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Did the transition to a 8-hour cycle work? I ask because the [[T:DYK/Q]] still shows that the queues are being cycled every six hours. Since I could barely find enough usuable hooks for a six-hook update, the replace rate desperately needs to be slowed down. <i>[[User:Grondemar|–]][[User talk:Grondemar|Grondemar]]</i> 13:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC) |
Did the transition to a 8-hour cycle work? I ask because the [[T:DYK/Q]] still shows that the queues are being cycled every six hours. Since I could barely find enough usuable hooks for a six-hook update, the replace rate desperately needs to be slowed down. <i>[[User:Grondemar|–]][[User talk:Grondemar|Grondemar]]</i> 13:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC) |
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: We didn't change it. The cycle doesn't need changing because there are 169 total hooks at T:TDYK. The problem you had is in regards to the number of ''verified'' hooks, not the total number, which is a different issue. [[User:Gatoclass|Gatoclass]] ([[User talk:Gatoclass|talk]]) 14:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC) |
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== Queue 3 == |
== Queue 3 == |
Revision as of 14:05, 8 December 2010
Did you know? | |
---|---|
Introduction and rules | |
Introduction | WP:DYK |
General discussion | WT:DYK |
Guidelines | WP:DYKCRIT |
Reviewer instructions | WP:DYKRI |
Nominations | |
Nominate an article | WP:DYKCNN |
Awaiting approval | WP:DYKN |
Approved | WP:DYKNA |
April 1 hooks | WP:DYKAPRIL |
Preparation | |
Preps and queues | T:DYK/Q |
Prepper instructions | WP:DYKPBI |
Admin instructions | WP:DYKAI |
Main Page errors | WP:ERRORS |
History | |
Statistics | WP:DYKSTATS |
Archived sets | WP:DYKA |
Just for fun | |
Monthly wraps | WP:DYKW |
Awards | WP:DYKAWARDS |
Userboxes | WP:DYKUBX |
Hall of Fame | WP:DYK/HoF |
List of users ... | |
... by nominations | WP:DYKNC |
... by promotions | WP:DYKPC |
Administrative | |
Scripts and bots | WP:DYKSB |
On the Main Page | |
WP:Errors | WP:Errors |
To ping the DYK admins | {{DYK admins}} |
This page has archives. Sections older than 7 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
This is where the Did you know section on the main page, its policies and the featured items can be discussed.
Testing ideas
Due to the discussion of improving DYK functionality and quality, in the same way we recently worked out changing the order of noms by date, I think we should take Hongkongresident's excellent list and vote. In place of talking , as some of these suggestions have been tossed around for quite some time, I think we can afford to implement any or none of them. Afterwards, we can review changes and remove or try others; please add any suggestions to the vote; I think it would be best to place discussion in a separate area to keep the vote from clogging up.
UPDATE I think it would be less confusing if you only showed support below, by not supporting it is assumed that you are opposing the idea. Leave comments in subsection in order to avoid discussion within the voting area. Or don't. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually I only saw this after adding both Supports and Opposes (was it added?); but I think it is better to have both. But remove the Opposes if you like. Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm quite happy to add oppose !votes simply to oppose the idea that people cant add a short opposition, if that's what's needed. Wikipedia is not Burma, nobody is obliged to !vote yes. Physchim62 (talk) 02:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I understand, I just wanted to simplify the process, and to avoid turning a vote into a discussion in the same area. However, whatever works... works. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- OK, I understand as well (I hope). Can we just keep comments short ;) Physchim62 (talk) 02:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I understand, I just wanted to simplify the process, and to avoid turning a vote into a discussion in the same area. However, whatever works... works. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm quite happy to add oppose !votes simply to oppose the idea that people cant add a short opposition, if that's what's needed. Wikipedia is not Burma, nobody is obliged to !vote yes. Physchim62 (talk) 02:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- NOTE Some sections have been closed (very prematurely in my view). Discussion continues on others lower down. Please do not close any more - they have only been open for 30 hours. Johnbod (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Slowing down the output rate
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Seems to have general consensus already. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- support Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment - not an end in itself. It was only one possible means of reducing the burden on reviewers and there has been no agreement on a method of reducing the rate. Gatoclass (talk) 03:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Over ten days of discussion, nobody has offered an argument as to why to why the current rate of output is Good; on the contrary, many arguments have been made as to why it is Bad. Physchim62 (talk) 04:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The current rate of output is Good because it ensures that everyone who wrote an eligible article got a DYK. Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- There's no need for a Main Page slot to give out "awards" to all qualifying articles. I assume that Gatoclass will be happy if we use the DYK Main Page slot for something with more focus on our readers, rather than as the simple Smartie factory that it has obviously become, without even any respect for its own criteria and certainly none for the title "Did you know?". Physchim62 (talk) 14:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The current rate of output is Good because it ensures that everyone who wrote an eligible article got a DYK. Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Over ten days of discussion, nobody has offered an argument as to why to why the current rate of output is Good; on the contrary, many arguments have been made as to why it is Bad. Physchim62 (talk) 04:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - the key is to slow the input rate to allow more thorough review. This whole thing was kicked off by copyvio concerns which slower output will not address. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support This is the cornerstone in any improvement of the project. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Gatoclass and Dravecky. cmadler (talk) 12:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose as a driver of change, Support as a consequence. Reducing hooks displayed without other change will require arbitrary rejections, and I cannot support that. However, meaningful changes in standards and practices that have the effect of increased rejections and longer times on the main page for those hooks selected is fine as a consequential effect. EdChem (talk) 14:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose treats a symptom, not the disease. HausTalk 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This proposal is the same as Reducing DYK frequency below! (the number of hooks per set is very hard to change significantly) Rejecting poor-quality noms is primary, the output rate should be flexible depending on the availability of approved noms. Limiting the output will simply bloat the T:TDYK page, which is already slow to load. Materialscientist (talk) 07:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's not actually the same proposal as the DYK frequency one below. Limiting the DYK frequency would (among other things) provide a hard maximum to the number of hooks. This proposal doesn't provide any hard maximum; it merely says that the throughput should come down if there's to be additional reviewing requirements (specifically, copyvio) given that we cannot assume that the number of reviewers is going to increase significantly. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist. —Bruce1eetalk 08:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support—"The current rate of output is Good because it ensures that everyone who wrote an eligible article got a DYK."... This is entirely unacceptable as a reason. Is this some kind of socialist welfare state? Tony (talk) 09:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Um, no, that wasn't actually my reason for opposing this measure. That was just a response to a user's questioning the utility of a high rate of output. Most of these half-baked proposals have unfortunately completely missed the point, which is that the key to improving anything is to reduce the burden on reviewers - anything that doesn't take account of that is just a distraction. Gatoclass (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— There should be no 'guarantee' of a slot on the main page. Qualitative criteria must come first, thus slowing down would create a bigger selection to weed out 'weak' candidates. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support It makes no sense to me to reserve a fixed number of slots for DYK if the pickings are slim and a slot or two have to be filled with some candidates that make many editors’ noses wrinkle a bit. Quality before quantity. Keep it flexible. If there are a number of really good candidates, then expand the quantity that day (or spread them out across two days). Greg L (talk) 18:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist.4meter4 (talk) 20:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, makes sense. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 10:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose and agree with EdChem, no one has any decent proposals as to how we can decrease the output rate. SmartSE (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support per Tony. We should be improving quality of articles and hooks by not seeing DYK as an entitlement. First Light (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Incorporate CorenBot to scan for plagiarism
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Fine, but how much help is it? Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- a bit, but certainly not the only tool to be used. This is not a practical problem, everyone agrees about a bit more copyvio checking: basic copyvio training can be provided and reviewers can use the methods they see best. Physchim62 (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, since it should help catch copyvio/plagiarism without significantly adding to the workload. cmadler (talk) 13:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. Just as a note, Coren has said that Corenbot must be used manually to scan articles, since the bot only checks for new articles. Also, due to TOS issues, Corenbot can't check Google Books. Either way, I still support this proposal.--hkr (talk) 13:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support as one of a suite of tools and checks. I would hate to see a CSBot tick being seen as a guarantee of no plagiarism. EdChem (talk) 14:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. While it can't scan Google Books, it would certainly help elsewhere. —Bruce1eetalk 08:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I don't understand this proposal. Plagiarism is bad and any tool which fights it is good - nobody will object this (proposal). The question is technical: who and how will do that? Materialscientist (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, without knowing much about the bot. Sounds good. Tony (talk) 09:03, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose— Lazy option that creates a false sense of security. Does not absolve editors from physically checking entries for thinly disguised copyvios. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Encourage editors to manually use online plagiarism checkers
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- simply reading the article (without a checksheet in your hand), source-checking and a judicious use of Google make a good practical substitute for this Physchim62 (talk) 02:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. Other than CorenBot, there are two (maybe more?) free plagiarism checkers online that can be used. One problem is that they aren't accurate as paid services. But I still support this proposal. --hkr (talk) 13:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- See above support comment - encouraging editors to do a range of checks is good, mandating particular checks risks the development of a "checklist" mentality which I think is anathema to what we seek to achieve. EdChem (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, per Hongkongresident (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but we'll need a list of recommended online checkers. —Bruce1eetalk 08:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support I do it all the time when something looks suspect. It's called Google string searches. ;-) But usually not very useful unless it is a wholescale copyvio. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Require two reviewers per hook
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- medium-term objective; additional reviewer resources should go to the borderline cases, not the ones that are clear yes/no. Physchim62 (talk) 02:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Currently impractical, and only of value if throughput was substantially reduced, and as I said above there is no consensus for doing that or for a means of doing so. Gatoclass (talk) 03:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Reviewer resources are better used for more thorough examinations of each article. Doubling the workload will work against that goal. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Probably not practicable. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose but open to reconsidering this pending other changes. cmadler (talk) 13:23, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. It takes long enough to get one review. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Definitely not now, but encourage the thinking that moving an article to prep is taking some responsibility for judging the article and hook "DYK-ready" and "main page-worthy". We already have checking at T:TDYK, moving to prep, and promoting sets to the queue. Each step should include some level of check; none of them should be seen as purely routine and housekeeping. EdChem (talk) 14:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, WP:GAN process should have higher standards — but this is not done there. -- Cirt (talk) 16:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Lampman. Nev1 (talk) 23:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment: reduce the number of items appearing if reviewer resources are thin. Tony (talk) 08:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This would be nice, but it's not practical. —Bruce1eetalk 08:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Encourage, not require, support or object - the more the better, but we can not set a fixed limit here. The consensus seems solid for rejecting boring hooks. This automatically means more than one editor will evaluated the "boringness", so we automatically get more than one reviewer :-) Having 2 or more approvals for every single noms is not yet feasible. Materialscientist (talk) 09:05, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Corblimy... it's not just the hooks that need reviewing, it's the whole frigging article. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Sort of support. Imposing a requirement in the short run is probably impractical, but we could have a system of encouraging Two Reviewers, by not promoting single-reviewer hooks unless DYK is short of hooks. If that bedded down well enough, it could evolve into a requirement. Rd232 talk 12:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
More transparent logs, better accountability
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support, not sure how helpful. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but proper implementation of this will require detailed discussions. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Sub-pages for each day would probably be the best solution . Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment, EdChem brought this proposal up which was focused on 1) Archiving T:TDYK, 2) More detailed DYK templates on article talk pages, and 3) Double-checking for COI issues. May take a while to implement, but I support the idea.--hkr (talk) 13:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. I've previously mentioned that I'd like to see each hook get it's own subpage, transcluded onto daily pages in a manner similar to AfD. cmadler (talk) 13:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - sounds like a lot of additional red tape for very little benefit to me. If someone can come up with a low-maintenance process, it might be workable, but in any case we can only do one thing at a time and there are more important issues to deal with. Gatoclass (talk) 13:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- It really doesn't involve any red tape. All it requires is a change in a couple of templates and a new bot to archive T:TDYK. It may take time to get through the technical stuff, but it certainly won't be done manually.--hkr (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support - our current records suck, but the process needs to be bot-run. Accountability need not be a scary thing. It will allow us to see where our weaknesses are, it may allow us to help editors having trouble getting used to our standards, plus we can recognise the people who contribute a lot of high quality work. EdChem (talk) 14:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. I'm concerned that this will just add extra bureaucracy to a Process that already has a lot of "process". It's obviously not a Bad Thing in itself, but will the supposedly better reviewing compensate for the time taken in completeing the bureaucracy? I'd suggest leaving this to one side until the excessive throughput rate has been dealt with. Physchim62 (talk) 15:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Should be trivial to implement, and useful some of the time, therefore, net benefit. Sasata (talk) 07:41, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, if it can be implemented without too much effort. —Bruce1eetalk 09:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment— logs are quite transparent enough. Its the use they are put to that is important. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. A pre-requisite for various improvements. Rd232 talk 12:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Introduce Good Articles to DYK
