Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 135

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Potentially silly question

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this is not full protected? Or protected at all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanamonde93 (talkcontribs)

EEng Englightening Vanamonde
Because the signal for the revolution to start is that the DYK updates start coming at 1-minute intervals. Thanks to you the revolution is off. Thanks a lot. EEng 10:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
I am guessing, that that page is used to control which prep is used. I can't say whether it's a sensitive page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Oops, I got it mixed up with the time between updates. So much for the revolution and enlightenment. EEng 10:47, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
EEng, no worries: I still chuckled. @Jo-Jo Eumerus: Yes, I believe it controls which prep is displayed at the top, or something like that. If an IP with malicious intent finds it, I don't imagine it will be more than a bit of a pain to fix, but the fact remains that none but administrators have any reason to edit it, so we might as well be safe, I think...Vanamonde (talk) 10:55, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Actually, Vanamonde, I've edited NextPrep 170 times over the years and I'm not an administrator. The fact remains that administrators forget—and not infrequently—to update this page when moving the next prep to the next unfilled queue, so it's been very useful to have it adjustable by non-admins so the displaying of preps is in the right order. Unlike the "next queue" page, which is used by DYKUpdateBot, this doesn't control any automated process, so if there is a malicious IP about, hopefully the admin promoting the next prep will take a look before doing so and realize that something's not quite right. We've been quite good about synchronizing the prep and queue numbers since we increased the number of preps to match the number of queues, so if the next prep number doesn't match the next empty queue number, it should be a red flag. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:22, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
I see, thank you. It still does seem to me, though, that semi-protection might be a good idea: but if it's not controlling the automated process, then there isn't a very strong policy reason for that, so I'll just let it be. Cheers, Vanamonde (talk) 16:38, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
No objection to protecting against IPs and non-confirmed users to avoid potential disruption, but no need to protect against the rest of us. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:50, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Aight. Indef semi applied. Going offline for many hours now, if somebody sees this and thinks of a good reason to unprotect it, don't bother to wait for me to come back. Vanamonde (talk) 17:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Good! The admin instructions for promotion to the queue have quite a number of steps and it's easy to miss something, like resetting the next hook counter. Thanks, BlueMoonset, for keeping an eye on it. Schwede66 19:36, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Question about special occasion hooks

I was thinking that Template:Did you know nominations/Cerro de las Campanas can be a special occasion hook as Raymie pointed out on the nomination page. Its 150th anniversary comes up in May 15, 2017. I reviewed the nomination and it is okay. How would we be able to save this hook for May 15? Thank you in advance. epicgenius (talk) 02:54, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

epicgenius, I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to save it that far in the future. As it says in the special occasion section, Articles nominated for a special occasion should be nominated ... between five days and six weeks before the occasion, to give reviewers time to check the nomination. So six weeks is the outside: hooks nominated today will need to run by the end of February. Sometimes this ends up stretching to six weeks after approval, or a few extra days beyond that, but four months from now is simply not possible. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't cry for me, Argentina

Remembering a recent discussion here about living persons suspected of crimes, is this hook (currently in Prep3) permissible, mentioning as it does a suspect in an alleged incident for which nobody has been tried or convicted? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:29, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Certainly this is the sort of thing we have to be careful about, though I'm not sure what the bottom line is in this case. However, let me suggest that a better hook might be based on the unexpected fact that, "His lawyer Fernanda Herrera, who is also a cumbia singer..." EEng 13:45, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • ITN routinely has items about fresh crimes such as the current 2017 Istanbul nightclub attack. And note that we have several similar items in the queue – Corruption in Angola, Ecuador and Italy. My view is that the case in question has so many bizarre features that we should stick with it: nuns on the run; claims of insanity; secret vaults and buried treasure; the Pope and the number of the beast. I suggest that it'd be best for the hook to focus on these farcial features while omitting the names of any of the people involved. Andrew D. (talk) 15:00, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Is farcial when people fart? That would be at home in this article too. EEng 16:55, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Hook has been moved to Prep 5 to give more time for consideration here. BlueMoonset (talk) 08:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I suggest this alternative hook: Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:20, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • ... that a man was detained while allegedly trying to hide currency worth millions of dollars inside a convent?
  • "Man" sounds too vague, in my opinion. How about "politician" or "argentine politician" (to provide some geographical context)? TomasBat 21:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • ... that a politician was detained while allegedly trying to hide currency worth millions of dollars inside a convent?
  • ... that an argentine politician was detained while allegedly trying to hide currency worth millions of dollars inside a convent?
  • I've just moved the hook out again to the newly emptied Prep 3 to give us even more time, but also because a hook needed to be moved out of Prep 5 to make room for a special occasion hook still awaiting promotion. (I don't have time right now to check that special occasion hook and its three articles, so if someone could do that and promote it to Prep 5, that would be great. Since Cwmhiraeth approved it, someone else will be needed to promote it.) BlueMoonset (talk) 17:14, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  •  Done Triple hook promoted to Prep 5. Yoninah (talk) 17:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I have changed the Argentine politician hook in Prep3. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I have made a further change as the article is about the politician as well as the detention, so I think both should be included in the link. An alternative (but wordier) option would be "... that a scandal in which an Argentine politician was detained included an alleged attempt to hide currency worth millions of dollars inside a convent?" EdChem (talk) 01:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

An unintended consequence of WP:ITN and WP:DYK. Perverse result that could not have been within the intendment of the rule. 7&6=thirteen () 12:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen, this appeared as a non-bolded link under Recent Deaths. It's fine - articles that were a non-bold link under Recent Deaths are still eligible for DYK. Move forward with the nomination. — Maile (talk) 13:58, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. Cheers. 7&6=thirteen () 14:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Queue 3 - Petrodollar recycling

that a prominent example of petrodollar recycling was the 90% purchase of New York's Chrysler Building (pictured) by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council?

This hook is written like a school child saying "something I did at the weekend was...", it would be better switched around to " that the 90% purchase of New York's Chrysler Building (pictured) by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council was a prominent example of petrodollar recycling?" The Rambling Man (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

There's some value to having the highlighted link appear first, but your rewording wouldn't bother me.
On the other hand, I'm quite a bit more bothered by the last-minute image swap. As i just posted at User talk:David Levy#Please self-revert your image swap of Chrysler Building in DYK queue:

David, I'm sure you meant well, but the previous image has a much better view of the iconic crown, a much better contrast between building & sky, and showcases a nationally recognized photographer. The substitute image has a badly foreshortened perspective and a badly monochrome cast, which combine to make this landmark building almost unrecognizable at thumbnail size.

The previous image was painstakingly selected out of hundreds available, and approved by the GA reviewer, the DYK nomination reviewer, the DYK prep reviewer, the DYK queue promoter, and the US Library of Congress. Overriding everyone else's judgment unilaterally, at the 11th hour on an admin-only page, hardly seems a good example of either WP collegiality or photographic discernment. I hope you'll please reconsider and self-revert.

I'd happily accept the reworded hook if an admin could revert back to the previously promoted image. Thanks very much for your consideration. —Patrug (talk) 07:57, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I'm happy to adopt both suggestions. I shall try and go through the queue, check everything out, and then change hook wording around and revert to the previous image (unless David is still online and can give his reason for the image change, but to me, it does look rather inferior in comparison). Schwede66 08:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Queue 2 - DRDO Smart anti-airfield missile

DRDO Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon is India's first fully indigenous anti-airfield weapon?

I'm sure it's not intentional but there's far too much repetition in this hook. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

So fix it. --Kevmin § 21:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Are you sure you know what you're doing here? I can't fix a queue, it needs an admin to do that. But once again you seem to be unclear on how things work. Never mind, perhaps you'll leave this here for someone who can help out. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Why do you make everything a personal attack on someone?--Kevmin § 22:56, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Why did you bother responding? By the way, a statement of lack of competence about a particular user isn't a personal attack. It's a statement of fact. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:01, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
No, it's not a fact, it's an assertion on your part about the person that you are communicating with, and your tone makes it personal. Something that your do regularly in a manner and tone indicating scorn and disdain for others, and fully ignoring wp:CIVIL.--Kevmin § 23:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Get your facts straight in future, and we can avoid this unnecessary communication. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Please make a specific wording suggestion and I'll swap it over. Schwede66 23:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps:
This avoids the repetition noted by The Rambling Man though it adds the fact of the testing year (which has about 5 sources supporting it in the article). It is an easter egg link, but not a surprising one. @Schwede66: Thoughts? This queue goes live in 7 minutes, if I am reading correctly, so there is some urgency. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 23:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 Done Yes, you interpreted the time right, but we can still edit it when it's on the homepage already. Schwede66 00:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Schwede66, I realised that the main page can still be edited by an admin. However, if the edit is done in the queue then the bot will report the updated hook to the article talk(s) and to user talk(s), rather than needing manual updates. Further, I thought we could do without another WP:ERRORS report.  :) I'm glad you got to it quickly. EdChem (talk) 00:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks both, a vast improvement. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

New DYK page trial, volunteers needed

We're really close to fixing the transclusion problem, but need your help! A bot's being developed that will move approved hooks from the nom page to a new approved page, and the bot needs to be trialed. If you would like to volunteer to try the bot-updated approved page for a week, please let me know here or at the Bot Request for Approval. If you're a review checker or a prep builder, it would be especially helpful for you to try it out and give feedback on functionality or report errors. All you need to do is add User:Wugapodes/DYKTest and User:Wugapodes/DYKTest/Approved to your watch list and use that for a week rather than the usual nom page. Super simple. Thanks. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 05:35, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: watchlisted, many thanks. Quick question: where would you like feedback to be posted? Vanamonde (talk) 07:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Feedback is probably best given at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WugBot 2. If it's urgent, posting on my talk page as well would be appreciated (and probably get a faster response). Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 08:55, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I will be happy to trial it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:26, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Will watch, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:29, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • This sounds sensible and I'm watching too. I suppose that when this is done, there will be less need to repeat lists of outstanding reviews here because the nominations on the unapproved page will all be waiting attention and is already in date order. Andrew D. (talk) 14:36, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Queue 3 - Lok Sewak Sangh

It's minor, but in Queue 3, I think we are missing two hyphens (300 km and 190 mi) in the Lok Sewak Sangh hook. EricEnfermero (Talk) 08:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

It's worse than that, unless I'm reading it wrong, the source says "more than 300 miles". The Rambling Man (talk) 08:43, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Have moved the hook to prep5; that should give enough time to look into the distance issue. And no, hyphens don't belong there. Schwede66 09:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I think the hyphens do belong there, per the article and per "adj=on", i.e. 300-mile (480 km)... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:09, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I'd try to avoid these hyphens, which would make reading even more complicated than it already is. We have in prep
* ... that the Lok Sewak Sangh organized a 300 km (190 mi) protest march in 1955 to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal?
My suggestion:
* ... that the Lok Sewak Sangh organized in 1955 a protest march of more than 300 km (190 mi) to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal? - I dont want to change the prep because I was the reviewer. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • FYI hyphens are never used with symbols such as km and mi, only with the full-word forms. EEng 09:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps a better wording:
  • ... that a 1955 protest march organized by the Lok Sewak Sangh to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal travelled more than [DISTANCE]?
I've put it as "[DISTANCE]" in recognition of TRM's point that the source needs re-checking. EdChem (talk) 10:56, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, I took another look at the source and it unquestionably says the distance was more than "300 miles", so I've corrected the hook now it's back in a Prep area. Wouldn't object to any rewording, they're all much of a muchness. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I concur, definitely says more than 300 miles. Striking above and providing alternatives:
  • ... that a 1955 protest march organized by the Lok Sewak Sangh to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal travelled more than 300 mi (480 km) over 16 days?
  • ... that in a 1955 protest, nearly 1000 protesters from the Lok Sewak Sangh marched more than 300 mi (480 km) over 16 days to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal?
I think the 16 days is interesting too... @The Rambling Man, Gerda Arendt, Schwede66, Soman, and Cwmhiraeth: as commenters in this thread for comment or with involvement in the nomination, for comment. EdChem (talk) 11:09, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Works fine for me, a touch-wordy for a hooky-hook, but interesting-enough. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:15, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Schwede66, Vanamonde93, and Casliber: This is in Queue 5 and goes onto the main page in 18 minutes. The error over the distance is fixed but there is still a rogue hyphen and one of the better wordings above would be nice. Paging any admin around? Thanks. EdChem (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks fine as it is, frankly. The hyphen is correct, and changing to have (for example) "protest... protesters" would be a retrograde step. BencherliteTalk 12:34, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
  • My apologies, I was working...I have made the change. However, upon reading the article, the hook did not seem entirely grammatical to me. I have therefore, admittedly unilaterally, put the following on the main page. Further discussion would, I think, be welcome. Vanamonde (talk) 15:01, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
  • ... that in a 1955 protest, nearly 1000 protesters from the Lok Sewak Sangh marched more than 300 mi (480 km) over 16 days to demand inclusion of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal?
  • ... that in a 1955 protest, nearly 1000 protesters from the Lok Sewak Sangh marched more than 300 mi (480 km) over 16 days to demand the incorporation of Bengali-speaking areas of Bihar into West Bengal?
  • Dammit. The unstruck version is the one I uploaded. I cannot, it appears, copy-paste accurately sometimes. Vanamonde (talk) 15:03, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Originally part of the above discussion under the "rumbling subsided" heading, but I have separated it as a discussion of an error in an upcoming hook. No objection to moving to the bottom of the page. EdChem (talk) 22:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the following hook, now in Prep3, is seriously overlinked, and Pat Loika will lose clicks to the other links: Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Ignoring whether clicks will be lost, I'd note that the hook is playing off a common meme and doing it awkwardly. Suggest alternative:
  • ... that according to BuzzFeed, Pat Loika is to the comic book industry what Oprah is to talk shows?
Neither BuzzFeed nor comic book need links, either. EdChem (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I just looked at this and the hook, if still worded as any of the above needs rewriting. The article says: "Buzzfeed described his efforts in interviewing comic book creators as being "the closest thing comics has to an Oprah"." Victoriaearle (tk) 13:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I'd just like to say that I've never heard of Buzzfeed so a link would be great. For instance, if Buzzfeed was a non-notable blog with a hundred viewers a month, why would I give two shits what they say about anything? Unlinking Buzzfeed makes it matter-of-fact or worse, no pedigree. We tend to have unlinked claims from people who aren't worth listening to, or at least aren't notable enough for a Wikipedia article. Unlinking this all down to just Pat Loika is a savage mistake. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:32, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I agree with Victoriaearle, this hook can easily be read as portraying Loika as a writer / illustrator of comic books. Struck my proposal. I think the hook should be changed to a direct quote, and in light of The Rambling Man's comment (which I edit conflicted with), a version with a BuzzFeed link, and in light of the above discussion, version with Loika at the start:
@RightCowLeftCoast, Vanamonde93, Yoninah, BlueMoonset, and Cwmhiraeth: As the editors involved as nominator, reviewers, commenters, and promoters, your input is requested. The hook is presently in Queue 3 so can only be adjusted by an admin if consensus is that it should be changed. I have separated this thread under a new heading level 2 heading as I think it is not really related to my above posts about the form of hooks, and is now an issue of accuracy. It is my opinion that the existing hook needs replacing. EdChem (talk) 22:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

