Misplaced Pages

Bytes/Chars

The prose size is measured in terms of bytes, not characters.

Support

1. A stronger argument - most pages start with wiki markups before being expanded. If there is 1k worth of markups, then the page would have to expand over 5k worth of markups to be more than 5x expansion from markups. An addition of 4k worth of markups is very hard to accomplish, especially without any supporting text. Any fears of an over use of markups would not happen. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose markup (esp. infoboxes and references) should not be included in count. —Politizer /_contribs 21:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Oppose - Infoboxes, reference templates, table format, and similar markup can add greatly to the byte length of an article without adding anything to the article's value to a user.
   Note that the rule applies to both the pre- and post-expansion count, and that sometimes the pre-expansion article has a large byte count that is grossly inflated by the presence of invisible markup. For example, I've seen articles that had just one sentence of text but a byte count well in excess of 1K, due to the inclusion of huge infobox templates. --Orlady (talk) 22:22, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
3. One char =/= one byte, as Politzer and Orlady explain. As simple as that. --JayHenry (talk) 22:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
4. Oppose - can't really add anything to what Orlady and Politizer have said. Adding, say, 1,000 bytes to the length of an article does not necessarily mean 1,000 characters of prose have been added. Reyk _YO! 22:35, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
5. Oppose - per all that has been said above. —Mattisse (Talk) 23:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
6. As above. Seraphim♥ 01:43, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
7. Oppose - definitely agree with the above. Infoboxes, {{cite}} formatting, tables, etc. can make a big difference and inflate the literal byte count of an expansion (or even pre-expansion, as Orlady noted), even if the prose itself has not been well-expanded. For this reason, I tend to strongly oppose the usage of byte estimations - since we're looking for a fivefold expansion of main prose, it's counterproductive to count the article's file size as a whole (markup and all). JamieS93 01:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
8. Oppose Again, the focus should be on prose. There's nothing wrong with blockquotes. There are ample places where blockquotes are useful and necessary. But we should be writing articles about the subject (and thee quotes), not encouraging articles built around the blockquotes, infoboxes, sources, tables, lists, etc. Alansohn (talk) 02:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
9. Ick, no. Wizardman 02:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
10. Oppose technically 1 character does equal 1 byte as per an experiment I did but the problem is that the count is easily thrown off by adding code that doesn't show in the article (like a piped link). --​​​​D.B. 02:46, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

    Actually (just to clarify), 1 character equals 1 byte (usually) but 1 byte does not equal one character; in that test they only came out equal because there was no wiki markup. If the test were, for example, ] , the count would yield 7 characters but 11 bytes. And then there are things like — (1 character, 7 bytes) and ™ (1 character, 8 bytes)...not to mention rarer and crazier stuff like __TOC__ (7 bytes, no characters and no measurable content). But you are correct about piped links and stuff. —Politizer /_contribs 03:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

    Yep and it works inversely with something like {{convert|20|m2}}, which returns 17 bytes but 28 characters. --​​​​D.B. 04:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

11. Oppose per all the above. Agne/ 02:50, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
12. Strong oppose - Per Orlady. I find this proposal to be just plain ridiculous. Gatoclass (talk) 03:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
13. Oppose Per all of the above. Additionally, I don't see what problem this proposal is trying to solve. BuddingJournalist 06:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
14. Oppose - DYK is here to reward creative writing effort, not creative copying effort. -- Suntag ☼ 09:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
15. Oppose mostly for the reasons that Orlady describes. John Vandenberg 17:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
16. Oppose While I agree with Ottava that there probably won't be a time where counting byte will make a page ineligible, we may as well make sure that the one article it does will be eligible without too much drama. \ / (⁂ | ※) 04:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

A limit to the number of articles used in one hook?

Hey everyone, I was wondering if we should think about implementing a limit to the amount of articles that could be used in a single DYK hook, I have no objection to having a double or even a triple hook, but with the shortage of hooks that we've been having, I think having 5 article hook is a little much especially considering the hook shortage we've been having ever sense we upped the amount of hooks per update to 8. Does anyone think we should cap the amount of articles allowed in a hook and require any other articles to get there own hooks? Or should we just leave it to the discretion of the user who is approving the hook? Thoughts? All the Best, --Mifter (talk) 00:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

My hooks tend to be 4+. Its easier to list a series of hooks that are thematically the same, especially when you create a list and build new pages to fill out the list. If you relax the rules some, you can get more hooks in that way. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:03, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe that no such rule is needed and would be opposed to adding it. I see nothing problematic about 5 (or more) related articles included in a hook. If there's a hook shortage we should think of ways to reward other types of new content, perhaps such as extensively cleaned up/rewritten from scratch articles. --JayHenry (talk) 01:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't have a big problem with lots of hooks. Especially when they're closely related, in usual circumstances it's probably better to get them all out in one fell swoop than to give the reader several updates in a row with the same stuff. When there's a shortage of hooks, we can always lengthen the interval between updates. In my experience, it seems that DYK reviewers have encouraged combined hooks where possible. Of course, from a technical standpoint, the {{DYKsug}} template is currently only built to take 5 articles.... if you want to nominate more than that, you're stuck not using the template, muahahaha! —Politizer /_contribs 01:29, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the notion of having a limit on the number of articles in a hook. Putting multiple articles in a single hook is a way of reducing the total number of hooks, which historically has been a great help in avoiding backlogs. If it turns out we don't need to do this anymore because of the greater efficiency of the bot, I still see no reason to impose an artificial limit on the number of articles in one hook, because it should already be clear from the rules that there are limits to the acceptable length of a hook in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 04:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Economising is good. I thought I did a favour with a few group hooks to save space for everyone. no limit please. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 05:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

No, I think this limit is unnecessary. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I support no limit to the number of articles in a hook, even if this means that the 200 character hook limit is broken. Royalbroil 13:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

For group hooks, we could just say that the lenght of the hooks should not be more than 200 characters as measured by one of the DYK article names and the remainder of the hook. In other words, the measurement is done by removing all the DYK article names except the shortest DYK article name and count that plus the remainder of the hook characters (not that this has ever been an issue). -- Suntag ☼ 20:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the general consensus here that multiple-article DYKs are great. For the hooks, surely just saying "don't worry about 200 if you've got a lot of links" would do it! We can trim it to a reasonable length if need be on a case-by-case basis, without worrying just now over how to count it... Shimgray | talk | 03:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"Case-by-case" is what I love to hear. —Politizer /_contribs 03:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

For now, "Unwritten" Rule C3 just says "A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule." Art LaPella (talk) 04:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I've always been using as my guideline for multi-article hooks. Of course, it depends somewhat on the number and length of the article titles (I'm more willing to accept a long hook that has 5 articles than a long hook that has 2; if it's just 2 articles, I would still aim to get it around 150-175 if that's possible without making the hook ridiculous) and on the length of the hook being proposed (no one is ever going to accept a 400-character hook, no matter how interesting it is or how many articles are crammed in...but 230 characters is something we can swing, if the circumstances are right). That's what I love about being human—we can make on-the-spot judgments about stuff like these, and our judgments are generally awesome because the other people working at DYK are smart and know what they're doing, which is awesome. —Politizer /_contribs 06:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Humanity is nice, but being inanimate always seems appealing. :) 07:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Wellll... I do sometimes feel like a bot when I'm going through making sure all the refs are after the punctuation.... —Politizer /_contribs 14:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You know there's a script which can do that, right? (User:Gimmetrow/fixRefs.js) Dr pda (talk) 09:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hot damn! I just used it and it was amazing. —Politizer /_contribs 21:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Peyton Short on DYK now

• ... that Peyton Short may have been responsible for the break-up of the first marriage of U.S. President Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel?

This is NOT a definite fact mentioned in the article (DYK Rules, Verification #4), but a speculation. The Peyton Short article needs a new hook. --74.13.129.214 (talk) 16:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The article says that Rachel's first husband "accused Short of breaking up their marriage," and it cites a source. The phrasing "may have been responsible" describes this accurately, IMO. --Orlady (talk) 17:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Then the hook should have said "Peyton Short was accused of breaking up...". There is no way to tell if the accusation made by Rachel's first husband was valid. Just using the words "may have been" means it's not a definite fact. The phrasing "may have been responsible" describes a speculation, assuming the accusation was valid, it doesn't describe any facts. --74.13.129.214 (talk) 18:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The source says "In his younger days Peyton Short was very well acquainted with the "pure and virtuous" Rachel Donelson who later became the wife of Andrew Jackson. In fact, Rachel's first husband, the scurvy Lewis Robards, accused Peyton Short of causing the breakup of their marriage." "May have been responsible" could mean "may have been at least silghtly responsible" or "may or may not have been responsible". The source provides "was very well acquainted", but there still seems a small gap towards quantifying the level of responsibility. In the future, the best place to address this is Misplaced Pages:Main Page/Errors. -- Suntag ☼ 20:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

In future? My post at WP:ERRORS was ignored. Now, do we fix the hook in the DYK Archive (WP:DYKA)? --74.14.20.98 (talk) 06:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. You posted your request at 16:23, 15 December 2008 and it appears that the Peyton Short hook was removed from the Main Page three minutes later at 16:26, 15 December 2008 The DYK Archive reflects what was on the Main Page, so I'm not sure whether that is something that is revised. -- Suntag ☼ 00:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

DYKsug

I'm seeing a lot of hooks that aren't substituting the DYKsuggestion template - a lot even leaving the comment explaining not to use it - <!--Please do not copy this code directly for nominating. Instead, use {{subst:DYKsug}} as described in the header.--> Is there a way we can make the need for substitution even more obvious? \ / (⁂ | ※) 00:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I believe they are substituting it. The naming of the templates is kind of confusing (my fault; I wasn't thinking ahead when I did them), but the template that people are supposed to use and substitute is {{DYKsug}}, which has parameters such as |article=, which you don't see in {{DYKsuggestion}}. Then what happens is, when you subst it, it turns itself into {{DYKsuggestion}}, which is sitting inside of {{DYKsug}}. The comment about not copying is one that I put into the template on purpose—the main problem is that if you use {{DYKsuggestion}} instead of {{subst:DYKsug}}, it doesn't add a timestamp or a section header ({{DYKsug}} basically doesn't do anything other than create a section header with the article names, stick on a timestamp, and then call {{DYKsuggestion}}). So basically, DYKsuggestion is not meant to be substituted; it's just supposed to sit there looking like a template (because that makes it easier, supposedly, to see the names of t he people who are supposed to be credited, and stuff like that).