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Possibly Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment - There was clearly no consensus for this in earlier discussion, and would require a radical restructuring of this project that I don't think we are ready for yet. Gatoclass (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually there was clear consensus for it above. I counted something like 13/6, which should count as a supermajority. The problem is that I posted a note about it on the GA talk page, and there's been no response. This won't be possible to do without cooperation from the GA project. Lampman (talk) 11:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Does nothing to address the problems of limited resources or need for more thorough review of hooks submitted to DYK. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose but open to reconsidering this in the future based on other changes. cmadler (talk) 13:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Not now - we have enough to fix, and I think this is inconsistent with DYK's core business. EdChem (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, would introduce a bit more high quality material to DYK here. -- Cirt (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but there's enough going on that I can accept putting off further discussion of it for a month. But, please, let's not just forget about this, or the idea of highlighting WP:CSB articles. Rd232 talk 17:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Per my comments in the prior lengthy discussion. Cbl62 (talk) 17:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. There are clear advantages to this, and the only disadvantages so far explained are that it would take time and work to set up and that co-operation from the GA people is not yet arranged. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support It's a way of introducing higher-quality articles into DYK rather than slap dash material that's been thrown together in a few days. Part of the problem with "new" articles is that many are obscure and so uninteresting; with over 10,000 GAs there must be some with interesting hooks. Nev1 (talk) 23:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. There are many pros and cons, and the key is: This proposal means diverting DYK reviewers to double screen GAs (surely they have to be screened for hook, MP issues, image, etc.) I vote to improve the quality of DYK reviews instead. Materialscientist (talk) 07:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose (for now) Initially I liked this idea, but I think some of the other changes should be tried first. If they fail to have the desired outcome (whatever that is ... higher quality submissions and more interesting hooks, I think) we can come back to this idea. Sasata (talk) 07:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support per Cirt, though I think this should wait a little bit while the other problems are worked on. This would actually give GA a purpose and give DYK more substantive content for the MP. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Tony (talk) 08:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, for now as per EdChem. —Bruce1eetalk 09:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— good way to boost quality in pretty short order. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support as a way to encourage improvement of the quality of articles. --Hegvald (talk) 14:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose for the reasons I've given in past discussions of this issue. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Not now - This may be a good idea in the long term, but it will not address the immediate issue of more thorough review of nominated DYK articles. Also, without some mechanism to reduce input (e.g., higher standards for DYK articles), this would result in a huge backlog at DYK. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This suggestion is moving away from DYK's fundamental purpose which is to encourage the creation of new articles at wikipedia.4meter4 (talk) 20:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Enwiki adds about 1,000 articles a day compared to about 10 GAs a day — which number stands to benefit more from mainpage exposure? Also, a new GA is less likely than a new stub to suffer the quality issues which spurred this whole imbroglio. I haven't seen any arguments on this page to support the idea that many new editors use DYK as a springboard for a prolific editing career. HausTalk 22:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose mainly due to the decreased space for non GAs - without decreasing them, there's no way these will fit! I'd like to see GAs on the main page, but don't think this is the place to discuss it. SmartSE (talk) 00:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - GAs are usually "fresh content" anyway, which is essentially the point of DYK. Technical rules about what counts as the necessary ratio for a DYK-able "expansion", or how many days old an article is before it is no longer "new", may not be met by recent GAs. However, those rules are clearly there as a method of identifying fresh content, and the definition of "fresh" isn't necessarily limited to the rules as they stand at the moment. DYK has suffered problems with reviewing, and at least GAN means that a fairly thorough review should already have occurred. Workload and project cultures may differ between GA and DYK; whether this proposal can be made to work, depends a lot on how effectively the two processes can be integrated. There was discussion above that suggested that a good structure for integration can be designed. TheGrappler (talk) 02:04, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- I have always been an opponent of bringing GAs to DYK, but you do raise a good point about GAs being (usually) mostly new content. I think there's something worth thinking about there. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- I wonder if, rather than "newly promoted GAs", we could restrict it to "recently written, newly promoted GAs". That would allay many of the concerns expressed in this section, all it needs is a good definition of "recently written". New GAs are usually either new articles or rewritten/expanded old articles. "In the fortnight before being submitted for GA review, the article was either (a) created, (b) greatly expanded, or (c) extensively rewritten" might work, particularly if (b) and (c) could be pinned down more precisely. "At least 50% new or rewritten content" from looking at the diffs might roughly do. I wonder if there is an automated tool that can give a quantitiative rather than qualitative evaluation of the size of the difference between revisions? That would allow "sufficiently big rewrites" to be identified systematically... but to be honest, it's usually self-evident on eyeball inspection, and even if this is objected to, "brand new or 5-fold expansion before GAN submission" would obviously be workable criteria. TheGrappler (talk) 21:05, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- I have always been an opponent of bringing GAs to DYK, but you do raise a good point about GAs being (usually) mostly new content. I think there's something worth thinking about there. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - I think this would be an excellent way of encouraging more GA writing and reviewing. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Definitely help improve DYK quality as above. Derild4921☼ 02:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support This seems like a good idea. Not every editor is in to starting their own article from scratch, and many are probably more interested in improving existing ones, so this would be an excellent way to increase participation in DYK. WTF? (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- That is irrelevant; DYK does not require that editor start new articles from scratch (see the rules regarding 5x expansion). Please familiarize yourself with DYK before voting. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support The main page should include GAs somewhere. Combining them with the DYK hooks makes the most sense to me. First Light (talk) 21:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support This is the logical step, it seems to me. We could reduce DYK output (which is necessary to improve quality) while maintaining a reasonably high turnover. At the same time it would provide well-earned exposure for the GA project. Lampman (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - We need to improve the DYK process, adding yet more potential candidates to the existing creaking process will not solve the problems, they will still need to be checked. Mikenorton (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Takes some pressure off DYK, adds some encouragement to the GA process and improves quality of articles linked from main page. An all round winner imho. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:12, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support: looks like a good idea, as noted in above comments; the proposal is to implement this and see if it is any good, so let's see. —innotata 00:08, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Ummm... why not? WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 20:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Doesn't address the problem. Additionally, last time I checked, GAs are still only reviewed by one person. Wikipedia is a work in progress and that is the point of DYK. If you want to put higher quality content on the main page then maybe we'd use featured lists and A-class articles here, but that isn't the point. All this will do is hammer the main page with music and TV which account for around one fifth of GAs (at a very quick estimate). Rambo's Revenge (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This would undermine the value of DYK for encouraging the development of new content that crosses a minimum threshold for quality and quantity. Also, I agree with Mikenorton that it would increase the load on the DYK review process, which (IMO) is a valuable QA review process that focuses more on substance and less on form than the GA process does. --Orlady (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support. Able to display articles that are of better quality and for a longer time on the main page. OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Spend the time to get it to feature it or you don't get on the main page. Have a larger group like the FA reviewers do it or you'll likely not solve any of the problems since GA has a single reviewer. Royalbroil 01:08, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Encourages the progression of Wikipedia as a whole and should help to improve content. And as more and more articles are created, the hooks are going to become more obscure under current methods. Brad78 (talk) 01:24, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose I would be willing to have a lower "Five fold expansion" threshold (maybe 3x expansion) that could take in some GA under its umbrella (likely submitted before GA approval was granted since we should still keep the 5 day rule). But there is no reason that merely being a GA alone should get it on the main page. AgneCheese/Wine 20:24, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose I've always felt that DYK is an outstanding incubator to encourage people to pick up stubs and develop them or to write new articles; the GA process has the same amount of reviewers as DYK does (one), and I'm not sure if this is the best route to go if we're going to feature quality content on the main page. Nomader (Talk) 08:53, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. If a GA is created as a result of expanding an existing article, it already qualifies for DYK, and the single-reviewer for promotion is troublesome as well. howcheng {chat} 09:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Abandon the "new article" concept
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- equivalent to abandoning DYK completely; not a subject for this talk page. Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment - related to the GA question above, and my response is similar to that one. Gatoclass (talk) 03:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - The consensus is strongly against this and would radically alter a fundamental purpose of the project. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose cmadler (talk) 13:37, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - dreadful idea, and as Physchim62 notes, not something that could or should be decided here. EdChem (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per EdChem (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Cbl62 (talk) 17:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support—Well, if you can find enough good hooks from new articles, fine. But I see no evidence of this. Convince me new articles provide a big enough flow of opportunities. Tony (talk) 08:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, as per Dravecky. —Bruce1eetalk 09:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— anything to widen the pool to dilute weak candidates must be a good idea. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not quite sure what this means. I would agree that the concept that DYK=new articles should be abandoned; DYK is a tool for showcasing content and providing interesting facts to readers. Pointing the tool solely at new articles is arbitrary, as evidenced by permitting 5x expanded articles. So, formally abandon the concept, and be open to including other sources of content into the DYK Main Page setup - but without abandoning the idea that some DYK hooks come from new articles. Rd232 talk 12:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. This lies at the heart of the problem. People creating new articles, no matter the quality, to get DYKs, which then have to be rushed because they're only accepted within a certain timeframe. It reduces the quality of both new creations and DYKs. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 11:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- "Fresh content" is perhaps a better description than "new articles" - it already isn't that, as it's certainly "new and recently expanded articles". Strangely, an article can get a complete rewrite and referencing, but fail to qualify under either of those headings, despite being essentially a brand new article! Is it really such a big leap of faith to go from "new and recently expanded" to "new and recently improved" (e.g. by incorporation of recent GAs)? I think the principle is still the same: displaying fresh content, of a certain quality, and hopefully drawing in new editors to do so. TheGrappler (talk) 01:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose The idea of encouraging new articles, or greatly expanding stubs, is a good one. First Light (talk) 21:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per above comments; DYK is a great idea for promoting new content, and new content seems the most suitable place to find odd facts for the main page. —innotata 00:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong oppose - although TheGrappler's comment bears considering. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Believe it or not, there's still a lot of redlinks out there that could be turned into interesting articles, and DYK encourages that. Simon Burchell (talk) 18:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose as worded but I am open to TheGrappler's "Fresh Content" concept that would be more flexible to expansion. I think we need to move beyond the hard and fast 5x prose expansion as the only sign of "new content" being produced. AgneCheese/Wine 20:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose DYK is a fantastic way to promote new content in the encyclopedia, and this is one of the best ways to encourage new article creation. Nomader (Talk) 08:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Abandon or increase the time limit criteria
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- equivalent to abandoning DYK completely; not a subject for this talk page. Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - There is already some wiggle room for hooks nominated on day 6 or intended for a specific significant date in the future so any increase would only serve to make more articles eligible, increasing workload for little tangible benefit. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky, this would take us in the opposite direction from where we need to go. cmadler (talk) 13:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - unDYKian. EdChem (talk) 14:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per Dravecky (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky. Cbl62 (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, as per Dravecky. —Bruce1eetalk 09:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— It's hard (but not impossible) to create an article of any quality in five days. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. For "new articles", 5 days seems fine. See my comment above though - we should be open to adding other content sources to DYK than new articles. Rd232 talk 12:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. We're encouraging people to highlight articles on the main page that they've spent almost no time working on. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 11:04, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky.4meter4 (talk) 22:19, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Articles should have been worked on (sandbox, user space - in unlimited time) before they appear. From then on, 5 days is fine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose drafts in user space allow for taking as long as you like already. SmartSE (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Physchim62 (and Smartse). —innotata 00:13, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Psychim62 and SmartSE. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Reject boring hooks