And now it starts to crystallise. EdChem says Neither BuzzFeed nor comic book need links, either and I would agree with the latter, "comic book" is common term so, per OVERLINK, it can be unlinked, but "Buzzfeed" is something I'm unaware of so a link would be very helpful, per OVERLINK, not only to allow me to understand the organisation behind the name, but also to ensure that it's not just Joe Bloggs (who wouldn't have an article) making a claim about something. So once again it seems that OVERLINK is good guidance, link the terms that may need to be linked for clarity, context or explanation, don't link terms that don't enhance the readers' experience. And stop focusing on getting the all-time top-score on DYK. It's not about y'all, it's about the READER!! Time to terminate this interminable debate. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and just to add some more fuel, we shouldn't be linking within quotations. That's another MOS thing. So Oprah shouldn't be linked in any of these examples. Mind you, apparently MOS doesn't apply to the main page according to some of our users... The Rambling Man (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I am glad we agree on "comic book." As you will see from the post above, I have proposed options with and without a link for BuzzFeed. My initial opinion was that BuzzFeed does not require a link, but I am certainly open to the view that the hook is better with one. TRM, in case you haven't noticed, I have not !voted to prefer no non-bolded links, and have argued for the reader's perspective. I have no issue with linking BuzzFeed if that is the general view. I agree that a reader might want to click on a BuzzFeed link to find out who BuzzFeed is... but readers may also be looking for information on Loika and be surprised to find that the link they followed goes to an article does not address the hook fact. TRM, I truly believe that your post are lack some good faith at times: Warning... exaggeration approaching... the DYK community is not made up entirely of page-view-driven fanatics who care nothing of readers or accurate content or the encyclopaedia and live solely for the gratification of seeing a hook posted at WP:DYKSTATS... and astonishingly, some of us even find your disinclination to recognise anything positive about DYK as problematic / irritating and this does IMO lead to your valid points about hooks and criticisms being obscured or lost. On the latter point, what do you think about the accuracy issue in the Loika hook in queue 3? I try to make sure that I take seriously the issues you raise that need to be addressed, but your approach is not making it any easier for me or others. I am glad you keep watch on the preps / queues, and your comments / changes to articles I have nominated are almost always things I look at and think "Yes, that is better" or "Yes, addressing that point strengthens the article" (whether it is something required under DYK rules or not). I value those contributions highly. Can you see a way to continue making them without needlessly ruffling so many feathers? Please? EdChem (talk) 23:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Added after ec: On linking "Oprah" to Oprah Winfrey, I generally wouldn't include a link in a quotation, per MOS. In this case, however, some readers may not know who she is (esp. outside the Western English-speaking world), just as some readers may not know who BuzzFeed is, and there is no reason to believe that we could be misinterpreting who is meant. We could end the hook as to an" Oprah? or as to an Oprah" Winfrey? or as to an Oprah" (Winfrey)? or as to" Oprah Winfrey? or as to" Oprah? or without a link as to an Oprah"? The MoS provides guidance and is generally worth following, but editorial judgement still applies and we have the authority to come to a consensus decision on whether or not to provide a link in this case, and in what form to provide it. It's not a matter of "MOS doesn't apply on the main page", the question is "what form of link (if any) is most appropriate in the context for the sake of readers, in line with the integrity of the source material, and following those considerations, in a way that offers an elegant presentation?" I am somewhat surprised, TRM, that the issue of whether the hook accurately reflects the source is not a more pressing issue from your perspective than whether or how a link to the Oprah article is provided. EdChem (talk) 23:35, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I am somewhat surprised, TRM, that the issue of whether the hook accurately reflects the source is not a more pressing issue from your perspective than whether or how a link to the Oprah article is provided. where did I say that? The Rambling Man (talk) 05:56, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
You didn't say it explicitly, but you have commented on linking issues but not accuracy in a thread where accuracy is raised, which is usually an area which you are quick to comment. I have directly asked for your view above, and of course you are free to comment or not. The hook goes onto the main page in under 3 hours. EdChem (talk) 09:19, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The point was that this was lumped in with the "overlinked" debate. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:21, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I separated it from the overlink discussion when I edit conflicted with your post quoting me (for the record, I did this in the edit before I saw the ec). After that, you commented in the separated section about Oprah. In any case, I am glad that a substituted hook has been used. EdChem (talk) 20:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
There seems to be a proclivity to re-section things here, there are one or two editors who are particularly guilty of doing so in order to focus on their own specific interests. I don't see this kind of behaviour anywhere else on Wikipedia. So sorry for missing the complete change of tack on the thread. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:27, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
I would be fine with changing it to any of the versions proposed above. Vanamonde (talk) 07:00, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • @Vanamonde93: This hook is in Queue3 and going live in 2+ hours. It needs an admin to change the hook. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Okay, I have swapped in the second of the hooks proposed above. Further discussion is, however, welcome. Vanamonde (talk) 09:25, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 6

Why is there an Easter egg link to the magazine? Isn't the point of the hook to hook the reader to the publisher's article?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yoninah (talkcontribs)

The hook is fully compliant with current DYK norms. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You can change it if you like, right? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:41, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes. Thanks for your support. Yoninah (talk) 22:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Since the magazine is one likely to be unfamiliar to many readers, a description (provided it is supported by an in-line citation in the article) is appropriate for a hook. If I clicked on a link "most widely read magazines", I would expect to go to an article on a magazine, which is what Die Gartenlaube is, is it not? EdChem (talk) 00:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
I notice that Yoninah has edited the prep to remove the link altogether, with edit summary "restore hookiness." Yes, this leaves only a bolded link, but I am concerned that a reader may want to know which magazine it was directly, and so a convenience link should be provided. Does anyone else have a view? EdChem (talk) 00:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
If you want to know what magazine it is, click on the bolded link! We just had this whole discussion above. We really need to be asking ourselves what is the point of the hook? Adding a link to the magazine takes away all the hookiness. Yoninah (talk) 00:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
This is a very good example of where a link would be very helpful to our reader so it should stay linked. By no means does it take away any of the hookiness of the hook. That assertion is simply nonsense. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:41, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I am not very concerned about easter eggs in hooks. Hookiness requires a little "funny", and easter eggs are one way of doing that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:38, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. I for one don't want to see the no-fun police taking over DYK. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
If you want to get really pissed about it, look at Prep 6: "... that an Australian cricketer took unpaid leave from his teaching job to play in the 2012 Champions League Twenty20?" WTF? When did this project suddenly become Guess Who? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:50, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree with TRM, and have edited the hook to include the name of the cricketer. EdChem (talk) 00:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Hi guys, I am the proposer for the cricketer hook mentioned above. I originally had Ian Moran's name bolded but I thought it would improve the hookiness if the name wasn't mentioned. After all, no one has even heard of Moran. I hadn't even heard of him before I wrote the article and I'm fan of the Sydney Sixers, the team he played for. Anyway, I am happy for the change to occur if everyone feels that I went to far with this easter egg. Cheers – Ianblair23 (talk) 02:29, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
No worries, it's just bad timing with the project at odds with itself over whether or not to use easter egg links, whether or not to use auxiliary links. It just touched a nerve I suppose. Nice article by the way. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:22, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
All good TRM. Cheers – Ianblair23 (talk) 08:12, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Rajeev Nayyar hook in queue 4

Presently in Queue 4, nomination at Template:Did you know nominations/Rajeev Nayyar:

I wonder whether this would be better if:

  • 1015 minutes was in hours and minutes
  • "Himachal Pradesh" is removed – I thought this was an ethnic descriptor but it actually refers to Nayyar's team (Himachal Pradesh cricket team) in Indian domestic cricket... perhaps just say "Indian", or even drop that entirely as it is clear he is a cricketer from later in the hook?
  • the wording is re-ordered to shorten the hook and make it read more smoothly
  • making Ranji trophy an easter egg link would allow further shortening

Perhaps something like:

I know the change is small, but I think it reads better. Thoughts? Ping Dee03 (nominator), Marek69 and Ianblair23 (reviewers), BlueMoonset (commenter on nomination), and Cwmhiraeth (promoter) for comment. Note that this is not any sort of error in my opinion, just my suggesting a touch of polishing.  :) EdChem (talk) 06:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Hours and minutes does sound more impressive. I like ALT2 best, but would not choose ALT3, and definitely avoid ALT4. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:24, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I think ALT1 and ALT2 flow best. Vanamonde (talk) 06:44, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I would advocate "nearly 17 hours" rather than the overly precise 16 h 55 m. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:54, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Hi all, I am surprised that original wording of the hook made it to the prep area. If you look at the nomination page I too noticed that the hook seemed a little long and suggested an alternative. This was agreed to by the proposer, Dee03. My ALT1 was
As you can see I removed the name of the club and the name of the competition and reduced the number of links from three to two. I am happy to change the duration to hours and minutes. Cheers – Ianblair23 (talk) 07:06, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I would prefer something like:
I am happy with this wording. Cheers – Ianblair23 (talk) 07:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
 Done Schwede66 07:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 5 - "could be killed"?

that up to 50% of a U.S. Federal Protective Forces detachment could be killed while defending a U.S. Department of Energy facility?

I'm not sure I follow this at all. Presumably up to 100% could be killed? The wording in the article says something along the lines that in certain variations of certain scenarios modelled in a study. I'm certain a better hook could be generated from this interesting article. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:10, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take it to ERRORS in due course. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:16, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
The Rambling Man, you could always ping the nominator, reviewer, and promoter, if you wanted to avoid the ERRORS route. Not everyone stops by here in the course of 11 hours. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:22, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
It's in prep, and those involved in its nomination and promotion are regulars here. I don't mind where it's fixed, it just needs to be fixed. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Growing and shrinking articles

I'm reviewing a very old nomination. It was nominated as a 5x expansion back in October. The original reviewer noted several problems, one of which was that it wasn't quite 5x expanded. The nominator expanded it a little further, and at that point, it was a full 5x expansion.

At some point the reviewer quit Wikipedia, and nothing happened with the review for a while. Now it's January, and I'm trying to review the article. However, in November there was a significant removal of content from the article by someone who had BLP concerns about the removed content. Because that content has been removed, the article as it currently stands is not quite 5x expanded from what it was when the expansion started.

Should I accept that, at one point, it was 5x expanded before the content was removed? Or should I insist that it be a 5x expansion now before it is accepted? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

This is an opinion based on my judgement of this situation: there is possible some obscure point in policy to back it up, but I'm not aware of it. If the content in question was actually a BLP violation, then it should not count towards any expansion, because we should not be using policy-violating content to meet quotas of any kind. If the BLP violation is not clear cut then I guess it gets messier, but as a starting point I would ask whether the page still meets the basic length requirement of 1500 prose characters. Vanamonde (talk) 17:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: The content is not a clear-cut BLP violation. The editor who removed it was reverted, then reverted back, and there was a brief discussion on the talk page wherein that editor explained why he felt it was a BLP violation. No one added it back after that, and I'm not clear if that's because they agreed with him or just never bothered to fight about it. Personally, while I see his point that there are some problematic parts of what was removed, I don't think it extends to the level of being a BLP violation; and if it does, then the rest of the article might be problematic for the same reasons. At any rate, the page is still well over 1,500 prose characters, and was before the 5x expansion began. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:38, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
(ec)The article is Corruption in Angola, and the passage was about the president's daughter and her business dealings. Among other things, the passage in question said that the president had appointed her director of a state-owned company and that he "wanted someone he fully trusted responsible for the restructuring to secure his family's interests." (sourced to Bloomburg). To me that makes sense to have in an article about corruption in a country, and doesn't violate our BLP policies so long as it is appropriately sourced. The article is full of things like that, that are examples of corruption in Angola, that implicate living persons, often by name. So if that's problematic the whole article is. I don't know... now we're getting into the weeds with content when my question was more about policy. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The article is an expansion from 4791 prose characters; it currently needs nearly 2200 characters more to reach the 23955 required to make a 5x expansion. The article's being reviewed now, so my feeling is that it needs to meet the expansion requirements now, and without the BLP material. I should point out that the material that was considered a BLP violation was added between October 25 and 28, and first removed on October 31. I don't see why it should count toward the total expansion, and would oppose it being counted as such. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
(Plus I should note that one of the proposed hooks was supported by the removed material.) Ok, thanks BlueMoonset. That more or less answers my question. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Does the election rule apply here?

I'd just thought I'd ask here for a second opinion, I have created Template:Did you know nominations/Assembly Members (Reduction of Numbers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 and one of the hooks makes reference to a politician involved in the upcoming Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2017 on 2 March. I would like to ask if other believe this would fall foul of the "30 day election cycle moratorium" rule or not? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd say yes it does. Also 30 days before is 31 January, not 2 February like the DYK nom says. Either that or after 2 March. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:48, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Upon further news becoming available that the person in question is not standing in the election, I think we can safely disregard the above as I don't think the 30 day rule applies now. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:02, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

QPQ question

If one encounters a situation where the person who nominated an article is exempt from the QPQ requirements, but the person who did the work creating/expanding/getting the article to GA is not exempt because they have 11 DYK credits, should one insist on a QPQ being done? For the record this is about Template:Did you know nominations/Why (Taeyeon song). ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:24, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

QPQ is the nominator's responsibility. It's got nothing to do with others who have been involved in creating or expanding an article. Schwede66 18:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
So someone with a dozen or so DYKs can get a relative newbie to nominate their article and get out of having to do a QPQ? (Not saying that's what happened here - but it defeats the spirit of the rule.) ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:15, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes. As long as we get our pound of flesh from someone. Most nominators are the creator/expander, so the question doesn't come up that often, but QPQ is the nominator's responsibility. EEng 19:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
But EEng#s, we're not getting our pound of flesh ... ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:29, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes we are, just every new editor is given five free pounds as a welcome gift, which he can use as he will. Look, it's just the way it works. Look, if you're worried about the accumulation of unreviewed stuff then revive my old proposal that everyone with 15+ credits (or whatever) needs to do two reviews for every new nomination (unless there's nothing awaiting review at the moment). That would dry up the backlog real fast. The beauty of that is that those with lots of noms under their belt are experienced reviewers, and so it's less of a burden for them. EEng 20:40, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
ONUnicorn, if you can show that an experienced DYK participant recruited a new nominator in order to avoid the QPQ requirement, I certainly think we can require the DYK regular to do a QPQ for trying to make an end run around the requirements. In fact, I've done that in the past (it was really quite blatant, as I recall, with the request made on the nominator's talk page by the creator, and this was when non-self-nominations were not subject to the QPQ requirement; we've since closed that loophole). However, if a newcomer finds an unsubmitted GA or new article and preps it for DYK themselves, then more power to them. If this happens, there's nothing wrong with asking the creator to volunteer to review another nomination, just as new nominators can start reviewing prior to completing their five freebies (and some do); the keyword here is "volunteer". BlueMoonset (talk) 01:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Related question... DMacks presently has one nominator DYK credit according to the QPQ check tool for an article he nominated in 2011. A review was done by Doug Caldwell, one of the article authors, though with DMacks as nominator but not an author, I am not sure that one was required. DMacks has done reverts on a few nomination pages as part of a mass rollback, and made comments on one nomination, at Template:Did you know nominations/Molecular gyroscope.

I have recently nominated two articles (trifluoroperacetic acid, DYK nomination; hexamethylbenzene, nomination) that we have expanded, for which I will provide QPQ reviews and both DMacks and I will receive author credits (assuming both pass). If DMacks were to nominate a new article of his own, would he only have two no-QPQ-required nominations left, or four, or five? I am wondering if I am consuming his "free" nominations even though I am providing QPQ reviews. I am in total agreement with BlueMoonset, having a DYK-newbie do nominations to avoid needing a QPQ review would be inappropriate and unacceptable, but in these cases DMacks and I have clearly contributed content and I think I am doing the right thing by doing the nominating and QPQ reviews, in effect helping DMacks to learn about current DYK practice, and I feel that if, by so doing, DMacks is losing freebies for future individual nominations then that consequence seems to me to be unfair. Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 01:16, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn, Schwede66, EEng, and BlueMoonset: As the contributors who have contributed to this thread so far, I'd be interested in any comments / thoughts... and also from any other DYK contributors. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 23:05, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@EdChem: Personally, in that situation, I would say DMacks would still have 4 QPQ-free nominations left. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 23:10, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #5 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:05, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Oldest nominations needing DYK reviewers

The previous list was archived a few hours ago, so here's a list of the 36 oldest nominations that need reviewing, which includes all those through December 17. Right now the nominations page shows 266, of which 90 have been approved, but that doesn't include the 74 nominations that can't transclude because we have too many transcluded templates to show them all, 18 of which have already been approved. Thanks to everyone who reviews these, especially the 22 that are over six weeks old and urgently need a reviewer's attention.

Over two months old:

Over six weeks old:

Other old nominations:

Please remember to cross off entries as you finish reviewing them (unless you're asking for further review), even if the review was not an approval. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 07:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It happened again

Lead hook with image on January 18:

Ernst Keil: 3,859 hits
Die Gartenlaube (the auxiliary link): 6,291 hits
Perhaps you should have looked for a wording where the hookiest part was not in an auxiliary link, such as:
  • ... that 19th-century publisher Ernst Keil (pictured) was in prison when he conceived the idea for Die Gartenlaube, which became one of the most widely read magazines?
Removing all auxiliary links is a disservice to readers, but tweaking wordings so that auxiliary links provide context / information / support but don't draw the focus of interest is at editorial discretion. EdChem (talk) 00:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Interesting. Still, I would have a link to the magazine rather than not Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't matter one iota that an auxiliary link got more hits. The more hits for Wikipedia, the better. The sooner that idea sinks in, the better. I'm perplexed as to why we should de-hook a hook to actively seek to reduce hits from the DYK section of the main page. But I'm feeling like a lone voice on this one. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:10, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Soup and sandwich

  • ... that the soup and sandwich (example pictured) has been a popular lunch dish in the United States since the 1920s?