Long story short, if you see {{DYKsuggestion}}, that probably means they did subst {{DYKsug}}. (Or they just figured out enough about the template and learned how to use DYKsuggestion on its own). If anyone ever uses {{DYKsug}}, they will get this horrible error message (not including the litter box). —Politizer /_contribs 00:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Of course, the whole thing is still an experiment, and if people think that it's easier to use {{DYKsuggestion}} and just make their own section header and use their own signature, {{subst:DYKsug}} could just be gotten rid of forever. There are several ongoing discussions at Template talk:DYKsuggestion about trying to clean up the template, make it more user-friendly and more transparent, etc. —Politizer /_contribs 00:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Just as a vote of confidence, I like it. At first I was like uh . . . WTF, but now it's like old underwear, part of me. --IvoShandor (talk) 16:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to get involved in DYK again, as I used to do a lot of rewriting of hooks, verification of references etc., but this has all become overwhelming. I am not even sure I can manage to enter a DYK of my own correctly. I don't know what has changed here but up until last August or September, I simply did the hook rewriting, source verification, or entering my own DYK without thinking it was complicated. I started in the last few days to look for a way to help out again, but I believe it is all over my head. Sorry. It is not for amateurs like me anymore! —Mattisse (Talk) 00:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

There has been significant effort to reduce the number of people needed to run DYK. Here's the skinny. (i) Hooks are added to the suggestion page via a substituted template. Examples of the template strings are available on top of every edit of the suggestion page via a MediaWiki page. The substituted template gives a consistency to the suggestion page (ii) The hook approval is about the same as before, so you should be able to jump right in for rewriting and source verification. (iii) Approved hooks are manually moved to the update page. (iv) A filled update page then is manually moved to one of the five queue pages. The queues provide a time buffer so an admin doesn't have to be here every six hours to update the Main Page. (v) A bot moves the appropriate queue to the DYK Main Page template. (vi) Another bot posts the DYK credits to the talk pages.
The Main Page updates normally are on a six hour change over, but an admin can change that merely by changing the number at DYKadminBot/time. For a surplus of hooks in the pipeline, they speedy up the change over. For a deficiency of hooks in the pipeline, they slow down the change over. We're in the process of getting a WikiStatsBOT to provide a hook count on the suggestion page to give the admins advance warning of whether they need to modify DYKadminBot/time.
We're keeping track of hooks that get the most hits, we now have a welcoming template, a vetter's notification template, and a responder's reply template. Category:Misplaced Pages Did you know has been populated so that just about all DYK pages are listed there. -- Suntag ☼ 00:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Note: it might sound complicated to think that we have all these "templates," but if you've ever warned vandals with stuff like {{subst:uw-vandalism1}} or used any of those other user message templates, these will look extremely familiar to you. —Politizer /_contribs 01:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

And, for any new people reading along... please don't be intimidated by this! There's a lot of complicated stuff, like the bots and the queues, which make the admins' lives easier (and those guys certainly deserved a break) but are confusing if you don't know a lot about them...but the good news is you don't need to know a thing about any of that to participate in DYK. Reviewing and discussing hooks doesn't require any more technical knowledge than posting a comment on any talk page requires, so if you've been on WP for even just a couple days then you should be fine—all you need is the enthusiasm to look for references and think critically about articles! —Politizer /_contribs 01:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Open Christmas DYK topics

I have a few open Christmas DYK topics that are red as late September sunset. Here's Christmas tree stand, Feather Christmas tree, which would be a spin-off from Artificial Christmas tree but I think deserves its own page, and Christmas tree production in the United States.

The last one I have substantial content already started in my user space, basically you would need to add some more recent data, fill out the empty sections and write a lead. That page can be found here in my user space. There are some sources on the talk page too, not sure which ones I have already used, you'll have to compare them with the refs section in the article.

There is some other, not so filled out stuff and a few red links too, you can see them: Christmas tree production in Europe, Christmas tree production in Denmark, there are some sources compiled here. Feel free to take over any or all of that stuff, I can help you find sources too, if needed. :-) Merry Christmas everyone. (Or if you prefer Happy Holidays or whatnot, war on Christmas! Run! Ahhhh!) ;-) --IvoShandor (talk) 16:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Crap! I forgot the one that will bring the most joy, Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Trees, I even have a few sources for you here, it should make a great DYK, if you don't do it, I will do it on Christmas Eve. :-) --IvoShandor (talk) 16:40, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow...that sounds almost as good as Killer Klowns from Outer Space! —Politizer /_contribs 16:54, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• Also, there is a very long list of suggested stub articles at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Holidays/Christmas task force/DYK Christmas 2008. -- Suntag ☼ 22:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice Suntag, that list is exquisitely long, lots of choices there. And @ Politizer: Killer Klowns! It's been ages since I even thought about that movie. It may be responsible for all cases of Coulrophobia. ;-) --IvoShandor (talk) 05:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Template news

For anyone out there who uses {{DYKproblem}}.... I've added some new functionality to it. Adding the text |nominator=no when you call the template will cause it to generate a slightly different message, which instead of saying "Hi! Your nom has been reviewed" says "Hi! Someone nominated your article, and it has been reviewed." This is because I occasionally find myself notifying article creators who did not nominate their article and might not even know that it has been nominated (because if things need to be clarified about the article or nom, I usually figure the creator can answer those questions better than the nominator) and they've sometimes been like "what? I never nominated that." So anyway, there's that.

Also, after a suggestion from Suntag, I created {{DYKre}}, a really simple template that can be used to notify a DYK reviewer that you have addressed his concerns (so basically the opposite of {{DYKproblem}}, which is for reviewers to notify nominators/creators that there are concerns). You don't have to use it, and in fact I don't know if it's necessary (given that most of us reviewers watch the page pretty closely anyway) but it's there if you want. I'm sure there are problems with it, and they will emerge as it gets used more. —Politizer /_contribs 19:00, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Update: I just used the nominator=no thing for real for the first time, and it seems to have worked nicely. —Politizer /_contribs 16:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice! I'd been thinking that something equivalent to |nominator=no would be useful, so thanks. Olaf Davis | Talk 22:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Credit mistake

I just went through my recent DYK credits and found five December 2008 writing credits that should have been nomination credits. The five were (i) Careysburg, Liberia, (ii) David Ross (businessman), (iii) Taping River, (iv) California Avocado Commission, and (v) Eugene Goodman. I traced down Careysburg, Liberia (it took a while). This diff shows that I was listed as a nominator for Careysburg, Liberia. This diff shows the move of the information to the Next update template put me as a maker via {{DYKmake|Careysburg, Liberia|Suntag}}. It should have read {{DYKnom|Careysburg, Liberia|Suntag}}. This seems to be a significant problem as it is a mistake anybody can make in moving hooks from the suggestion page to the Next update page. It seems likely that other editors are receiving writing credits when it should only be nom credit. Can anyone think of a way to fix this problem? Perhaps a bot can read the credits in the history of the suggestion page and compare them to those listed at the queue pages. I'm not sure that is even possible. -- Suntag ☼ 22:13, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I try to make sure everyone gets the right credits - mistakes happen of course. The main problem is that DYKmake is the default, and it's not that hard to forget. Also, the amount of third party nominations are generally limited to DYK regulars like yourself.

I'll try to remain vigilant about it - I do try my best to make sure the credits are right but no-one is perfect. \ / (⁂ | ※) 23:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

There are several people who update the next update page. Perhaps there are some modifications that we can make to the templates. We can modify Template:DYKsuggestion to move the position of |nominator= as it appears on the suggestion page. Also, would it help to modify Template:Did you know/Next update/Clear to include some default {{DYKnom|Example|Editor}}? -- Suntag ☼ 23:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that this has always been a problem. Some editors correct the templates they receive themselves. Personally I let the errors remain because sometimes I gain undeserved credit and other times my contribution is not fully creditted.(aaah) But we're all volunteers and the job we are doing is worthwhile even if it is sometimes imperfect. Oh and Merry Xmas to one and all Victuallers (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't change the Suggestion template. The nominator field is sufficiently far away from the creator/expander field that you notice it by itself nine time out of ten. I'll try working with the Clear template to add a few of the {{DYKnom|Example|Editor}} templates. \ / (⁂ | ※) 23:55, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

 Done You can see the change at this page here. \ / (⁂ | ※) 23:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Great! I'm gonna press my luck and see if the bot guys can do something for us. See Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests#DYKCheckbot. (I really miss having our own in-house bot guy.) -- Suntag ☼ 00:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree with \ / that the |nominator= field in the template shows up nicely far away from the other stuff. But if anyone thinks it would be useful, I could also change the template so that it underlines or bolds (on the actual page; it wouldn't change the way anything looks in the edit window) the words Created by, Nominated by, etc. —Politizer /_contribs 00:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

A bot I don't think would work. It would need to know the hook has been moved, look in the edit history and retrieve a field. Either that or the update becomes entirely automated, which would not account for any editorial concerns. \ / (⁂ | ※) 00:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, a bit of code probably could fix this I think. If the DYKsug template formated the "nominator" field as {{DYKnom|Article|Editor}}, then updaters could just grab the string and move it straight to the next update page. Likewise with the article creator. Gatoclass (talk) 04:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh gosh, that actually is an awesome idea, it would save a huge amount of clicking and copy-pasting. I'm gonna throw together an example and then see what you guys think of the output. —Politizer /_contribs 14:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll second that. What a great idea. The entire string could be copied over when there is no approved ALT hook. And if there is an approved ALT hook, the remainder of the string should be set up to be copied and pasted into the Next Update. This would eliminate a need for Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests#DYKCheckbot. -- Suntag ☼ 18:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I've thrown something together; it's not done yet, but just so I can gauge whether or not I'm even heading in the right direction, you can see the output in my sandbox here. (You can see the code here, but I wouldn't recommend it, because it's terrifying.) This does something a little different than what you originally proposed; it doesn't mess with the |nominator= and other fields, but it just creates a bunch of fields called |credits=, which don't do anything other than sit there (ie, the template itself doesn't interact with those fields, they just sit there nice and pretty so you can grab them from the edit window). If you go to the sandbox link I gave above, you can see that a) the display looks the same as it does now; and b) once you click "edit," there are nice {{DYKmake|Example|User}} and {{DYKnom|Example|User}} templates auto-generated in there for every creator/collaborator/expander/nominator, and for every article. There are only two big problems I can see that still need to be worked out:

1. 1. Right now, if you nominate a single article with only one creator/expander/etc. (which is, of course, the usual case), it creates a long page of empty |credits= fields, which we don't want. I've been working for a long time on getting the template to only display fields that are actually filled in, and it's been difficult, but if we want to go ahead with this plan it'll have to be fugured out; more information here (a thread that's currently archived because we abandoned that plan, but if we want to do this it'll have to be opened back up).
   2. If people make an unusual nomination (for example, more than 3 expanders, more than 5 articles, etc.), that isn't handled by any of this, so people doing the promotion always need to look out to make sure there aren't extra people need credited, or extra comments the nominator left, etc. This shouldn't be much different than the status quo, since we have plenty of people who don't use the template and in those cases the promoter will be doing stuff by hand anyway.

Anyway...sorry if any of that is confusing! I'm just trying to keep you posted on what I'm doing, before I go too far ahead and then find out that I'm doing the wrong thing or something. —Politizer /_contribs 15:20, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

A couple of suggestions. Any chance you could dump the "credits=" strings altogether and just have the series of {{DYKmake|Editor|Example}} fields instead? This is because I would have to trim off all the "creator=" strings instead of just being able to copy and paste all the strings I want with one shot.

Also, if you can't figure out a way to stop generating all the blank fields, I think just three creator fields and one nom field would do, we very rarely get hooks that have more than that number of contributors. Also I can't see much point generating separate credit fields for each and every hook, again one would be enough for most situations. Gatoclass (talk) 16:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the suggestions! Here's a new version, with the credit templates formatted in a bulleted list so they can be pasted directly into T:DYK/N as is (again, you can go to the edit window to see how it looks). As for whether or not to generate separate fields for each article...I haven't updated Next in a long time so I'm a little rusty on how it's done, but is it standard to credit the creator/expander for each article bolded in the hook? (That's what Ottava Rima has been getting credit for, for example.) I thought that was the standard, but if you don't think it's necessary to have that many credit templates, it's just a simple matter of deleting them from the DYKsug template, so either way it shouldn't be to difficult. —Politizer /_contribs 16:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

You can also experiment yourself to try different combinations of things and see if the template generates the credit templates that you want. Just paste the following into the sandbox, and add/delete/fill-in fields however you like.