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- this is simply requiring that the current DYK criteria be respected. Physchim62 (talk) 03:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, in that this is already in the DYK criteria. Crafting an excellent hook is not the same skill as writing a quality article so experienced reviewers are a vital link in this process. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - subjective, time-consuming, and really like many of the other proposals in this section, too lacking in specifics. Gatoclass (talk) 06:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- There's no lack of specifics here: Johnbod and I have outlined a system that would work fairly and with little extra reviewer time. The fact is that rejecting boring hooks is already in the DYK criteria, so DYK has to have a method to do it, otherwise it doesn't deserve the title "Did you know?" (or its Main Page slot). Physchim62 (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose As GC says, too vague. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support in principle, but I'm not sure how this would be implemented fairly. cmadler (talk) 13:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. Articles shouldn't be rejected for boring hooks, although the "interesting-ness" of an article could be a topic of discussion in reviews. That, along with the subjectivity issues lead me to oppose this proposal.--hkr (talk) 13:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's not a question of saying that the article is boring or otherwise unworthy, merely that the hook is unsuitable for a section entitled "Did you know?" EdChem came up with three of his/her newly sourced BLPs a couple of days ago: all three of them were decent articles but, for two of them, it was really difficult to find a hook that fitted with a "Did you know?" section (and, in one case, accepted Main Page legal prudence). Such articles simply don't belong in a section entitled "Did you know?", whatever their other merits. Physchim62 (talk) 14:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Interesting hooks from an article should be found whenever possible and should certainly be given first priority. There's little point in putting a hook on the main page if it won't generate any clicks. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose arbitrary judgments, but recognise that the rules do allow us to consensus-reject hooks as unsuited to use. EdChem (talk) 14:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per Gatoclass (talk · contribs), Lampman (talk · contribs), and EdChem (talk · contribs). This would lead to problems over being too subjective, arbitrary, vague. -- Cirt (talk) 16:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. It may be subjective, but it needs doing. People should not be approaching the process with the viewpoint that it doesn't matter how dull their hook is and that if there are no solid technical reasons for rejecting their nomination then they have a "right" for it to go on the main page. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose on subjectiveness. However, I could see supporting a combination of this with a hook limit: i.e., if you have more than x hooks per month, boringness becomes a criteria. HausTalk 18:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- "Boringness" is already a criterion, and indeed is inherent in the very title of the section "Did you know?" Physchim62 (talk) 18:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Sometimes boring is just boring. Nev1 (talk) 23:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Main page must be interesting to as many readers as possible. Materialscientist (talk) 07:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support - we need to reject boring hooks much more often. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Yes, it's subjective, but any disagreements on the boringness of a hook will be ameliorated by the greater number of reviewers who will be able to give 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. opinions (assuming the "Require article nominators to review articles" proposal is accepted). Consensus will then dictate the suitability of 'marginal" cases, and extra eyes will be there to help tweak mundane hooks into something more interesting. Sasata (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support—Hey, it's on the main page. The current method is letting hooks on there that make WP look lame. This has gone on for too long. It's embarrassing. Tony (talk) 08:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. I know there are subjectivity issues here, but I believe this can be overcome. See Sasata and Physchim62's ideas above for example. —Bruce1eetalk 09:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— WhoTF wants boring hooks? A 'Quick fail' mechanism is needed. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Neutral: Support in spirit, but this can't be done without a proposal for how to implement it. Just saying "let's reject boring hooks now" isn't going to change anything. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- There are basically two proposals as to how to implement it. On is Johnbod's proposal of "voting on hooks", which is being discussed in more detail just below. The second is my proposal that, if a reviewer spots a bad hook on T:TDYK, they note the fact that they think it's not DYK material. Anyone is entitled to disagree with that assessment, of course, and if an article gets reviewed we should be entitled to assume that the hook is OK. But a submission with a hook that is evidently unsuitable for DYK shouldn't even be reviewed until the hook problem is sorted out. My proposal probably needs some mechanism for submissions to "drop off" the end of the reviewing queue after a certain length of time (5 days? 7 days?) to be fully workable, but I see this as a minor point: the length of time that hooks stay on the queue could even be an ajustment factor to keep the backlog in order – shorter time in the reviewing queue if there's a backlog of approved articles, longer time if hooks are running short. Physchim62 (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If that's your proposal, it's no different than the system already in place. Reviewers are supposed to be leaving complaints about hooks that are too boring; back when I reviewed I did it all the time (and people complained about how I was impeding their nomination's progress even though the article met all the requirements). Your proposal also has the same problems as the status quo: 1) it's only as good as the reviewers who enforce, or don't enforce, it; 2) a single reviewer with an unnatural interest in, say, highways can let a ton of otherwise boring hooks slip through. There is nothing new in your proposal, and Johnbod's doesn't seem to be getting consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If there's nothing new in my proposal, then why is it getting so much opposition? ;) And why are so many editors complaining about boring DYK sections? And why does the average DYK hook only get a thousand click-throughs? Physchim62 (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not sure where people are voting on your proposal in particular, so I don't know why it's getting opposition. As for DYK sections being boring, well, like I just said (did you read my comment?) the status quo doesn't work either, and your proposal is no different than the status quo. Finally, it has been known for a long time that click-throughs are not a great metric for article interestingness; some interesting hooks get few clicks (because of the time they are shown, their location in the list, or random variation), and as you can see from WP:DYKSTATS, some not-so-interesting hooks get many. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Well we know (at least) three objective point:
- half of all DYK hooks get fewer than a thousand click-throughs while they're on the Main Page [1]
- this isn't because DYK is "below the fold" because, over the same period, OTD hooks had twice the click-through rate of DYK hooks (after adjusting for the rapid rotation of DYK sets)
- and there must be reader eyes on the DYK section because, when a really good hook goes on, it gets tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of click-throughs (see WP:DYKSTATS)
- So I don't think my proposal represents the status quo, when the status quo is producing hooks that our readers just don't want to click on: it represents actually requiring hooks to be interesting before even looking at the rest of the article. I simply don't believe that there's a host of wonderful articles behind all those lazy, boring hooks: I reckon that, if I could be bothered to click on them, I would find that the lazy, boring hooks link to lazy, boring articles. But that's irrelevant really, because if nobody clicks on the hooks we'll never find out. Physchim62 (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Again, read through my comments. If you do so, you will see I am not debating that DYK often produces boring hooks. What I am saying is that your proposal also will, because it's no different than what people are already supposed to be doing. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Of course we agree that DYK often produces boring hooks, and that my proposal is no different from what people should be doing anyway. The point is that reviewers aren't rejecting hooks because they're boring, and editors aren't refusing to put them into prep queues, when they should be doing under DYK current guidelines and any common sense interpretation of the title "Did you know?" I don't have a magic wand that can change peoples attitudes; I'm just trying to say "look, it isn't that difficult to reject these hooks." Everyone will benefit if these hooks are weeded out before they reach the Main Page, preferably before DYK has even invested reviewer time in looking at the whole article. Contributers will have more readers for their articles, reviewers will have less work to do and Wikipedia will have a better Main Page. But, if it's so easy and it's already in the rules, why isn't it being done? Physchim62 (talk) 02:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Again, read through my comments. If you do so, you will see I am not debating that DYK often produces boring hooks. What I am saying is that your proposal also will, because it's no different than what people are already supposed to be doing. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Well we know (at least) three objective point:
- I'm not sure where people are voting on your proposal in particular, so I don't know why it's getting opposition. As for DYK sections being boring, well, like I just said (did you read my comment?) the status quo doesn't work either, and your proposal is no different than the status quo. Finally, it has been known for a long time that click-throughs are not a great metric for article interestingness; some interesting hooks get few clicks (because of the time they are shown, their location in the list, or random variation), and as you can see from WP:DYKSTATS, some not-so-interesting hooks get many. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If there's nothing new in my proposal, then why is it getting so much opposition? ;) And why are so many editors complaining about boring DYK sections? And why does the average DYK hook only get a thousand click-throughs? Physchim62 (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If that's your proposal, it's no different than the system already in place. Reviewers are supposed to be leaving complaints about hooks that are too boring; back when I reviewed I did it all the time (and people complained about how I was impeding their nomination's progress even though the article met all the requirements). Your proposal also has the same problems as the status quo: 1) it's only as good as the reviewers who enforce, or don't enforce, it; 2) a single reviewer with an unnatural interest in, say, highways can let a ton of otherwise boring hooks slip through. There is nothing new in your proposal, and Johnbod's doesn't seem to be getting consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- There are basically two proposals as to how to implement it. On is Johnbod's proposal of "voting on hooks", which is being discussed in more detail just below. The second is my proposal that, if a reviewer spots a bad hook on T:TDYK, they note the fact that they think it's not DYK material. Anyone is entitled to disagree with that assessment, of course, and if an article gets reviewed we should be entitled to assume that the hook is OK. But a submission with a hook that is evidently unsuitable for DYK shouldn't even be reviewed until the hook problem is sorted out. My proposal probably needs some mechanism for submissions to "drop off" the end of the reviewing queue after a certain length of time (5 days? 7 days?) to be fully workable, but I see this as a minor point: the length of time that hooks stay on the queue could even be an ajustment factor to keep the backlog in order – shorter time in the reviewing queue if there's a backlog of approved articles, longer time if hooks are running short. Physchim62 (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - subjective and a potential source of lengthy and unproductive discussions about whether certain facts are interesting. Some facts will be interesting to some people and boring to others ... that is something which cannot be changed. By all means, I support revising hooks in ways that may make the more interesting to more people, but this proposal is not that. Also, this proposal does not address the core issue which was raised at the beginning of these discussions: the quality of the articles, not the hooks. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It does address the issue of article quality: why should precious reviewer time be wasted on reviewing articles with utterly mundane hooks when it could be used on ensuring the quality of the articles with hooks that actually fit in a section entitled "Did you know"? Physchim62 (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- What you're saying makes sense in the context that you're considering (one where judgments can be made about which hooks are mundane and which are not) but it is inapplicable in the context that I am considering (one where such judgments are entirely subjective and not useful). I don't oppose improving hooks using an approach taken by Tony (here, without the negativity), but I don't believe that the mundanity of a hook can be judged objectively or on its own merits. Holding constant the quality of the hook itself, hooks about topics which do not interest us will be more boring than hooks about topics which do interest us, and this type of judgment is completely personal and subjective. -- Black Falcon (talk) 20:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It does address the issue of article quality: why should precious reviewer time be wasted on reviewing articles with utterly mundane hooks when it could be used on ensuring the quality of the articles with hooks that actually fit in a section entitled "Did you know"? Physchim62 (talk) 19:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, mostly - Interesting and boring are in the eye of the beholder, so this is seriously subjective. Also, we wouldn't necessarily be judging the submitted hook. Many boring hooks can be improved by cleverness in the review process (something that I and some other reviewers actually seem to enjoy doing). However, I would support a rule that says that it's OK to reject articles/hooks that are BOTH boring and substantially similar in topic to other articles/hooks by the same contributor that have been featured recently or are on the noms page. It's the combination of boringness and sameness that I would reject, not boringness alone. --Orlady (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. What's boring to one person may not be boring to someone else. For example, I find many sports related hooks dreadfully dull because I don't like sports. A sports fan, however, would find it interesting. This policy is only likely to create a lot of wiki-drama here.4meter4 (talk) 20:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support but in the sense that hooks should be interesting, which is less subjective than what is boring (or at least it is IMO!). SmartSE (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Interesting that you should think that way. The proposals that have been worked through (including mine, obviously) have tended to assume that it is easier to identify the "obviously bad" than the "obviously good". For me, all hooks that are posted to the Main Page should clearly fit within a section entitled "Did you you?", which sort of implies that they should be interesting. Another way of wording it might be that the hook fact has to be "unusual or unexpected" (rather than an "extraordinary claim", as the current selection criteria put it). Physchim62 (talk) 01:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Again, subjective. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Subjective and counterproductive. Will encourage sensationalism. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Am concerned (leaning to oppose) that "interesting" hooks are often misleading or sensationalist. Good on April 1. Good to see the odd eye-catching one in an otherwise dull list. But if you try to make it into "today's surprising but possibly somewhat misleading facts" then actually the "shock value" of the good ones will be lost, while the whole thing loses a little bit of dignity. "Interesting hooks" are nice, and although subjective, it's certainly true that there would be good correlation between different people's opinion on what counts as one... I just don't think a continual diet of them (nor pressure on editors to manipulate an "interesting" hook out of a dull-but-worthy type of article) is particularly useful. TheGrappler (talk) 21:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Conditional Support, but only if there is a fair system of judging "boring" that involves more than one reviewer. I realize that the current system already allows a single reviewer to reject a hook as too boring, but nobody uses it because everyone realizes it is patently unfair and subjective. I prefer Johnbod's approach just below, but others could also work. First Light (talk) 21:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Supportthis obviously makes sense but any changes must be done carefully. (I've submitted much too boring hooks (for other's articles, and when other hooks were rejected).) —innotata 00:16, 20 November 2010 (UTC)- Current DYK rules should be enforced: that's enough. —innotata 00:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strongest Possible OPPOSE - aside from all the other problems I have with it, implementing this would get the camel's nose under the tent for "I don't like you/I have a beef with you/etc., therefore I say your hook is boring" incidents. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:25, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose This is just too subjective - I have just about zero interest in sports and politics, for example, but accept that some people find them very interesting. So I could quite easily scroll down all those noms and strike them out as boring, while everyone else would be outraged. Likewise, I find archaeology interesting, but to other people that's just piles of old rocks and broken pots... Simon Burchell (talk) 18:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Too subjective. OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose completely subjective, will bring lots of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Royalbroil 01:13, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Reality Check this !vote has been going for well over two weeks now, are people going to carry on adding 50% oppose and 50% support until we have a month's worth of it? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Entirely too subjective. We have a global readership of millions of people from different cultures, background and experiences and those people are naturally going to have different likes, dislikes and interest. What is interesting to one person maybe stone cold boring to another but whose "interpretation" of interesting are we going to value? AgneCheese/Wine 20:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Specifically, rate hooks for interest
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - too subjective and too time-consuming. Gatoclass (talk) 06:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. While I agree (in principle) with rejecting boring or mundane hooks, I don't see a great value to rating for subjective interest. As an example, there is currently a hook on the nominations page, which I just approved, that has to do with a cricket match. I have no interest in reading about cricket, but it was definitely an unusual (neither boring nor mundane) and "hooky" hook. cmadler (talk) 13:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- No need for a specific "interestingness" rating (how on Earth would we construct one of those?), simply reject the hooks that are obviously mundane. If an editor can't be bothered to find a non-mundane hook, why should a reviewer be bothered to read the article? Physchim62 (talk) 14:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Just to clarify, I support the proposal as discussed in detail above, but I do think my proposal for simply not reviewing mundane hooks is quicker, simpler and more in line with DYKs vocation as a Main Page section, so I prefer it. Either one could work, but doing nothing is already going against the current DYK criteria, not to mention any other good reasons for rejecting mundane hooks. Physchim62 (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Well I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't review boring hooks, but then someone else always does, eventually. By leaving a quick low rating you could actively express your lack of interest & disapproval. At the moment the culture is such that leaving a query sign just for boringness usually gets overriden. And if say 3 low ratings are left you are on the way to overcoming the subjectivity issue. But one way or another we need a way to actually stop boring hooks and articles going forward. Johnbod (talk) 17:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Just to clarify, I support the proposal as discussed in detail above, but I do think my proposal for simply not reviewing mundane hooks is quicker, simpler and more in line with DYKs vocation as a Main Page section, so I prefer it. Either one could work, but doing nothing is already going against the current DYK criteria, not to mention any other good reasons for rejecting mundane hooks. Physchim62 (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, just adds a systematic / objective appearance to a decision process that remains fundamentally arbitrary. EdChem (talk) 14:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per EdChem (talk · contribs) and Gatoclass (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- To all of these, the idea (discussed in detail above) is to overcome subjectivity by getting several quick views - the wisdom of the crowd. But the ratings should not bind those choosing hooks, who can ignore them if they want to. It is a way of reducing rows with noms, since I anticipate that typically views will actually coincide, and also attracting new help to the page - something none of the other proposals are likely to do, with many likely to put newcomers off. Johnbod (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose on subjectiveness. HausTalk 18:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Someone is putting "too subjective and too time-consuming" everywhere. Main-page appearances need to be a little more time-consuming to be worthy of such exposure. The too-subjective argument seems to reject any notion of striving for quality. Tony (talk) 08:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, as per Johnbod's comment above. —Bruce1eetalk 09:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. We ought to be able to construct a viable voting system so that the more interesting hooks get given priority in the limited Main Page space. Rd232 talk 12:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Don't see how this is workable and don't see how it improves upon any other proposal for rejection of boring hooks; it just seems to add process creep without actually ensuring the outcome that we are looking for. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per above: subjective, time-consuming, and does nothing to address the quality (or quality control) of DYK articles, which is the key issue requiring DYK reform. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Subjective, time-consuming, and a form of instruction creep. Also, many boring hooks can be improved by cleverness in the review process (something that I and some other reviewers actually seem to enjoy doing). --Orlady (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Orlady.4meter4 (talk) 20:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Subjective. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Plus my "conditional support" of Reject boring hooks just above depends on this, or a similar system, being instituted. First Light (talk) 21:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Not clear what this is supposed to be; does not sound like a good idea. —innotata 00:21, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong oppose. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Increasing the character limit
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - ok maybe to 2,000. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Going through a few entries, it's clear that this will rid us of a lot of dross. The limit would have to be relatively high to have any impact (see my stats above). Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - According to Lampman's stats, the character limit would have to be pretty high (4,000 to 5,000) to have a real impact, and I think such a character limit is too high for DYK. cmadler (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- No strong view - adjusting to 2000 or 2500 characters seems reasonable, and we do get cookie cutter stuff that just makes 1500 characters, but I am unsure that this wouldn't just change those to just-2000 character cookie cutter articles. EdChem (talk) 14:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. character count ≠ quality, and any attempt to pretend that it does will inevitably lead to a loss in quality. I would support removing the current 1500 character minimum, but now is hardly the time to be increasing DYK input when the reviewing procedures are already stretched beyond their limit. Physchim62 (talk) 15:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- In theory yes, in practice many editors simply scramble trivialities to fit into 1500. Here extra 500-1000 bytes of prose means a lot (personal experience). Materialscientist (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, would have to be debate about what to increase it to, but yes, good idea. -- Cirt (talk) 16:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support increasing limit to 2000, but not higher at this time. Because the proposal is vague it will not reach consensus. For example, my "support" vote appears to be in line with Johnbod's "oppose" and EdChem's "no strong view." Cbl62 (talk) 17:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- And perhaps Cmadler's oppose too. So an increase to 2K might well achieve consensus. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- It might reach consensus, but it would still be pointless on any objective criterion. Physchim62 (talk) 18:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- And perhaps Cmadler's oppose too. So an increase to 2K might well achieve consensus. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support (2000 or 2500). I would oppose any increase to the 5x rule though. Materialscientist (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Yes, some will "pad" articles with extra verbiage to qualify, but those cases will (hopefully) be caught in the screening process. Reviewers should not be afraid to reject a hook for an article that has been obviously "padded". Sasata (talk) 07:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support—One of the several reasons hooks fall flat on their face is that not enough information is provided for the reader to "get it". Combine with fewer items, please. Tony (talk) 08:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Tony, this proposal is to increase the character requirement for readable prose in the article, not to increase the allowance for characters in the hook. EdChem (talk) 09:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'd also dispute the comment about hooks: often they need to be cut down to make them more "hooky". Physchim62 (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Tony, this proposal is to increase the character requirement for readable prose in the article, not to increase the allowance for characters in the hook. EdChem (talk) 09:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, up to 2000 or 2500. —Bruce1eetalk 09:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. However, downside is that it may actually increase the temptation of committing plagiarism. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. What does this actually achieve? It doesn't tackle the "cookie cutter" problem, it will just create bigger, harder to check cookies. And it'll reduce the supposed benefit of DYK for newcomers, with a higher threshold making their input less likely. A length criterion of 1500 is useful to exclude trivially short articles, but it is not a measure of quality. A crude measure of quantity is not a substitute for identifying quality. Rd232 talk 12:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - for now because it's already been shown that the limit would have to be substantially increased to make a difference and no actual limit has been proposed here. Also, I think we should try qpq first. Additionally, per rd232. Gatoclass (talk) 13:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Quantity ≠ quality, and the issue that started this whole discussion was article quality. 1500-character articles can still be good and interesting, and 2500-character articles can still be bad and boring. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - not a solution. It should take approximately the same amount of time to review a 3,000-character article as two 1,500-character articles. Requiring more text is not likely to reduce the workload of DYK reviewers. Increasing the character requirement may be a good idea for later, but it should not be part of the reform to address quality and quality control issues. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Because 1,500 characters seems to be the right length to provide good basic coverage of many topics, that threshold encourages people to write solid articles instead of stubs. Rather than encouraging quality, I expect that increasing the minimum length would lead to more padding of articles with copyvio material, excessive verbosity, and irrelevant details. Additionally, it would increase the burden on reviewers by increasing the effort involved in reviewing an individual submission. --Orlady (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support. Most topics are still stubs at 1500 characters. I would support raising the bar to 1800 or 2000.4meter4 (talk) 20:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support although quantity ≠ quality and this may encourage close paraphrasing and padding, 1500 really isn't a lot and good DYKs tend to have more. I'd support rising to 2000, but maybe consider an IAR clause for amazing hooks where nothing more can be found to increase the length of an article. SmartSE (talk) 00:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. The selection criteria already allow reviewers to reject articles of more than 1500 characters if they feel the article is too short. Maybe reviewers don't want to use those provisions, I don't know: if that is the problem, it is the same problem as the "boring hooks", where again the criteria say reject boring hooks but the reviewers don't do it. Physchim62 (talk) 03:25, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Personal opinion can always be contensted, and maybe this is why rejection of 1500+ articles is rare. Here putting a clear formal criterion would help reviewers. I wish we had such digital criterion for boringness :-) Materialscientist (talk) 03:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. I oppose any move to make DYK a more difficult UX than it is for the novice. For veteran contributors, I'd support the 2000. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Writing should be succinct but the hooks need to be long enough to be well-written. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 11:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- I see very little downside, on the whole, to a substantial increase in size thresholds - 3,000 or above is quite reasonable, and even 5,000 would not ruin things. (If we go much above 3,000, however, I'd like us to consider commensurately increasing the time allowed for nomination - perhaps ten days or two weeks - so as not to penalise "gradual" authors) Shimgray | talk | 11:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment"Gradual" authors can always work in userspace before moving their work into the live article - I don't think increasing the character limit necessarily means you have to increase the time allowed for nomination. Simon Burchell (talk) 18:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - I've looked at my own DYK articles and found that 11 out of 61 are below 2,000, 26 between 2,000 & 3,000, 13 between 3,000 & 5,000 and only 11 over 5,000. Some articles are never going to be much bigger than 1,500, because there just isn't much written about them in easily accessible sources - none of those 61 articles have been significantly expanded since they appeared on DYK, arguably suggesting that further expansion is non-trivial. Mikenorton (talk) 13:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - some short articles can be both excellent and interesting. Toughening length requirements may make it harder for novices, and for people writing on obscure or poorly documented topics. TheGrappler (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per TheGrappler and others. —innotata 00:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strong Oppose - as I've said before and will say again, a 1,000-character article on an obscure subject can be FAR more interesting and complete than a 5,000-character article on a less obscure one. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Conditionally support Keep 1500 for lists, otherwise they would need rubbishy super-long leads to comply. Adabow (talk · contribs) 00:39, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Increasing the citation requirements