Is the use of the definitive article in "the soup and sandwich" an Americanism? It doesn't sound right to me, but I note that the article also uses it. The hook is currently in prep3. Schwede66 00:06, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Northamerica1000 and Schwede66: "Soup and sandwich" is a common listing on American menus, and in ordering it's usually said, "I'll have the soup and sandwich". — Maile (talk) 00:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I think it sounds odd to a non-US audience; I'd say "the soup and sandwich combination" or "the soup and a sandwich". Perhaps change the hook to:
  • ... that the soup and sandwich combination (example pictured) has been a popular lunch dish in the United States since the 1920s?
Better not to add "a" before the sandwich as then we'd need to pipe the name and it would imply that the article name was possibly wrong. EdChem (talk) 00:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I was also thinking that adding the word "combination" would be a good idea, since it's referred to that way at least once in the article. "the soup and a sandwich" would not be correct, as it would be referring to two separate menu items in America. "soup and sandwich" is a single menu item, usually less expensive to order as a combo than to order as two separate items. — Maile (talk) 00:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Adding the word "combination" is fine by me (... that the soup and sandwich combination...) North America1000 01:00, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I have copy-edited the article along the same line, will alter the hook. EdChem (talk) 01:27, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Northamerica1000: Maile's point about a single menu item is not in the article but could be added, IMO.  :) EdChem (talk) 01:28, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be redundant? That's what a "combo meal" is. Otherwise, it would be À la carte. — Maile (talk) 01:31, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for sorting it. Schwede66 07:49, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
  • This hook got my attention as I like this for lunch myself. Checking the results, I see it got 18K hits, which is quite good. Well done. Andrew D. (talk) 07:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

12/24 hour per slot?

Why is it that sometimes a set of hooks stays for 24 hours, and sometimes only 12? Is it something that was changed by discussion? Where to find the discussions? HaEr48 (talk) 09:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It was changed by a discussion that happened on this page, its now in the archive. The reason why it was changed back to 12 hours was mostly to help clear the backlog that is mucking up the transclusion coding on the main nomination page. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:17, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Pointed editing threat

I would like a second set of admin eyes on this nom template:Did you know nominations/Acer taggarti. The Rambling Man (talk · contribs) is, in my opinion, purposefully threatening to take the hook to main page errors based on me disagreeing that the working of the hook is "obfuscation" this is also not the first instance of this happening and seems to be related to Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs) having voiced an opinion that the nomination is fine per the DYK rules. This behavior is very pointy and actively assuming bad faith, something that has been ignored and not addressed for much to long.--Kevmin § 14:14, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not a threat, it's merely a factual statement of the consequences of inaccurate content hitting the front page. If there are 12, ERRORS will amend it to 12. Also as it stands it failes the "The fact(s) mentioned in the hook must be cited in the article." - "that the extinct maple Acer taggarti was first described from over ten fossils" is not cited in the article. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Let's see. A hook is nominated by you and gets approved. TRM disagrees with an aspect of it, but you don't agree with it. So TRM states that, if it runs like this, he will raise the issue at WP:ERRORS, a place especially designed for issues with main page entries, and where uninvolved editors will agree or disagree with him. This is pointed or problematic how exactly? If TRM is wrong, he won't get much support at Errors. If he is right, then the hook will be corrected or improved. Taking this to Errors doesn't harm or hinder you (or Cwmhiraeth for that matter) and may lead to a better hook. And if TRM would too often send incorrect errors to Errors and thereby wate the time of the uninvolved editors there, he will probably be corrected by them.
Now, if he would have known of this problem (in his opinion), not have said anything, and then waited for it to appear on the main page before going to Errors, then you would have an argument that he was engaging in bad faith, pointed editing (although it would be hard to prove). But now it just sounds as if you don't want the extra scrutiny your hook and article may get as a result. Fram (talk) 14:37, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Just say "twelve" and there's no problem. I don't understand your objection to saying "twelve", namely that "over ten" "generates interest in readers wondering how many it was described from over the round number 10 that is given." Err, no. Saying "over ten" doesn't magically make the hook more interesting and isn't likely to make readers think "Gee, if it was over ten, was it 11, or 130, or 12,843?". BencherliteTalk 14:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Why is "twelve" the correct number? The article refers to a holotype, six fruit paratypes, and six leaf paratypes. That's thirteen specimens in total, is it not? (Wouldn't WP:CALC apply in this case? It has on any number of hooks before now.) So if the total is a number over ten, the hook is not inaccurate to say so, even if I don't find "over ten" more interesting than the actual number, which is higher. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:17, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Hilarious. First I get complaints for reviewing and noting issues when hooks are promoted to sets, then I get complaints for reviewing and noting issues before they get promoted to sets. Gotta get them pageviews. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I have tweaked the article and proposed ALTs. I agree with BlueMoonset on 13 and WP:CALC, with Fram that anyone may request / suggest changes at WP:ERRORS, and am confused as to why "over ten" is hookier than "twelve" or "thirteen". @The Rambling Man: I respect your diligence and appreciate the value in catching errors and otherwise improving hooks. I also recognise that what you see as direct / blunt may be seen as more harsh by others, and I am grateful that not everyone is the same, but please recognise that sometimes your manner obscures your message. You don't need to post like you are Dale Carnegie, but I believe you are more persuasive when you are not perceives as being antagonistic or dismissive. We are not all pursuing pageviews at the expense of all else, but equally there is nothing wrong with constructing / modifying a hook (within policy) to attract attention. EdChem (talk) 23:30, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't know who Dale Carnegie is, but as I said, I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. I made a suggestion based on a dubious hook, it was wholesale rejected based on a false hope of "more clicks" so I simply said I'd take it to errors. All this kerfuffle could have been solved at source. Why aren't you berating Kevmin, after all it seemed like I was far from the only person here with that opinion. Fram, Bencherlite, Only in Death all agreed with me. As for my comment above, it's borne out of pure frustration that some owners of these nominations simply don't see what the main page of Wikipedia is about. The pursuit of pageviews to the detriment of the encyclopedic value of the main page needs to stop. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:36, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
TRM, I'm not berating anyone. I edited the article for clarity on the point you raised and suggested ALTs in the nomination, so my first action was in line with content quality and consistent with BlueMoonset and Fram's comments. I posted a comment on the nomination page addressing Kevmin seeking support for the ALTs (which would address the issue you raised), and asking that he recognise the validity of your points (and right to take issues to ERRORS) by setting aside when your manner of communication obscures your message. His response on the ALTs is encouraging, but on you was much less so, unfortunately. I addressed you here, and I apologise that this is a more public venue, explicitly recognising your contribution and asking for some moderation in tone. I don't mind blunt communication directed to me, but some other editors react poorly to it. In the hope of reducing tensions, I asked both you and Kevmin to give a little, Kevin by being more accepting of direct communications without taking offense, you by softening your expressions. It seems my efforts have been less than successful, which is disappointing but not surprising. I do agree with you that you are regularly criticised no matter which way you go, and I am sure that is frustrating and blowing off some steam is certainly understandable. I want your contributions to continue producing quality improvements, I believe we need higher standards, and I have commented several times that tweaking a hook for pageviews is one thing, but removing appropriate links is inappropriate and unacceptable. We will never agree on every issue, but I do try to see your perspective and to act on issues you raise, and I do try to acknowledge positive contributions as well as raise issues of concern – and I firmly believe that you would find DYK less confrontational if you could also comment on positives as well as negatives, avoid so many sweeping generalisations, and try for a more collaborative approach. You are, of course, free to disregard everything I am saying just as Kevmin is free to disregard my comments and to continue to portray you unfairly as a critic in need of sanctions – but I hope you both can see that there is a better approach possible. EdChem (talk) 10:31, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
It may come as a surprise but sadly one of the things I do here is to try to maintain the integrity of the main page. There are two or gheeethreads on this talk page alone which demonstrate the inconsistencies, inadequacies and clear ownership problems that DYK has, and DYK alone. I work on OTD and ITN as well and you never see the kind of inept behaviour there that you do here, mainly as a result of the page view clamour. As for softening my expressions, I re-read the comments I made at Kevmin's nomination and they were precise and clear and neutral and the over-reaction spoke for itself. As for commenting on positives, you'll find I did that straight away when more meaningful and concise alts were suggested. I can't do much more than that when the project is in such a state. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:19, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 4

The quirky in Prep 4 has an auxiliary link to Boom! Studios, which has tags all over it. Should we link to this page? Yoninah (talk) 13:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Sure. Quality is not a DYK concern, and someone interested in Boom! Studios may decide to edit that page to improve it! The Rambling Man (talk) 14:05, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
TRM, that comment is singularly unhelpful. IMO, we should not link to it: and judging by your sarcasm, you think so too, but you could not resist the urge to hurl yet another snide remark at the project. A simple "no" would do much better. Vanamonde (talk) 15:16, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't understand? Quality of the target article is hardly a priority so I don't see why quality of auxiliary links should be of any concern at all to the project. The link should stay, its appearance on the main page will doubtless drive hundreds of readers to the article, and maybe, just maybe, one of them will make an improvement. If that happens, it's a success, because we're all here to improve the project, right? The Rambling Man (talk) 05:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Schwede66, I don't see the consensus here to unlink it. In fact, I see no argument at all in favour of doing so when target links are often tagged all over. Please restore the link until such a time that we instigate a rule that either no auxiliary hooks are linked, or all auxiliary hooks are checked for quality, and unlinked if a clear consensus exists to do so. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Of course, in the meantime I could review all linked articles and list all the problematic ones here for individual discussion, if that would help? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:01, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I unlinked it because I share Yoninah's concerns. I count nine maintenance tags, and that's excessive. If editors other than TRM are also of the opinion that the link should be restored, please say so. Schwede66 17:18, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

E.g., in the current crop on the main page (up for another 45 minutes), the following need to be delinked for consistency with the action carried out above:

I haven't started checking the other queues and preps yet, but happy to do so if that's what the community actually wants rather than just one individual editor. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, too late. Here's the next set's worth of low-quality links for consideration:
In other words, 75% of them pesky aux hooks! The Rambling Man (talk) 12:06, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Schwede66 since you've decided yourself on the consensus, please be consistent and delink the three articles I've listed above. I'll prepare the next couple of lists in due course. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Let's try that ping again... Schwede66. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
It's also pretty clear you didn't really read the article. With 105 references, it's referenced far beyond most target DYKs. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:23, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for attending to some of the maintenance tags, TRM; that's now down to three. I repeat that if editors other than TRM are also of the opinion that the link should be restored, please say so. Schwede66 18:56, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Schwede66, please ensure you approach this consistently then, and unlink those I have listed above in the same way. As I said, since you believe this to be consensus now, I'll add the next couple of lists in due course. Or would you prefer me to use ERRORS for this kind of report? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Currently "problematic" auxiliary links in Queue 4:

Please delink them in the same way you delinked Boom! Studios! Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Currently "problematic" auxiliary links in Prep 5:

That's 50% of them in this set. Please delink them in the same way you delinked Boom! Studios! Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:36, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I think I will routinely delink auxiliary links when I promote hooks in future, so we don't keep getting all this kerfuffle. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Okay, and I will return those which aren't easily understood by our readers to ERRORS. Better to keep avoiding the problem after all. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
In which case, and for the benefit of clarity of both your (threatened) actions and that of Schwede66 here, please close the section above entitled "Linking only the target article in hooks" with your decision in the closing comments. Thanks! Of course, it would have been better to relink the unlinked term in the first place, but hey ho, the project can't go a day without yet another drama. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:04, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Cwmhiraeth please modify the DYK rules per your current approach or I shall continue to resort to using common sense to benefit our readers. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I am not in the business of modifying rules without consensus, but instead I will make a request to you. Please do not cherry-pick articles linked from promoted DYK hooks and tag bomb them. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
This seems like a good place to mention to @The Rambling Man: that we now have a dedicated page for approved links. TRM, you can easily skim through this list at your leisure and note hook problems on approved nominations, before the prep promoters spend hours assembling preps, and hopefully avoid this daily drama at WT:DYK. Yoninah (talk) 12:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Nope, I'm happy to skim through the 7 or 14 per day I get a chance to do so, just before they hit the main page is the most opportune moment because it's that moment that quality should be assessed. Thanks. I will continue to review and tag articles in keeping with Wikipedia's norms and hopefully you'll soon realise that it's not the auxiliary links that are the ones which are causing all of the problems. Now then, Schwede66 implemented a delinking based on his and one other editor's opinions, Cwmhiraeth appears to be attempting to roll out her own version of this without actually closing the argument in favour (or otherwise) of doing so. This is yet another mess of inconsistency, all posited on a false assertion that taking links away from our readers makes DYK a better place. Where is this paradigm actioned elsewhere on the main page? Anyone? So what makes DYK so special? Is it the hunger for pageviews by any chance? For what it's worth, those "hours" preparing sets is clearly misused time as I so frequently run into articles which have errors or quality issues that should be booted straight back to noms. But apparently that isn't the job of the review, the set builder or the promoting admin. So someone else has to point out such stark and regular issues. Finally, I didn't "cherry pick" those articles linked from DYK, I looked at all articles linked from DYK. It's called "being thorough". The Rambling Man (talk) 13:00, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: Fair enough. Yoninah (talk) 17:15, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 4 photo

The Bears Ears
The Bears Ears

I'm not a big fan of the current prep4 photo: out of focus, not very gripping, and (to me at least) not very meaningful as a thumbnail. Courtesy ping to Cwmhiraeth as prep compiler. Is it just me who thinks we could do better, or shall we find a different lead hook? If others think it's ok, I shall go with the flow. Schwede66 03:54, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you in terms of interest and meaning, but the photo should be replaced regardless—it's a stereoscopic version, which is one of the reasons it appears out of focus. If we don't go with a different photo entirely, there's a 2D version of the current photo, BearsEarsUSGS-2D.jpg, that ought to be used instead of the one now in prep; for one thing, it doesn't have the oddly colored road lines. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:02, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Well the Bears Ears show up nicely on the skyline. I included the photo at least in part because the nominator is a novice DYKer and I thought featuring it might be encouragement to further participation in the project. Perhaps such factors should not be considered. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:04, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I didn't get it at all, particularly as the hook relates to "Bears Ears National Monument", and actually it's a natural pair of geographical features. It would be better although less succinct to say something like "The two buttes known as Bears Ears", or "Two buttes comprise the Bears Ears National Monument". The Rambling Man (talk) 08:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Would it be an idea to consider taking it to Wikipedia:Photography workshop so that someone with graphics experience (or anyone here who may have it) to zoom in on it and clean it up? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:26, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Why is this hooky?

Why is this hooky?

@Casliber: @KAVEBEAR: @Cwmhiraeth:

In Prep 3 we have in the quirky slot:
  • ... that the 11.5 centimetres (4.5 in) long lemon-bellied flyrobin catches and eats insects over 2 centimetres (0.8 in) long on occasion?
Why is this hooky, much less quirky? If the bird ate things that were larger than itself, that would be news, but things that are smaller are obvious. Yoninah (talk) 17:03, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
What is "the quirky slot"? HaEr48 (talk) 17:44, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
@HaEr48: it is the last hook in the set, intended to be "funny, quirky or otherwise upbeat" to end the prep set on a high note. Yoninah (talk) 20:17, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
That's just a supplementary rule and a quirky last hook is simply encouraged, not mandated. See J7. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:20, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Since when? J7 is doing nothing but encouraging a quirky hook in the last slot. We never put a boring hook in the last slot. And every time I try to insert a "quirky death hook", it always gets removed for being not appropriate. Yoninah (talk) 22:59, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps you didn't read what I wrote. I said J7 doesn't mandate a quirky hook but encourages one. I.e. it doesn't have to be a quirky hook. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Is it accurate, and reliably sourced? Then I see no problem. The drive to turn everything in DYK into something unusual or quirky or misleading causes more problems than it's worth. GRAPPLE X 17:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
It isn't hooky or quirky at all, it's probably just about the most interesting part of the article. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:04, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
I'm not saying it is, I'm saying we stretch things too much to make them hooky or quirky and it leads to complaints and errors we wouldn't have if we just stuck to facts sometimes. GRAPPLE X 18:06, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
It's big in proportion to the bird's size. If you were six foot tall, it would be equivalent to you eating a one foot long insect in one gulp. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:33, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Does it do it one gulp? That would be impressive and hooky. If it's like eating a bit of spaghetti, i.e. one foot long piece of pasta in bits, then it's not impressive at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:43, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
No idea if one gulp, but still a pretty big insect for a tiny bird I thought. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:51, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Can we rewrite the hook before it goes live? Can we drop all the numbers and conversions and just say something like:
  • ... or more accurately
  • ALT2: ... that the lemon-bellied flyrobin occasionally catches and eats insects that are one-sixth of its size? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:30, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Either is fine by me as long as folks don't think there is any OR. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:47, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, in that case, it should be "... of its length" rather than "of its size". The Rambling Man (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
Could an administrator then replace the last hook in Queue 3 with this one:
ALT2a: ... that the lemon-bellied flyrobin occasionally catches and eats insects that are one-sixth of its length?
Thanks all, Yoninah (talk) 22:35, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

 Done Schwede66 23:04, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I am am probably too late for this but the belly vs breast name issue is much more interesting.
If there's support for it, I'll change it again (but am off to bed soon). Schwede66 08:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I should leave it as it is. The "crude" remark is not in the source and appears to be OR. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:13, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
The source states "Other names: lemon-breasted flycatcher, from more genteel times". Crude is an antonym of genteel; its just turning the statement on its head. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 11:26, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Neopalpa donaldtrumpi

I just reviewed Template:Did you know nominations/Neopalpa donaldtrumpi; can we rush it through so Trump's inauguration is still fresh on everyone's mind? I think the hook will be more relevant this way. -- King of ♠ 02:47, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

King ofHearts, I don't see any particular urgency, but a complete review would be welcome in case an admin does and is interested in giving an extra-quick promotion. As it stands, the review omitted a number of DYK criteria, so the nomination is not ready to be promoted at this time. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:57, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
There is a freely licensed image, File:Donaldtrumpi frontal.jpg, which could be cropped and possibly used for the image hook. The image fits well with the hook if it looks suitable at the small size. EdChem (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Stick it into prep when ready and let me know which queue to put it into and I shall action it. Schwede66 05:26, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
@Schwede66: I have promoted the hook to Prep2. If you wanted it to appear on inauguration day, it would need to be in Queue5 or Queue6. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:24, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Ok. Currently checking prep5 for promotion; will stick it in there. Schwede66 07:30, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Cwmhiraeth What's your (or anybody else's) thinking on the photo? Too hard to figure out what it actually is? I'm wondering because as a lead hook, it would get massive page views. Schwede66 07:44, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Promoted it to Q6. If the photo should be added, I can do that after a good night's sleep. Schwede66 08:38, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

How about the quirky position there? - The quirky in Q5 seems also to resemble ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:30, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
You could move Bernardo Putairi, currently in the picture slot with a very unflattering image at Queue5, to the quirky slot and replace it with the moth and its image. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:40, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Sleep scuttled any Queue5 opportunities. I've made it the lead hook in Queue6 and welcome any caption modifications (either discuss here, or admins go ahead and change; not sure how long I will be around before it goes live). Yoninah, I've moved the bio back into this set. Schwede66 18:52, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Interesting page view stats. It ran on 21 January with decent page view stats, but had slightly higher views a couple of days earlier. I guess some media must have been reporting on the critter. Schwede66 17:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 2 - arousing "strong feelings"

... that Saul and Joanna, a trilogy by first-time novelist Naomi Frankel, aroused strong feelings among German-Jewish immigrants to Israel in the 1950s?

