer talk/contribs 18:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
The quibbles are not the main concern, the main issue here is quality over quantity, a central goal for Wikipedia since around 2006. As for A3 above, my suggestion would solve that problem, by shifting the vetting process over to GAN. Lampman (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you that we should be going for quality. But there are a lot of quality expansions that don't meet GA criteria; that doesn't mean they're bad articles, it just means that they're not the GA kind of article—especially if they were expanded from near-nothing (take, for example, Zebda, which was recently expanded from about 800b to about 4800b; it's not comprehensive enough for GA, but the information that is there is still good information and relatively interesting). Just because an article hasn't been nominated for GA doesn't mean it's bad.
Also, if we excluded "recent expansions" from DYK and only allowed GA-promoted expansions, might that cause GAN to get flooded with articles that people want featured on DYK—and possibly are not very good articles and wouldn't have been nominated if it weren't for DYK? We might just be moving our backlog over to GAN, rather than actually eliminating the backlog. —Politizer talk/contribs 18:53, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't want to discourage the expansion of articles, quite the opposite. But the GA criteria aren't all that scary; it's basically just about covering the main issues, sourcing throughout and using reasonably good language. This should be the goal also when an article is expanded for DYK. The purpose of DYK is "thanking the editors who create new content and to encourage other editors to contribute to and improve that article and the encyclopedia." It is true that the GAN process will slow this down a bit, but the exposure the article gets during a couple of weeks of GAN is negligible compared to what it gets when it's featured on the Main Page. Lampman (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I do not like the idea of adding GAs. Leave DYK alone as it is.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 18:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Change is scary, but this is change we can believe in! Lampman (talk) 18:38, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
  • I also don't like the thought of mixing GAs with DYKs, but I do think, now we have succesfully got minimum referencing accepted, there could be a bit more emphasis on quality of prose for example. You very rarely see a reviewer saying "criteria ok, but lots of prose mistakes" or similar, when this, or "needs basic prose copyedit" could & maybe should be said of quite a few, mainly by non-native speakers. At least at typical DYK length this doesn't take too long & a number of people, sometimes including me, do it anyway, but it could be made more systematic. Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
As noted above, this would add too great a workload on an already struggling DYK project. The good news is that there's a project that's happy to take on this job, and it's called Good article nominations. Lampman (talk) 19:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying reviewers should have to "approve" the prose, but that more articles should be put on hold or rejected when it is noticeably deficient. Lampman, haven't you noticed that (as usual) no one is interested in having GAs on DYK? Johnbod (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

So everyone who has already got an article to GA status is just going to lie down while new GAs are featured and there articles never will be? And we're removing a motivation factor of encouraging people to expand previously existing articles. Terrible idea. Possibly one of the worst I have ever seen suggested. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 00:57, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Truly one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen. Is this a problem with regular DYKs? Also we would be adding a motivation factor of encouraging people to improve previously existing articles. I thought that was what it was all about. Lampman (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree, and consensus clearly is opposed to this idea. --BorgQueen (talk) 02:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I would call it a consensus in a true WP sense, since the arguments range from Bedford's WP:IDONTLIKEIT to Ameliorate, who doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the word "new". But I see that there's a majority vote against it, and I'll just leave it at that. Lampman (talk) 13:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
What exactly do you mean that I don't understand the meaning of "new"? My argument is, if we allow 'new' GAs will everyone who has previously had an article promoted to GA status be okay with new GAs featuring on the main page even though there is no chance that there GA ever will be? The answer is, of course, no. DYK is about encouraging people to spend an hour or two to expand or write a new article. Removing the 5x expansion criteria is the worst idea ever presented here, the criteria exists so people will still spend a little while working on an article that has already been created, rather than having people essentially punished because someone got to creating an article before them. As it stands right now the 5x expansion criteria is responsible for numerous articles being expanded from stubs or redirects, without it, people will check an article find it exists and go and write something else. I know that I won't spend the amount of time required to write a GA on any random subject, but I'll still spend a few hours expanding an article like Cerberus or Snuppy. Regardless this proposal falls victim to the perennial "lets allow new GAs" suggestion, but with the added twist of eliminating another criteria, we could accept new GAs without it adding too much pressure the problem is that it would be punishing people for having their GA promoted before the idea was implemented which previous GA authors are not going to accept, and the problem with allowing GAs in general is it will create a backlog of 5000 articles. In short, there is no possible way that GAs can be added to DYK, the main page redesign will have to account for GAs getting exposure on the main page. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 14:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I still don’t understand this argument. New content is the very essence of DYK, that is the reason why it’s there. Where does this apocalyptic vision come from, where thousands of GA-editors from the past descend on DYK to protest a perfectly reasonable requirement? It sounds like clairvoyance, but it has no background in reality. Is anyone today complaining that DYK only highlights recently created content, not content created years ago?