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Oppose Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Same requirements as at GA should apply; one ref per paragraph is meaningless. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, better referencing = the Wikipedia of the 2010s decade. Geschichte (talk) 11:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - DYK currently requires a non-trivial level of referencing (minimum 1/paragraph), and I see raising it further as a back-door attempt to replace new-article DYK with GA. 1/paragraph may not be GA-level, but it is decidedly not "meaningless". cmadler (talk) 13:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment: This can't be given a simple support/oppose. The quality of the sources used in an article is important, but discussions of sourcing requirements on Wikipedia always seem to degenerate into issues of quantity and mechanical adherence to over-simplified rules: the number of sources or the density of footnotes in the text. A single widely-accepted in-depth treatment of a topic is superior to three superficial newspaper articles on the same. A footnote after a paragraph is perfectly fine if it is clear that it supports the paragraph, and the footnote can bundle sources and explain what supports what part of the statement. Insisting on a footnote after each sentence (or more) just encourages close paraphrasing and plagiarism of the type that has been debated above on this page. --Hegvald (talk) 14:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support some change - certainly almost naked web addresses are as bad as entirely naked ones. We need to come to community consensus on what is reasonable referencing as a minimum requirement. EdChem (talk) 14:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, per Geschichte (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. Proposal is too vague for me to know what I'm voting for. What would the new citation requirements be? Cbl62 (talk) 17:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. As pointed out by Lampman and Cbl62, I just don't see how this could possibly work, especially from a reviewer's perspective. I tell a nominator that their three-sentence paragraph has to have one ref per sentence, they tell me the ref at the end of the paragraph supports all three sentences, what do I do then? (Especially if the ref is offline). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I don't see a clear proposal here. "Two sites per para instead of one"? - surely not. The rule of at least one reliable site covering every non-trivial paragraph is good, it simply needs to be properly enforced, by checking the reliability of the sources. This I support Materialscientist (talk) 07:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, as per Demiurge1000 . —Bruce1eetalk 09:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support— can do with being much more stringent, but is no substitute to close manual checking. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Neutral. Seems like meaningless aspiration or needlessly bureaucratic rule. It's basically down to reviewers - and that's why I'd support moving to Two Reviewers. Rd232 talk 12:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - our citation standards are fine. If articles are getting through with inadequate citations, that's because of sloppy reviewing not sloppy citation standards. Gatoclass (talk) 14:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose If an article is poorly-cited enough that it deserve a
{{refimprove}}
tag, then reviewers are supposed to be rejecting it anyway. I don't see what this proposal would add to that. (FWIW, "one citation per paragraph" is a heuristic only, not a rule as far as I know, and I never much liked it anyway.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:20, 12 November 2010 (UTC) - If this proposal is for raising a per-paragraph citation requirement, then I oppose it'. If it is for requiring that all (or almost all) information in an article be properly attributed (using inline citations) to multiple, reliable sources, then I completely support it. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose The basic citation requirements are fixed WP-wide. Interpreting those basic requirements really depends on the article: different subject areas have different points that can be "taken for granted" without needing citations, for example. DYK should focus on having a good interpretation of those basic requirements (with appeals for a second opinion if necessary). It is a subjective judgement call, and always will be. Obviously, if a reviewer thinks the article is insufficiently referenced, then they shouldn't pass it; I don't think there's any real disagreement on that point. Physchim62 (talk) 19:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- On a related note, I suspect that the absolute requirement to have an inline citation directly after the hook fact may be a sort of perverse reason behind some of the "boring hooks", with submitters simply taking a referenced sentence, changing it into a question and posting it as a hook (i.e., without thinking "is this really a good hook?"). Just a reminder of the law of unintended consequences! Physchim62 (talk) 19:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - In my experience, the current citation requirements, combined with the expectation of one inline citation per paragraph, are effective in encouraging many articles to be substantially improved between the time they are nominated and the time a hook is approved for DYK. I agree with Gatoclass that it comes down to the quality of the review -- if reviewers do their job, the current rules are effective. --Orlady (talk) 20:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Orlady. Also, increasing referencing standards will only further increase the liklihood that articles by new wikipedia editors will be rejected. As it is, most articles by newbies require DYK reviewers to step in and help clean things up. Let's not make so many hoops that DYK reviewers are less likely to step in and "save" a potential article.4meter4 (talk) 20:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose DYK's are not/should not be required to be Good Articles. Grsz11 05:10, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support DYK's should be good examples of short articles within policy. They should be well enough sourced to exemplify the current sourcing requirement standards. That is still a much lower requirement than GA. ·Maunus·ƛ· 02:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per cmadler and Physchim62. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Reducing DYK frequency
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Fundamental. there are many good suggestions that would work with this, but none that would work (IMHO) without it. Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, support, but how is the issue. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose on the grounds that it reduces only output and does nothing to address the actual problems of input or the need for more thorough reviews. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Reducing output is essential to improving quality. Can only work in combination with some of the above options though. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Output should be reduced, but only in conjunction with input. And since the proposals that are likely to pass won't affect the input, I oppose any tampering with the output.--hkr (talk) 13:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose output-based "solutions". Reducing output requires some additional change in DYK selection, and without knowing what that other change is, I can't support this. cmadler (talk) 14:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Did you know/Guide already states "Not all suggestions have to be used in the template. Choose the ones that will pull in a variety of readers." (emphasis in the original) No big change needed at all, simply for DYK to adhere to it's own guidelines. Physchim62 (talk) 18:11, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- See earlier response, I haven't changed my view since earlier in this thread. EdChem (talk) 14:46, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. DYK has to choose whether it is a quality control stamp on new articles, something which doesn't in itself need a Main Page section, or a process to compile a Main Page section entitled "Did you Know?" I'm quite willing to open a specific RFC on this one, because I think there will be no lasting improvement at DYK while it treats its Main Page slot as something which can be sliced up at will. Physchim62 (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- 'Oppose, in favor of other measures (increasing chars size, citation requirements, etc) that would have the same impact. -- Cirt (talk) 16:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Three updates per day would be optimal IMO. Cbl62 (talk) 17:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The optimum would be one update per day, so that DYK hooks can be seen by readers in all timezones. That's probably too big a step to be taken at once, unless it's forced from outside. Physchim62 (talk) 18:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment to give an example of one of the problems caused by DYK's current rotation frequency, see this edit at WP:ERRORS: when problems with an article or hook are discovered through the hook being on the Main Page, they are very rarely addressed because the hook has already disappeared. Another example is the "Recent deaths" link at the bottom of the "In the news" section… never noticed it? Well it gets (on average) more click-throughs than all the DYK articles put together! Physchim62 (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. I realise this is only the "output" end of the system, but it needs to happen at the same time the other changes are put in place, otherwise we risk having a "crisis" caused by running out of available prepared nominations. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- We can (and have) adjust the output flow pretty quickly in response to available nominations, both through frequency of updates and number of hooks per update. Right now we have six updates in queue/prep, and about 200 hooks on the nominations page. Assuming a 75% approval rate of nomations, we have more than a week's worth at our current rate. The rate could fairly quickly be throttled back to two updates per day, which gives us about a two-week backlog. I suspect that even under the most stringent proposals (except for those that explicitly limit output) we can find 16 suitable hooks per day, which is enough for two updates (which I think is the optimal amount). So I don't argue that we shouldn't seek to reduce the update frequency, but I do say that the update frequency is a result, not a cause, and we need to treat it as such. cmadler (talk) 21:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - I think the frequency has been a driver for general sloppiness and stress in the DYK process. Not pointing fingers; 4x per day is just a hard thing to keep up with. Frank | talk 21:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This proposal is the same as "Slowing down the output rate" above! (the number of hooks per set is very hard to change significantly). Rejecting poor-quality noms is primary, the output rate should be flexible depending on the availability of approved noms. Limiting the output will simply bloat the T:TDYK page, which is already slow to load. Materialscientist (talk) 07:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- No, this isn't the same as the proposal above. The proposal above is saying throughput rate needs to come down to allow better reviewing at constant resources. This proposal would apply a hard limit to the number of sets per day, which is also equivalent to limiting the number of hooks per day (with a little leeway for 7- and 9-hook sets). Ideally, the limit would be one set per day, but I accept that DYK would have to run at two sets a day for at least an interim period while the change beds down and participant expectation have time to change. Physchim62 (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, as per Dravecky and Materialscientist. —Bruce1eetalk 09:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support per my arguments above re increasing pool and thus quality of what gets onto MP. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - if the object of this poorly stated proposal is to ease the workload on reviewers by giving them less hooks to review, it won't do that. As Dravecky said, it will do nothing to reduce the total pool of submissions needing review, therefore it achieves nothing. Gatoclass (talk) 12:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually no, that isn't the object of the proposal at all. There are two main objects. Firstly to guarantee a higher reward (in terms of time on the Main Page and hence article reads) for those hooks that are selected, as a sort of "compensation" to DYK submitters for accepting the necessarily more stringent reviews. What has happened up to now is that the prolific submitters have been allowed to debase the reward of a DYK slot, by increasing the number of sets and so reducing the time that any individual hook is on the Main Page. This is typical of the way DYK has been run for the benefit of its prolific contributors and to the detriment of occasional participants and new comers, and it has to stop. Which brings me to the second object of the proposal: to focus the attention of all participants in the DYK process on the fact that DYK exists to generate a Main Page slot. It might do other things as well, but it's primary purpose is to provide material for a section on the Main Page entitled "Did you know?" If not, then well, we'll just use that Main Page space for something else, there's no shortage of ideas as to what could be done with the space. Physchim62 (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If that was the object of the proposal, it should have been specifically stated and not left for !voters to try and guess what it was about. But your comment just underlines my own criticism of many of these proposals as half-baked and unclear. As for your other comments, everyone has their own opinion on what exactly DYK is "about" and at this point yours has no more validity than anyone else's. Gatoclass (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Of course it would have been better if there had been links back to the discussions above when this !vote was set up, that's been mentioned elsewhere. As for what DYK is "about", then well, if it's not "about" producing a Main Page section then fine, we'll just find another use for that Main Page section, it's not a problem. Physchim62 (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- If that was the object of the proposal, it should have been specifically stated and not left for !voters to try and guess what it was about. But your comment just underlines my own criticism of many of these proposals as half-baked and unclear. As for your other comments, everyone has their own opinion on what exactly DYK is "about" and at this point yours has no more validity than anyone else's. Gatoclass (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually no, that isn't the object of the proposal at all. There are two main objects. Firstly to guarantee a higher reward (in terms of time on the Main Page and hence article reads) for those hooks that are selected, as a sort of "compensation" to DYK submitters for accepting the necessarily more stringent reviews. What has happened up to now is that the prolific submitters have been allowed to debase the reward of a DYK slot, by increasing the number of sets and so reducing the time that any individual hook is on the Main Page. This is typical of the way DYK has been run for the benefit of its prolific contributors and to the detriment of occasional participants and new comers, and it has to stop. Which brings me to the second object of the proposal: to focus the attention of all participants in the DYK process on the fact that DYK exists to generate a Main Page slot. It might do other things as well, but it's primary purpose is to provide material for a section on the Main Page entitled "Did you know?" If not, then well, we'll just use that Main Page space for something else, there's no shortage of ideas as to what could be done with the space. Physchim62 (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- So if you can't get people to agree on what you think DYK should be about, you will move to have it abolished? Sounds a little petulant to me. However, you will need to get consensus for that, and I suspect that will turn out to be more of a problem than you anticipate. Gatoclass (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Not petulant at all. I've been saying DYK has big systemic problems for a long time now. I'd much rather work with DYK regulars to sort those problems out, as that is obviously the most constructive solution. But I'm not got to stop saying that DYK has problems if I haven't been able to overcome the natural inertia on this page. Physchim62 (talk) 17:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- So if you can't get people to agree on what you think DYK should be about, you will move to have it abolished? Sounds a little petulant to me. However, you will need to get consensus for that, and I suspect that will turn out to be more of a problem than you anticipate. Gatoclass (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - I agree with Dravecky and Gatoclass that this would not reduce the total pool of submissions needing review. Furthermore, any measure that artificially limits the number of hooks by setting a quota would increase acrimony at DYK, due to battles over whose hook gets accepted and whose hook gets rejected. DYK can and does adjust the frequency and size of updates to match the availability of content. It also can change the number of suggestions through encouragement or discouragement of third-party nominations. --Orlady (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Dravecky and Materialscientist.4meter4 (talk) 20:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support will go a long way towards allowing more thorough reviews. Queues can be offset by raising standards and restricting number of simultanoeus nominations allowed.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support increasing quality of DYKs. First Light (talk) 21:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose: shouldn't we just put as many DYKs on the page as are cleared? —innotata 00:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Require article nominators to review articles.