Perhaps I'm missing the point but couldn't the arousal of strong feelings be applicable to hundreds of thousands of literary works? As it stands this seems like a really weak hook, I mean what was the real impact of these "strong feelings"? And were they positive, negative, happy, sad? As an aside, the article claims that a "notable" award won by Frankel includes the Ruppin Award, but Wikipedia doesn't even have an article on that, so is it actually notable in our terms? Pinging Yoninah, Gerda Arendt, Cwmhiraeth. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:40, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it might be good practise to link to the review in these cases. The source says "awakened deep emotions". I am open to a better, more factual hook, "feelings" are always dangerous ;) - I'm not surprised that an Israeli award has no article here. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:06, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Well I pinged all three of you in the hope that you'd know what I was going on about. Is there, at least, a large-ish Wikpiedia with an article on the "Ruppin Award" that we could inter-language wikilink to? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:13, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I think this page is for everybody interested, and new people to the discussion would want to know who discussed what before. - We have English articles on the person Arthur Ruppin and the Academy named after him. I don't read Hebrew, so can't tell if the Hebrew Wikipedia has an article on the prize. If it has one, we can use ill and drop the word "notable". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:31, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Possibly, I think the "notable" is embedded in the infobox syntax. But that's an aside. The hook is the main issue here. And I did say it was currently in Prep 2, so anyone really interested could easily find the discussion. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:45, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Next week, prep2 will be something else. We could add the review to the article talk page. I did that earlier but stopped it, because I forgot to remove when the hook appeared. Will try to write the ill if nobody did it yet. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
By the time it's not in prep 2, this discussion won't matter. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:21, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I received a lesson about user-friendly and pass it on ;) - You could serve us by at least linking the article in a thread, from which we can gather all other links. You could go a step further and mention that article(s) in the thread header, helping to decide if something is relevant for me when reading the watchlist. You go a step further and supply the review. You decide. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:33, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Indeed. However, I spend long enough each day checking these promoted hooks and those blurbs at OTD such that time is a premium. I remain to be convinced that the editors that need to know haven't been given sufficient information here, i.e. the prep, the hook, the nominator, the reviewer and the promoting admin all here. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:43, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
By the time you wrote this comment you probably could have linked the seven next articles in question, step 1. Need to leave now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:04, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: if you're already looking at the prep set, it doesn't take much time to go into the editing window and copy the hook from there to post in your discussion. Then we at least see the linked pages. Yoninah (talk) 13:11, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I'll carry on providing essential information on how to stop errors and dull hook sgetting to the main page. You all please focus on quality reviews and promotions. With luck that'll mean I won't need to post here again. You may both wish to update Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Did you know to state explicitly what you need, rather than the current instructions which just link to a prep/queue which, as Gerda states, goes stale after a few days. Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
And no, I don't look at the preps individually, I look at the WP:DYKQ page because there is so much chopping and changing that I sometimes see hooks skipping right into queues that I've already reviewed for one reason or another. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Gerda is right; there is very little on English Wikipedia about Israeli subjects, especially an award. The corresponding page on the Hebrew Wikipedia for the Ruppin Prize is here.
Regarding the hook, we're talking 11 years after the end of the Holocaust, when people still weren't talking about what had happened in Europe (the dam would open with the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem 1961). All those strong emotions about the war and the genocide were suppressed. But if you feel that readers won't connect to that through the hook, we could restore the image and write:
Naomi Frankel
Naomi Frankel
ALT1: ... that after six decades subscribing to left-wing ideology, German-Israeli novelist Naomi Frankel (pictured) adopted right-wing ideology and moved to the West Bank? Yoninah (talk) 11:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Much more interesting. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:19, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. @Cwmhiraeth: originally promoted this with the image, but I asked her to move it to a regular hook slot because of the hook contents. Cwm, could you move ALT1 to another image slot please? Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 11:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I've left Frankel in Prep 2, but removed the old hook and put the ALT1 into the empty image slot. If there's a problem with having two person lead hooks with only one intervening non-person, then it can be pushed back to a later prep. I'm glad that we're using the image after all; she has a very interesting face. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. Yoninah (talk) 17:29, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Queue 6 – Woodhaven Boulevard subway station

... that the Woodhaven Boulevard–Slattery Plaza subway station is named after a plaza that no longer exists?

This subway station used to include Slattery Plaza in its name but it no longer does so the is in the hook is flat-out wrong. I suggest rewriting the hook to ... that Slattery Plaza, whose name continues to be displayed prominently on the walls of the Woodhaven Boulevard subway station in New York City, was demolished in the 1950s? --Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 12:59, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Or better yet, to keep the focus on the subject of the article and for a shorter hook, ... that the walls of the Woodhaven Boulevard subway station in New York City still prominently display the name of a plaza that was demolished in the 1950s? --Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 15:22, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Dyspeptic skeptic. I've tweaked the hook based on your second suggestion. Schwede66 18:36, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 6 - kombonis (ma or not ma?)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in 1 of 37 slums called kombonis?

So I added "Zambia" because I'm certain that a vast majority of our "English-speaking" audience don't know where Lusaka is. And I changed "one of 37" to "1 of 37" per our manual of style (MOSNUM), but looking at the source, it calls these "ma kombonis" not simply "kombonis". So I'd like to see this fixed or clarified before it hits the main page. Asking ONUnicorn, Tryptofish and Cwmhiraeth, all of whom were clearly very happy with the discrepancy in nomenclature (and italics). Plus, the sole source for this was published 10 months ago, so it needs a timeframe, so "as of March 2016", or even better, when the research was actually conducted for the book.... I would suggest these kind of numbers are fluid so stating it as fact as of now is somewhat dubious. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me, and thanks for catching those things. I will be clearly very happy if anyone makes the necessary corrections. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
BTW the article doesn't say that 80% of the residents live in 1 of the 37 slums, but that 80% of residents live in 37 slums. So I deleted the numbers from the hook and made it: ... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in slums called kombonis? Yoninah (talk) 22:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I had read it to mean that all 37 slums are occupied, but that of course any single resident would live in just 1 of them. But I can see now how the wording could be misunderstood to mean that they are all crowded into just 1, leaving the other 36 bereft. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Pull: Yoninah's version is a substantial improvement, so thanks for that.  :) I was going to post some tweaks, but I think we have bigger issues to look at, including:

  • TRM's point, to ma not to ma, about whether the correct term is "komboni", "ma komboni", or "ma komboni".
  • Whether these are actually slums. Page 94 of this report (not presently used in the article) by Francis Chigunta uses the term as "informal communities", and distinguishes them from squatter camps. The associated footnote says: "Informal settlements should not be equated with squatting or illegal occupation. Although the former do not comply with the requirements of one or more laws regarding land tenure, land use, provision of social services or building stands, rights of occupation ranging from de facto official recognition to free hold title exist in the informal settlements (Muller, Ibid.). No such recognition is given to illegal settlements. For this reason, squatter camps are not entitled to provision of social services by the state or local authority." The reference used in the nomination and article (ref 3) described them as "poor, unplanned settlements" and makes clear that there residents include parts of the middle class, and the "unplanned" part is mentioned on WP as a long-standing problem with the city. This source also uses ma komboni.
  • The article gets the publication details of the source 3 wrong. The article gives the reference as:
Gough, Katherine (2 March 2016). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
The actual reference is:
Chigunta, Francis; Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (2016). "Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity amd social entrepreneurship". In Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (eds.). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge Spaces of Childhood and Youth Series. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379.
  • The lead author, Francis Chigunta, should have an article (though this would not hold up the kombani nomination). He was a Professor at the University of Zambia, a Presidential economics advisor, earned his DPhil at Oxford (working in the community on which the article is focused), and died in mid-2016. There are about half a dozen newspaper obituaries of his death, one I noted quoting an Australia-based academic describing Chigunta and his contribution in glowing terms. I can find plenty of things he wrote, including ones where he used the term slum (in a discussion of HIV vulnerable populations), but not where he uses komboni as meaning slum.
  • The current first sentence equates komboni and slum ("A komboni or compound is a type of slum common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka."), yet I am finding more that support for "komboni" = informal community (ref 1 in the article, ref 6 in the article which is actually by the same author (the article gives the book editors as the author, rather than the chapter author) and the two sources are actually the same, in parts. The relevant section is identical in both: "The green veneer of the Garden City mystique still masks what it has always masked: a dusty, inelegant and largely poor sity made up of a checkerboard of large, low-density planned elite townships (massive footprints, low populations) and high-density informal compound areas (komboni in Chinyanja, the city's lingua franca). Some of the terminology, like compound/komboni, may be particular to Lusaka, but a similar bifurcation of the city into broadly formal and informal housing zones which increasingly blur into one another around the poorly managed—indeed, unmanaged—urban edges afflicts the spatial form of most cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.") rather than "komboni" = slum (coverage of Komboni Radio in ref 7), though some (like article ref 2 from The Guardian) are simply using the term slum.
  • The hook might also be tweaked to include the fact that the komboni cover about 20% of the city, though the above sourcing / accuracy issues need to be addressed first.
  • @ONUnicorn, Tryptofish, Cwmhiraeth, The Rambling Man, and Yoninah: As the article expander, nomination review, hook promoter, and both commenters in this thread, your thoughts are invited, along with everyone else's, of course. EdChem (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • To give us time to sort this out, I've moved this hook to prep 4. Schwede66 08:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Realistically, with this kind of upheaval, it should really be taken back to the nominations page until it's good to go again. This should not be the venue for such detailed discussions. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:04, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I think you are right, TRM. Frees up the talk page. Could you please do the honours? For me it's sleep time. Schwede66 09:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: Thank you for bringing up these issues.
  1. The source I was citing for the statistic (# of kombonis) uses ma kombonis, but other sources drop the ma and just call them kombonis. One of my sources [1] uses ku komboni (which in context I believe the ku means something like at - at komboni). I don't believe dropping the "ma" is an issue when none of the other sources use that prefix.
  2. Tryptofish's reading of the "one of 37" is correct - Lusaka has 37 neighborhoods that fit in this category of komboni, and approximately 80% of the people in Lusaka live in these neighborhoods, but no single person lives in more than one of them at a time. Spelling out one and not 37 is an indication of that - per WP:MOSNUM, "But adjacent quantities not comparable should usually be in different formats" "they live in one of those neighborhoods" "there are 37 of those neighborhoods" - talking about different things, and one is not being used as the number 1; it would be inappropriate to put 1 of 37. "One of thirty seven" might be appropriate; but "1 of 37" wouldn't; IMO. I do agree though that Yoninah's version is an improvement in clarity.
  3. Ed Chem Thank you for finding that additional source! I'll have to look it over and see if I can work it into the article. It seems to clear up some things that other sources left ambiguous. Thank you also for providing a fuller citation for that book.
  4. Komboni=slum is in part an artifact from the article as it stood before I started working on it. Towards the end of my research I was begining to doubt that equality since these neighborhoods sometimes middle class and aren't always quite "slummy", especially in cities other than Lusaka. The two sources by Patience Mususa especially lead me to question that. However, I still think a comparison to Brazil's Favelas is apt; and Favelas are described as slums even where they aren't so "slummy". The main thing about the kombonis is that the term originally described irregular housing for Africans on land belonging to their white employers - in modern times some of these neighborhoods are still poor, run-down slums, while some are more middle class, but all are still "kombonis" "compounds" "irregular neighborhoods" "informal communities".

I hope this clarifies things somewhat. I'll try to make both the article and the nomination clearer. Can we actually continue discussion of the article itself on the article's talk page? I'll copy this discussion there. I welcome any feedback anyone has. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Linking only the target article in hooks

Discussion

Gerda Arendt's idea, mentioned above, seems to me a good one i.e. link only the bolded article in each hook, nothing else. [Later clarification: The proposal is to not have nonbold links by default, but not forbid nonbold links.] It's true, as T.R.M. said, that the hook may contain "technical or highly-specific terms which our general readers wouldn't not understand", but so what? Presumably they're linked from the article, so the reader can click on the article and go from there. The more I think about it the more obvious it seems that linking anything other than the target article dilutes the hook's purpose for no real reason other than imitation of the linking in articles -- but hooks aren't articles and don't have the same purpose. Thoughts? EEng 04:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