Anyway, I’m not hell-bent on killing the 5x expansion-rule, I just thought it was a good way to accommodate GAs on the Main Page, keep the DYK-project manageable and promote the “quality over quantity”-principle all at the same time. But if there’s such strong feelings against it, then forget about it. My main issue was trying to get GAs on the Main Page, and Geometry guy has made a different suggestion about this below. Lampman (talk) 02:45, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Ameliorate expressed this all before I was able to jump in, but I just wanted to agree that the 5x expansion guideline is a good motivator for people to expand many articles, including articles on areas that the editor doesn't know much about but can easily find basic information online or at the library; expanding an article to GA is a much bigger commitment and requires a large amount of time and (I assume) some more expertise or at least familiarity with the subject. Requiring articles to be expanded to GA-class before adding them wouldn't motivate people to write better articles, it would deter them from writing most of those articles at all. —Politizer talk/contribs 14:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Further on BorgQueen's post, I don't think that DYK can unilaterally change the scope of what it puts on the Main Page. To add GAs, As, and FAs that don't make it to the FA Main Page space to the DYK Main Page space, I think it would require a widely participated discussion. Talk:Main Page is a place to launch a request to add GAs to the Main Page. -- Suntag ☼ 19:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I am interested in the idea of a possible link-up between GA and DYK, but from a different angle. DYK currently presents to readers (and hence provides recognition for) articles in an early stage of development, while TFA showcases (and hence provides recognition for) our very best work. There is nothing for articles between these extremes. This is particularly an issue for short articles, which face a challenge to become FAs, and a further challenge to become TFAs. There has been much discussion about this at WT:FAC (check the archives), which was how I became interested. I am very open minded about how to do this, but using DYK is one possible route. I quite like the fact that DYKs can be unusual or quirky, and think that there are plenty of short GAs that fit such a model.

I would only want to see one or two GAs presented on the main page at the time, but I think it would be clearer to readers if they were presented separately (e.g. at the bottom of DYK after a sentence like "And here are some facts from a couple of less recent articles"). To compensate, perhaps the blurb for (say) the two articles could be three lines instead of two, and the updates could be less frequent (twice a day? I'm not very familiar with DYK processes). I don't think it is helpful to focus on recently promoted GAs: that could be damaging to the GA process and to the encyclopedia. We need to encourage good work by editors who love contributing content without creating new battlegrounds.