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Consensus to implement this idea. Physchim62 (talk) 14:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment. This is the quid pro quo proposal that has been discussed throughout the talk, and of all the proposals, seems to enjoy the highest amount of consensus, although there is some concern that review quality could be affected. I support the idea, but the question is, how can it be enforced?--hkr (talk) 13:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- cmadler has suggested that it becomes a part of the review, i.e. checking that the nominator has reviewed a hook since their previous nomination, which sounds like it could work OK. Mikenorton (talk) 13:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Seems like this could be incorporated into the nomination template pretty easily: check this user's TTDYK contributions. Click that, and if they have decent edit summaries, it's instant verification. 28bytes (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- That would also show up editors that spend a lot of time doing mundane and useful tasks at DYK, which should I think count for something. Mikenorton (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - I've suggested this several times, and I'm glad to see that it finally seems to be gaining traction. cmadler (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Stumbled in here, as an infrequent self-nominator, I'd say this is a good idea in concept, though you'll end up having to make sure that the newby reviewers don't completely screw up their reviews.--Milowent • talkblp-r 14:29, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, preferably bot-monitored through a new DYKref template. This would also address the quality concern - putting yourself down as the reviewer means asserting you have done a proper review, and will be logged. It means taking responsibility as a contributing member of the DYK community. Editors who will not take that seriously deserve to be held accountable for fnot participating as a responsible and trust-worthy member of our community. EdChem (talk) 14:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, per EdChem (talk · contribs) and Milowent (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Nev1 (talk) 23:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Don't see any disadvantages here. Any "tit for tat" reviewing will eventually be caught by our team of eagle-eyed reviewers. Sasata (talk) 07:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, as per EdChem. —Bruce1eetalk 09:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose as WP:CREEP. Good in theory, but who's gonna keep tabs in practice? --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- People know who nominates a lot, and if people don't point to a review as part of a nomination when they should, someone will notice sooner or later. Equally, shenanigans in reviewing will become apparent sooner or later, and if logs are more transparent, it will be a fair deterrent to misbehaviour. Rd232 talk 12:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support per EdChem and cmadler - but strongly recommend moving to Two Reviewers to ensure that this doesn't reduce reviewing quality. Would also recommend specifying that reviews need to be of articles created by newcomers, to prevent gaming by exchanging reviews. (People would probably notice that sooner or later, but still.) Rd232 talk 12:54, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- This one looks like it's been closed way too fast. I don't care personally if this rule is implemented, but I don't know how it'll work with new editors. —innotata 00:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Having a DYK lottery (either through Yzx's method or Roux's gradual approach)
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Very dubious Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - this is not a game show - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - pointless. If we're going to limit output, it should be a deliberate, rather than a random, selection. cmadler (talk) 14:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. - PM800 (talk) 14:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Unconvinced EdChem (talk) 14:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, per Cmadler (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. The basic principle of lottery is fundamentally incompatible with Wikipedia. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Per BorgQueen and Dravecky. Cbl62 (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. BorgQueen puts it very nicely, but I'd add that it's neither necessary, nor a solution to a problem. Physchim62 (talk) 03:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment: I can only presume the people commenting in this section haven't actually read my proposal; it was only called a 'lottery' because it built off a proposal that was a lottery. → ROUX ₪ 03:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- As I understand it (Roux, correct me if I'm wrong), Roux's proposal is to have a large list of approved hooks (about 200, the same as the current "backlog") and that each editor receives a random selection of eight of those hooks in the DYK section when they hit on the Main Page. The oldest hooks in the set of 200 would be replaced as new hooks are approved. Physchim62 (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I think that might have been the original idea, but I think it was rejected as infeasible to randomly pull eight hooks each time the page is displayed. The only feasible way to do this is to randomly pull eight hooks that will be displayed for everyone for a length of time. In other words, updates would be compiled randomly rather than deliberately. cmadler (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. I would rather have my nom rejected because it's not good enough, than by "the luck of the draw". —Bruce1eetalk 09:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose— culling ought to be on qualitative grounds. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - complexity of this isn't worth the benefits. I'd rather see a system of voting on hooks, so that any exclusion is on qualitative grounds. Rd232 talk 12:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per all above.4meter4 (talk) 20:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Limit monthly or daily self-nominations
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Support - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Johnbod (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
SupportOppose Agree with Gatoclass below; no point in this one if quid pro quo goes forward. 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)- Oppose - see absolutely no point in this, will be unlikely to significantly reduce the number of submissions and will penalize those who, for example, want to build the occasional multi. Also I think the quid pro quo proposal will greatly reduce the rationale for this. More submissions now = more reviews, so it will even out in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 04:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support as an excellent way to address the input problem, as long as limits are set high enough to allow reasonably prolific writers to submit their best work. - Dravecky (talk) 05:45, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- DYK is supposed to encourage new article creation. I am strongly opposed to any measure likely to discourage new content or participation in this project - especially when there is no evidence that this will make any substantial impact on the total number of submissions, in addition to penalizing a particular group of contributors. Also, see my previous comment above. And BTW I think it's far too early to put a proposal like this to a vote, when it's had limited discussion up to now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Not early at all, there's been a substantial amount of discussion under Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Dispelling_a_myth_about_DYK and Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Consensus_so_far. However, I do agree that a quid pro quo approach may make this proposal less appealing. And although the linked discussions weren't !votes, they did have (around) 11 in support of the proposal and 7 against, so it's dubious that there will be enough consensus for it to be implemented. --hkr (talk) 13:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- DYK is supposed to encourage new article creation. I am strongly opposed to any measure likely to discourage new content or participation in this project - especially when there is no evidence that this will make any substantial impact on the total number of submissions, in addition to penalizing a particular group of contributors. Also, see my previous comment above. And BTW I think it's far too early to put a proposal like this to a vote, when it's had limited discussion up to now. Gatoclass (talk) 06:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support Will shift established editors' focus from quantity to quality. Lampman (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Conditional support - only if we decide not to require nominators to review articles, and then only if the limit is per-hook. In those cases, I'd be OK with a limit of 2/day and/or 20/month. I am absolutely opposed to any per-article limit. cmadler (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)- Oppose for now. We seem to have consensus on going forward with the requirement for nominators to also review nominations. I'd prefer to wait a bit and see what kind of effect that has, both on the number of incoming nominations, and on the reviewer activity. cmadler (talk) 17:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment: If this is to happen, it should be a limit on hooks accepted (rather than nominated, recognising more will be rejected as standards rise) and not on hooks nominated or on articles. Quid pro quo reviewing is a good start, but I remain concerned about high volume cookie cutter articles. EdChem (talk) 14:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Perhaps I should point out that nobody has even demonstrated that such a system would substantially reduce the number of submissions yet. I think that's the least that should be done before a proposal like this is made. Not that I'd be likely to vote for it in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 15:13, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Clearly not! But the figures above seemed pretty convincing to me and others, and showed it would be more effective than your own proposal to achieve a similar end by increasing article size. Now you are saying "Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now", and opposing each individual suggestion that works in this direction on the grounds it will not be effective by itself. Johnbod (talk) 17:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Haven't done a full statistical analysis but these figures suggest a per month cap would make a difference:
- TonyTheTiger: 44 DYKs in Oct. 2010; 58 DYKs in September 2010; 38 in July 2010;
- Alansohn: 52 DYKs in Oct. 2010; 61 DYKs in Sept. 2010; 64 DYKs in Aug. 2010; 70 DYKs in July 2010; 65 DYKs in June
- Geschichte: 32 in Aug. 2010; 32 in April 2010; 21 in March 2010; 28 in Feb. 2010; 31 in Jan. 2010
- BillyHathorn: 24 in Oct. 2010; 19 in May 2010; 18 in April 2010; 25 in Jan. 2010
- cbl62: 20 in Sept. 2010; 21 in Aug. 2010; 30 in July 2010; 19 in May 2010. Cbl62 (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the hard work, but that's nowhere near a sufficient survey. Even so, the highest month you've got there - September - has 58 from one user and 61 from another. Reduce them to, say, 15 per month and you've saved 90 slots. That's 90 slots out of 1080 for the month - only 8% of the total. And that's probably an exceptional month, it would probably be half that much normally. I might also add that Alansohn's submissions are almost invariably very easy to verify. What this proposal would do is potentially impose a huge penalty on a handful of fine contributors for a very minor net benefit. Gatoclass (talk) 17:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Even if it was only an 8% reduction, which I doubt, that's a considerable help. You know perfectly well that Tony's Wikicup contributions aroused a lot of complaints here at the time, & Alansohn's have also been the subject of adverse comment from Sandy Georgia & others. Which is where we came in. For one person to have a new item on the main page every day seems excessive to me. Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- For one person to be submitting two new articles per day over a one-month period shows that the DYK "award" has been debased to chicken-shit level. It has been debased by lowering the standards (and the reward of time on the Main Page) so that these people can get their hooks up regardless of any consideration for the rest of the project or the readers of the Main Page. That's why Main Page readers overwhelmingly don't click-through on DYKs. Physchim62 (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Okay, since no-one else got around to it, I just collated the totals from our top 7 contributors over the last 10 months. Collectively, they averaged 18.7 submissions per month each. So if you imposed a limit of, say, 15 articles per month per person, you would have saved a total of 3.7 * 7 or 25.9 articles per month. We feature 1080 hooks per month, so the net saving from this proposal would be approximately 25.9/1080, or 2.4%. Gatoclass (talk) 06:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Except that an average over 7 months is not at all an accurate way to measure the effect of a cap. Cbl62 (talk) 06:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It was over an average of 10 months, not 7. Yes, it would have been better to do it over 12, or better still 24, but I didn't have time to go back that far and it would be unlikely to appreciably affect the end result. Gatoclass (talk) 06:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- That's not my point. Averaging collapses the highs and lows in individual user's output. To examine the impact a cap would have, you need to look at the data on a month-by-month basis. Cbl62 (talk) 06:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I have to disagree. Averaging shows the net saving overall. Cherry picking the highs and ignoring the lows gives a very distorted view of how effective a measure like this would be. Gatoclass (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Here's why averaging hides the impact. If you look at the last four months, and look only at five users (and there are certainly others who have been excluded), the impact of a 10 DYK limit would be significant. Chart below. That said, I've already noted that I'm fine with the "quid pro quo" alternative. Cbl62 (talk) 07:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I have to disagree. Averaging shows the net saving overall. Cherry picking the highs and ignoring the lows gives a very distorted view of how effective a measure like this would be. Gatoclass (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- That's not my point. Averaging collapses the highs and lows in individual user's output. To examine the impact a cap would have, you need to look at the data on a month-by-month basis. Cbl62 (talk) 06:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It was over an average of 10 months, not 7. Yes, it would have been better to do it over 12, or better still 24, but I didn't have time to go back that far and it would be unlikely to appreciably affect the end result. Gatoclass (talk) 06:46, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Except that an average over 7 months is not at all an accurate way to measure the effect of a cap. Cbl62 (talk) 06:34, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Okay, since no-one else got around to it, I just collated the totals from our top 7 contributors over the last 10 months. Collectively, they averaged 18.7 submissions per month each. So if you imposed a limit of, say, 15 articles per month per person, you would have saved a total of 3.7 * 7 or 25.9 articles per month. We feature 1080 hooks per month, so the net saving from this proposal would be approximately 25.9/1080, or 2.4%. Gatoclass (talk) 06:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- For one person to be submitting two new articles per day over a one-month period shows that the DYK "award" has been debased to chicken-shit level. It has been debased by lowering the standards (and the reward of time on the Main Page) so that these people can get their hooks up regardless of any consideration for the rest of the project or the readers of the Main Page. That's why Main Page readers overwhelmingly don't click-through on DYKs. Physchim62 (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Even if it was only an 8% reduction, which I doubt, that's a considerable help. You know perfectly well that Tony's Wikicup contributions aroused a lot of complaints here at the time, & Alansohn's have also been the subject of adverse comment from Sandy Georgia & others. Which is where we came in. For one person to have a new item on the main page every day seems excessive to me. Johnbod (talk) 17:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the hard work, but that's nowhere near a sufficient survey. Even so, the highest month you've got there - September - has 58 from one user and 61 from another. Reduce them to, say, 15 per month and you've saved 90 slots. That's 90 slots out of 1080 for the month - only 8% of the total. And that's probably an exceptional month, it would probably be half that much normally. I might also add that Alansohn's submissions are almost invariably very easy to verify. What this proposal would do is potentially impose a huge penalty on a handful of fine contributors for a very minor net benefit. Gatoclass (talk) 17:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Haven't done a full statistical analysis but these figures suggest a per month cap would make a difference:
- Clearly not! But the figures above seemed pretty convincing to me and others, and showed it would be more effective than your own proposal to achieve a similar end by increasing article size. Now you are saying "Reducing the rate of output is not necessarily bad, but there's been no agreement on how best to achieve this and, by my estimation at least, not much chance of establishing a consensus on a method right now", and opposing each individual suggestion that works in this direction on the grounds it will not be effective by itself. Johnbod (talk) 17:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Editor October September August July Alansohn 52 61 64 70 cbl62 9 20 21 30 Geschichte 13 18 32 7 BillyHathorn 24 15 7 15 TonyTheTiger 44 58 5 38 Cap Savings (limit of 10) 93 (8.6%) 122 (11.3%) 87 (8.1%) 113 (10.5%) Cap Savings (limit of 15) 75 (6.9%) 97 (9.0%) 72 (6.7%) 93 (8.6%)
- Yes, but this underlines my other point. There is really only one user who consistently contributes more than about 20 DYKs a month, and that is Alansohn who has a phenomenal average of 29.8 a month and who sometimes produces 60+ a month. A 15-hook-per-month cap would hugely diminish his contributions. I fail to see why one user should be so heavily penalized for the sins of the project as a whole - particularly by a measure that will only marginally address the problem.