{{subst:User:Politizer/DYKsugdev
 | article=
 | hook=
 | creator=
 | nominator=
}}

You can add up to 5 articles, up to 3 collaborators, and up to 3 expanders. —Politizer /_contribs 16:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

That looks great! However, I think you need to expand the maximum number of articles to eight. Eight is the maximum number we've had in a hook, and we've had plenty of hooks with at least half a dozen. Gatoclass (talk) 02:20, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I've expanded the max to 8 (only in dev right now; the {{DYKsug}} being used is still the old version). Also, as for your comment about how we don't need separate credit fields for each author, I've had a change of heart and I agree with you...specifically, because of this complicated nom. With multiple articles, there's a chance that different individuals had a different role in each article, and the template currently doesn't allow people to specify that, so I realized there's no way we have the power right now to auto-generate correct credit templates for noms that complicated. Given that multi-article noms are relatively rare anyway, I just made it so that if there is an |article2= specified, it automatically generates no noms—the idea being that if there are multiple articles, it's going to require a human to figure out the credits anyway, so there's no point fooling people with inaccurate credit templates. The newest version can be seen here (scroll down to the last one, in the edit window, to see how it doesn't generate credit templates for multi-article noms).

The last minor thing I need to do is make it not generate credit for the |creator= field if the |expander= field is already filled in. This is an issue that came up a few days ago when someone noted that some nominators are just trying to fill in as many fields as they can, so when they nominated a newly expanded article they would also list whoever created the article years and years ago...which is obviously not someone we want to credit. The current version of the template in use works to that, if someone specifies an expander and a creator when they call the template, only an expander winds up on T:TDYK (the "creator" just disappears into cyberspace); I should probably try to get the same thing to happen with the credits.

Once that is worked out, I don't see anything preventing me from moving these changes over to the real template, assuming no one has any objections. Once I do, I'll notify all the DYK regulars at their talk pages, so that if anyone hasn't been paying attention to this page they won't be surprised next time they go to populate Next. —Politizer /_contribs 17:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I've done the stuff I mentioned above. I believe everything is ready. I'll let it sit for a little whilte just in case anyone has objections, then I'll update the real template and notify everyone. —Politizer /_contribs 18:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I didn't have time to check the sandbox yet, but it sounds to me as though you have all bases covered. Looking forward to seeing it in action! Gatoclass (talk) 06:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Awards encourage mass-production of low-interest DYKs

I don't know if this has been a topic previously, but it strikes me that the process of awarding editors for producing a profuse number of DYKs also tends to compromise the entire section on the front page by an overabundance of very bland hooks. It does not seem as there is any shortage of nominations, so perhaps a policy change to jack up the standards would be in place? __meco (talk) 12:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

We usually do try to pass hooks that are interesting. If the suggested hook is not, then we try to find some interesting fact from the article. If there isn't anything, then most likely it won't go on the main page. That has happened before. I'm talking about really boring and plain stuff here like "X was a something...", you know what I mean? The "interestingness" of the hook depends on the reader and the subject too. I mean, someone interested in animals won't think that it's an interesting fact that bullets of several calibers can fit into the same gun, and someone interested in military matters won't see the importance of in which oceans the dolphin lives. So we can only judge the absolutely terrible ones, ad it depends on the reviewer just like deciding an article's suitability. Chamal 12:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with meco. The "created or 5x expanded within 5 days" rule encourages the submission of stub-size articles that have just enough citations to pass DYK inspection but far from adequate coverage. Improving an article beyond that level requires a lot of research, and often at least 1 re-structure, which can seldom be done well within 5 days. So the "within 5 days" rule encourages superficial work. I'd suggest replacing "created or 5x expanded within 5 days" with "promoted to B-class or better in the last 5 days", and allow submission of additional facts from existing articles that get promoted from B-class to GA, A-class and / or FA. --Philcha (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Ideas like that have been floated before and, for better or for worse, fortunately or unfortunately, I imagine that's never going to happen. DYK needs a rapid turnover of a large number of nominations, and the kind of qualitative evaluation that this plan would require would never allow us to get through the number of nominations we have to get through on a daily basis. —Politizer /_contribs 14:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The advantage of the the 5x rule is that it is objective and easy to confirm. The article rating system has neither of these properties, ratings are subjective and based more upon the last reviewers opinion that measurable properties. The likely result of this change is increased wikidrama as edit wars erupt trying to determine the rating of nominated articles or otherwise qualified articles are (improperly?/justifiably?) demoted shortly before their nominations expire and are removed from consideration. --Allen3  12:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

(e/c) This again, will deviate us from the original objective of DYK (that of providing newly developed articles a chance to get noticed by other editors and give them a chance to be improvemed), just like including GAs in DYK. If this is implemented, then I guess the number of articles being submitted will go down, which means we probably will have to change the entire way DYK functions. But I think this is a better idea than including only GAs. The problems such as an increase in the number of unsuitable articles (ones not meeting necessary criteria) being submitted for reassessment will be there, just like in the GA suggestion. And the problems like everyone not being able to do it, some wikiprojects not having particular classes etc will also be there. We'll have to wait and see what the others think. Anyhow, I'm against the idea of including newly promoted FAs, since they have their own chance to appear on the main page and we don't need to put up the same thing twice. That room can be given to another article instead. Chamal 13:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that what you are bringing up is an issue different from mine (although they both have to do with the quality of the DYK items). __meco (talk) 13:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

OK then, let's get back to the subject :) What do you think about what I said first? Can we create a guideline to measure how interesting a hook is? I think it depends on the reviewer (which is what has been happening all this time). Any suitable alternative will be welcome. But I think most people who are regular submitters of hooks (and people who are most likely to get those awards, and also the one who have received them) here create and nominate pretty decent articles, since they are pretty much experienced and know their way around here by now. I'm not sure if the awards have much to do with it. Chamal 13:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if calling for an immediate action is warranted. Also, as I have been noticing hooks from one particular editor, I don't want to give examples as this would tend to denigrate this individual's contributions on the whole and probably only end up in a squabble. Perhaps suffice for now that this subject has been raised, and those who are regulars in DYK work have this in the back of their minds in the near future. Then maybe some will have pondered the issue after having made their own related observations and some suggestions might be presented also? __meco (talk) 13:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Your concern is appreciated, but if there is a problem with boring hooks I don't think it's a problem that DYK is creating, it's just a problem that happens to fit well into DYK. (And for the record, I don't think it's a problem...but anyway.) The editors here who submit a lot of articles, it's not as if they have women and money piled up at their feet—a DYK award isn't a huge deal, it's just something kind of nice. I'm no mind reader, but I don't think most of the editors here are doing it for the award; they're creating these new articles because it's what they like to do, and DYK happens to be a good place for them to put a lot of those articles, but they would still be doing it even if DYK didn't exist. That's my impression, at least. —Politizer /_contribs 14:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Relevant to the general subject of hook interest, I note that no article statistics have been collected for December 15 and 16. Is something broken? --Orlady (talk) 16:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

That happened for 2 days in the middle of October, too...it seems to be a problem with the tool, not with any of our articles in particular. —Politizer /_contribs 16:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

You might want to read the disclaimer at the bottom of the traffic site: "This is very much a beta service and may disappear or change at any time." Guess what happened to the stats in last July? --BorgQueen (talk) 16:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware that it's a beta product, but that generally means it's helpful to communicate about things that don't work as expected. In this case, http://dammit.lt/wikistats/ has the stats for December 15 and 16, so it's "only" a matter of processing the data. --Orlady (talk) 17:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Communicating with us won't help that much. You might want to contact User:Henrik, who maintains the site. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Just remove the awards. Awards are silly nonsense anyway. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this the same user who just spent two weeks complaining over the loss of a single DYK award out of about forty submissions? Gatoclass (talk) 02:28, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Gato, don't even start. That is 100% wrong and you know it. I don't want an award. I wanted Milton to have hooks for his birthday. How can you not understand that? The hooks were up anyway. That wasn't the problem. The problem was a fight that made it so that 12 hours of the 30 hour period did not contain hooks on Milton. I won't begin to start with how your attempted characterization right there makes me feel. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Your complaints began when I debolded an article in a hook that had half a dozen other eligible articles, it was going on the front page anyway. Same with the other disqualification. So I find this sudden expression of disinterest a tad hard to credit. Gatoclass (talk) 03:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Could we just not get into going after each other, guys? I am not sure that "Just remove the awards" was a completely helpful thing to say at this point but don't compound it, Gato... and don't bite back Ottava. Please. Do remember that this page will be viewed by some of our newest editors and let's all be excellent to each other. ++Lar: t/c 03:28, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

(deindent) I spent a great deal of time updating DYK 2.5 years ago, and this has always been a bit of an issue. On the one hand, we want to encourage new articles; on the other hand we want the main page to be interesting, and to attract new editors to start-up articles. Finding that happy medium is challenging. My personal bias was to encourage new article writers by trying to make sure as many articles made it on the main page as possible (i.e. having one bland article in 5 noms wasn't so bad), and we had some wizards at making even the blandest articles have an interesting hook -- Samir 03:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

That sounds pretty much like what most of us do now. From what I can tell, we rarely reject a nomination outright just because it's not interesting...rather, we squeeze out whatever semi-special fact we can and then sneak it onto the main page, when possible, as long as the article itself meets all the standards. —Politizer /_contribs 03:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Further, I'd say about a third of the time, one of the DYK reviewers either revises the article, the hook, or both to help get the article onto the Main Page. On some of them, we really struggle, but seem to come up with something before time runs out. -- Suntag ☼ 18:38, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

• Just about all noms posted on the suggestion page are used. If there is no shortage of nominations, and eliminating the DYK awards will not affect the amount of noms, I don't see how "awarding editors for producing a profuse number of DYKs" can be said to tend to compromise the entire section on the front page by an overabundance of very bland hooks. -- Suntag ☼ 18:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we're backlogged

35 hooks in Expiring right now. And the vast majority of hooks above there haven't been looked at. I thought about putting a 35 entries in backlog as of 04:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC) like Gatoclass did during the last major backlog, but I figured I should at least bring it up here first. —Politizer /_contribs 04:41, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

35 is not too bad, are the updates still being posted regularly? If it gets to 50 we might have to think about shortening the time cycle again. Gatoclass (talk) 04:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

The updates seem to be ok now, but when I started populating Next a few minutes ago (I only added a few; I'm not going to do the whole thing, for reasons that will be apparent in a moment) there were hardly any verified noms left to take. The few verified noms left near the bottom are ones I just verified a minute ago, so someone other than me should promote those....and there are a few more verified noms among the more recent ones, but other than that it's just days and days of noms that haven't been checked, so within a couple updates there won't be anything left to put in the queue (unless we verify a bunch really fast...I might be able to do a bunch tomorrow morning but no guarantees. Shortening the time cycle would worsen that for now, since we'd run out of verified noms even faster....but if we both shorten up the time cycle and ramp up our verifying efforts (assuming we're not already busy in the real world...) we could probably put a good dent in the noms. —Politizer /_contribs 04:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing to stop you promoting hooks you verify! I do it all the time - couldn't prepare decent updates without it. The only rule we have is that users can't verify their own hooks, there is nothing to stop you promoting them once verified.