Other criteria than recentness are better in this respect: I have suggested shortness as one. Another is novelty: has something similar been featured before, or recently? DYK has an important role in countering systemic bias, by encouraging work on atypical articles rather than the typical ones. The point of view I have on GAs is that although they contain a large number of typical articles, they also are a good place to look for atypical ones of reasonable quality. As far as the main page is concerned, this is an unexploited resource. Can we find some way to exploit it? Geometry guy 19:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Requests to expand the Main Page to include GA articles should be made at Talk:Main Page. -- Suntag ☼ 20:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Which you already did. Never mind. -- Suntag ☼ 20:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Sandy's recent post about the importance of verifiability reminded me of a couple of issues that were on my mind, but I forgot to include in my comments. GAs (especially recent ones) have typically only been checked by one independent editor. Hence they need to be checked again before appearing on the main page. This is why I think DYK could play a useful role: a check for verifiability and a copyedit for prose quality would be extremely helpful for almost all GAs. It is with this proviso that I think it is unhelpful to focus only on recent GAs: recent GAs may not have received adequate scrutiny, and older GAs may have deteriorated (just as FAs can); they cannot be presented to readers without checks. Geometry guy 21:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I wish I had a nickel for every time I've read (at FAC, no less!!) a statement from a nominator along the lines of, "well, I'm not really sure what makes a source reliable". We need to get on this, earlier, throughout all processes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Do any of the proposed mainpage designs include new showcase space? I could imagine a section which including two or three blurbs (between DYK and TFA length) from a FL, FPo, or FS - and this might include GAs. Gimmetrow 22:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
If GAs were to be featured as part of DYK, then I believe these would have to be only new ones – as I’ve tried to explain above – because the creation of new content is the very essence of DYK. If, however, they were relegated to a separate section, then they could be picked from past ones, like TFAs are today. Also like TFAs, there could then be a selection process based on certain criteria, like Geometry guy mentions above. As for using DYK to check the quality of older GAs, I think this would be an unreasonable burden on an already struggling project. The sweeps project is already working on this, though admittedly they’re facing a sisyphean task. None of the five main page redesign-finalists have a GA section. It could be brought up, though it might be a bit late to suggest a radical redesign now. Lampman (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong support for adding GAs into the DYK space. Two GAs at a time seems sensible, and populating the rest with new articles as at present. There's obviously a need to demarcate the two (perhaps by putting from wikipedia's newest articles in between them). I'm ambivalent as to how these could be selected - newly promoted or a similar system the FAs are both good suggestions. If anyone is concerned that this would reduce the number of new articles featured, they should consider tightening the current requirements, which mean almost every new article that avoids being deleted can be featured in DYK. Modest Genius talk 23:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

About the whole idea of recognition for GAs...I don't remember exactly where this discussion happened, but I seem to remember a consensus being made not to give GAs external recognition because it could confuse readers. Specifically, people were talking about the little stars that FAs get on the top of the article, and the fact that GAs don't get that and only get a template at the top of the talk page (which casual readers don't see). Again, I don't remember all the details, but I remember people decided that GA should remain an internal classification, not something Wikipedia presents to the outside world, partly because of the fact that if there are 2,615,205 WP articles and only 5,386 designated as "good" (these numbers from WP:GA) then what does that say to casual readers about the quality of our work? Or, in other words, if a reader comes across an article and is like, "Ah, they say this is a good article," then what will that reader think about the rest of the articles he comes across?
I'm just saying, should we be seeking front-page recognition for GAs at all? And if we do seek that, is DYK the way to do it? The answer to the first question might be no (I will try to find a link to the actual discussion); and there is a clear consensus here that the answer to the second question is no, especially when it comes to this particular incarnation of it (ie, the proposal above that a GA requirement kick out the newly expanded article guideline). —Politizer talk/contribs 23:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
There was a big GA-symbol discussion last spring. Lampman (talk) 02:12, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
The recent Main Page survey indicated, admittedly with a small sample size, that many editors felt that DYK was currently the poorest content section on the Main Page. The idea of including GAs in the DYK section received broad support, from even more people than wanted DYK to remain as-is, despite only appearing after the survey had been live for some time. The relevant discussion is at Wikipedia_talk:2008_main_page_redesign_proposal/Survey#Including_or_expanding_Did_You_Know.3F Modest Genius talk 15:35, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for linking to a discussion in which a whole three people agreed DYK is the least useful but are completely ignorant as to DYKs purpose; DYK is to encourage people to create new content, look at the suggestions page and see how many articles DYK is responsible for. Also, five people agreed that it is good how it is and five think that GAs should be included but didn't offer any ideas as to how we deal with a) an instant 5000 page backlog or b) 5000 articles automatically disqualified because they were promoted before a certain date. That is why straw polls are a terrible waste of space and are not binding to anything we do. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
The discussion makes the exact same point that has been made here: there should be more of a focus on quality over quantity, and including GAs would be a good way to achieve this. The idea of argument made from ignorance is entirely in your head; I saw little evidence of this. There seems to be a tendency among some contributors here to be very protective of their own turf, to value the exposure of their own work over the improvement of the encyclopaedia, and to not even bother listening to how the project is seen from the outside. Lampman (talk) 04:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Lampman, I'm sorry but I don't think you're getting anywhere like this. All you say is that "there should be quality over quantity" and this could be done by adding GAs to DYK. How about giving some points about why this is essential and why DYK should be the place to get GAs recognised? Ameliorate and Politizer have made very valid arguments, but you (or anyone else) have not answered them properly but keep more or less repeating the above statement. I don't think this is going to convince anyone.