- I might add that some of those top 7 users have contributed little or nothing to the actual running of DYK. Quid pro quo is going to mean a much bigger contribution from them, which will greatly outweigh the relatively minor impact made by a monthly cap. Gatoclass (talk) 07:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's not about "penalizing" anyone. It's about implementing reforms that will satisfy those who might otherwise seek to get rid of DYK as we know it. And I'm willing to support the market-driven approach. There doesn't appear to be consensus for a cap, but there is clear consensus for quid pro quo. And implementing both a cap and quid pro quo is overkill in any event. Cbl62 (talk) 07:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Really? I've been puzzled by your earlier comments positing the two as either/or. Quid pro quo is about increasing reviews, this is about reducing volume (whether it's called "input" or "output"). I see no connection between the two, and like most people here (not Gatoclass obviously) I think we need to introduce several changes to achieve the desired effects. The useful last bit of this discussion has not changed my view supporting a cap at all btw. Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- The connection is that qpq reduces the volume per reviewer, because it adds reviewers to the pool. Reducing the burden on reviewers is the goal of most of the proposals - reducing the volume of submissions is only one possible way of achieving that, it's not an end in itself. Gatoclass (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, reducing the number of submissions is a worthy (and I'd say necessary) goal in itself. Our readers are looking for a bottle of champagne each day, not four bottles of lemonade! I'd rather submissions came down through self-selection on the part of the regulars, to give the reviewers more time to spend helping the newcomers. But if people think that some sort of imposed restriction is needed as well, then so be it, it's no big deal. Unless, of course, you think DYK exists for the submitters rather than the readers... Physchim62 (talk) 14:03, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- The connection is that qpq reduces the volume per reviewer, because it adds reviewers to the pool. Reducing the burden on reviewers is the goal of most of the proposals - reducing the volume of submissions is only one possible way of achieving that, it's not an end in itself. Gatoclass (talk) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Really? I've been puzzled by your earlier comments positing the two as either/or. Quid pro quo is about increasing reviews, this is about reducing volume (whether it's called "input" or "output"). I see no connection between the two, and like most people here (not Gatoclass obviously) I think we need to introduce several changes to achieve the desired effects. The useful last bit of this discussion has not changed my view supporting a cap at all btw. Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's not about "penalizing" anyone. It's about implementing reforms that will satisfy those who might otherwise seek to get rid of DYK as we know it. And I'm willing to support the market-driven approach. There doesn't appear to be consensus for a cap, but there is clear consensus for quid pro quo. And implementing both a cap and quid pro quo is overkill in any event. Cbl62 (talk) 07:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I might add that some of those top 7 users have contributed little or nothing to the actual running of DYK. Quid pro quo is going to mean a much bigger contribution from them, which will greatly outweigh the relatively minor impact made by a monthly cap. Gatoclass (talk) 07:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, agree with Lampman (talk · contribs), above. -- Cirt (talk) 16:58, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, tend to agree with Lampman. --BorgQueen (talk) 17:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, though I'm fine with trying "quid pro quo" first, as it is a sort of cap and trade alternative to an absolute cap. Either or both are fine with me. The question is what cap? Anything in the range of 10-20 per month is fine with me. Cbl62 (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. No reason to quench prolific writers. I sense a gross logical mistake here "reducing quantity will force them to improve the quality" - No! They will simply do something else on WP on in RL. Writing and quality check/improvement are the top WP priority, IMO. Further, I see no evidence that DYK blunders originate from prolific contributors. Why should they get punished? Materialscientist (talk) 06:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose I'm with Material Scientist on this one; prolific contributors contributing "cookie-cutter" articles will simply have their hooks rejected if they are uninteresting. If they can write large quantities of articles that meet the increased length requirements, are reasonably well referenced, and interesting, good for them, and thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! Sasata (talk) 07:50, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - per MS. No matter how much the boring Louisiana politicians bug me, we shouldn't penalize him for writing them. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, as per Sasata. —Bruce1eetalk 09:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but I fear unworkable - the original object, IIRC, is to encourage newbies to participate and create new articles. Having no limit threatens that objective by crowding out the newbies. Needs somebody to keep track, and to also take account of frequent reciprocal nominations. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Gatoclass. Rd232 talk 12:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - Of all the suggestions, this is the one I oppose the most (no, I would not be affected by it). A strict numerical cap on submissions from the most active contributors will certainly reduce input, but in the worst way possible: by discouraging article-writing and without regard to quality (i.e., the first 10 or 15 submissions are accepted, the rest rejected). I'm not convinced that there will be a "shift of focus" from quantity to quality: (1) submissions from experienced editors tend (in my experience) to be of a higher-than-average quality, so limiting their contributions would decrease the average quality of DYK submissions; and (2) the shift of focus will be from DYK to other things. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Gatoclass.4meter4 (talk) 20:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose I can't see how this would solve our problems. Black Falcon (and others) have summed it up nicely. Lampman's point doesn't seem to be based on any evidence. SmartSE (talk) 00:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This is tackling the problem from the wrong end: it doesn't matter who writes the hooks. Regardless of creator, if the hook and article are good then use it, otherwise select another article. If some editors are flooding in cookie-cutter noms which get rejected, then they'll learn to either raise the quality of their contribs or else not submit weak articles to DYK. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. DYK is about writing new articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Would senselessly confine good editors. The ones contributing lots of article aren't usually the problem. That said, all the Princeton and Michigan basketball season articles were annoying, so perhaps some sort of limit like that, but not like what is proposed. Grsz11 05:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support. We should encourage quality, not quantity. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 11:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- I agree, but this proposal addresses quantity only. It gives no consideration to the quality of nominated articles. -- Black Falcon (talk) 17:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose First of all I must thank all those who have made positive comments about my DYK contributions. I think that rather than a hard monthly cap, which becomes yet one more statistic that needs to be tracked, that we should increase the minimum article size to 2,500 or 3,000 characters of prose, which has the benefit of cutting many of the bare stubs that pass through. Alansohn (talk) 00:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - raising the bar on submissions to decrease the submission pool makes more sense than hard limits. HausTalk 01:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose eh? No obvious reason, no benefits, and no good for some of our best contributors. —innotata 00:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. This is nothing less than "You're doing too well, so we must penalise you!" newthink. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 00:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Anything which discourages article creation and improvement is clearly way off.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Hard cap rarely works well. People can get around this rule easily by asking others to nominate on their behalf. OhanaUnitedTalk page 06:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Do nothing
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
- not a practical option Physchim62 (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Better than doing something bad, though. cmadler (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- DYK is already a disaster area that corresponds neither to its title, nor to its vocation as a Main Page slot. Doing nothing is tantamount to abolishing it. Physchim62 (talk) 17:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Support - may be the easiest way of ensuring a quick death for the present DYK concept. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment - I don't see how DYK is a disaster and I see a long future for this highly useful endeavor to promote new material at wikipedia. I'm not saying things are perfect here, but for the most part DYK runs just fine in its current state.4meter4 (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Comments
- Increasing the character limit.
- 2500 seems fair; reducing the logic, simply the time it takes to write would make contributors spend 40% more time on an article, and 2500 is not that hard to achieve. - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- According to Lampman, 68% of noms are already over the 2500 limit. Upping the limit would more penalize submitters for whom English is not their first language (as noted in the stats above for the "Norwegian" contributions). Physchim62 (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Limit monthly or daily self-nominations
- 20 a month seems good to me, max a year at 240 gives those who love to amass DYK's still something to achieve, and by maxing out their contributions, it could free up probably 100 spots for other editors a month. - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:54, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Some of those are (IMO) terrible ideas, but I'll respect Theornamentalist's request not to indicate my opposition inline. 28bytes (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's just a collection of all the ones (good or bad) that have been proposed so far. I agree, some of them aren't practical.--hkr Laozi speak 03:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment - I don't see any point in having a vote on these issues, at least, not right now and not in this format. The issues for each are generally more complex than are presented here, and with the exception of matsci's quid pro quo proposal above, none of them have looked close to achieving consensus. Also, I think we should give the qpq system a chance before trying anything more radical. One step at a time. Gatoclass (talk) 03:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- (ec from below) Your abstention from the !vote is noted, as is the habit of new sections appearing just as consensus might be reached on a previous section, an attempt at divide et impera perhaps. In any case your concerns are noted, and shall be duely treated. Physchim62 (talk) 03:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I thought I might leave a few comments anyhow, to try and clarify some of the problems. Gatoclass (talk) 03:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Actually I'm not sure if it is helpful commenting on these proposals because many of them were not discrete proposals in the first place, and they can't be addressed in isolation from one another. I think perhaps I will stick to my original instinct and refrain from commenting upon them further. Gatoclass (talk) 03:57, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I thought I might leave a few comments anyhow, to try and clarify some of the problems. Gatoclass (talk) 03:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I think that it could help give focus, and the more popular ideas could emerge from the paragraphs of text above. When that's done, we could move on towards implementation and testing.. eventually. - Theornamentalist (talk) 03:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Re "One step at a time", I agree. Debating 16+ proposals at once is a surefire way to ensure none of them move forward. 28bytes (talk) 06:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
One problem is that the number of participants has dropped a lot over the last week, and though of course all suggestions have complex arguments for or against, discussion has become rambling. This is hopefully a way to attract more participants. Johnbod (talk) 04:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Personally, I'm inclined to think the best thing we could do with this discussion is hatnote it. With all due respect to Theo, he hasn't been engaged at any point in these debates until now and I don't think his summary of proposals is accurate, and a number of them are simply missing the point. I can see this whole section quickly degenerating into another rambling discussion about everything and nothing. IMO we'd be better off moving on before that happens. Gatoclass (talk) 07:14, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I agree with Gato that we should give the qpq system a chance before making other moves. I suspect that qpq may have a similar effect as the monthly "quota" system that I had advocated. I see qpq as a "cap and trade" alternative to a true quota. Let's give it a chance before adding more elements all at once. Cbl62 (talk) 07:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Theo hasn't, but I've been here since the (nearly) very beginning of the discussion, and it looks like the listed proposals are derived from the chronology of the discussion that I wrote earlier on in this talk, but admittedly without the discussion of history or the flaws brought up for each proposal. The chronology was never meant as a !vote, just a brief overview of the discussion events for newcomers to the talk. However, I do not debate why Theo sees the need for there to be a straw poll, which was done in good faith, and he does have a point. As 28bytes said, we have a small group of people debating 15+ proposals all at once, something needs to be done.--hkr Laozi speak 07:36, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- My basic concern with this new section is that it has divorced a grabbag of proposals from the actual discussion that took place about them. I mean, if I read a proposal like "Reject boring hooks" - well of course I'd be in favour of that, who wouldn't be? We'd all like to see better quality hooks on the mainpage. But since this proposal is presented in isolation, I can see it just regenerating the same debate it generated the first time.