BTW I have counted the total number of hooks and it's around 160, which means there are slightly less hooks now than when we came off the six hour cycles a couple of weeks ago. So we seem to be keeping up okay. Gatoclass (talk) 05:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

There is certainly a shortage of verified hooks, particularly expiring nominations. But we have two batches done, and less than eight verifications in twelve hours is achievable. That being said, it would be great to get it back to having all five queues full and a next update in the works. \ / (⁂ | ※) 10:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

For most of my time on DYK, it has usually been a matter of throwing together an update at the last moment from whatever is available, which often wasn't much. In fact I have frequently prepared last-minute updates where I had to verify virtually every hook myself on the fly, because there were none on the Suggestions page! And now here we have people worrying because we've only got two updates in the slot and "a shortage of verified hooks". I have to keep pinching myself to believe this is really happening :) Gatoclass (talk) 16:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Haha, wow, it sounds like I've been quite spoiled since I started at DYK. —Politizer /_contribs 16:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Queue 4

In the hook about the Laogai Museum in T:DYK/Q4, I believe the word laogai (the second time it appears) should be italicized. I don't see an edit summary in T:DYK/N saying why the italicization was removed (ie, I don't know if there's a particular MoS or DYK issue behind that), but as a foreign term my intuition was to put it in italics. —Politizer /_contribs 16:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

According to Misplaced Pages:ITALICS#Foreign_terms: "If looking for a good rule of thumb, do not italicize words that appear in Merriam-Webster Online". And the word appears here. However, it is just a good rule of thumb, and I'd like to hear others' opinions. --BorgQueen (talk) 16:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ok, I hadn't seen that. It is true that the term has been adopted into numerous dictionaries (the OED, as well as leading dictionaries of German, French, and Italian). I don't know how familiar it is to most people, though; its adoption into those dictionaries seems to have been more politically than linguistically motivated. But either way is fine with me. —Politizer /_contribs 17:51, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Another rule of thumb is this Google Books search, which shows "laogai" italicized about 40% of the time. Art LaPella (talk) 17:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Template getting updated

Just in case anyone hasn't been following, there has been a discussion above about improving the current template to auto-generate DYKmake and DYKnom credit templates, so the person promoting the nom to Next can just copy them in (with the idea that this will remove some of the human error that may have been going on occasionally). You can read the discussion above, or experiment with the new template design at User:Politizer/Sandbox (you can experiment by using {{User:Politizer/DYKsugdev}}, which is the dev version of {{DYKsug}}). I will be updating the real template with these changes, within 24 hours, unless someone has objections to the new version. I will also notify all the DYK regulars (especially those of you who do most of the grunt work moving hooks to Next) when I make the update. —Politizer /_contribs 18:49, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, just took a look at the sandbox, and the examples with multiple entries don't seem to have outputted any code at all. Is that a bug you've yet to address?

Also, I am uneasy about the "collaborator" tag. IMO this will incline people to assume that anyone who made a couple of improvements is a "collaborator". We don't want to be handing out DYK awards willy-nilly. I would suggest just using "creator2", "creator3" etc., it's less liable to be misinterpreted. Gatoclass (talk) 06:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the link I gave you was accidentally to the sandbox before I made those changes; in this version, the examples with multiple entries output Credits must be done manually by a DYK reviewer.

As for changing the parameter name, I agree with that idea, and can change that relatively easily; creator2, etc., will be more intuitive. The only thing I have left to do is make it not create a {{DYKnom}} when people do self noms...a lot of people list themself as both creator/expander and nominator. Once I have that done I think it should be ready. —Politizer /_contribs 14:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

 Done Both of those tasks are done now. You can see the goods here. —Politizer /_contribs 14:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Just nominated Early left anterior negativity using the new template, and I noticed that I had made the credit templates bass-ackwards...it was {{DYKmake|Politizer|Early left anterior negativity}} instead of {{DYKmake|Early left anterior negativity|Politizer}}. That is fixed now. —Politizer /_contribs 17:02, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

TonyTheTiger just nom'ed Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration and the credit template came out fine. I'll keep my eye open for more complicated noms to start rolling in, and try to make sure that they do the templates correctly as well. —Politizer /_contribs 17:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Page Count Stats

I noticed the discussion above about the page count tool not working. I checked Henrik's page, and he hasn't posted a contribution in a couple weeks. As BorgQueen mentioned, a similar issue resulted in the loss of all data for the last half of July. If anyone here knows of anyone who has the ability to make sure the data isn't lost before Henrik's return, that would be good. Cbl62 (talk) 23:02, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Has anyone e-mailed Henrik? —Politizer /_contribs 00:13, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I was coming to this discussion page to bring up the very same topic about the stats tool being down, too. I just emailed Henrik about it, so hopefully he's at least aware of it even though he's been inactive on Misplaced Pages recently. I could have missed a comment about this somewhere, but is there possibly another stats tool that we could use which works similarily? JamieS93 04:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. Henrik's tool is really invaluable, and there ought to be a way to have someone "fill in" when he is away (or to automate the process) so that we don't end up with big gaps with missing data (like we had in July). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbl62 (talk • contribs) 04:45, 19 December 2008 UTC (UTC)

Raw data is still available, I believe. Does anyone know how to process it? --BorgQueen (talk) 05:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The stats tool seems to be pretty highly regarded, as it's been incorporated into wikipedia's history pages now. So if it's down, maybe one of the techies would be interested in trying to fix it. Gatoclass (talk) 06:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

{{DYKalt}}

Hey everyone, I just went and created a template for suggesting alternate DYK hooks, I have noticed while moving approved hooks to the next update, that some users have been using the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts, and that templaet adds a whole bunch of extra code to the page that is not needed for alts but is needed for the initial suggestion. And, all the extra code makes it harder to find the approved hook when moving hooks to the next update, so to fix this problem, I went and created {{DYKalt}} which has only the parameters that are needed to suggest DYK alts :), the template responds to the following parameters:

So this:

{{DYKalt|number=2|hook=Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat?|user=Mifter}}

Would produce this

Template:DYKalt

Thoughts? I'm thinking that we should have an admin add the usage of this template to the Editnotice for T:TDYK, but before asking an admin to do that I wanted to make sure everyone was on board with us starting to use this template :). Thanks and All the Best, --Mifter (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with this, other than the possibility of confusing people by having yet another template (I've created a monster!!!). But given that most of the alt suggesting is done by regulars, I think regulars can figure things out after a couple days...I'm not sure if it would be necessary to have it in the edit notice, though, just because the edit notice is already quite large and the instructions for {{DYKsug}} in the editnotice still leave a lot to be desired (which means the edit notice will probably continue to get larger until those instructions are good enough). Actually, I personally am not totally convinced we need the table of DYKtick icons in the edit notice, but I dunno, maybe they are useful for other people—personally, I know them just by habit, but are a lot of you other guys still using that table in the edit notice for copying and pasting? —Politizer /_contribs 17:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I copy from the table of DYKtick icons all the time. I reduced it to two lines at Template:DYKSymbols by keeping the symbols, codes, and the {{subst:DYKproblem|Article}} string and getting rid of the rest. My challege to you, my good friend Politizer, is to reduce the vertical height of Template:DYKsugstrings. : ) -- Suntag ☼ 18:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou Mifter for the suggestion, but I really can't see the point of this. It's easier to just write your own DYK hook than go to the trouble of formatting it this way. And unlike DYKsug, this is not producing output that helps speed the DYK process. Given that this will also have to be documented at the top of the page, it just looks like a case of instruction creep to me. Gatoclass (talk) 06:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It is not a matter of a better template for the alts, people should not be using any template for the alts since there really is no need. {{DYKalt}} doesn't seem address the original problem, that of people using the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts. If people think they need to or should use a template to create the alts, I think we'll end up with people using {{DYKalt}} and the {{DYKsug}} template to create alts, which brings us back to the original problem. -- Suntag ☼ 13:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There isn't any real use for a template for alt hooks. Only thing it does is present it in the same way that the user would, nothing much of a help and only increases the work the user has to do I think. Chamal 13:26, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Valery Kobelev

Valery Kobelev passed the criterias for DYK and was removed from the DYK list. Where is it now?? The Rolling Camel (talk) 17:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Here. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:22, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that hook is inaccurate; I probably should have pointed that out the first time I commented on the nom. According to the article, he didn't "perform the worst ski crash ever," but performed what one person has called one of the worst ski crashes ever. I think we need to either change the hook to reflect that, or take it out of the queue and put it back on T:TDYK for discussion (if that hook is unsalvageably peacocky). —Politizer /_contribs 17:31, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. It is here now. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Mitsuyasu Maeno hook in Queue 4

There is a typo in T:DYK/Q4: "Japanesese" instead of "Japanese" (that one is my bad). Also, the nominator asked me if we could restore "ultra-nationalist" to the description of the guy targeted in the kamikaze attack (replacing "multi-millionare Yoshio Kodama" with "multi-millionaire and ultra-nationalists leader Yoshio Kodama")—I personally don't have a preference for either one over the other. —Politizer /_contribs 20:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 20:36, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh man, it looks like I just made another typo (which is now in the queue, where I can't fix it): "ultra-nationalists" instead of "ultra-nationalist." Sorry! —Politizer /_contribs 20:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it. (Occasionally this mop comes in quite handy.) - Dravecky (talk) 21:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for Christmas 2009

I wish I'd had this idea a week ago when there might have been enough time to pull it off for 2008 but given a year to do research it's completely possible: a single themed queue for Santa's reindeer. There are articles that need creating or expanding at HMS Dasher, Dancer (1991 film), Prancer (film), Vixen, Comet (disambiguation), Cupid (disambiguation), Donner, and Blitzen. Heck, Nils Rudolph could use serious expansion, too. Just something to consider and I needed to write it down now or the idea would be lost for good. - Dravecky (talk) 09:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Long title, piping

I have a long titled article: Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs. Was wondering if it would be alright to pipe it in some obvious way, such as a statement or a speech, or something like that, for my hook. Thoughts?

"...that a 1969 policy statement by Richard Nixon", etc? Shimgray | talk | 10:38, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that. --IvoShandor (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's been done a lot before, I think it should be fine. —Politizer /_contribs 15:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should be alright as long as the hook isn't easter eggish, and it's clearly indicating what the general subject is about (i.e., if it's scientific, where something occured, etc). Piping that type of link, though, typically makes the hook more readable/interesting if you can cut down and summarize a long article title. JamieS93 15:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I just used Shimgray's example above, easter eggish was my main concern, it never used to be much of a problem but I had noticed the occasional talk page discussion about it so I just wante dto give a heads up here first. The hook and several alts are now on the suggestion page, thanks for the input. --IvoShandor (talk) 15:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Expiring nom needs reviewed

Can someone take a look at this nom? It's been here over 10 days now; I've had misgivings because it uses a single source, but the single source does appear to be pretty reliable, so I'm not totally sure what to do with it, and have been waiting for a second opinion. —Politizer /_contribs 15:27, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

After the holidays...

I just significantly expanded vascular myelopathy and was about to nominate it for DYK when I noticed only articles relevent to the holidays are being accepted for now. This has kind of bugged me. Are articles not relevent to the holidays created during the holidays going to be acceptable after the holidays for nomination? I'd like this article to feature in DYK but for the meanwhile it can't. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 16:28, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

There's a special list of ones to be featured "seasonally" (as it were), but there's no limitation on normal content - just add it as usual under the relevant date. Shimgray | talk | 16:49, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Crap... my mistake there. Cheers, done now. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK page view data is back -- Big spider scores

Well Henrik's page view counter is back, and of all the great hooks in the past week, the biggest score goes to the Giant huntsman spider with 29,300 DYK views. It now ranks among the all-time best.