My opinion is that exposure of new articles and expansions shouldn't be sacrificed for GAs. My only problem is that GAs will be "replacing" these. Other than that, I have no problem with GAs getting recognition. A lot of new editors contribute to DYK, and it's a good chance for them to get some recognition within the Wikipedia community. I mean, everyone can't build GAs can they? It provides these new contributors with some "glory" on a small scale and encourages them to contribute more to Wikipedia. I think it kind of helps to keep them interested. Featuring GAs on the main page will have pretty much the same effect (but mostly on established & experienced editors, since they are the ones who are mostly involved with GA). So obviously it's good if we can do it. But why in the world do we have to kick out that first category to accommodate them? As I mentioned in an earlier section, the best thing would be to have a separate section for GAs (newly promoted or otherwise) and have it alongside DYK, as part of DYK or as an independent section on the main page. If we are going to do it as part of DYK, then the original DYK process should be maintained without any "trimming", and also add the hooks from GAs. If that can't be done, then it's not the DYK contributors' fault and they don't have to be kicked out to allow for GAs. Chamal talk 05:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I still don’t understand Ameliorate’s argument, so I can’t really take issue with that. I’m not sure if he imagines 5,000 GAs on the MP at the same time, or exactly what catastrophe he fears. I can, however, explain why DYK has to change.
When DYK was initiated early in 2004 there were about 200,000 articles, and WP’s goal was to create as many articles in as short a time as possible. DYK was a tool towards achieving this goal. Today, with 2,6 million articles, the main goal of WP is not the unbridled creation of new articles, but the improvement of the ones that exist (this idea was in fact expressed by Jimmy Wales as early as 2006, when the project passed 1 million).[1] Much of WP has geared in this direction, but DYK has changed little. There is normally agreement in the general community that DYK is in need of reform, but within the project the attitude is conservative. Allowing GAs in DYK would improve quality in two ways: it would encourage the creation of more GAs, and as we would have to tighten the criteria for inclusion of new articles, these would get better as well. There was strong opposition against my suggestion to replace 5x expansions with GAs, and while I admit that this might not be the perfect option, I didn’t see many alternative suggestions to how the project could be improved. The general attitude was summed up by Gen. Bedford with his "I do not like the idea of adding GAs. Leave DYK alone as it is." I think that’s what they said about the steam engine and the horse. Lampman (talk) 06:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Stop being dense and get to the point. How do you propose we check 5000 articles? How do you propose we add a pool of 5000 articles to the main page when we can barely keep up with the current backlog? Where is this agreement that DYK needs to reform - the three people at the main page redesign survey? The reason for the conservativeness within DYK is we know what it involves, we know how time consuming it is to check one articles (not to mention 5000) and we know that we won't be able to cope with a massive backlog. So cut the rhetoric, explain how you propose we do it and we will listen. ~ User:Ameliorate! (with the !) (talk) 06:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I never suggested 5,000 articles, my suggestion has always been to include new GAs. There are about 7 or 8 of these created on an average day, but I suspect not all would be nominated for the MP. These articles have already been vetted much better than any DYK article, so that wouldn’t be a problem. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a project dedicated to new content should feature only GAs that are newly created, so why anyone should rebel against this is beyond me. I certainly wouldn’t push any of the GAs from my back catalogue to get into DYK. I may be engaging in rhetoric, but at least I'm not making crazy doomsday predictions about the future!
Space would have to be made by tightening the criteria for new articles, which is not unreasonable seeing how you can get on the main page with 1,500 words of bad prose and one inline citation. As for the idea of featuring old GAs on the MP, you would have to ask those who brought this up, I think it’s a bad idea as it doesn’t encourage creation of new content.