My feelings exactly. Any technical term that appears in the hook will of necessity appear in the article, so someone who wants to explore some side issue will just have to click on the hook. This will also circumvent the situation where the auxiliary link is more popular than the hook subject, as in this hook: * ... that Alan Hale, who discovered Comet Hale–Bopp (pictured), said that he "predicted" its appearance would trigger suicides‍—‌and it turned out he was right? where Alan Hale got 12,110 hits and the auxiliary subject, Heaven's Gate (religious group) (the last link), got 21,112 hits – and when the auxiliary link may be siphoning off views from the hook subject, as in this hook: ... that since it honors a notionally illegal cult, suburban Shanghai's Tianfei Palace is officially classified as a museum? where Tianfei Palace (Songjiang) got 10,030 hits and the auxiliary subject, Mazu (goddess), took another 4,151 hits. Yoninah (talk) 14:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
I looked into DYK clicks back in 2010, as summarised at User:EdChem/DYK clicks. Skip to the tables at the end if you don't want the methods used, but I found (from a small sample) that at least half of all additional views of articles on the front page in DYK went to non-bolded articles. At least cutting back on non-bolded links seems wise to me. EdChem (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Good work, and interesting, but the way I see things it doesn't matter. If there are many clicks on "auxiliary" (let's call them) links, then they're siphoning off from the main link and we should therefore eliminate them; and if there are few clicks, then no one's using them anyway. Either way, get rid of them -- just have the one bolded link. EEng 19:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Another example, my DYK for aluminium sulfacetate got 5020 views for the bolded link and 5490 for the only other link (5278 corrected for typical daily views). I didn't link "empyreumatic" to avoid syphoning clicks (and with only a Wiktionary link as a potential target), but didn't expect mordant to be such a popular click. From my DYK for e-baby, there were at least 5000 additional clicks for non-bolded links. Without the extra link, my DYK on section 127 of the Australian Constitution would likely have exceeded 5000 views. The predatory conference DYK had the clicks directed mostly at the bold link, while the aluminium triacetate DYK had a spike in views for all six linked articles. Just this quick survey of these of my recent DYK articles suggests that there is still significant interest in non-bolded links; the question is whether we view this as helpful to readers going to the articles they choose, or unhelpful syphoning of attention from the bolded article. That, to me, connects to another issue being discussed on this page, when the non-bolded links are of poor quality. I am concerned that we are inadvertently highlighting poor articles and wonder if we shouldn't avoid non-bolded links in cases where the target is poor quality. Going to bold-link-only would require an RfC, IMO, to ensure input from interested editors who work on main page content. EdChem (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
You've raised another great point, which I want to repeat: auxiliary links (as I'm calling them) often lead to poor-quality articles, right there from the main page. EEng 22:35, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
I have to agree with removing all unnecessary unbolded links (except for maybe April Fools Day), I've noticed this happen on a few of my hooks too. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
There's something terribly wrong. We've got a sensible proposal for changing the DYK rules, and it's actually gaining traction. EEng 22:46, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
(ec) But we don't need a separate discussion to avoid linking "unnecessary ... links" that's WP:OVERLINK. Come on. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:50, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm a fan of this idea. I think an alternate proposal might be to have some minimal quality standards for auxiliary links. That way it disincentivizes overlinking, but still allows for specialized terms or related topics with good coverage to be linked when appropriate. Just to play devil's advocate though, there may be some value in linking to less-than-stellar articles as it may encourage improvement of them. We may want to think about the impact the added traffic has on improvement of those auxiliary linked articles. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 22:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Noooooooooooooooooo! The last thing we need is to turn every review of one nominated article into a review of 3 more linked articles too. My proposal is to eliminate, by default, all links in hooks other than the bolded link. [Later clarification: The proposal is to not have nonbold links by default, but not forbid nonbold links.] I suppose there might be some special reason to link something once in a while (though I can't think what that would be right now) so the idea isn't to make a rule forbidding such links, just saying that in general auxiliary links should be omitted -- like I just said -- by default. EEng 23:11, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, don't worry, I agree with you wholeheartedly. But this is presumably a discussion, and this will likely be brought up if wider comment is sought. I think that's actually how WP:ITN evaluates its content. They have far less of a backlog though which is probably why it works there and why it wouldn't work here. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 23:18, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Wait... what is "how ITN evaluates its content". What does evaluation of content have to do with anything? We're talking about linking. EEng 23:48, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Non-bold links at ITN (if I remember right) have minimum quality requirements for non-bold linked articles as well as bold-linked articles. Actually it's been a while since I read their guidelines so I might be wrong here. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 23:58, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
It just happened again. For the hook ... that in 1429, John Beaumont, 1st Viscount Beaumont, was knighted by a seven-year-old king?, the bolded article got 3,254 hits, and the cherry at the end of the article, the seven-year-old king, got 6,409 hits. Too much linking is definitely diluting the exposure of our featured articles. Yoninah (talk) 00:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
That's a great example, too. The novelty of a 7yo king is meant to pique interest in the Beaumont article, but by linking the kid-king it completely backfires by drawing all the clicks away. (You have to be careful in interpreting the data, as EdChem points out, to remember that the kid-king gets a lot of clicks normally anyway, but the point remains.) EEng 00:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Could post this here or in the item above. Thalia Awards, linked from the Petra Hřebíčková hook, is unsuitable to be linked to from the homepage. The hook needs to go back for further discussion as the DYK article has an unreferenced section. Schwede66 02:38, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Vote

  • Support proposal 100%. — Maile (talk) 00:20, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support proposal 130% (as proposer, who stole the idea from Gerda). EEng 01:17, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Comment I just noticed that Rule 4 says "Articles for DYK (including other articles linked in the hook) must conform to the core policies of Verifiability, Living Person Biographies and Copyright". To be honest, I don't think I ever remembered to apply that rule to the non-bold-linked articles, and unless I'm very much mistaken no one else (or almost no one else) is either. If we were to actually start trying to do that -- check all the non-bold-linked articles -- I think the entire DYK process would finally come to a total, final, and (if we are lucky) irrecoverable collapse. Realistically I think we have to eliminate non-bold links. EEng 01:28, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
CommentComet I've seen it. That thing where somebody thinks all linked articles should yadda yadda yadda yadda. But that's like saying that all links in the Main Page Featured Article blurb would have to be FA standard. On second thought, I'll see your 130% and raise my support to 130.5%. — Maile (talk) 01:35, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
REMOVED - EEng, that tidbit in the rules was added in August 2016 without consensus, and by someone who doesn't even come up on a QPQ check as having had a DYK. Very limited editing history by that editor. So, I just removed it as no consensus. — Maile (talk) 01:52, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Good. But the point still remains that every time we have a nonbolded link in a hook, we're linking from the main page to an article of completely unchecked quality, and that's a bad thing. EEng 11:03, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Fun with statistics (caveat, these are meant to be quick and dirty summary of the last few months at DYK. There are many problems with drawing conclusions from these statistics. Take them with a grain of salt) I was bored, so I decided to do some statistics and hypothesis testing to try and quantify the problem. The average bold link gets about 2100 views while the average non-bold link gets about 260. This is considered a medium effect size with 32% of bold links getting fewer hits than the average non-bold link. nitty gritty stats Over the last 200 revisions to T:DYK and last ~1770 links in the template, unsurprisingly, bolded links get significantly (t(1770)=660.6, p < 0.00001) more hits than non-bolded links but this could be for a number of reasons. Hits on bolded links were more variable than non-bolded links with bold links having a standard deviation of 5350 hits while non-bold links have a standard deviation of 2000. The effect size is medium at 0.46, meaning that 68% of bolded links are above the mean for non-bolded links were they normally distributed which they most definitely aren't. Do with that what you will. Wugapodes better living through statistics 02:42, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
(I still support the proposal. I think the rationales are fundamentally sound. While the stats show it's not a systemic problem, they also show there are a lot of outliers, and I think reducing those would be a positive) Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 02:45, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Wugapodes, you're a great addition to the project but your statistics are enthusiastic nonsense. EEng 11:03, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
@EEng: Is that a critique of the write-up or the methods? If the former, I've updated it to explain the numbers in regular terms and the more important stuff first. If the latter, yeah, probably, I did it in a couple hours so there are lots of improvements that could be made, but I see them as a tool to answer a question, not an answer themselves. If there's a particular suggestion you have or question you want taken into account let me know. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 18:35, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Wugapodes Good work with your statistical analysis. Just in case you get bored again, I can offer two more hypotheses that you could test. Firstly, if you restrict your analysis to lead hooks, my hypothesis is that the difference in page views between auxiliary links in lead hooks with bold hooks is less than what you found when you tested the sample of all hooks. Secondly, and more importantly, an image referring to an auxiliary link (as determined by the placement of pictured) will result in significantly less difference in page views between auxiliary hook and bold hook. Schwede66 18:57, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Wugapodes, please pardon my bluntness, but misuse of statistics is a hot button of mine. (To quote myself, "Blindly plugging numbers into statistical formulas has caused a lot of problems, as the ex-managers of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants would be able to tell you first-hand (if they weren't both dead, of course).") You seem to be exploring (though incoherently – there's that bluntness again) whether nonbold links get different numbers of clicks than bold links, and that's not the question. The question is whether the presence of nonbold links draws clicks away from bold links. (That, at least, is the statistical question; the still leaves questions statistics can't answer, such as whether that's a bad thing or not, what the ultimate purpose of hooks is, and so on.)
A few things that are obvious, and not obvious, can be seen in the view stats from one hook's appearance last year [2][3][4] – the first is the bold link (Paddy Murphy) and other two are the nonbold links. You don't need any fancy techniques to see that (a) it's necessary to correct for the base number of clicks articles get on a normal day anyway; and (b) the two nonbold links each got 2000 clicks they would not have got had they not been in a hook that day. What's not clear is (c) how many of those clicks would have gone to the bold link (which got 10,000 clicks) had the nonbold links been omitted; and (d) whether we care about that anyway. Answering (c) with any confidence would require an experiment (as would answering Schwede66's question about the effect of pictures -- I can't even understand what Swede's first question is asking). EEng 20:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
EEng For reasons's I'll elaborate on your talk page, I'm not convinced those are systematic biases in the data. However, I am doing more detailed work and will post those results here when I'm finished, for the rest I will respond on your talk page so as not to clutter this page with fancy statistics talk. Wugapodes [thɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 22:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Bias has nothing to do with it. You've computed a bunch of numbers with no clear objective. I'll be happy to discuss this elsewhere, as you suggest. EEng 22:58, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support As I said above having experienced this before, I fully support this and that seven year old king example above is further proof this change is needed. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:39, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose people will just shrug shoulders at hooks they don't get and move on, linking helps stave that off. Also, driving readers to find other pages from the DYK section is a good thing. If everyone could stop being so precious about pageviews of their own nominations, and consider the purpose of the main page more objectively, the thousands of auxiliary hits generated through these other links should be recognised as positive, not negative. P.S. Having done considerable work on OTD lately, their hooks average about three to five times as many hits as the quirky section. They also have auxiliary terms linked. It's not doing them any harm. Perhaps it's just the content of DYK that's the issue, not the way the hooks are linked. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support The whole purpose of the hook is to draw the reader to the new article being featured, not to direct attention all over Wikipedia. Yoninah (talk) 12:59, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think it is unusual for me to agree with TRM, but this is, in my view, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We need links in hooks, because we are dealing with a global audience, who frequently might not have the faintest idea what certain terms are. Links can make a hook hookier if they allow people to click on something and understand the hook. Now I get that there are problems with some links, but this just needs a quick check during the promotion process: in fact, its among the quickest checks we can ask people to perform. Vanamonde (talk) 13:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - If the reader doesn't understand everything in the hook, he can click on the link to find out more. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:56, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    No, he won't bother. He'll just go to OTD instead where the non-quirky factual hooks with auxiliary links get three or four times as many hits as the DYKs do. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Cite your source for this assertion.--Kevmin § 14:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Don't be silly. Pageviews of OTD hooks by far outweigh the general calamitous input at DYK three- or four-fold. Best thing there is there's no "ownership", no "desperate grab for pageviews", just a dedication to the purpose of the encyclopedia. DYK has a lot to learn. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:26, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Anything used in the hook should be in the article itself already. The interest in what an unusual term/person is in a hook should lead to clicking the hook link. I have tried to avoid over-linking in any hook i write as a default, and this just clears up any problems that main page protection crusaders will have.--Kevmin § 14:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose We've always encouraged people to limit the number of links in a hook, and to try to arrange the hook so that the nominated article's hook is first. I'm happy with continuing that practice. Still, there are sometimes terms or phrases that are important to understanding the hook and should be linked there. To forbid other links makes it harder on the reader, who will have to search for it once they get to an article (and it may not be easily seen there), assuming they don't skip over the hook because it's too opaque. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:03, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
The proposal isn't to "forbid" other links, just that they not normally be linked in the same routine way we link stuff in articles -- to take a more conservative approach to linking. EEng 20:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
When I read it and posted my opposition, the proposal said there could only be bold links. If only bold links can be used, non-bold links are therefore forbidden. I see you've revised the proposal, but I'll maintain my oppose; I think encouraging fewer links without heavy-handed rules is the better way to proceed. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:59, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, people started voting before I'd had a chance to really think through what I was proposing. EEng 06:16, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Neutral but leaning more towards oppose than support. I don't mind auxiliary links; in fact, they can be useful. I'm not precious about where readers click; if it's not the bold hook but they are more interested in the auxiliary link, then so be it. What I mind is auxiliary links pointing to stubby stubs, especially when they are in the lead hook, and most certainly when the hook image relates to the auxiliary link. What I like about the proposal is that it will avoid this from happening. But there could be a much simpler way of addressing it, and that is "if it's a stub, it can't be linked to from the hook". Schwede66 19:02, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support the general idea but don't think should be a hard rule. We have too many rules and we already use our editorial judgement in preparing and approving hooks. Andrew D. (talk) 19:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Definitely not meant to be a hard rule (though I didn't make that clear at first). I think the idea is that a hook starts with no nonbold links by default, and they're added very judiciously where they serve the hook's purpose (though I'm note sure I can explain what that means exactly, at this point). EEng 20:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, as I noted above, we already have WP:OVERLINK which should be applied in any case. I can see shedloads of cases where it's necessary to link terms in these hooks, and I can also see that our editorial base and readers will see this as a downgrade just to satisfy the precious pageview-centric DYK nominators. That's not what it's about, as ably demonstrated by OTD. They regularly get pageviews of 10k to 20k for the most mundane things, yet a "good" DYK might creep over 5k. It feels a little like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic so I'm delighted to go along with whatever suggestion gains most traction, but the project should know that they're batting bottom of the pile, despite having a huge portion of the main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:41, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Christ, give it a rest, will you? There's no way to tell why OTD gets more views – it may just have to do with the kind of material that tends to be listed there, nothing about some "quality" difference. Maybe people just like historical stuff more. This isn't to say DYK doesn't have serious quality problems – it does – but this isn't evidence for it.
You may now insert one of your standard lashings-out. EEng 20:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
You mean like "Christ, give it a rest, will you?" That OTD is maintained by one individual, and is free of ego and free of ownership and free of your kind of communication style yet still massively overtrumps DYK in terms of page views is all that needs to be recognised. You can all shuffle around and pretend that what you're doing is the core of DYK essence, to bring "new and improved articles" to the attention of our readers but as it turns out, they couldn't care less. On one day last month, my "talk page" got more hits that the average DYK. You need to give it a rest, you need to look harder at what you're doing, and if re-organising the deckchairs to try to manipulate figures to justify the existence of the project is your thing, go for it. It still doesn't explain why all this arcane effort goes into basically ZERO interest. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:54, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
You're making stuff up as usual. On a random recent day (Jan 9) OTD items (700, 2500, 4500, 6500, 7000) got about the same views as DYK (2200, 3000, 3500, 4000 , 5000, 6000, 6500, 12000), and if anything fewer. A fraction of OTD-listed articles get very high view counts (a recent appearance of my own pet article got 60,000+ views) but much if not most of that can be ascribed to mentions of the subject elsewhere on the net (these being anniversary items, after all), plus OTD items (unlike DYK items) are selected for their general interest in the first place. EEng 22:58, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
You're making stuff up as usual. careful now, that kind of talk could result in a block! And it's noted. In any case, just a day or so ago, OTD smashed DYK into the long grass, embarrassing the quirky project wholesale. And it did it without the personality overdrive (e.g. you) and without the ownership (e.g. Maile, Yoninah) and without the excuses (e.g. Cwmhaerith). It also did it without all the endless and arcane nomination templates, prep areas, queues etc. You really do need to think again if you genuinely believe you're appealing to new editors. This latest attempt to "optimise" DYK to "maximise" hits on a particular page is utter bullshit, perpetuated around a profoundly disturbing need for "pageviews" from the DYK projecteers. How odd. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Let's take some real figures, 12 Jan, OTD had 13,775, 8,578, 5,798, 21,748, and 18,063 hits. Now I'll leave it to you to tell me how may hits the quirky project got. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, for the "mo(u)rning session" DYK got 4,049, 1,204, 1,298, 1,942, 1,062, 643, 3,791. Stunning. Add them all up and get just about what one of the OTD topics (e.g. Occupation of the Ruhr) got. I'd say a three-to-five-fold difference is normal. DYK just doesn't interest our readers right now. So reducing the interest by limiting the links, how does that help our audience since it's been proven that other links generate interest in Wikipedia? Or is it all about the credits? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
(ec) The DYK stats you're giving are for 0000 to 1200 UTC, offpeak for the English wikipedia. For the other 12 hours the stats are 1200, 3000, 4500, 8000, 12000, 14000. And, again, those are for 12 hours (not OTD's 24). What are you trying to prove? You keep ignoring that DYK and OTD are, by design, quite different and wouldn't be expected to get similar numbers of views no matter what. That DYK consumes more editor time than does OTD has already been explained: DYK never runs anything twice and requires a review of the article, while OTD works from the same menu of existing items year after year. EEng 00:12, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Is there any point to this? Or is it a case of "my project is better than your project, doo dah"? By the way, have you seen how many pages link to Occupation of the Rhur? Quite a few more than the average DYK. So it stands to reason you cannot claim that all views for articles on OTD are directly from being in OTD as it has other sources for views. Most DYKs don't have that luxury and gain most of their views from their spot on DYK. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:56, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, of course there's a point. OTD makes little-to-no effort every day to knock up some main page hooks. The audience responds; three or four times more people go for OTD items than DYK items. OTD doesn't ban links on auxiliary topics. That's what this discussion is all about. The Rambling Man (talk) 00:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, as both I and CofE have both tried to get you to understand... (oh, forget it). EEng 00:12, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
TRM, the largest of several flaws in your argument is that you're not correcting for the baseline level of traffic to each article. It's not surprising that brand-new articles have low baseline traffic. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:59, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Oh dear. I suppose you looked at all those OTD pageview graphs, right? The spike shows when it was on the main page. That's the relevance. Not the baseline. The spikes easily outdoes anything on DYK. Take Theodora for instance. The "baseline" hits you refer to averages out at 100. The day it featured it saw 13,775. So that's a hike of 13,675 over the "baseline level of traffic". Significant. Or try the Bulo Marer rescue attempt, baseline average was optimistically 40. The day it featured the pageviews rose to 18,063. So that's a spike of 18,023. So I'm not sure what you're on about. Perhaps your own argument is flawed? The Rambling Man (talk) 08:41, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Opabinia regalis sorry, I forgot to ping you, looking forward to your response about my "largest of several flaws" (sic). The Rambling Man (talk) 22:44, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Good, thanks! If you're going to claim to be Mr. Accuracy, you have to do the stats right. Next step, if you think this is a useful metric, is to look at a larger sample rather than a small handful of articles, making sure to correct for the amount of time an article is linked on the main page. Of course, what that really says is that to a first approximation nobody cares about anything linked on the main page - 6k or 13k is a drop in the bucket of 23 million views. (I believe I'm on the record in past discussions of main-page content in thinking we ought to just delete the main page and replace it with a search box.)
I wasn't (just ;) being snarky in my other comment, though - I'm genuinely surprised and perplexed that someone who has put so much time and energy into highlighting concerns about poor or inaccurate material on the main page would happily advocate for links to unvetted articles, even after seeing evidence that at least some readers are choosing to consume that content instead of clicking on the vetted, bolded link. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Opabinia regalis My stats were accurate, as demonstrated. To the links: somewhat ironically, DYK's auxiliary links may well be a better condition than the target links. All other sections of the main page (TFA, OTD, ITN, TFA, TFL) have auxiliary links to help the reader. They don't "vet" the auxiliary links. Why is DYK so "special"? Is it because the the precious need for pageviews for the DYK owners? There's no evidence anywhere to support that removing auxiliary links will help our readers enjoy the content of Wikipedia, nor will it drive more hits to the bold targets. But you already know that. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • leaning Oppose, we have relevant links to help readers to other relevant topics. This should be as true in a DYK hook as any article. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:53, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • oppose. This is a wiki, the point of which is to provide links not just in indices or contents but within content, so within the article text and on every other user facing page, including the main page. It would be distinctly odd to make DYK the one place this is not practiced. The key thing is to use common sense. Not link every word or even every term that has and article, but link ones that are interesting and relevant to the article or hook.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 22:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    Indeed, despite DYK hooks not being "articles", I still think WP:OVERLINK should apply, i.e. don't link common sense terms, but as and when necessary link terms to avoid ambiguity and to assist our reader, not assist pageviews for our precious DYK nominators. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:48, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Leaning oppose - maybe I'm missing something, but the whole premise of this idea seems off to me. Readers demonstrably do have an interest in the peripheral/auxiliary links (and/or don't always understand the significance of the bolding). Why would we make changes constructed to stop readers from consuming the content they want, so we can redirect them toward consumption of the content we want them to want? Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:56, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    Because it undermines the general "I want hits" mentality of the members of the DYK project. It's not about increasing traffic into Wikipedia, it's not about interesting hooks that embellish the encyclopdia, it's about ring-fencing hits to make the nominator feel great about their singular contribution to Wikipedia. Which, of course, is bollocks. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:59, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    You know, I would've guessed you'd be on the other side of this argument. ZOMG, nobody really ever checks the other linked articles, there might be typos in there! What if we accidentally link from the main page an article whose dashes are the wrong length?? ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:59, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
    Ah yes, of course. The path less travelled, and all that. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:48, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    I'm sure you're enjoying your own little session, but are you actually actively contributing to this discussion or using it as another excuse to demonstrate how to use piped links? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:51, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
    Ah yes, shucks, got me there. Maybe we need a percentage click-thru comparison of how DYK piped links compare with ITN and OTD piped links? Martinevans123 (talk)
    Again you're so clever you're leaving the audience cold, like DYK. I'm just talking about clicks on OTD targets vs clicks on DYK targets. The difference is stark and the irony is that OTD targets take a few moments to select, while DYK targets are subject to a litany of arcane regulations and then usually promoted in a crap state, to then go on to get maybe 1000 page views. The Rambling Man (talk) 00:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
    Cold? I imagine they're dead by now. Who wants a mere 1,000 hits anyway, eh? Martinevans123 (talk) 00:16, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose per The Rambling Man. More clicks are a good thing. A rising tide lifts all boats. If a hook piques the interest of readers in articles about seven-year-old kings, we have succeeded in interesting a reader. Maybe they'll also feel like digging deeper into the subject and click on the main link as well, who knows? It's not a zero-sum game. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:25, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support It might lead to more interesting hooks, because hook-creators can't rely on other links to provide interest. For example, because I had done quite a bit of work on the Dorchester, Dorset article, when it later became a GA and an item in DYK, I took an interest in what the hook was going to be, and I was disappointed to discover that it was "...that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were tried in the Shire Hall at Dorchester?", because it seemed to me to be a hook that made Dorchester almost incidental (and sure enough, the page views show most readers weren't interested in Dorchester - 3,677 for the Tolpuddle Martyrs but only 814 for Dorchester, both from a similar baseline). Now, if the Tolpuddle Martyrs couldn't be linked, maybe a different hook could have been created, one which might have been more interesting with regards to the town of Dorchester. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 01:40, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The point of DYKs is not to stroke creator's egos, but to enlighten readers. Everyone wins if a DYK gets lots of hits for an article that isn't bolded. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose Hooks are better understood if there's links to relevant specific terms. I'll note that only 3 of my 50-60 hooks ever have not had another link in them. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Supportish I agree with Joseph's point and others on that side, but I am more concerned if it is actually true that the non-bold link articles have to be improved first, then this whole thing grinds to a halt on peripheral links - maybe the thing to do is warn noms of this, and add a requirement to noms and reviewers that they have to work on and insist on improvements to peripheral links too (if the standard is that promoters have to not promote these things). My hesitancy is having nomed and reviewed in the past, I don't recall anyone ever mentioning I had to make sure the other linked articles were good too. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:11, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose - As per Schwede66. J947 05:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per MOS:LINK, "Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Wikipedia. Internal links bind the project together into an interconnected whole." DYK and the Main page are both still subject to Wikipedia's MOS, so even if a decision was reached here that additional links should not be provided, it would be largely irrelevant. (Yes, I know the MOS is only a guideline, yah-de-yah.) To provide more justification, we can move onto the next part of the MOS; WP:BUILD "Internal links can add to the cohesion and utility of Wikipedia, allowing readers to deepen their understanding of a topic by conveniently accessing other articles. Ask yourself, "How likely is it that the reader will also want to read that other article?"" So in fact, if we are taking away links because we think people will click on them we are defeating one of the key purposes of Wikipedia. Harrias talk 18:18, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose per TRM & many others. If were still voting... Johnbod (talk) 19:14, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - even if this has been "sold" as my idea, - it isn't, it's just an observation how the German Wikipedia does it. I am all for linking with care, but never for rigid rulez. As a reviewer, I let people know when I think they are diverting the attention for their main subject. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:27, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:BUILD, and because such a strict default for DYK linking creates a problematic precedent, such as in instances when non-bolded links to related articles would make a hook more informative or comprehensive. Such a default could serve to make an already bureaucratic process even more bureaucratic, whereby people will be debating/arguing about whether or not to include a non-bold link relative to an imposed default of not having any. Rather, linkage in hooks should be considered on a case-by-case basis, relative to a hook's overall content. DYK already has enough rules. North America1000 08:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Hold it, people!