Ah, the tool is back - nice! :-) Well, I'm not sure if it's been done already, but if you all need a hand with gathering information of the top-viewed hooks over the past week or so, feel free to leave me a ping and I'd be happy to go through the archives and help look up the hooks through the view counter tool in case there's some data that hasn't been recorded at WP:DYKBEST. JamieS93 04:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Glad to see the tool back and... dang, it looks like Man v. Food only cracked the 4900 mark and I had such hopes for that one. - Dravecky (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The spider got 29,300 views? That's surprising. OTOH, maybe world record topics bring in the crowds. I'm really liking this tool. This is the second spider article receiving more than 20,000 hits, the first being La Princesse (the mechanicl spider). I think the Main Page hits count is interesting enough to have a regular column at Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost. Also, we should look into having a redundancy feature so that if the first version goes down, the second picks up. -- Suntag ☼ 14:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If we can get the system to regularly generate data on the in-the-news and this-day segments as well, it'd be *really* interesting - this-day has a fairly broad range of topics too, so is quite comparable. Shimgray | talk | 16:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Inline citations and redundant footnotes

After reading the discussion about the hook for Yes-no question, I think it's worthwhile to gauge consensus on the balance between requiring inline citations vs encouraging redundant footnotes. By redundant footnotes I mean a situation where you have consecutive sentences all sourced to the same reference with a repetitive use of the same footnote. (Like this example) Looking at guidelines like WP:Footnotes and Misplaced Pages:Citing_sources#How_to_present_citations, having a single footnote at the end of a paragraph is clearly an acceptable practice. While no one has the omniscience to know what every reader will think, logic generally dictates that a solitary footnote at the end of the paragraph is the sourced used for the entire paragraph. If there are multiple footnotes then it would stand to reason that the text prior to the footnote, but after the earlier footnote, is what's being sourced.
As a reviewer myself, I am obviously a huge supporter of requiring inline citations for verifying hooks but I don't see any substantial benefit in requiring redundant footnotes. Sometimes a hook utilizes information from multiple lines of text in the paragraph (or article). If consecutive lines of text are sourced to the same footnote, it doesn't aid the reader (or the reviewer) to have consecutive appearances of the same footnote. If a reviewer can not clearly tell where the reference citation is, I think it is fair to ask for clarification from the nominator. But once clarification is given and verification is complete I think it is rather silly to go ahead and still require a redundant footnote. That's what concerns me with the discussion on the Yes-no question hook. The whole purpose of verifying hooks is to avoid embarrassing error report at WP:ERRORS and inaccurate information on the mainpage. If the hook is verified to a cited reference and there is no disputing facts, then why not let the article appear on DYK? Agne/ 06:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If the purpose of a reference right after the hook sentence is only to make it easier to verify it for Did You Know and not as a permanent record, then the rule should be that the reference should either be immediately after the article's hook sentence (as now), or else the reference should be with the hook at Template talk:Did you know. This could be done with a new Reference field in DYKsug. Art LaPella (talk) 06:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea Art. I think most nominators wouldn't have a problem noting what the references for their hook are. Agne/ 06:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

This sounds good. It would only require a small change and would bring benefits in potentially tricky situations. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

See Template_talk:DYKsuggestion/Archive_1#Hookref. The basis for requiring inline citations in hooks is at DYK selection criteria. Also, is this really a problem? People generally understand the need to allow the 3,000,000+ readers of the Main Page to confirm the hook and it is rare that anyone objects to inline citing of the hook fact. Few hook use information from multiple lines of text in a paragraph or article. Rather, most hooks use actual language from the article and additionally provide an inline citation to that language. In the Yes-no question DYK suggestion example, there was no redundant footnote request. That original hook was not verified to a cited reference and the inline citation request by Politizer was an effort to develope an alternate hook since the original hook is not worded well. Sometimes its better to try to initially work with a user on the DYK suggestion page through discussion rather than come out initially and post an objection to the suggested hook. Politizer took the right approach. -- Suntag ☼ 14:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) In the yes-no question discussion, I would have made that recommendation whether or not this was DYK. As I pointed out in the discussion, I can't tell in that instance whether a paragraph with one footnote at the end is supposed to mean X Y Z etc. , or whether it's supposed to mean X Y Z etc. I don't require repeating refs when multiple sentences flow into one another (for example, when multiple sentences are following the same stream of logic, reporting the results of an experiment, explaining a fact, etc.), but when three sentences contain three facts that could in theory have come from anywhere, I use three references. —Politizer /_contribs 12:54, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The usual method is to add a cite at the end of the paragraph to cover the whole thing, and then add citations for individual facts that are likely to be challenged. If the fact is not something that is likely to send people thinking "what the hell?" and it'd backed by the reference at the end of the paragraph, it's not necessary to cite that individually. But the thing here is, some DYK articles don't have a good structure, some don't even have sections. So in something like that it's hard to find where the ref is for a particular piece of information isn't it? So better to have the ref right next to the hook fact I think. It'd be great if we can have the ref linked from the suggestions page itself, as Art suggested. Chamal 13:33, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree that citations should not need to be repeated if they are provided in a logical place, which generally means at the end of the paragraph (or at the end of the sentence that introduces a list or quotation). However, after a variety of experiences here (notably after an article that I created was eviscerated by a righteous Wikipedian who deleted every insignificant factual item that was not supported by its own independent footnote), I reached the conclusion that in Misplaced Pages (where subsequent contributors may add or delete content without respecting the relationship between existing content and associated references) it's often better to include extra citations for traceability. Extra citations are not nearly as bad as unverifiable content. --Orlady (talk) 00:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of adding footnotes to DYKsug, it will just complicate things further. In regards to the general question, I think cites need to be as close to the relevant fact as possible, otherwise one really doesn't know whether the cite refers to that particular fact. This can mean redundant cites but users can always delete a cite they think is redundant after the article has had its time on the front page. Gatoclass (talk) 17:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

If we're already expecting nominators to submit a hook that they've made sure is referenced, where is the extra work or complication is simply noting what reference is being used? Agne/ 18:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I still don't see what is the benefit of encouraging redundant footnotes if the material is already referenced and cited with a footnote? (Note that I'm working from a good faith assumption that the material used for the hook is, indeed, cited with a footnote in the article just maybe not every line with redundant footnotes) Does poor readability and bad style do anything to increase a reader's faith in Misplaced Pages? If we are assuming that each of the 3,000,000+ readers of the main page desire to be able to check the sources for every hook featured on DYK, can we not also assume they have the common sense to look at the footnote at the end of the paragraph that the hook is from? One statement jumped out at me, when Suntag states "Few hook use information from multiple lines of text in a paragraph or article." I know that its been a few months since I've been actively reviewing but if this statement is true then that will go a long way towards explaining the dilution in quality of hooks at DYK. Some of the best, most eye catching and informative hooks usually come from utilizing multiple aspects of the article and may be referenced by multiple footnotes. While we should stay vigilant in requiring that the hook material be referenced to an in-line citation, this culture that wants the hook to be drilled down to an EXACT single line from the article with a single footnote is cutting our noses off to spite our faces. And for whose benefit? The 3,000,000+ readers of the main page? The content creators? Or the reviewers? As a reviewer, I would concede that it is easier to "Control-F" to search for the exact wording of the hook and then tick off that there is a little blue footnote immediately next to it. But what is easier for the reviewer, is not necessarily in the best interest of the groups that DYK is designed to served--the readers and the project as a whole. We should be encouraging better habits, better hooks and better articles for the benefit of all. It is infinitely possible to maintain our standards of verification without handcuffing the nominators to dumb down their hook to an exact line from the article or to mandate redundant footnotes. Agne/ 18:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not always possible to have a single cite for a hook, because hooks often contain more than one fact that needs to be cited. However, regardless of whether the hook needs one cite or more than one, it's best to have the hook cited as closely as possible to the relevant fact or facts. If that isn't done, reviewers are in the dark as to whether the hook actually has a valid cite or not.

Now for someone like you Agne, who likes to cite things at the end of a paragraph, and who knows the rules well, I might make an exception, but one cannot operate from the assumption that every user who gives a cite at the end of a paragraph intends it to be a cite for the hook fact. I know from experience that many users completely forget to add a cite, or else when they do add a cite, it turns out that it's not actually a cite at all. That's why we need rules about these things. Gatoclass (talk) 18:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The reviewers don't have to be in the dark. If the reference citation is not immediately clear, they can always seek clarification and the nominator can respond in kind. This is actually not a new idea since we've been doing this for quite a while now. But the question then is, after the nominator has responded and clarified the referencing--allowing the hook to be verified by the reviewer--are we still going to mandate a redundant footnote in order for it to be featured? Agne/ 18:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Like Agne, I much prefer hooks that don't derive directly from the words in the article, and that may require multiple sources. However, complex hooks are harder to verify, particularly when they are based on unusually long articles (a couple of weeks ago I reviewed a couple of candidate hooks that were based on a 128K article, and the review was a time-consuming job). When nominating a complex hook, it would be helpful to include a comment to tell the reviewers where in the article to look for the hook fact and sources. --Orlady (talk) 00:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This may be a little late for me to be posting this, but anyway, in response to Art's suggestion that we include a |reference= field in the DYKsug template.... Suntag did float that idea a while back, but we never pursued it, and I wasn't a huge fan of it. I may be more hardline than most other reviewers here about citation, but my way of thinking is, we want the referencing style in the article to be as clear as possible, and in a perfect world we wouldn't need nominators to tell us where the citation is because in a perfect world that would be obvious just from reading the article. (And most WP readers will read only the article, not T:TDYK...and those are the people we're serving, anyway.) My worry was that adding such a field to the template might just encourage nominators to get lazy about referencing in the actual article. That is probably paranoia on my part, but anyway, that was my take on that issue. —Politizer /_contribs 05:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to reiterate, I see no need to relax the rules on this. It's all very well for Agne to talk about reviewers "seeking clarification" from nominators, but we shouldn't need to do so. Nor should hook facts be buried in articles in such a way that determination is difficult. Time is very much of the essence here, it's already a very time-consuming job trying to verify hooks, and expecting reviewers to plough through reams of text, or contact users when they shouldn't have to, is simply unreasonable. Gatoclass (talk) 07:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I must be still missing something here. If the reference after the hook sentence rule is for "most WP readers will read only the article, not T:TDYK...and those are the people we're serving, anyway", then the article's hook sentence should be treated the same as all the other sentences, since these readers haven't even read the hook. Or if the rule is because "expecting reviewers to plough through reams of text, or contact users when they shouldn't have to, is simply unreasonable", then including the reference(s) with the hook would relieve that very burden on the reviewer. The only people who benefit from requiring a reference after the hook sentence (and only the hook sentence) are readers who see the hook, and respond by clicking the article, finding the hook in the article, and clicking the reference to decide if they want to believe the hook. If that is a frequent occurrence, then that is the only reason for the present rule. Yes, a reference(s) with the hook (with or without a new DYKsug field) is an added complication, but at least it's more user-friendly than expecting them to add a reference and then counter-intuitively delete it after the DYK period. Art LaPella (talk) 18:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I usually don't think of this as a DYK-specific thing (which is why I get a funny taste in my mouth when I hear talk of people adding an extra footnote just for DYK and then removing it once it goes off the main page), but as a general style thing that every article should have and that DYK happens to enforce—just like no bare URLs in refs (that's a random example but I think it's relatively parallel). In any article, every fact should have a reference reasonably close to it (no one doubts that; what we're debating here, I think, is how close and how often is "reasonable"), and DYK happens to require that that general guideline is met before a hook is featured. At least, that has been my understanding of things since I started here. —Politizer /_contribs 19:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I do think of this as a DYK-specific thing. The rules state: "The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable." I have never read that every sentence in the whole article needs such a reference; only the sentence that verifies the hook. And I believe that is the DYK-specific rule that this discussion is about, not the additional rule that the article in general needs some references. Art LaPella (talk) 20:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a DYK-specific thing we are discussing here - the DYK requirements regarding the hook are a separate issue from the normal Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines concerning referencing. What we are basically looking for is confirmation that the hook statement itself is accurate. The second issue is that the confirmation should be as transparent as possible, so that reviewers can quickly confirm hooks. I know I probably sounded a little blunt in my previous post on this thread, but really, I can't stress this enough - I have sometimes spent considerable time trying to confirm hooks because users didn't reference the hook clearly enough, and that is time that could obviously be spent doing something more useful. It can take a long time to put an update together if you get several poorly referenced hooks in a row.