In addition to the eight people in the straw poll, the idea of GAs in the DYK was recently brought up at the Main Page redesign debate, independently of this discussion. The reaction went about as follows: “Why not just make DYK include good articles instead of new ones?”, “I think that's a great idea”, “I love that idea”, “with the context of DYK, I will support GAs”. But then you seem to be of the opinion that anyone who’s not heavily involved in the DYK project is not entitled to an opinion, so you’ve got me in a bit of a Catch-22 there. I think perhaps those not heavily invested in DYK, who can see it from the outside, are in many ways better equipped to say what’s wrong with it. Lampman (talk) 07:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
And those who aren't really into GA don't understand the number and magnitude of hardship we faced when we are stuck in the middle between DYK and FA. Attention was always focused on DYK and FA, and most don't give a damn towards GA. I remember some well-respected editor (forgot the username) mentioned that he only contributes to FA and DYK but never GA is simply because the first 2 appear on main page while the last item doesn't. Has anyone cared about our feelings? OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Ameliorate that you should try to get at least basic idea of how DYK functions and its purpose. As you say, those who are not heavily invested in DYK are probably better equipped to say what's wrong with it, but only after properly understanding what it's about. Imagine someone going to a RFA and putting in a strong oppose saying that "user has an ugly picture on his userpage". Since you're talking about getting on the main page "with 1,500 words of bad prose and one inline citation", can you show us one article that has made it on to the main page with these criteria through DYK? The prose is checked before passing; if there are minor errors the reviewer will most probably perform a basic copyedit or mention that the article needs some improving before baing passed. If the prose is as terrible as you say, then it will definitely be rejected. The quality of the articles obviously will not be as high as a GA, but they are not rubbish. Check Template talk:Did you know, all the nominations there don't get onto the main page. Chamal talk 09:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

One problem with disregarding newly expanded articles is that many existing articles are very stubby, and expansions shouldn't be discouraged. The best examples I can think of, incidentally, are the stubs created by User:Eixo, apparently an alias of the user who started this discussion. I don't see why expansions such as this shouldn't be allowed at DYK. It's practically a new article. Punkmorten (talk) 10:17, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

It’s not an alias, but a defunct username. The article in question was part of a project to cover all Norwegian government ministers, and by all means, it’s great that it’s been expanded. But I can’t for the life of me see how it’s a human right that anyone who knows how to use a keyboard should have their work exposed to millions of people on one of the world’s most popular web sites. I don’t want to single out individual editors for criticism (I already mentioned one example above), but what I describe are the minimum requirements, and articles that comply with these normally get featured.
Anyway, all the arguments I’ve heard so far have been about how great DYK is, and that nothing should be done to change it. If this is the universal attitude on this forum, then I’m simply tilting at windmills, but it should be pointed out that the attitude of the community at large is a different one. Lampman (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more with Punkmorten's statement. Not even stopping to consider what Ameliorate has brought up about introducing thousands of new articles into DYK's backlog, the main point is that DYK encourages people to turn horrible stubs into half-decent articles (not shining examples of quality research, but at least something that a user can look at and not think they wasted their time). Replacing recent expansions with GAs (when people already have plenty of motivation to work on making GAs) would get rid of that.
As far as I can tell, there are different kinds of editors around here, and we need each kind to keep things working: some people like taking a half-decent article and nursing it into excellency, while others like creating a half-decent article where there was previously nothing (and some people, like me and probably most of the others in this discussion, like doing a bit of both); both those kinds of editors are extremely valuable to the project. Right now, stuff like GA and FA reward the first kinds of editors, and stuff like DYK rewards the second. By taking DYK away from the article-expanders, it seems like you're punishing them and just giving more to the GA people.