As the proposer, I'd like to interrupt for a minute. I made an offhand suggestion, and suddenly everyone's voting. Could we perhaps have a discussion about good approaches to linking? It might help if people find examples of hooks they would have linked differently. Even though I unthinkingly made it sound that way at first, I never meant for there to be an absolute prohibition on hooks, just a conservative approach recognizing that links in hooks might serve a somewhat different purpose than do links in articles.

Please keep the discussion free of tiresome rumbling about how terrible DYK is, how nothing will every pull it from the crapper, etc. Just focus on the question of what is the best approach to linking in hooks.

(signed)--> Your Pal EEng 14:10, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Now then... let's look at

... that in 1429, John Beaumont, 1st Viscount Beaumont, was knighted by a seven-year-old king?

I think seven-year-old king should not have been linked. It's in no way necessary to understand the hook, and (as observed above) competes with it. I'm not sure about knighted -- as some have argued, maybe we should link things that at least some readers might not understand. EEng 14:10, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

... not just because it's a playful or quirky Easter egg link that might amuse some people, or annoy and enrage others? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
... It would have encouraged me to click on the DYK link, not discouraged me. It's straightforward, apply WP:OVERLINK as any other "decision" will be summarily ignored because every hook's linking will become subject to debate over whether it's overlinked or not... The Rambling Man (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
It all depends on what you want readers to look at. If the whole point of DYK is to highlight new content, I would have thought that is more likely achieved by only linking the article with that new content. If DYK doesn't have that purpose, then, er, why the restrictions on which articles qualify for inclusion? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Agree. That sounds like 100% common sense to me. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:08, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
In all of this discussion, it seems like we're not considering what's actually best for the reader, just for the pageview hungry DYK owners. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Well, what is best for readers? Above I posed the question of what DYK is for. Is it legitimate to direct readers to new content? If it is, DYK should be organised to maximise focus on that new content. If it isn't, why have any restrictions on which articles qualify for inclusion in it? If any article could qualify, at least then we might have more interesting hooks. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 17:22, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
That's part of it, and that's done by use of the bold target linking. Auxiliary links help the reader should additional context or subject matter expertise be required. WP:OVERLINK should be all that's needed. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Is DYK primarily meant to encourage readers, by showing them material they had no idea existed? Or is it to encourage editors to create articles that would be interesting to the general readership and expand articles that are currently languishing as stubs? Or perhaps both? How does one find the right balance when these two objectives might conflict? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:36, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
The needs of the reader should far outweigh the needs of the editors. Besides the vast majority of DYKs aren't the first articles created by editors, indeed there's a regular cadre of editors nominating the same old stuff to DYK (Hawaii politics, Indian politics, Paralympic athletes, obscure insects), this isn't benefiting the editing community at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:42, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Without editors to edit there'd be nothing for readers to read, so the needs of editors count too. DYK's mission is to highlight new and expanded content, so the newness of the editor doesn't matter. I agree that the long strings of articles on insects, Pennsylvania waterways, boat races, etc. overdo it. EEng 17:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
As hilarious as I find most of your comments and baiting, please double check how many "boat race" DYKs have run on the main page (out of the possible total, naturally). Otherwise, take your goading elsewhere. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Huh? Anyway, just to reiterate, DYK's mission is to highlight new and expanded content, so whether the editor is new doesn't matter. If the thought of having their work read by interested readers motivates the creation of new articles, that's fine. People who don't write stuff people want to read might not understand that, of course. EEng 21:17, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Huh? I think what you just said there was "stuff that's already been said" and nothing much more. The point here is that we don't you to bait people and we don't need new rules specific to DYK relating to linking. WP:OVERLINK does the job just fine. In the meantime, have a great Saturday! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for reiterating what reiterate means. EEng 21:37, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
You can say that again. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
That. EEng 22:53, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
New and expanded content is only highlighted for the editors who submit here. Regardless, we shouldn't be overriding MoS for clickbait. There was a discussion some years ago about how to write hooks to lead with the bolded link, which is good practice (maybe someone can find it?). Like FAC, DYK should follow regular linking policies. Victoriaearle (tk) 17:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
MOS is for articles (though of course big chunks of it should be applied elsewhere e.g. technical stuff like dates and units of measure). Hooks aren't articles and have a different purpose. Recognizing that wouldn't be "overriding MOS". EEng 18:28, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
While hooks aren't articles, they are complete sentences and there's no reason at all (at least none given here) for all but the quirky hook to comply with MOS and comply with OVERLINK. That way you remove the possibility of yet another tinkering "supplementary rule" in this already arcane and over-the-top system which actively discourages new editors and new articles being nominated through its unnecessary complexity. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:21, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
The reason's been given: to channel traffic to the bookhook. You not accepting the reason doesn't make it not a reason. EEng 21:22, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
The reason isn't sound. There's not reason for our readers to be channeled to the "book", they should be allowed to be intelligently directed to items of interest. Stop tinkering with the deckchairs, this is a waste of time, and as noted above, this isn't zero sum problem; you have precisely zero evidence that just removing all the other links will suddenly result in a leap in DYK hook hits. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
No leap is predicted, nor has anyone but you mentioned zero-sum. Clever how you picked up on my typing book for hook. Devastating! 21:37, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
If Jimbo starts selling books, I'd certainly buy one. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Well it shows how much you pay attention, book, claim of no mention by anyone else, claim of no leap. I begin to wonder if you're having some parallel discussion elsewhere. You're certainly working very hard to undermine anything you've already said in this debate. And honestly, if "no leap is predicted", what's the actual point of this entire discussion? Another case of a solution looking for a problem? More "me me me"? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Why is everything about you? EEng 22:53, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
It's not, you made several errors there, it's all about you. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Not overriding MOS sounds legitimate, except that if that means hooks are written in such a way that readers aren't that interested in looking at the new/expanded article, then, as I asked above, what is the point of the restrictions on which articles qualify for inclusion here? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:01, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

The rumbling having apparently subsided...

...let's try again. How about this?

  • When adding links to hooks, consider whether a given link helps the reader by explaining something unusual understand the hook, or merely distracts from the bolded link.

Thoughts? EEng 22:53, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Let's try again, hooks should comply with WP:OVERLINK. In fact, your suggestion would definitely mean we'd link "seven-year old king" because that's "unusual". You're wasting time here. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:57, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
I asked for "thoughts". EEng 23:12, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, hooks should comply with WP:OVERLINK. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Until now, I've been under the impression that we add links to technical terms, to geocentric features that readers in other parts of the world might not be familiar with (like names of U.S. states), and to names of people or awards. As an aside, I'm wondering if editors involved in this discussion feel that readers actually take the time to click on more than one hook in a link? Do they click on "seven-year-old king", and then go back and click on the bolded article? I doubt it. Yoninah (talk) 00:21, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
I think editors take a variety of approaches to linking in hooks, perhaps unconsciously. I'm beginning to think that the desirable outcome of this discussion would be something like I proposed above in this subthread, simply reminding editors that links in hooks may serve a somewhat different purpose than they do in articles, leaving them to judge for themselves what to do with that, and not legislating some rigid approach.
There's really no way of knowing how many of those clicking on a nonbold link are "lost" i.e. never come back to click the bold link. Certainly it's some proportion of cases, but what proportion seems to be the subject of vigorous speculation, as is the question of whether we should care. EEng 00:32, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
And there it is. There's no such thing as a "lost" click. Anything that encourages an editor to click into Wikipedia from the main page is a good thing. Reducing the number of links to improve the scores of DYK owners is going to be detrimental to that. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Sometimes less is more. It makes more sense to concentrate the click traffic on the main article, where people can then either get a better and fuller explanation within the article or click through to the additional parts of the hook through the main article. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:38, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Not at all, how does it "make sense to concentrate the click traffic"? If a reader happens to discover there's an article about a seven-year-old king but happens to be entirely disinterested by the hook, we can still be hopeful that he'll click on the non-bold link and still enjoy the encyclopedia. Removing links does not serve our reader. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:47, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • @The Rambling Man and EEng: For Chrissake will you both stop? You've both made your point. In this particular case I agree with TRM, but by keeping on at each other you are a) not convincing each other, b) not convincing anyone else, and c) probably driving people away from this discussion by burying it in long threads. Please. Let others weigh in. Vanamonde (talk) 09:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
    Agreed and if we could reduce the snide personalisation too that'd be great. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:33, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I wonder whether we might offer advice to avoid wordings that put the "hooky" parts in non-bolded links. Take the previously mentioned example:

An argument can certainly be made that, as a reader unfamiliar with DYK, I would click on seven-year-old king looking for information on this knighting. But, would I have found it? This fact is much more significant in Beaumont's life than in Henry VI's, so we are arguably not serving the reader with such an Easter Egg link to an article which potentially does not include the fact. One response would be to mandate that any link in a hook go to an article which includes the fact, and so if the fact is not worth including in the article then the article is not worth linking, in that clicking a link in a DYK hook presumably seeks information on the fact. I say "presumably" as my data from 2010 (linked above) includes a hook where [[most valuable player|MVP]] got a large number of clicks, presumably seeking the meaning of the abbreviation. There are also considerable clicks on the image, and perhaps the image should also link directly to the article?