As for Art's suggestion that refs are put directly on the Suggestions page, I'm not keen on this idea, even though I've sometimes done it myself, because our other requirement is that the hook statement actually appears in the article, so the article has to be checked anyway and it may make the statement harder to find if it isn't flagged with an accompanying cite. Gatoclass (talk) 05:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Typo alert

Plz could an administrator correct a typo I've just spotted in the pictured hook (the squirrel monkeys) in Queue 4: "fragemented" → "fragmented". Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks BQ! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 09:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK hook having 9-articles

Congrats to Doug Coldwell for his 9 article DYK hook. I guess that would be the present record? -- Suntag ☼ 13:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, what is the record so that I can promptly smash it?--293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• I created DYK hooks with 5 or more DYK articles to keep track of this. If you know of other hooks that had 5 or more DYK articles, please add them to "DYK hooks with 5 or more DYK articles". -- Suntag ☼ 23:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Length of the hook question

Do the ellipses (...) and the space between them and the word "that" count towards the length of the hook? I sort of assume that they do but would like to make sure. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 14:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... I count "that" and the question mark at the end, but not the "..." Chamal 14:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Either way, I think some sort of clarification is needed. The reason I asked is that I was looking at a proposed DYK hook whose length, counted from "that", was 200 characters (the official limit), and whose length when counted from "..." was 204. I was contemplating whether to try to shorten it by 4 characters or leave it as is. Nsk92 (talk) 14:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

And what about (pictured) – does that count towards the length of the hook? I've always included it because I feel it consumes space on the Main Page. --Bruce1ee 15:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would count (pictured) too and in fact I thought that (...) should be counted for exactly the same reason. Nsk92 (talk) 15:35, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

My practice has been to count (pictured) and the question mark but not the ellipsis. Cbl62 (talk) 16:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't count the ellipsis and I usually count the "(pictured)" but I do think it's a little unfair to count the latter. Gatoclass (talk) 17:36, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

User:Art LaPella/Long hook says "For what it's worth, I don't count the "..." but I do count the "?"." I also count "pictured" just because hook length enforcement is such a repetitive, un-automated task. I haven't tried to settle the question with an Unwritten Rule because I thought arguing over 204 characters or 200 defeats the purpose of the word "about" in "about 200 characters". But the current consensus might be better reflected by removing that word "about". Art LaPella (talk) 18:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Nsk92 (talk) 20:17, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Backlog

User:YellowMonkey says on my talk page that we have a backlog. Could anyone confirm? --BorgQueen (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Um, not exactly. Queues 3, 4, and 5 are all empty... Cirt (talk) 01:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

On the DYKT, I think so. That's why I economised the hooks and then added one to each of the queues. And will pad the SA to balance, of course. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

If we indeed have a backlog, we can adjust update cycle rather than lengthening the entire main page. --BorgQueen (talk) 02:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem isn't that there is too many, it is that we aren't verifying them quickly enough. Old hooks get left unverified well into their expiry, while the queues aren't being used to their full capacity. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 02:50, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, per YellowMonkey's concern, I've shortened the cycle to 5 hours. Let me know if anyone has objections. --BorgQueen (talk) 03:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

There's only 172 hooks total on the Suggestions page, including the Christmas and New Year hooks. So we are actually eating into our hooks again, with only 146 hooks in the main section as opposed to over 170 a few days ago - and many of the current hooks have been challenged. So I see no need at all to accelerate the cycle. Gatoclass (talk) 06:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Granted, I've been out of the loop all day so you should take this with a grain of salt, but AFAIK we have very few verified hooks (I assume 50% because a lot of us are busy and 50% because the events of the past week or two made it not so enjoyable to edit here for a while, for me at least but maybe also for others, which greatly reduced the amount of time I was devoting to checking hooks), and speeding up the updates might make us run out even faster. —Politizer /_contribs 06:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, I notice the queue is full so there won't be any more going to the queue for a day or so, but all the same, I don't see much reason to panic yet. We'll have a better idea of where we are at after the Christmas break when all the special hooks are out of the way, that might be a better time to think about boosting the cycle IMO. Gatoclass (talk) 06:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I've reverted it back to six hours. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I definitely had set the timer on 5 hours and I see the latest update was done after 5 hours and 50 minutes. Did someone do something to delay the bot or was it some sort of divine intervention?! --BorgQueen (talk) 09:22, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was kind of hoping my sixfer hook would not be prematurely relegated so maybe someone was listening :) Gatoclass (talk) 09:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

We're live!

The number of 'Did You Know' hooks currently found in the DYK pipeline is stored here and updated every 30 minutes. Here's the output:

The timing of the update is controlled at User:WikiStatsBOT/DYKdelay. I just requested that the bot be revised to reflect the number of verified hooks, so that column is empty. If there is some other modification that you think the table should have, please post here. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 18:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Sweet! Is this going to be included in the navbox, or transcluded somewhere prominent?

As for having the bot count verified hooks, I agree that that would be awesome, but it might also get a little complicated...for one thing, some hooks occasionally get multiple or (for example, sometimes i get into an EC with someone else verifying and after that i'm like, "ah, screw it, I reviewed it too, so I'll tick it too"...other times someone ticks one of the hooks and someone else ticks an ALT or something)...and, on the other hand, sometimes a hook gets ticked but then people change their minds or start arguing about it, but the tick remains there. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to get the bot to be able to think around all that stuff...it might just be easier to have a disclaimer saying "these numbers might be off by a couple." —Politizer /_contribs 19:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, I like this; hook-verifying activity can be prioritised more clearly and backlogs can be seen before they arrive. This might give me the necessary kick in the behind to get on and do some verifying like I keep meaning to! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 19:57, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Very impressive tool. Dare I ask -- is there a way we could automate the Best of DYK? To date, BorgQueen and I have been doing it manually, inputting each DYK hook into Henrik's page view counter to see how many hits it got. It's a pretty time-consuming process to do that for roughly 1,000 hooks a month. If the task could be automated, that would be a tremendous time saver. Perhaps a trained bot could even go back through the old archives to check the months of DYK's that BorgQueen and I haven't gotten to yet. Cbl62 (talk) 21:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice, I think this'll be very helpful! Thanks a lot for your work guys. :-) JamieS93 21:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Great work Suntag! I can't pretend it's been fun adding up all the hooks as I've have to do on a number of occasions lately :)

A couple of suggested improvements however - would it be possible to add a column or two for challenged or rejected hooks - and maybe some extra totals taking these into account? I don't know how you could reliably do this - but then again I'm not sure how you can reliably count the verified hooks either, so it might be possible.

Also, I think it might be useful to have some sort of history where the totals are stored, to see how the number of hooks is trending over time. Gatoclass (talk) 04:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I am the one who actually programmed the bot, so perhaps I am bet suited to answer the questions posed here.

• To get the number verified the bot simply counts the # of checks. Yes this is not 100% accurate, but it should be accurate enough. The idea is the give people a quick idea of what needs worked on, so the verified number occasionally being 1-2 high shouldn't matter.
• Yes, I could add whatever other stats desired as long as there is a clearly defined way to count them. However, keep in min the table will be transluded to one or more pages and a bigger table might mess up formatting if its put to the right of a TOC or similar. The extra info may or may not be worth making the table bulkier.
• What did you have in mind for "some sort of history"? Of course, the complete history is already available in the stat page's history, so what were you desiring?
• The "Best of DYK" could probably be completely automated, but I'll need more information on the precise process you'd want the bot to follow.

--ThaddeusB (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

FYI, the Bot's trial period is complete so the next update won't occur until after it gains official approval (shouldn't take long). --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Grammar in Queue 3

The Pennsylvania Route 343 hook in Queue 3 could do with rewording, as it's ungrammatical at the moment. Perhaps "... that Pennsylvania Route 343 is part of the ..."? Thx in advance. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. Gatoclass (talk) 09:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Procopio

The Procopio article is a pretty thoroughly researched piece on California history. It's currently in queue 5 set to hit the main page from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. California time. It would be nice if it could be switched to a queue where it would hit the Main Page while Californians are awake. I wouldn't normally ask, but this article took a lot of time to prepare. Cbl62 (talk) 13:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I've moved it to #1. Let's hope they wake up early in California. :-D --BorgQueen (talk) 16:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, BorgQueen. Cbl62 (talk) 16:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Update late

Are any admins watching this page right now? The update is about 30 minutes late...maybe something happened when BorgQueen and Gatoclass were changing the bot's update intervals? —Politizer /_contribs 13:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been watching, and just updated manually. I don't think it has anything to do with the timer template (which is the only thing I altered and then reverted), but only the bot creator could come up with a good answer. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Btw, could someone do the credits please? It is the queue 2. --BorgQueen (talk) 13:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm on it! —Politizer /_contribs 14:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Credits done, the queue can be emptied now. —Politizer /_contribs 14:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, you are an angel. --BorgQueen (talk) 14:25, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Just doing what I can to pad my contribs ;). —Politizer /_contribs 14:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Now's the time to ask BorgQueen to assign you to a good job. Once Misplaced Pages contains the sum of all human knowledge, it may be revealed that Misplaced Pages is nothing more than a tool the Borg and all earth individuals and technology, including Misplaced Pages, will be transformed into Borg. At that time, we'll all be scrambling for decent jobs in the collective. Personally, I don't want to end up in Sanitation duty, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't mind food preparation, however. -- Suntag ☼ 18:19, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

DYK articles that make GA/FA

Suntag and I just thought about the idea of keeping a list of DYK articles that go on to make GA or FA (while keeping our fingers crossed that the result doesn't look embarrassing), and to facilitate keeping track of that Suntag suggested adding |FA= and |GA= parameters to the {{DYKtalk}} template that goes on DYK articles' talk pages...it defaults to "no," but if an article gets promoted you can set it to "yes" and then it shows up in Category:Misplaced Pages Did you know articles that are featured articles or Category:Misplaced Pages Did you know articles that are good articles). I've written code to add those parameters to the template, but since the template is protected I can't update it; the code is at User:Politizer/Dyktalk if any of you admins want to double-check it and then paste it into Template:Dyktalk—that is, of course, if you guys all think this is an idea worth pursuing.

(Suntag has put in a bot request here for a bot to go through and update those templates in existing DYK articles.) —Politizer /_contribs 17:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Further on the above. The |FA= and |GA= won't change how we presently do things. I don't anticipate anyone in the future actually filling in the |FA= and |GA= for {{DYKtalk}}. Every few months or so, we'll just have the bot run an update. When compared to the overall contributions in Category:Misplaced Pages good articles and Category:Misplaced Pages featured articles, the new DYK categories will give DYK some feed back on DYKs part in the GA and FA process. In sum, there's nothing for anyone to do but enjoy the gravy. -- Suntag ☼ 18:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Cool. What a good stream of innovations today! One question to sneak in at this point: could Featured Lists be included as well? Lists with lots of prose in the lead or elsewhere sometimes get featured at DYK, and could in theory be nominated at WP:FL... (and yes, I admit I'm thinking of one of my self-noms which will be presented at FL if I ever get round to it...!!) Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 19:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why not, as long as it was once in DYK and is now featured. I can just change name of the |FA= parameter to |FC= parameter, to clarify that other kinds of featured content are acceptable as well. (Within reason, of course—I think we can safely assume that no feature images were ever had a hook taken from them and put on DYK.) —Politizer /_contribs 20:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Umm, I can see a problem adding with parameters to {{DYKtalk}}, namely FA's and GA's don't normally use this template. Instead, any DYK appearance gets added to {{ArticleHistory}} via its |dykdate= parameter (to reduce talk page clutter). See for example Talk:Dürer's Rhinoceros. It may be possible to fill the categories Category:Misplaced Pages Did you know articles that are featured articles etc by modifying {{ArticleHistory}}. I would recommend you consult with User:Gimmetrow on this, since he is one of the few people who fully understands all the workings of {{ArticleHistory}}, and as an admin can implement any changes. Dr pda (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's a good point...I think one of my own GAs is using ArticleHistory instead of DYKtalk. I've left a message with Gimmetrow... the {{ArticleHistory}} template is a big deal, and I'm certainly not qualified or knowledgeable enough to mess around with it on my own! —Politizer /_contribs 01:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