I should also mention that the diff Punkmorten gave is an excellent example of how an expansion is often tantamount to a creation, and your plan of allowing new creations but disallowing expansions would put us in the messy situation of having to decide what constitutes a "new" article (sure, the creation log is easy, but that's a pretty arbitrary measure, given what Punkmorten pointed out). —Politizer talk/contribs 15:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
From someone who contributes and reviews articles regularly at DYK I would oppose any move to replace the five fold expansion criteria with GA articles. It has been my experience that DYK's best articles tend to come from our five fold expansion policy. These articles typically take poor quality stubs and turn them into, if not GA quality articles, good articles of value to the encyclopedia. The DYKs that I am personally most proud of are not the new articles I have created, but the articles I have expanded and improved. In contrast, our newer articles can be barely more than stubs as the criteria is frankly not that stringent. Replacing the five fold expansion rule with GAs would therefore remove the incentive that currently produces the best fruit at DYK. Furthermore, I don't think adding GA in this way to DYK would encourage improvement encyclopedia wide. I personally find the GA process intimidating, as do many other editors, and am not interested in submitting articles for review at GA. However, I am more than willing to work on expanding and improving articles for DYK. If the five fold expansion was removed, rather than try for GA status, I would just simply no longer focus my efforts on improving already existing articles and merely write new ones. I think my response would be the typical one by the average editor and ultimately dropping the five fold expansion policy would result in a marked drop in the effort to improve articles; the opposite effect of what Lampman intended. Nrswanson (talk) 19:33, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
A further comment to Lampman, I do not agree with your assertion that the wiki community at large is somehow unhappy with DYK. Not that there isn't room for improvement, but in my experience most editors across the encyclopedia like what we do here. I would venture to say that we have more editors involved here in one way or another than any other project, a fact which should speak for itself.Nrswanson (talk) 20:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
i support this idea. (being the one who sort of suggested it in the first place) I think the DYK's should include GA's and not five fold expansions. - -' The Spook (TALK) (Share the Love with Barnstars) 23:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Can we have your reasons, Spook? As for the idea of the majority of the Wikipedia community being unhappy with DYK, I don't agree with that. DYK is a section where almost every editor can participate, while GA is something reserved for the experienced & skilled ones. I don't see how the community dislikes DYK, since a larger number participates in it than at WP:GAN. We still didn't get any proof on the terrible quality of articles passing DYK (as you guys claimed) or on this "community cosensus". Chamal talk 04:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Egyptian Communist Organisation sounds like one of those marginal DYK articles. It's very short, not broad enough (didn't even mention the specific individual as party leader nor founder), and no lead section (the article only have the body and references). Of course, just like GA and FA, it's possible that I am just lucky enough to come across a bad one so I will admit what I am doing is a bit cherry-picking, but same cherry-picking phenomenon happens when FA or DYK crowd points out that some GA are in bad shape. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This might have been a feasible idea if not for the fact the timing for this proposal is way off. We are suffering a backlog that forces us to run four-hour cycles. Preparation of Main Page content is still rather labour-intensive (though helped by the semi-auto process that is implemented rather recently). If the backlog eases up we might be able to reconsider it.

If the day would come where DYK is short of hooks, GA might be able to provide some hooks to fill in. There are two possible ways to go around it. First is that GA hooks are prepared way in advance and would be considered as a "pool of last resort" when there are no more DYK hooks to fill up. The other way is that GA hooks run on a weekend schedule that FP used to share DYK with. The former would create tensions on whether priority should be given for DYK or GA hooks (editors would feel that DYK has slowly ceded power to GA). For the latter, DYK might suffer from another worse pileup that all of us can't envisage, though all hooks for GA could be featured and cleared easily in a year. (capacity of ~4,800 hooks) Even so, someone will have to prepare the hooks (is the GA community willing to help?). - Mailer Diablo 17:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not the first time DYK has been faced with a great backlog, and the problem is unlikely to magically go away at any point; rather it will get worse. The problem is that the criteria have not kept up with the development in article creation. I was asked to provide examples of poor DYKs, one such was the recent Li Zhengji. It has only one inline citation, and a poor one at that, as it is an ancient source not supported by modern scholarship. I made this point on the suggestions page, and someone (don’t remember who) said he’d raise the issue at the appropriate forum. Nothing happened, and this article – along with several like it – was featured. The problem is that the DYK project is swamped, and participants don’t have the time to carry out endless discussions with editors based on vague policy issues.