In any case, another possibility is to recommend avoiding what amounts to seductive details in non-bolded links. I would be very interested to find out (though we can't do the experiment) how the clicks would have been distributed for the hook re-worded as:

Would readers intrigued by the King being seven have clicked on the link to Henry VI or to Beaumont? What about these wordings:

My point is that the same information and links can be provided without drawing the likely-only click to an article unlikely to provide information on the fact in the hook. Readers will follow their interests, and that is fine, but we avoid Easter Egg links based on the principle of least surprise, and it is worth wondering what a reader might have expected in the hook as it ran when clicking on "seven-year-old king". EdChem (talk) 10:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

It seems he was five, not seven. Just sayin' Martinevans123 (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
Ok, Martinevans123, and yes, under the principle of least surprise, you have a point... but my comments had nothing to do with reviewing and we all know that going down that road will derail this discussion – again – from the topic. EdChem (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
It now seems that it's not that straightforward. Sources differ. I'm sure we're not going down that road, haha. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I think EdChem has it right: One response would be to mandate that any link in a hook go to an article which includes the fact, and so if the fact is not worth including in the article then the article is not worth linking, in that clicking a link in a DYK hook presumably seeks information on the fact... That's a great way to see it. EEng 00:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Conclusion

A week has passed an no further discussion has taken place, and no consensus appears to have been found to change the way in which hooks are linked. I suggest this section now be closed and archived. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:23, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll close it seven days from the previous post. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:35, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Quick review requested

I'd appreciate a quick review and promotion for Template:Did you know nominations/Grace Bochenek. She is the current acting U.S. Secretary of Energy, and I'd like the hook to run before she is replaced by Rick Perry whenever he gets confirmed by the Senate. It is a short, easy article to review. Thanks! Antony–22 (talkcontribs) 22:29, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Jo-Jo Eumerus for the quick review. It is ready to be promoted. Antony–22 (talkcontribs) 20:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
 Done Promoted to Prep 5, corresponding to daytime in U.S. Yoninah (talk) 22:41, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 6 - meal at noon

Sundial cannon
Sundial cannon
  • ... that sundial cannons (example pictured), triggered by the sun, fire at noon to signal dinnertime?

To my ears, the use of "dinnertime" in the hook is a bit problematic. These days, most people have lunch at noon. And in some cultures, the concept of having "dinner" at noon isn't well known. Is there a better way to word this? Schwede66 23:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

ALT1: ... that in the early 20th century, sundial cannons (example pictured), triggered by the sun, fired at noon to signal it was time for the midday meal? Yoninah (talk) 00:47, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Does it really matter what interpretation was placed or intended for the signal? Couldn't it be shortened to:

(ALT2): ... that early 20th century sundial cannons (example pictured) were triggered by the sun to fire at noon?
(ALT2a): ... that early 20th century sundial cannons (example pictured) were triggered by the sun to signal noon by firing?

If you want to keep the interpretation:

(ALT2b): ... that early 20th century sundial cannons (example pictured) were triggered by the sun to signal lunch time by firing at noon?
(ALT2c): ... that early 20th century sundial cannons (example pictured) were triggered by the sun to fire to signal lunch time?

ALT2b could be re-worded along the lines of: "to signal meal time by ...", or "to signal time for the midday meal by ...", or other similar variants; ALT2c could be re-worded along the lines of: "to fire to signal meal time?", or "to fire to signal time for the midday meal?", or other similar variants. My choice, for whatever that is worth, would be ALT2a. Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 02:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Happy with ALT2a. I probably have time to promote two prep sets. Am rather 'handicapped' with one-handed typing, though (donating platelets), hence would appreciate others tidying up prep6 (this thread and the above). Schwede66 04:37, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I have moved the hook to Prep 4, but it needs attention because the image needs to match the hook, the image being a household ornament not a full size cannon summoning workers to a meal. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:08, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I have altered the hook as suggested above in ALT2, leaving out the twentieth century reference. An afterthought, what happened to dinner time on cloudy days? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:40, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
I wondered that, too. I suppose those were fasting days. Schwede66 08:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
The obvious replacement for the original hook would be
ALT3 ... that sundial cannons (example pictured), triggered by the sun, fire at noon to signal mealtime?
David Eppstein (talk) 02:00, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just promoted this prep set to the queue but need confirmation by another admin that all is good (David Levy would know). The sundial photo isn't on Commons, but it's uploaded to WP only. I've used the normal protection template, but I wonder whether that is what one would do in such a case?

With regards to the hook text, I haven't further adjusted it but left it as it was. If that's not right, please comment further. Schwede66 06:04, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Removed hook from the main page

Template:Did you know nominations/Lvinaya Past @Jo-Jo Eumerus, Mindmatrix, and Yoninah:

The source only discussed eruption in the South Kurils, not the Kuril Islands in total. " The largest eruptions in the southern Kurile Islands occurred in the Late Pleistocene: on Kunashir Island, Golovnin (Tomariyama) and Mendeleev (Raususan) volcanoes have occurred caldera-forming eruptions (ca. 38–40 ka BP: Melekestsev et al., 1988). The largest Holocene eruption occurred at Lvinaya Past (Moikeshi) volcano on Iturup Island (9400 ± 60 BP), forming a large caldera, which is flooded now by sea"[5] (this is the longer version of the sentence used at the Template to source this: the remainder of the article also makes it clear that this "largest" is only about the South Kuril Islands).

I have limited time, so feel free to readd a corrected version to the Main Page when there is consensus for it. Fram (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Seems like specifying Southern Kuriles would suffice (I don't think Hokkaido is usually considered part of the Kuriles), although I am not aware of any Holocene larger eruptions in the rest of the Kuriles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:17, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Restored with more specific wording. Harrias talk 14:27, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I don't claim that there were larger eruptions in the Northern Kuriles or not, but the hook didn't reflect the claim in the source and made an unsourced claim, so... Fram (talk) 14:29, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Not researched whether it is really larger or not, just for consideration: Tao-Rusyr Caldera. According to List of Quaternary volcanic eruptions, it produced 4 to 5 times as many tephra, and a caldera of comparable dimensions. Fram (talk) 14:34, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 4 Lizzie Borden

... that Chloë Sevigny is portraying the role of the real-life ax-murderer Lizzie Borden in the upcoming film Lizzie?

Why isn't it "accused ax-murderer"? The article does say "ax-murderer", but it also says she was acquitted. The Lizzie Borden article does not state her guilt as a fact; it says the case is still controversial. Art LaPella (talk) 02:37, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think simply changing the hook is enough, given the phraseology in the article. As you say, the terminology makes it sound like she definitely did it, but she was acquitted and there is nothing to suggest that new evidence came to light after her death that should change this. I don't even think "accused ax-murderer" is appropriate; I know that this clearly isn't a BLP, but it is still negatively labelling someone that has never been found guilty of the crime. Harrias talk 07:40, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
I edited the article and suggest this hook:
ALT1: ... that Chloë Sevigny portrays the accused ax-murderer Lizzie Borden in the upcoming film Lizzie?
Pinging @Captain Assassin!:, who created the page, to join this discussion. Yoninah (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
It's not a BLP, but it's still POV. She was never convicted and I never thought the case against Borden was impressive. Anyway, "portraying the role of the [accused] real-life ax-murderer" is needlessly wordy when you can just say "portraying the [accused] real-life ax-murderer". Yoninah's alt is a lot better. Ribbet32 (talk) 21:30, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
I've updated the hook in prep 4 to the ALT1 suggestion here. Harrias talk 21:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #3 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:22, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Nothing happened, so the set meant to appear now is still in prep 3. I don't know about other time-related hooks there, but know that Laudato si' is supposed to run tomorrow and is now in prep 5. Could it be swapped, to prep 4 or even prep 3? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for a fast response! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:23, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt, you're welcome, though I actually didn't see this until now, well after I moved the hook. I also moved the Poulenc hook from Prep 1 to Prep 6 so it should run on Monday as requested. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:36, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you even more for unprompted fixes! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #4 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:08, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Queue 2

Isn't "Blessed Virgin Mary" a little heavy-handed for a piped link? Several other options were offered in Template:Did you know nominations/Oliveto Citra. Yoninah (talk) 14:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

The article is about an apparition that supposedly appeared to the villagers who would have been Catholics. "Blessed Virgin Mary" is used extensively by the Catholic Church, the "Blessed" being an honorific showing respect. If someone wants to change it in the hook I will not object. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:12, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
Removed "Blessed". Harrias talk 21:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Main page hook seems to be incorrect (or meaningless at least)

Template:Did you know nominations/Long Military Service Cross (Spain) @Jionunez, Yoninah, and Cwmhiraeth:

I have not pulled or changed this one, but it seems to me to be a meaningless (or even wrong) hook. Looking at the source[6], I see that the medal was created by law in 1958, and changed by law multiple times. In 1994, by royal decree (as far as I can tell, all alws in Spain are a "royal decree", making the "Juan Carlos I approved" meaningless as this is just a ceremonial approval of the law passed by Parliament), it was more or less abolished because it was integrated in the Royal and Military Order of Saint Hermenegild. They soon realised that this left one group of military personnel in the cold, and so in 2002 the law was again changed so that those military people who were not eligible for the Hermenegild could still get an award for staying with the army for a long time.

This means that the order was established (by law) in 1958, and changed (with royal approval) on multiple occasions, including Royal Decree 38 of 1986. The 2002 date was just the latest(?) in a series of changes to the specific rules for the order, a standard change as happens to most orders over the lifetime of them.

To me at least the hook gives the impression that the order was not lawful or official between 1958 and 2002 (false), and that Juan Carlos himself intervened in 2002 to make it official (false, as it was already official and the role of Juan Carlos I was ceremonial, not substantial).

I suggest removal of the hook, but wanted to give people a short while to comment first to see if I missed something here. Fram (talk) 08:26, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Based on Fram's description, perhaps:
Do these seem accurate and comprehensible? EdChem (talk) 08:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
  • The first one definitely not, as Juan Carlos wasn't king in 1958 :-D The second one? It is not clear that the order was ever de-established, it just was, if I understand things correctly, impossible for anyone to receive it between 1994 and 2002. Fram (talk) 09:06, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I have now removed it from the main page. Fram (talk) 09:40, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Fram, you are certainly correct about my first suggestion, I forgot to check when Carlos became King! Given the ambiguity in the 1958-2002 period, fixing while on the main page became impractical. It's a pity this wasn't raised at the nomination or in the preps / queues, perhaps it's an example of the potential issues with AGF ticks on foreign-language sources. I wonder if we should ask that attempts be made to contact a native speaker in such cases? We could create a list of editors willing to look at sources in languages other than English, who can assist on just the source to assist reviewers. I know that my last foreign-language supported hook benefited very much from a reviewer (and input I requested from another editor) who spoke the relevant language. EdChem (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

LifeRing Secular Recovery

Hi, I notice this is queued for just after midnight UTC, but the hook has been changed from "...that LifeRing Secular Recovery has online as well as face-to-face meetings and email support groups, for people trying to beat alcohol and drug addiction without religion?" and now has no mention of the online and email focus of LifeRing. Can this hook be reinstated as it's kind of a very important aspect of the page, and the hook as it stands is not as informative. I understand the constraints of the physical space but maybe it could go in another day? Many thanks Mramoeba (talk) 15:12, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

To be honest, though it was Yoninah that made the change, I fully agree with it. The hook was convoluted in that form, and was bordering on being too promotional in aspect too. Harrias talk 16:27, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
Ok thanks, I guess you guys do far more of this than I do, I'm no good at writing hooks, I was just surprised as I thought that was what the review was for. Mramoeba (talk) 18:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
I am the reviewer of that nomination, and recall making sure that sources supported the different modalities, which I did find interesting. There were a number of areas which needed tweaking, and I appreciate that Mramoeba worked to address them; the article is very much main-page worthy, in my view. However, from a hookiness perspective, I agree with Harrias, Yoninah's alteration does make for a better hook – actually, I'm a little embarrassed that I confirmed the accuracy of the hook but didn't comment on the possibility of shortening it. The fact that would lead me to look at the article (and indeed, which led me to doing the review) was that they offer a secular alternative to AA, and that is more prominent in the shortened form. Mramoeba, DYKs are checked at four points: By the reviewer in discussion with the nominator and editors and anyone else who jumps in; by the promoter, who closes the nomination and places the hook into a prep set; by the admin who moves the set into a queue; and, by those who check preps and queues. In theory, most issues should be caught in the first (review) step, but the DYK project has ongoing issues with variations in quality and the last check by editors watching the preps / queues is catching and fixing quite a few issues too. Minor changes to hooks (such as happened here) are often done unilaterally, and it is wise for nominators / editors of the articles to watch the preps and queues for these, and to ask (as you did) if something happens that you find concerning. The change is no reflection on you (or on me), it's just an example where more people working together lead to better outcomes, and it's not the kind of change that points to an inadequacy in an earlier stage – unlike cases where a serious flaw in the article or hook is spotted. As for your hook writing, shorter is generally hookier, and I hope you get plenty of practice in writing hooks for future DYK submissions. :) Yoninah, thanks for watching the preps / queues and looking to improve hooks, your change here is definitely an improvement. :) EdChem (talk) 23:07, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
No worries, I'll try to keep it short in future. Thanks for all your help, people. Mramoeba (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #6 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:19, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

  • This appears to be a false positive caused by not replacing {{User:DYKUpdateBot/REMOVE THIS LINE}} with {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} which I have done, but I'd appreciate it if somebody were to confirm that things are now okay. Vanamonde (talk) 10:52, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #1 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 22:05, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Oldest nominations needing DYK reviewers

The previous list was archived a few hours ago, so here's a list of the 36 oldest nominations that need reviewing, which includes all those through December 28. Right now the nominations page shows 255, of which 76 have been approved, but that doesn't include the 52 nominations that can't transclude because we have too many transcluded templates to show them all, 18 of which have also been approved. Thanks to everyone who reviews these, especially the 18 that are over six weeks old, left over from the last list, and urgently need a reviewer's attention.

Over two months old:

Over six weeks old:

Other old nominations:

Please remember to cross off entries as you finish reviewing them (unless you're asking for further review), even if the review was not an approval. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 04:47, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 6

@FallingGravity: The image caption reads like a rollover caption. Isn't there a name for this work? Yoninah (talk) 18:59, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

@Yoninah: The best I know of is "Risqué stereo-view of unidentified woman, c. 1900.". FallingGravity 19:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I think we should go with that. I'll edit the caption. Yoninah (talk) 19:11, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Extremely disappointed

This conversation has run its course, per WP:NOTAFORUM at the very least. BencherliteTalk 23:46, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
An impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, border wall, yesterday (well maybe a few years before that)

I found out today that that the opportunity presented by Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Neopalpa_donaldtrumpi did not lead to the hook

Did you know ... that donaldtrumpi has a scaly yellowish head and small genitalia?

I am extremely disappointed in all of you. EEng 02:06, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Well ... if they'd gone with that, at least the error report wouldn't have been so, er, um, well... whatever it was. — Maile (talk) 02:17, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
EEng Believe me, I was tempted... Schwede66 04:14, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
No excuses. Greatness was within our reach, and you fumbled it. All of you. I weep. EEng 04:20, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Not clever enough to accuse me of splitting hairs, eh, Maile. --Dyspeptic skeptic (talk) 10:50, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Ah, ha ha. This bunch is a laugh a minute. — Maile (talk) 12:14, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
I'll be very surprised if another opportunity arises to highlight what could be (hard to say -- there's been a lot of competition recently) the lowest moment in the history of American politics, if not all human politics throughout history, to wit a contender for the presidential nomination of one of the major American parties bragging about the size of his penis on stage. And of course the scaly yellowish head would have been a delicious bonus. EEng 16:25, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
I dunno. I have the feeling that DYK has recently been presented with a gift that keeps on giving (at least for 4 years) with quirky hook possibilities, if not lead hooks. — Maile (talk) 17:01, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Note: I've again reverted one editor's attempt to close this discussion. For those who are interested, his comments may be seen here [7]. EEng 20:22, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Please, continue! Always fun to see people belittling a living person for personal amusement. Glad BLP has a humor and disagree with politics exception! Ravensfire (talk) 21:10, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
We will build a wall to shield us from him, and we're going to make OTD pay for it! :) The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:14, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
Those who know me know that I'm an equal-opportunity belittler of fools and hypocrites in high places. The fact that Trump and his sycophants provide such plentiful raw material is something you'll need to take up with them‍—‌in fact, the hope of prompting assholes to straighten up and fly right is one of the key reasons political humor is important. EEng 21:25, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
We're still having a problem with one editor repeatedly trying to close this discussion. Also, perhaps one of the admins participating (Schwede66, Ritchie333, Maile66, Jo-Jo_Eumerus) could have a talk with this person about his WP:TPO violation in removing others' posts i.e. Special:Diff/761963726. EEng 23:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I want to thank administrator Bencherlite for thoughtfully collapsing. No, wait, that might have come out wrong. Collapsing transitive, not intransitive. Anyway, if there are any serious comments about the the extent to which politically charged hooks are appropriate, no doubt they're still welcome. EEng 00:09, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
P.S. Does anyone have any idea why this comment is coming out above the collapse box???