How are you going to keep track of all the articles to see if they make GA r FA in the future? Maybe you'd be dedicated to it and keep it going, but in your absence I don't think there'd be many people who'd like to spend their time (and it will be very time consuming) doing this. And if what Dr.PDA says is true, then I think we can easily make the categories using that template? It can automatically add it when the template gets updated when the article is promoted, and we won't have to worry ourselves about it. Chamal 01:18, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's the plan; no matter whether we use {{DYKtalk}} or {{ArticleHistory}} (I assume what we make will have to be compatible with both), the ultimate idea is to have something in the template so that when the article gets promoted, the person who's working on the article can just make a note of that in the template and that will add the article to the category. I think the bot that's being developed is also intended to run periodically to automatically update articles that the people working on promoting might have forgotten to (ie, if the bot encounters an article that is an FA and has a DYK in its article history, and no one entered |FC=yes , then the bot will insert that and then the template will automatically add the article to the category). At least, that is my impression of what we're trying to do. —Politizer /_contribs 02:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I would discourage adding any form of article rating to {{dyktalk}}. The {{dyktalk}} template gets incorporated into {{ArticleHistory}} whenever an article becomes FA, and most of the time when an article becomes GA or goes through peer review. At present there is only a handful of articles with both {{dyktalk}} and {{ArticleHistory}}. Gimmetrow 04:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yea, DYK uses the parameter |dykdate= on ArticleHistory. See Talk:Eddie Hill for an example. So you need to change your plan of attack. Do you want to add a new parameter for ArticleHistory for this purpose? Royalbroil 13:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

It's probably not necessary to add a new parameter. Again, I'm not familiar with the intricacies of {{ArticleHistory}} and don't want to go messing with it, but I imagine the existing parameters could be used... something like a pair of nested #if: statements to say basically "if this has something entered for |dykdate= and its |currentstatus= is FA, FL, GA (and maybe also FFA, FFL, FFA/GA, and DGA), then add ] or whatever."

In any case, I believe populating the categories should be pretty easy, it's just a matter of a couple lines of code in whatever template is being used. The hard part is updating hundreds of old DYKs that are now FC/GA and none of us are paying attention to anymore...that's the main reason Suntag suggested using a bot. —Politizer /_contribs 21:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

To make things a little more tangible...here is the code I had in mind (just a very rough idea; I'm sure I have some errors in there).

{{#if:{{{dykdate|}}}|
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|FA|]}}
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|GA|]}}
{{#ifeq:{{{currentstatus}}}|FL|]}}}}

For anyone reading along who's not used to template code...basically what this does is, the first line checks to see whether there's anything entered under |dykdate= (in other words, whether the article has been on DYK); if there isn't, it doesn't do anything. If there is, it goes on to see if the article is currently an FA, GA, FL, or whatever. If it is, it adds the article to the appropriate category; if not, it doesn't do anything.

One issue is what to do with former/delisted featured or good articles...should they still be in the category, since they were featured/good at some time? Or not? In the case of former featured articles that have been demoted to GA, should they be in the DYK/FC category or the DYK/GA category? etc. —Politizer /_contribs 21:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I missed this thread over Christmas, but add my voice to the chorus about doing this within articlehistory and not DYKTalk, as the latter gets absorbed into the former when an article goes through the GA/FA/FL process. To address your query, since the categories you created use the present tense ("are"), then it seems logical to include only current featured/good content. BuddingJournalist 02:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a fine idea, but would also check with User:SandyGeorgia as much of the FA updating work is done by a bot and we do not want to mess that up with this. Ruhrfisch _><>° 02:30, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Saw my name pop up in an edit summary, so came over to see what this was about. I don't think this is a good idea at all. Gimmetrow runs GimmeBot, and he's already weighed in above on some of the problems. This will create a lot of programming work for very little payout, and create something else to be tracked, when very few of us actually do the tracking. I would not be in favor of undertaking the changes necessary to add yet another element to articlehistory, that Gimmetrow and I will end up maintaining. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood Gimmetrow's reply above. He was addressing Politizer's original idea to add params to the DYKTalk template (which isn't a good idea). However, Politizer's updated proposal of adding some code to articlehistory would require no extra work on anyone's part...the code just adds good/featured articles that have been on DYK to a category. BuddingJournalist 02:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think what Sandy means is that she and Gimmetrow do almost all article history updates. I have been a major contributor to 18 FA or FL articles and have never updated an article history - I do not know what to do. I think Sandy's point is that even one extra thing to do becomes a cumulative "lot of work" when multiplied by the thousands of FAs and GAs. Ruhrfisch _><>° 03:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

If (and that is, of course, an if) this works as I think it would, this would require only one edit, rather than thousands—updating the template code itself. Every article in which that is transcluded should then reflect that change (or at least it will reflect that change the next time the talk page is updated). Again, since I'm not familiar with this particular template or with bots and stuff, I'm not 100% sure; it was only a suggestion that I thought might be interesting. If it ends up being a huge amount of work then, as Sandy said, it might not be worth it since it's just a little fun thing that's not super-important. But I'm hoping it can be done with a minimum of effort, and no need for any labor-intensive maintenance. —Politizer /_contribs 03:40, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this was all flawed and done about in the wrong way. I would suggest a closer discussion with Sandy, some of the other FA people, and some of the GA people. Then, if anything, moving it to a Village Pump discussion. This will affect a lot of pages and a lot of areas. It is definitely not something that should be limited to the backwaters of DYK. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

(ec)This won't affect a thing. All it's doing is maybe making a list of articles that have gotten to FA or GA; the list won't be used for anything, it was just an idea for fun. It's not like I'm proposing to overhaul the whole FA criteria or something. This is not a malicious proposal at all, and there's no need to community discussion; the reason I've brought it to other editors' attention is because those are the editors who are experienced with the technical details behind the AH template and things like that. —Politizer /_contribs 03:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Gimmetrow is the go-to person on this; he's the one who knows if it can be done easily and how to do it best. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Addendum In response to SG and Ottava's concerns...now that I think about this more, I think we actually won't need a bot at all to do this. If the categories can be populated just by adding some code to {{AH}} without changing the way that people actually use the template (which is the goal of the code that I suggested above), the changes should be reflected immediately (or the next time someone edits the talk page) and no one will have to change any code at those pages. Not requiring a bot should simplify things, I think. —Politizer /_contribs 16:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Christmas in DYK-land

There are now about 22 Christmas DYK hooks on the suggestions page -- not yet quite enough to fill all four (?) DYK slots for Christmas day. As the time is getting near, does someone want to volunteer to figure out which queue should be used to start loading with all the DYK goodies from Santa's sleigh? Also, since they are time sensitive, we should probably put a high priority on approving any Christmas hooks that have not yet completed the review process. Cbl62 (talk) 21:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought we decided not to have all Christmas hooks all day, but rather to have a couple Christmas hooks in each update? (Or maybe I'm confusing that discussion with Darwin Day...either way, I personally feel similar about both.) —Politizer /_contribs 00:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of what the prior discussion was. Just raising the question. If 20 of the 22 Christmas hooks were deemed worthy, and we used them over the four Christmas Day update, that would be 5 per update, leaving room for 3 non-Christmas hooks per update. Cbl62 (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

How about this as a proposal -- Spread the 20 Christmas hook over six updates starting with the current Queue 2 which will go live while it's Christmas in the Far East and Australia. That would mean about 3 or 4 Christmas hooks per update and still leave room for non-Christmas hooks? Cbl62 (talk) 01:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

That plan sounds fine to me. —Politizer /_contribs 05:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I just added a Christmas-themed hook on Candy Cane Lane (much more popular than "Candy Ass Lane") to Dec. 24th - sorry for the last minute heads up. Ruhrfisch _><>° 05:01, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Queues 2 and 3 already got filled but without Christmas hooks. These queues will go live on Christmas so we need to re-adjust. I loaded the Next Update with a mix of Christmas and non-Christmas hooks. f someone could swap the Next update in place of Queue 2 or 3 and save the Queue 2 or 3 hooks for another update, that would be great. Cbl62 (talk) 06:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Probably the easiest way to deal with it is to bump the current Queues 2 and 3 til after Christmas, and swap the Christmas queues in their place. If anyone has a better idea, go for it. Cbl62 (talk) 07:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The queue order can be easily manipulated by altering this. --BorgQueen (talk) 08:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Who passed...

...this article? They might need a helpful talking to about DYK rules...for one, the grammar is terrible; two, the ref does not even cover the DYK nom (for crying out loud, a Google Books link is even given right there!) -_- Anyway, rant over. Cheers all, Allanon 08:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. This sounds like I am completely angry...and possibly making a personal attack...which I am not and was not trying to do, respectively. The purpose of this was supposed to be a 'heads-up' that someone should help out the person who passed this, not as a hate message. Apologies... Allanon 09:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

That one should never have been passed. I have given it a copyedit, but I had to guess at the meaning in one or two places because the grammar was so mangled. Gatoclass (talk) 13:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.. funny. That article was created and nominated by Piotrus who has a lot of experience in DYK. Maybe he hadn't managed to complete it. But I agree that it shouldn't have been passed at all. Chamal 13:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The entry was passed by User:Jolly Janner, after an initially missing in-line citation had been added. Nsk92 (talk) 14:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the admin that copies hooks from next update to the queue can check the articles a bit (nothing much, just a glance to see if it isn't really terrible) before copying, so that we can avoid things like this in the future? Chamal 14:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

No, it is not normally the admins responsibility at all. If anything, the person moving the hooks to the next update should double check if possible. However, the guy moving to the next update also shouldn't have to verify it themselves. A once over to check whether the article is still there, in a somewhat usable shape. The people verifying the hook are the people who are meant to be verifying it. In this case, someone made a simple mistake. Mistakes happen. » \ / (⁂ | ※) 22:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with \ / .... 99% of the time the hooks get vetted well and hooks that shouldn't be verified don't get verified; 99% of the hooks that get verified are ones that deserve to be verified. While there might occasionally be an instance where an editor accidentally verifies an article they really shouldn't have (I've done it myself), they happen so rarely that asking Next people to re-review it probably wouldn't have much payoff, and it would exponentially multiply the amount of time it takes them to prepare the next update. I don't think there would be much bang for the buck. —Politizer /_contribs 00:16, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Christmas update status

OK, we've got queues 3, 4, and 5 and the Next Update ready with Christmas hook, plus others mixed in. The next two updates after these should also be a mix of Christmas hooks and others (roughly 4 of each). On Queue 3, if someone can protect the image, I'd appreciate it. I inserted it directly into the Queue without protecting it (I don't know how). Finally, once Queue 1 moves to the Main Page we should direct the bot to skip Queue 2 and go directly to Queue 3, as by that time it will be Christmas in much of the Eastern Hemisphere. Still a few Christmas hooks that need verification, too. Cbl62 (talk) 09:11, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

We have a new bot on a trial run now. Really convenient. --BorgQueen (talk) 10:08, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The next update has the "(pictured)" with the wrong hook, just fyi. --IvoShandor (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. You're talking about the cookie right? Chamal 12:04, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Announcement

Just to let everyone know what is going on, BQ and I have agreed to go to an eight hour cycle over Christmas because it will be Christmas somewhere in the world over the next 48 hours or so, and we only have enough Xmas hooks for six updates. The next update will have the first set of Xmas hooks, and there are three more ready to go, so that means we need to put together two more Xmas updates with 3 Xmas hooks apiece (because there are only six left on the Suggestions page) and then we will have the whole of Xmas covered. BTW, there are two updates in the queue right now with no Xmas hooks but we are just going to bump past those until all the Xmas updates have been featured. Cheers and Merry Christmas everyone! :) Gatoclass (talk) 13:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

All six Christmas updates are now done, and not a single hook about war, weaponry, mayhem, or gratuitous sexual content. Peace! Cbl62 (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Cbl, you've done a good job there :) Gatoclass (talk) 04:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, besides my Christmas in the American Civil War one.  ;) BTW, due to being a double hook I didn't include it with the Xmas DYKs, but I do have a hook where one of the highlighted articles is Bethlehem, Indiana, should we need a replacement hook.--Gen. Bedford 21:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Announcement

I will be taking a holiday trip soon, within next 24 hours, so please take a good care of DYK while I am absent. I will probably take my laptop with me but am not 100 percent sure I will have an Internet access there. I've already told Gatoclass how to change the time interval and I am crossing my fingers and hope that things will go smoothly. I will be back in a week or so. See you next year, guys! --BorgQueen (talk) 15:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Safe journey!--Gen. Bedford 15:33, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh NOES. BQ is leaving, now the rest of us will have to get busy!