If the criteria were sharpened, the selection process would be much easier, as low-quality entries could be quickly dismissed. Everyone seems hung up on vehemently defending the 5x expansion rule, but this was just one suggestion I made to help with the selection process, and I have seen no suggestions to alternative changes. Other options could include changing requirements on article length, sourcing, WP:MOS etc. Personally I can easily create an eligible DYK in about an hour, but I don’t think it’s fair that it should be this easy to get an article to a prominence almost on par with an FA, which can take months to make. DYK’s criteria have to keep up with WP’s development, otherwise we’ll get in a situation with a permanent backlog, and DYK won’t be displaying the best of WP’s new work, as intended. Lampman (talk) 18:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Well here is where I agree with you Lampman. I have been advocating for some time that we raise the standards here at DYK but if you look through the archives you will see that any proposed changes to the criteria have been vehemently opposed by most of the editors involved here, most of whom are of the philosophy that DYK is under a mandate to encourage new editors to the encyclopedia who would be dettered by stricter policies. It's a valid perspective but one that I personally don't share. The other arguement against is that stricter policies make the review process more time consuming for editors, something that we just don't have the man power for. This objection is reality based and any changes in policies would therefore need to be practical from an administrative point of view. I personally feel inline citations throughout an article as well as a small increase of length to either 2,000 or 2,500 characters would be a welcome change here at DYK. But good luck convincing other editors of that. As for GA, my personal feeling is that GA needs a voice on the mainpage. However, merging GA with DYK is not the answer to that problem. GA needs their own section on the main page. Merging the two is just going to create conflict between the two projects that isn't likely to resolve. The goals of the two projects are so divergent that it isn't likely for a merger to work well and satisfy either party.Nrswanson (talk) 18:25, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you, Nrswanson. I think the minimum length should be increased, but guess what, some editors think even 1,500-character length is not short! The backlog is gone now temporarily but it is only matter of time we get swamped again. --BorgQueen (talk) 06:23, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I like Nrswanson's suggestion regarding GA having its own section. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:46, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I think Lampman's suggestion of increasing requirements for sourcing and MOS is a good idea. After all, we are putting up articles on Wikipedia's first page and it would be weird if some of them were not compliant with Wikipedia's basic manual of style. As for GA having its own section, I think it's too late for that now. It should have been done when the redesign proposals were brought up. Chamal talk 03:48, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
I oppose "increased requirements for sourcing" if that means more citations. Something that does bother me about DYK, however, are the number of articles on subjects of dubious or borderline notability, or referenced to dubious sources. Gatoclass (talk) 04:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
It isn't "late". We had that discussion going on for over 10 days already. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) Do we really need new "rules" about MoS and every imaginable thing, when we can just all agree on a some principle along the lines of "Articles getting put on the main page should not suck" and exercise judgment in interpreting that? So far, it's been clear that all of the reviewers I've worked with at DYK are very intelligent people who are able to make judgment calls about these sorts of things; as for myself, even though there aren't specific rules about writing style and things like that in DYK articles, I know I've left my share of mean and nasty messages telling nominators to clean up their stuff (or I have gone there myself and cleaned up what I can, generally in as cantankerous and disgruntled a manner as possible, but hey, whatever gets the job done). Sure, there will always be people who whine and say "show me the specific rule that says X" but, in general, I think people are willing to listen to input from reviewers and reviewers are able to make judgment calls about article quality without having hard-and-fast rules telling them what to do.
No matter how many rules Lampman proposes about MoS, article length, and what have you, there are always going to be articles that suck in some way that's not covered by the rules, and so there is always going to be a need for reviewers to exercise some judgment. So if we're admitting that reviewers need to exercise judgment sometimes, why not just do the whole shebang and admit that most of the reviewing that gets done is essentially a judgment call?—Politizer talk/contribs 04:30, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Yep, I agree that there will always be some kind of loophole. As for the sources, how do we check those sources without more effort on the part of the reveiwers? I saw many hooks being rejected recently because of having only sources from sites such as IMDB, but those are the really obvious ones. I'm not saying that there should be a rule about MOS, but it'd be better if we paid some attention to MOS without just putting out a few passages of text as an article on the main page. It wouldn't be that hard, you only come across such an article once in a while and even then it wouldn't take too much work. BTW I couldn't comment on the examples given per my request. Well, they are not exactly badly written, in fact the prose is fairly good (nowhere near GA quality of course, but still...). Several sources are also there, although some are not given as inline cites. Not exactly articles with bad prose and one inline cite but no doubt they are borderline articles. As Politizer said, I think articles like that need to be "judged" by the reveiver without just looking at the rules. Chamal talk 05:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Verify symbol for images