Now I've remembered to make the top/bottom templates match, it doesn't.... BencherliteTalk 00:13, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
That was a really neat trick. Here's a permalink [8] because the day may come when we might want to drive a fellow editor completely crazy. EEng 00:52, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Now I do get it, that The Wikipedias is Serious Bizzness, but I'm a wee bit disappointed at the repeated attempts to shut the discussion down. In fact, I think that there is a perfectly valid issue about DYK to be discussed. Hooks are encouraged to be "hooky", but I wonder about the role of humor. At Template:Did you know nominations/John Hughes (neuroscientist), I offered three possible versions, and the first (with some slight further editing) was what was put on the main page. But a part of me was quietly rooting for ALT2. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:23, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Why quietly? It was completely appropriate and by far the best. As to humor, by now you're thoroughly familiar with one of my favorite quotations: "Great men of all nations and of all times have possessed a keen appreciation of the ridiculous, as wisdom and wit are closely allied." It's amazing the extent to which those who don't get it are so often certain that means there's nothing to get. Either that or they're so angry at being left out that they have to spoil it for others. EEng 00:52, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
The reason that I did not express a preference was that I wanted to do a sort of experiment, and see what would happen if I exerted no influence. (And I was entirely happy with the way it ended up.) And I'm asking here in order to get a sampling of what other editors think about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Looking at the John Hughes nomination, I see a mention that ALT2 is ok on sourcing, but nothing that indicates to the promoter either which ALT or ALTs are approved or which are the options in the case the choice is being left for the promoter. Best practice is (or should be) that the tick specifies one of these. EdChem (talk) 02:24, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
That's a good point. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
As the reviewer of the John Hughes DYK, let me say that I specifically exclude any problematic hooks (with explanation in my review, and by striking the offending hook), and will otherwise state the remaining hooks are OK. I leave it to the promoter to choose the best hook, and the nominator to place the favoured hook as the lead. (For the record, I preferred ALT2 as well.) Mindmatrix 03:52, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a good point: I could have instead put ALT2 first. When I have reviewed, I've always stated my preferred hook as part of my review. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Christmas Eve night is December 25? Claimed to be the world's tallest but Guinness still has a different tree? Same AP source used twice? I don't see a source that definitely says when it was lit? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:39, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Donald Trump can buy it and call it his "big woody". EEng 07:15, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
It's not uncommon for the Guinness Book of Records to take months to confirm records. I tidied the article slightly, removing mention of Dec 25; the sources back up that it was Christmas Eve. Harrias talk 08:31, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Harrias, for the on-topic and swift reply. Much appreciated. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:30, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Featured lists

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


In line with the existing eligibility criteria of GAs being eligible for DYK, I've just I propose adding the following line to DYK Eligibility criteria:

  • "Lists designated as Featured lists within the past seven days, regardless of whether they were expanded, are also eligible."

Hope that's alright. Lourdes 11:20, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

That seems perfectly reasonable to to me but I expect it to receive a certain amount of backlash here. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
:) I hope not. Thanks. Lourdes 11:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I've edited my initial statement and am looking forward for responses from fellow editors. Thank you. Lourdes 11:26, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Now moot, let's not let the how interfere with the discussion of this proposal EdChem (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

== Featured Lists ==

Lourdes has just added newly-promoted feature lists as eligible for DYK with the edit summary "add and propose". I am unaware of any discussion having agreed to this change to DYK eligibility. If I missed it, would someone please point it out to me? If it hasn't been discussed then I suggest Lourdes be reverted and a discussion held, as changes at WP:DYK should have consensus or be absolutely uncontroversial (like fixing a typo). EdChem (talk) 11:23, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Hello EdChem, I've undone the change. I've already added a section above this discussion for suggestions from editors. Thanks. Lourdes 11:25, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not overtly against this, but I wonder whether there is any conflict with such a list being simultaneously eligible for DYK and TFL. They are very different things, and I don't think it is an issue though. Harrias talk 12:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Featured Lists and Featured Articles already have their own separate slots on the main page. If we are not including Featured Articles, why would we include Featured Lists? The only reason GA was included, is because GA did not otherwise have have its own slot on the main page. — Maile (talk) 12:47, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
    But recent death subjects can feature in ITN and DYK. So there's already a precedent for items to feature in two sections of the main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose Horses for courses. The point of being a featured list is eligibility for the featured list section of the main page. DYK doesn't tend to do list content; list entries are specifically excluded in tools like the DYK Check. Andrew D. (talk) 13:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Andrew Davidson, lists are included in DYK noms. As per Wikipedia:Did you know#Eligibility criteria: "Lists: Proposed lists need 1,500+ characters of prose, aside from the listed items themselves." Lourdes 14:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Two factually incorrect statements in such quick time. (1) The point of being a featured list is eligibility for the featured list section of the main page not true. In fact, FLs have only featured relatively recently on the main page, initially just once a week as well. Twice a week now, but that's another matter. (2) DYK doesn't tend to do list content that's hogwash. If a list is improved to meet the arcane requirements of DYK, it's perfectly legitimate to see it running. As Lourdes says, it's even indoctrinated in the rules! The Rambling Man (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose The logic behind GAs being included was that this would be their only chance to hit the main page, since there was no way otherwise to appear on the main page. For Featured Lists, there is a spot on the main page for them, so they will have that chance. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:58, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
    One FL is featured twice a week. Do you know how many FLs there are? Right now the answer is 3,093. So if each one got its "chance", and no others would be promoted, we'd have enough of a backlog to service until 2046. Plus, considering the scarcity of featured lists being promoted or even nominated at DYK, what's the big issue? Is there some kind of protectorate in force to ban other types of quality, recently improved material? I knew the regulars would be here to oppose this, so I'm not surprised at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:44, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Then spend the energy to increase the number of days that FLS appear on the main page, rather then shoehorning them into DKY. The number of days is not something DYK should be taking up the backlog of.--Kevmin § 18:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Well funny you should say that as it was me that spear-headed the push for FL on the main page and then pushed for twice a week. So thanks for your encouragement!! As for The number of days is not something DYK should be taking up the backlog of., that's one of the bizarre things I've ever read on Wikipedia. You realise that only two or three FLs get promoted per week right? You know that this won't "take up the backlog of"? Perhaps a little research would help construct a more orderly and defensible position here. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Its not the place of DKY to deal with the backlog of FL's that have not been featured on the mainpage. Your feigned lack of understanding of that point and accusation that the point is bizarre means nothing in this situation.--Kevmin § 19:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not even sure what DKY is, and there's no issue here with FL backlog, I was simply contextualising for those who have no idea about featured lists. I.e. that one or two or three get promoted every week. Your personal attack (... feigned lack of understanding ... is noted however. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose As noted there was no other way for GAs to appear on the MP. The rebuttal that FL's only appear twice a week is irrelevent, as they still have a dedicated slot, and most likely no statute of limitations. Its moot to constantly bring up the time.--Kevmin § 18:51, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
    Not at all. Your opposition is founded in ill-logic. But never mind. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
    Oh sorry, the time. Yes, it's five past seven. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Its not founded on ill-logic. Its merely an opinion you dislike, and as such you feel that ridicule is the only option available to you, fully breaching WP:civil as custom. This is why no one cartes what you say, and why you have no ground to stand on with your position.--Kevmin § 19:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment suggest this is closed, it's clear the DYK regulars have no appetite for new and interesting and decent quality lists that may be of interest to our readers, despite only two or three being promoted per week (i.e. nowhere near the massive tranche of mediocre insects, Indian politicians from the 1970s, Hawaii personalities, Swedish television presenters etc that get promoted every day). The project is determined to keep its borders closed, like Trump, and to prevent any new innovation from enriching the daily dull dose of so-called hooks. So sorry to Lourdes for trying to make this a better place only to be dismissed out of hand by the regulars. So much for encouraging new content from new editors to the project! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Again, when seeing that you are not getting your way, you have posted more blatantly uncivil and attacks on the project. Why should we put up with your blatant disdain for anything that does not go how you feel it should?--Kevmin § 19:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • It's my opinion that this project is ring-fenced to protect its own, it summarily accepts mediocrity for main page inclusion, sometimes much worse, and that the users involved can't see the wood for the trees. That's not blatantly uncivil, that's not an attack, it's a statement. One that I believe in. If you don't like it, don't respond, do something else. If you actually believe that I've breached WP:CIVIL, take me to ANI right now, or else I'd suggest you stop claiming otherwise. Your continual reversion to such claims is actually becoming a little wearing, and we need to have it out. Find some proper indiscretions, take me to ANI, get me banned. Or else stop crying wolf every time I say something you don't like to hear. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Kevmin let's see it then. Either an ANI trip with all your strong evidence of "uncvil" (sic) behaviour or you stop pretending it's happening. We don't want false accusations left unresolved. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:41, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Uncivil behavior

At what point should the project continue to tolerate unrelenting breaching of WP:Civil? Every time the problems with TRM have been pointed out, discussion of the problem is closed and we are urged to move on. This only makes the project more and more toxic, as no one wants to be the focus of TRMs attacks. While TRM is constantly saying to take the problem to ANI, that will fail as there has been no attempts here to resolve the issue. It NEEDS to be addressed now, as it will not change if it is not, and the project will fail due to toxicity.--Kevmin § 20:29, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd like the diffs please. And as we all know, this is way beyond a local solution, if there's a real problem with "uncivil" (sic) behaviour then we need to address it centrally, hence my request to take it to ANI, with all associated diffs regarding "uncivil" (sic) behaviour. Or is it just that you don't actually like me so you feel obliged to have a go at me if we ever disagree? I'm not sure. I've sparred with many here, and many of whom loathe my very existence yet tacitly accept that we're in it for the encyclopaedia, for better or for worse. You, on t'other hand, seem otherwise inclined. See you in court! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
@Kevmin: I would collect diffs and head to arbitration enforcement. There's a lower bar than incivility with TRM. Quoth the Arbcom: "The Rambling Man (talk · contribs) is prohibited from insulting and/or belittling other editors.
"If The Rambling Man finds himself tempted to engage in prohibited conduct, he is to disengage and either let the matter drop or refer it to another editor to resolve.
"If however, in the opinion of an uninvolved administrator, The Rambling Man does engage in prohibited conduct, he may be blocked for a duration consistent with the blocking policy. The first four blocks under this provision shall be arbitration enforcement actions and may only be reviewed or appealed at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. Should a fifth block prove necessary, the blocking administrator must notify the Arbitration Committee of the block via a Request for Clarification and Amendment so that the remedy may be reviewed." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
I agree, if there's a collection of diffs that show that, then please head straight to Arbcom and get me banned. Thanks to Ed for regurgitating the Arbcom ruling, which we're all aware of. In the meantime, I'm waiting for him to turn the text in the ITN section orange. By the way, by prohibited conduct, is that like, sniffing glue? Or a 4G inverted dive with a MIG 28? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:19, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Are you aware, though? You really seem to like to toe that belittling line. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:29, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
That was always the problem with Abrmoc's ruling. "Belittling" is purely subjective. I don't believe I've belittled anyone or anything, but you, as an admin, have the power, right now, to block me based on your own subjective view of that ruling. It's utter bullshit, but hey, such is life. You really seem keen to pull the trigger, always there to help other users know that I'm on that fine line, always there to remind me that "any moment now" I can be extinguished from Wikipedia's history, like it's a little holiday moment for you. I don't care really, if you want to destroy and expunge editors who actively improve Wikipedia, that's fine. If you want to keep editors who are under sanction, "under your gun" that's fine too, it maybe fulfils something in your life you have absent right now. But please, at least, be honest about it. If I told someone to fuck off, or that I hope they died soon, or that their article was shit, fine. But right now, you and your gun-slingers are clutching at thin straws to get me banned from Wikipedia. The truth be told, I usually make more positive contributions before breakfast every day than you do in a month. Is that belittling, or is that fact? I guess the block button will let me know. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
This is getting off topic, so I've followed up on your talk page. Others may wish to as well; it's a genuine plea to get the old TRM back. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:12, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #5 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 22:59, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

8th hooks being added after Queue is loaded for the main page

David Levy you have twice added an 8th hook to sets, on Template:Did you know, with the edit summary "recycled hook to improve main page balance". You added Jan 29 main page, Makasib -where was this recycled from? And to the current hooks on the main page, you've added Alison Hughes that already appeared on on the Main Page on Jan. 21. Why are you changing the number of hooks in a set without consensus here? And why are you deciding which hooks should be added, without a consensus here? — Maile (talk) 13:07, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Items are routinely added or removed from sections of the main page to maintain balance (that is, the left side being roughly equal in length to the right side). Typically in the past, this has not included DYK, but there was no requirement for that preferential treatment. Items on the main page are subject to discussion at WP:ERRORS, which was the case for both of these instances. Both times the hooks were recycled from sets that recently already run, ensuring that they had gone through our approval process, and were still relevant to the DYK aims if showcasing new material. Harrias talk 13:20, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Harrias explained the situation accurately.
I selected relatively short hooks (to avoid overcorrection) and sought topics distinct from those already present. The Makasib hook originally appeared on 26 January. —David Levy 13:32, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
It's a good solution to a common problem of making sure the main pages is balanced. Better to add than to take away from other sections. I don't see what the big deal is, but I knew it was just a matter of time before someone here complained about it. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:02, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Concerns are not necessarily complaints, but I digress. North America1000 14:32, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Date relation again

Any chance to swap Cello Sonata No. 1 (Reger) out for FP (Poulenc) in, prep 1. Poulenc died on this day while Reger's work is just a little late for Reger Year 2016, and a few days more don't matter. The catalogue was just approved yesterday, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:13, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't look, for several reasons, - will wait. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:37, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
  • People should not date their relations -- can lead to birth defects. EEng 17:15, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Queue 1 - Deseret alphabet

".. that at one point, street signs in Salt Lake City were written in the Deseret alphabet (pictured)?" nom.

The source actually says "it was used on at least some street markers". The hook implies that all signs used it. It should say "some street signs". Cwmhiraeth, Yoninah, Psiĥedelisto. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Right. I took "street signs" to mean "some street signs", but I could see how this could be misconstrued. Could an administrator fix this please? Yoninah (talk) 17:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it makes a statement that "street signs" were written in "Deseret alphabet", not that just a few were. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
This queue goes live very soon (about 20 min from now AFAICS), and I concur that "some" is needed. I think "at one point" should be changed to "at one time", making:
@Maile66, Casliber, and Graeme Bartlett: As DYK-active admins who have edited WP recently (last hour or so), would one of you please update the queue before it goes to the main page? Thanks. EdChem (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Added. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry about that guys! I thought that the sentence would be interpreted as some and was trying to keep the hook short. But now that I'm reading it again, I can see the ambiguity ... Psiĥedelisto (talk) 23:48, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

No main page update

I'm off to bed, so I can't look into it, but for some reason, despite the fact that the Queue is populated, the main page update hasn't happened. Can anyone have a look into it? Harrias talk 23:20, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it may be because someone has realised how far late the updates have got in recent days and decided it would be more pragmatic to hold one set on for a couple of extra hours to bring it back into sync rather than letting it take forever to naturally return. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:26, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Actually, it's not that at all: the DYKUpdateBot appears to have died. I've notified Shubinator on his talk page. I don't know that there are any admins around who can handle a manual update, but I'll see if I can find someone. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:15, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
Updated by Materialscientist, to whom many thanks. Now, if some admin could promote a prep or two, so we're ready for next time... BlueMoonset (talk) 00:45, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

In less than two hours Did you know will need to be updated, however the next queue either has no hooks or has not been approved by an administrator. It would be much appreciated if an administrator would take the time to ensure that DYK is updated on time by following these instructions:

  1. Check the prep areas; if there are between 6-10 hooks on the page then it is probably good to go. If not move approved hooks from the suggestions page and add them and the credits as required.
  2. Once completed edit queue #1 and replace the page with the entire content from the next update
  3. Add {{DYKbotdo|~~~}} to the top of the queue and save the page

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Prep 3

"... that injury stopped Lorne Crerar from gaining a full international cap as a player, but 20 years later he took part in two Rugby World Cups as a judicial officer?"

I just thought I'd point out that this just needs a minor edit as the hook says he took part in 2 World Cups when the article says he took part in 4 World Cups but only did 2 of the finals. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:32, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
I see you have amended the hook. Thanks. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:16, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Pioneer Cabin Tree

Pioneer Cabin Tree was featured on ITN a few weeks ago and is now on DYK. I thought ITN items are not eligible for DYK, or has the rule changed recently? -Zanhe (talk) 02:21, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Articles featured at ITN as bolded links are not eligible: articles featured as unbolded links, including in the RD section (which is where this was: link) are still eligible. There has not been any change that I am aware of. Vanamonde (talk) 07:23, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. -Zanhe (talk) 05:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Prep 6 image slot

Template:Did you know nominations/Nunc dimittis (Pärt) is a special occasion request for February 2. Since I approved it, I'd appreciate another editor moving it to the image slot which I reserved for it in Prep 6. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 22:52, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks like February 2 is a busy day for music hooks. I just found this one buried on the noms page and reviewed it. It can also be placed in Prep 6. Yoninah (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I completely forgot that one, thank you for digging. How about that one for prep 5, and Sonja Kehler to prep 6, - to split the musical ones? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:39, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
OK, I moved Sonja Kehler to Prep 6. Template:Did you know nominations/Thomas Thomaschke is ready to move to Prep 5. Yoninah (talk) 00:48, 1 February 2017 (UTC)