Just kidding, thanks for all your hard work at DYK thru 2008 BQ, you've earned a good break! Looking forward to your return :) Gatoclass (talk) 06:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Bugged bot

The DYKadminbot seems to have bugged and replaced T:DYK with an empty list , skipping queue 2. As I have very little experience with DYK, can someone clueful handle it? --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 22:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, since BorgQueen is absent and the previous set of hooks was getting staler than fruitcake, I've added the hooks from the "lost" queue #2 to the template by hand. I'm quite new at this so things like archiving, credits, and such are a mystery. (But I'm working on it.) Anybody with more DYK experience who wants to jump in, please do so. - Dravecky (talk) 01:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

So it appears that the bot handed out all of the credit on the articles and BorgQueen on all the talk pages so that's taken care of already. The bot's next scheduled update is at midnight Dallas time so if anybody up late on the US west coast or up early on the other side of the Atlantic could make sure the next update goes smoothly, that would be appreciated. (I'll try to be here but I've been up since 4am, so....) - the trying-to-save-Christmas Dravecky (talk) 02:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've manually uploaded an identical copy of the cookie photos and protected per the instructions. I think that's everything for now. (Hope to goodness I'm doing this right.) - Dravecky (talk) 02:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping in and fixing things, Dravecky. If there is a "Barnstar for Saving Christmas" around here somewhere, you've earned it. --Orlady (talk) 04:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

At least no one ruined Christmas. I always ruin Christmas. :-) --IvoShandor (talk) 05:27, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, the DYKadminBot just did it again.... I've left a note on the bot's creator's usertalkpage. Hope this helps. --PFHLai (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That's it; no Christmas bonus for it.--Gen. Bedford 06:50, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've blocked both DYKadminBot and DYKBot until I can look into it (not at home so I couldn't switch them off). So updates will have to be manual. ~ User:Ameliorate! 12:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've worked out what happened. The bot looks for the hooks between <!--Hooks--> and <!--HooksEnd-->. Of course the "Next next update" didn't have these tags and so it was easy to replace it when copying the hooks over. My fault as 1) I should have pointed out how important those tags are and 2) the bot should check the tags are there and if they aren't then stop, not blank the template it if can't find them. ~ User:Ameliorate! 12:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The next two queues have these tags so everything is good to go, no further manual updates should be needed. ~ User:Ameliorate! 13:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it should be added to the editnotices of the pages not to remove those tags? Chamal 13:06, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Well done Ameliorate! That was quick work. I just popped back to do a manual upload but thought I'd better check here first, good thing I did because it appears you've saved me the trouble :) Gatoclass (talk) 14:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Um, wait, it appears I spoke too soon. The update hasn't actually updated, it seems to have disappeared into the ether. So it looks like there's still some sort of bug. Gatoclass (talk) 14:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

As the update had been manually done there was no <!--Hook--> tag on the template itself and because the bot finds and replaces <!--Hooks--><!--HooksEnd--> with the content from the queue it had nothing to replace. I should've thought about that but everything should be good to go now (although I did say that before and it didn't work ...) ~ User:Ameliorate! 15:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, we'll see how it goes next time. Thanks for the explanation :) Gatoclass (talk) 16:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Remember Last Night?

Can someone please fix the DYK notice on Talk:Remember Last Night?. Thanks. Otto4711 (talk) 02:14, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Got it. It looks like the "?" in the article name caused the bot to prematurely end the string when it was gathering text to enter with the template. - Dravecky (talk) 02:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I am awed by your speed. Otto4711 (talk) 02:35, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Randy L. Bott

The claim that his tests are called "celebrations" is on the main page right now, yet the source it was cited to {ratemyprofessor.com) did not say anything like this, it was simply a top ten list, no text, no additional information. Either the wrong ref was used by mistake or this is a case of OR slipping by DYK. Honestly, this hook should probably be removed from the template asap. --IvoShandor (talk) 10:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Woody removed it just now. Two mistakes in three days, we really should be more careful. Are the instructions for verifying hooks not clear enough? Maybe new reviewers find them confusing. Doesn't really look like it but I don't see any other explanation. Chamal 11:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

That article was approved by Ecoleetage. Maybe someone should ask him about it. Gatoclass (talk) 12:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

It was my fault for not providing the more precise source, which was at Ratemyprofessors.com but on a subpage. I thought I had provided it. The issue should now be resolved. --Eustress (talk) 15:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

We wouldn't have accepted that anyway because it's just an anonymous post on a public forum, but thankyou for explaining where the claim originated. Gatoclass (talk) 04:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot still malfunctioning

I had to manually update because the bot still isn't working properly, it cleared the queue page as if it had posted the update but then didn't post it. For this reason, can I please ask users to keep an eye on it to see whether or not it works properly next time. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 15:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The bot reset the timer about 30 minutes ago but didn't even attempt to move queue 1 over. If someone with more experience can tackle this immediately, I'll hold off for a few minutes. If not, I'll try and muddle through again. (I did already add the "HooksEnd" tag as discussed above but about 24 minutes after the bot reset the clock but not the hooks.) - Dravecky (talk) 20:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The bot appears to have malfunctioned here, the description entered has nothing to do with the article in question. It appears that should have been entered at Talk:Dustbin Baby (film), which appears to have heen at DYK recently. D.M.N. (talk) 20:57, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I just manually updated - the bot had blanked Queue 5 but not moved the content. Is there anything else that should be done? Nancy 21:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Huzzah! It appears that the bot is back in business. Can anybody tell me if restoring that "HooksEnd" tag was the difference or was some other change made to make it work as advertised? - Dravecky (talk) 02:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately though, it is still updating on an 8 hour cycle after I switched it to a six hour cycle last night. If it doesn't rectify itself with the next update, I think we will have to switch back to manual updates again as we now have more than 200 hooks on the Suggestions page. Gatoclass (talk) 04:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Good news: the bot did a proper update after 6 hours (and five minutes). Bad news: it failed to put the {{dyktalk}} templates on Magnolia Grove (Greensboro, Alabama) and Wang Shizhen (Tang Dynasty) although I have just done so manually. Why these two? Could the parentheses be preventing the bot from properly making the edit, somehow? - Dravecky (talk) 08:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, probably. The bot has had a few problems with special characters previously. I guess someone needs to nudge Ameliorate again. Gatoclass (talk) 10:21, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The clock was on an 8-hour cycle because BorgQueen edited {{DYK-Refresh}} for the Christmas hooks. I've just now undone those changes so the display is back to the usual 6-hour cycle. - Dravecky (talk) 10:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that changes the actual cycle, it only changes the display, but that's what was confusing me. To change the time cycle, you have to edit the User:DYKadminBot/time page. Gatoclass (talk) 10:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I saw that one, too, but also saw that you had changed it back already. Finding the DYK-Refresh template was a simple matter of examining BQ's contribs and seeing what had been changed in the last few days. - Dravecky (talk) 11:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

My first Next Update

As part of trying to pitch in here during the holidays with so many "usual suspects" away from their keyboards, I've constructed my first Next Update using a mix of topics and localities from the oldest existing noms while trying to separate similar topics and balance the lengths, per the many examples I've seen in the past. Before anybody does anything crazy like move it to Queue 4, I'd appreciate it quite a bit if somebody would give it a quick review to make sure I've done this correctly. (Oh, and I didn't move up my own verified hook because that seemed like a conflict of interest so perhaps somebody could put that in the next Next Update.) Thanks. - Dravecky (talk) 08:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Not bad, but a quick glance suggests that (a) most if not all the hooks are on serious topics, (b) a shortage of bio hooks, (c) the two bio hooks that are there are next to each other.

You might benefit from reading User:Art_LaPella/Unwritten_rules#Unwritten_rules_of_thumb_for_preparing_updates if you haven't already, it has a few tips on how to put good updates together. Gatoclass (talk) 10:32, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

BTW, you don't really have to take hooks from the "oldest existing" noms. If they have been approved they will eventually get promoted anyhow, so you can take a hook from pretty much anywhere, although as a general rule of thumb we do tend to take them from the sections closer to expiry more frequently. Gatoclass (talk) 10:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd read the "unwritten" rules but just made a mistake putting the bios together. I was focused on the street-naming aspect and trying to keep it away from the other place and transportation hooks and completely spaced on the article being a biography. Okay, they're shuffled but I'm going to grab a "funny" one then bump the Iraqi lawyer to the Next Next for now. - Dravecky (talk) 10:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I guess the holidays really bring out the morose in content creators. The approved hooks are things like suicide bags, animals sacrificed for medical research, commandos fighting Nazis, and other not-very-lighthearted fare. I've grabbed something at least a lot lighter if not actually funny and slotted it at the end, per the unwritten rules. - Dravecky (talk) 11:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's pretty difficult to put a balanced update together ATM because all the lighter hooks got used up over Christmas/Boxing Day and all we have left are the plodders. So I guess you just happen to have chosen an inopportune moment to try your hand :)

Still, I think you've done well under the circumstances, so welcome aboard :) Gatoclass (talk) 11:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Transwikied articles

Are articles translated from another Wiki eligible for DYK? If so, does the "last 5 days" rule mean that the article must have been translated into English within the last 5 days? Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 16:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe when you start the translation it's considered a new article and is eligible for DYK; after that, it is treated just like any other new article (it has to have been started within the past 5 days). Referencing is important; there might be things that aren't tagged with in the other-language version but should be here.

My article Suanmeitang is a recent translation from Chinese and just got verified, but I also added a lot (there were no sources originally, so I added sources and did a lot of rewriting). So it's not just a direct translation, and might not be the best to compare to, but anyway, it's there. Anyway, it would probably be good to hear what some of the more experienced DYK people have to say. —Politizer /_contribs 17:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Since they are new to en.wikipedia, I have always considered them new articles. Gatoclass (talk) 17:37, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A clear double standard, when "new" was defined above as information created for wikipedia and doesn't appear elsewhere. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Articles that didn't exist on Misplaced Pages before they were created are articles that most English-speaking Misplaced Pages users couldn't read before they were created. Articles that only existed on another language Misplaced Pages are also articles that most English-speaking Misplaced Pages users couldn't read before they were created. So for the majority of our readers, they are both "new." —Politizer /_contribs 17:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A translation of a previously published text is not new within law, ethics, or any sense of the term. The attempt to claim it is now shows a clear double standard within DYK. This really should be stopped. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that community consensus says that wikipedia is not a reliable source, and user based translations are not reliable. Thus, there are two marks of unreliability against translated pages. Even then, the sources wouldn't be in English, which is a further problem. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference example was invoked but never defined (see the help page).