The DYK image noms require a review separate from the DYK hook. It would help to have a symbol to confirm free use of the image so that the DYK selecting admin can quickly see which images have been verified. Perhaps some sort of photograph in a small round frame would help distinguish the image reivew from the hook check mark symbol. Please add the new symbol to Template_talk:Did_you_know#Symbols. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 19:12, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I like adding a comment along with the regular DYK check. I don't think it's a big deal if it isn't checked - it's very easy to click on an image to see if it's on Commons (which is 90% of the time). Royalbroil 13:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I've been adding a comment as well. DYK is such a labor intensive process, that I thought it would be quicker for the next update fillers to visually see a symbol approving an image rather than scanning for comments. If there is a need, there are images at Category:Vote symbols. Personally, I like . -- Suntag ☼ 17:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DYK templates and other DYK Categories

I just created and populated Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates. If you have the time, go through each template and see whether the DYK project still needs them. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 21:32, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Suntag. Does anyone but me regularly use User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem? If so I'll move it into template space. Also my other user-space template, User:Olaf Davis/DYKTemplate, was basically an experiment with a proposal which never got taken up - but is there anyone out there using it? Olaf Davis | Talk 22:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I use Olaf's DYKproblem, but if the consensus is to change the template then that is fine with me. Art LaPella (talk) 02:19, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Hey Olaf, I just recently made {{DYKproblem}} which is very similar to yours...I hadn't noticed your template until Art LaPella pointed it out to me. (There is also {{DYKusertalk}}, by How do you turn this on.) I think it's definitely good to have a template like this, and personally I use mine all the time (again, only because I hadn't noticed you had already made one)...if you want, you can check it out and see if it would be beneficial to merge them or have one redirect to the other or something like that. —Politizer talk/contribs 22:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
That is pretty similar - even down to the name! Yours does basically everything mine does and has some added features in the parameter usage, so there's probably nothing worth merging. I guess mine could be redirected or deleted. Olaf Davis | Talk 23:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
The name was different before...I just saw your name and liked it better! As for redirecting/deleting, I guess it would be better to redirect yours, so that anyone who is using it doesn't try sometime and think "wtf" when it doesn't work. But I don't want to step on your toes.—Politizer talk/contribs 23:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DYK notify bot

In view of the new Template:DYKproblem, User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem, and the Adminbot, I was thinking that we would benefit from a DYK notification bot. Since we substitute , , and on the suggestion page when making comments, we can include a timestamp in the substitution and add a |user= parameter. If the |user= parameter is filled out, the DYK notify bot will grab User:Olaf Davis/DYKproblem or Template:DYKproblem and post it on the user's talk page. The timestamp can be used by the bot to keep track of which comments it responded to. If we want to get fancy, we could add an |article= parameter that would be used by the bot to identify the troubled DYK suggestion. We also could code the substitution of and to let the editor know that the article is ready for DYK. -- Suntag ☼ 01:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey, that is some idea. A lot of hooks with problems or questions go unanswered till the last moment, so it would be great if we can have something like this. We can use it if there's any problem with the hook. I don't think it'd be much use telling people that their hooks are OK though :) Chamal talk 02:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
If we created a DYK nomination template with parameters such as |nominate=, |created=, and |expanded=, then the bot could use those parameters to determine where to deliver the message. This would save those reviewing the DYK noms a step or two. -- Suntag ☼ 03:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Except that those who require messages such as User:Art LaPella/No qualifying article (for instance) don't even know they need a new article, so how would they know about the nomination template, if it's buried in the same rules they haven't read? Art LaPella (talk) 03:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
I think the user who is reviewing the hook is supposed to place the template, not the nominator. This shouldn't be a problem, since all of us are more or less familiar with the rules. Only thing is, it might require some extra work on our part. This might have an effect on the backlog though. The extra work might reduce the number of hooks that people review. Chamal talk 04:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
This is something I thought about only much better (my idea was to have the bot find the template and then work out where the hook was which would have been prone to errors). What we really need is a more stable format for hooks. For example a template like {{dykhook|... that ''[[this]]''' is just an example?|authorsname|nomsname|articlename}} to make it more bot readable, then if the template is subst'd it can insert the other templates into the code inside HTML comments, for example <!--{{DYK?|user=authorsname|article=articlename}} {{DYKno|user=authorsname|article=articlename}}-->. So it is something I would like to do but not until the adminbot is fully approved, as after that I was planning on starting a topic about what people would like to see a bot doing. ~ User:Ameliorat