- If someone feels strongly about proposing this as a method of reducing submissions and improving quality, what they would need to do is start a fresh discussion listing all the pros and cons that have already been discussed, and then invite further comment. Or add some new suggestions of one's own. That is how to present a proposal - not just throwing out a catchphrase and asking people to vote on it. It seems to me that is just an invitation to going round in circles. Gatoclass (talk) 07:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The specifics for each of the proposals listed here are detailed in the talk, if you're willing to dig through a 300+ KB discussion. These are just brief summaries of each proposal.--hkr Laozi speak 07:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- As I recall, nobody ever actually got around to proposing a specific method about how to implement such a system fairly. What is the point of voting on a general principle when nobody has been able to propose a satisfactory method? If someone wants to propose a specific method, we can debate the pros and cons of that, but otherwise, I don't see the point. Gatoclass (talk) 07:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The initial chronology does list the cons that have already been discussed and relative consensus of each proposal (which was not included in this new list). And again, this wasn't intended as a vote, the (initial) list was just a chronology of the various proposed ideas and the flaws discussed by the opposition for each of them.--hkr Laozi speak 08:09, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- As I recall, nobody ever actually got around to proposing a specific method about how to implement such a system fairly. What is the point of voting on a general principle when nobody has been able to propose a satisfactory method? If someone wants to propose a specific method, we can debate the pros and cons of that, but otherwise, I don't see the point. Gatoclass (talk) 07:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Well - I assumed after 400k of largely fruitless discussion, everyone was exhausted by it and ready to settle for a modest reform. It seems I was wrong about that - some people would apparently like another 400k of discussion. I admire your stickability, but I find it hard to persuade myself that anything useful will come of it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Gatoclass (talk) 13:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
I was hoping to catch more of an audience, its just that I've seen similar discussions get quite lengthy and lose steam, and although I haven't taken part in this one, I've been reading it, and see many points brought up in the past that seemed to go nowhere. We need reform! I think we need to take action and be brave. In my opinion some of the proposals, while they would certainly come with strong opposition as does nearly anything changed on WP, would be better implemented for a short period of time to see how they would work and discuss when we actually have data to discuss on. I feel like we could be stuck in theoretical for more time then it's worth. - Theornamentalist (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- This is a pretty useless poll that encourages superficial replies to badly worded suggestions.
Take "Increasing the citation requirements", for instance. This can't be given a simple support/oppose. The quality of the sources used in an article is important, but discussions of sourcing requirements on Wikipedia always seem to degenerate into issues of quantity and mechanical adherence to over-simplified rules: the number of sources or the density of footnotes in the text. A single widely-accepted in-depth treatment of a topic is superior to three superficial newspaper articles on the same. A footnote after a paragraph is perfectly fine if it is clear that it supports the paragraph, and the footnote can bundle sources and explain what supports what part of the statement. Insisting on a footnote after each sentence (or more) just encourages close paraphrasing and plagiarism of the type that has been debated above on this page.--Hegvald (talk) 14:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)- Just as a note, each proposal has a corresponding section with a full in-depth discussion explaining all the details in the talk. It's not "badly worded" per se, it's a summary of all the proposals brought up in each section of the above talk. Admittedly, the editor who created the poll should have linked to each relevant section, but it is there if you want to read it.--hkr (talk) 14:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I have read it (even commented in it), and the issues are more complex than these poll questions and brief replies allow for. That was my point, but perhaps I didn't express it clearly enough. Anyway, I moved my comment on sourcing requirements. --Hegvald (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- "Increasing the citation requirements" is detailed fully in Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Higher_standards_for_sourcing. Each heading is just a summary, and all these proposals are very detailed in their own respective sections, but none of the sections are linked (which is a problem, and should be addressed, perhaps by copy-pasting the details?).--hkr (talk) 14:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I have read it (even commented in it), and the issues are more complex than these poll questions and brief replies allow for. That was my point, but perhaps I didn't express it clearly enough. Anyway, I moved my comment on sourcing requirements. --Hegvald (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Just as a note, each proposal has a corresponding section with a full in-depth discussion explaining all the details in the talk. It's not "badly worded" per se, it's a summary of all the proposals brought up in each section of the above talk. Admittedly, the editor who created the poll should have linked to each relevant section, but it is there if you want to read it.--hkr (talk) 14:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) There is one enormous value to this, which is that it will allow us to put to rest the proposals that are currently widely opposed. That seems to include "Require two reviewers per hook" (5/5 opposed), "Abandon the new article concept" (5/5 opposed), "Abandon or increase the time limit criteria" (4/4 opposed), and "Having a DYK lottery" (3/3 opposed). Others seem to be widely supported, and we should start looking at implementation: "Incorporate CorenBot to scan for plagiarism" (5/6 support, 1 appears neutral), "Require article nominators to review articles" (4/4 support, plus strong support higher up this page under "Matsci's quid pro quo proposal"). Then I'd suggest that we temporarily set aside disputed proposals, and agree to revist those after a pre-determined period of time (1 month?). That will give us time to implement the uncontroversial proposals and start to get a feel for how they work. cmadler (talk) 14:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed. I think it's becoming clearer which proposals have consensus now. And my comment was in favor of the proposal! Even if it did list my criticisms of it...--hkr (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that many of the above proposals are linked. Nobody is suggesting that having nominators also review articles is a Bad Thing, but neither is anyone suggesting that it's a solution on its own. I think we should eliminate those proposals which are tantamount to abolishing DYK, because any editor who wants to discuss them further can do so at T:MP. Physchim62 (talk) 15:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- I agree this is a useful stage in the discussion, narrowing down the wide range of options & proposals. There are "big picture" options, especially in terms of reducing output/frequency, and a number of specific measures that would go towards achieving this. Perhaps at some point these wider "aims" and detailed measures need to be taken separately. I wish I could agree with Lampman that everyone votiong here seems aware of the discussions above. Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that many of the above proposals are linked. Nobody is suggesting that having nominators also review articles is a Bad Thing, but neither is anyone suggesting that it's a solution on its own. I think we should eliminate those proposals which are tantamount to abolishing DYK, because any editor who wants to discuss them further can do so at T:MP. Physchim62 (talk) 15:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Strongly agree with Cmadler. There are some proposals with wide support, let's give them the attention they deserve. 28bytes (talk) 18:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed. I think it's becoming clearer which proposals have consensus now. And my comment was in favor of the proposal! Even if it did list my criticisms of it...--hkr (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- This section has been up for more than 36 hours now. Unless someone objects, I'm going to go through and close as either kept or rejected the proposals that are overwhelmingly leaning one way or the other (3-1? 4-1?). I would again like to suggest that we take 1 month to implement and test the proposals that have overwhelming support, and that, at the end of that month (let's just say December 15), we reopen discussion on all the more controversial proposals. cmadler (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Johnbod left a note on my talk page requesting that I not close any more discussion because it's "too early to do this". Personally, I think it's become clear that some proposals have consensus for/against now, and that is unlikely to change, and that some proposals do not have a consensus now, and that's unlikely to change. It seems reasonable to me to go ahead and close discussions, agreeing to revisit all the no-consensus ideas in about a month. However, at Johnbod's request, I'm not closing any more discussions, and if anyone thinks I misread a discussion as for/no-consensus/against, they are welcome to change or reopen it. I just think it's time to move on and stop talking about ideas that aren't going anywhere now, and start implementing the things for which we do have consensus. cmadler (talk) 14:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Only 30 hours in fact, which is no time at all on these important issues. I've re-opened the ones that were no consensus, but am leaving the ones with a clear result one way or the other. There is plenty to do meanwhile implementing the 4 proposals that passed. The "lottery" one could also be closed. Johnbod (talk) 14:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Might a closure of WT:DYK#unsourced BLP drive be considered? It would be good for it and its preceding discussion not to be drowned out by everything else being discussed. EdChem (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- I'd be wary of closing it outright: there seems to be some disagreement as to whether the BLPs are going to treated as new articles or whether there should be some other sort of expansion. Why not bring the section down to the bottom of the page, and note that this point needs to be decided on before it can be signed off. Physchim62 (talk) 15:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Might a closure of WT:DYK#unsourced BLP drive be considered? It would be good for it and its preceding discussion not to be drowned out by everything else being discussed. EdChem (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- Please re-open all the polls. Some of us are just getting to this conversation and it is standard to leave open a five day window on these sort of conversations. Two days is hardly enough time to get enough input on any topic, even if it looks like a WP:SNOW close.4meter4 (talk) 20:59, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
- One of the points that some participants here seem to have missed is that editors participate in WP voluntarily, and for a wide range of reasons, but they do so primarily because they get some form of enjoyment from it. Personally, I participate because I enjoy building content through writing or expanding articles, responding to questions, and (sometimes!) through discussing content matters with other editors. Submitting articles to DYK is a by-product of that - it's often quite rewarding to have an article mentioned on the front page, but I contributed articles long before I was aware of the DYK processes and hope to continue to do so irrespective of whether anything I do in future goes through the DYK process or not. I do sometimes contribute thoughts on DYK articles and hooks, but I know that there is a group of editors who spend much more time than me on processing DYK candidates, and they do an excellent job - but I feel no obligation to join that group because it's not what I get most pleasure from doing. So, there needs to be recognition that different editors have different roles on WP, and because some editors contribute new articles into the DYK process should not necessarily mean that it should be the same editors processing those submissions. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- FWIW, I think all the polls can be closed now. They have been open for over a week and non-one "voted" yesterday. I think the extra exposure was beneficial though. Johnbod (talk) 11:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- I've just been commenting and "!voting", as have others; it looks like more comments are desirable, and the closed proposals were closed by people taking an active part in other discussions, after sometimes a very brief time, with fairly few comments and no signs of certain or snowballing consensus. —innotata 00:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Including Newly Sourced BLPs at DYK
Following on from the supportive discussion of including unsourced BLPs at DYK, and the comment of 28bytes, I propose the following rule changes:
On WP:DYK, under DYK Rules...
- Change second sentence to read "DYK is only for articles that have been created, or expanded fivefold or more, or newly-sourced BLPs that have been expanded at least twofold within the last 5 days."
- Under selection criteria, add as third dot point "Former unsourced BLPs which have been thoroughly sourced and in which the prose portion has been expanded twofold or more within the last five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles."
On WP:DYKAR...
- Add to rule A4: "Twofold expansion for newly-sourced BLPs similarly means from the version prior to the expansion and addition of sources."
- Add to rule D8: "For newly-sourced BLPs, the five days starts with the first edit adding new content or references."
- Add to rule D12: "For newly-sourced BLPs that have been two-fold expanded, thorough sourcing of the article is expected."
On WP:Did you know/Onepage...
- Change nomination rule 1 to read "The first priority is to understand that the article must be new, because newness can't be fixed later. To make a long story short: At least 80% of the article must be new (five days old or less) when the article is nominated, or it must be a newly-sourced BLP that is at least 50% new content."
- Citation requirements, rule D2, add "Newly sourced BLPs are expected to be thoroughly sourced."
- Rename rules M4 and M5 to be M5 and M6, and add a new rule M4: "For purposes of DYK, 50% new is sufficient to be considered "new" in a newly sourced BLP; this reduced requirement recognises the time and effort involved in thoroughly sourcing an existing unsourced BLP. Adding enough new material to make an article 50% new is called a twofold expansion, because one-half is 50%."
- Does a section similar to Fivefold expansion need to be written?
Are there any other changes required? Could we add a new status to the DYK nomination template, such as: {{subst:NewDYKnom| article= | hook=... that ? | status=blp | author= }}? Thoughts? EdChem (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
- Looks good to me. Re the Fivefold expansion section, I think a new "F7" there noting to substitute "two" for "five" when considering newly-sourced BLPs would be sufficient. 28bytes (talk) 19:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
- Those all sound good to me, and I also strongly support the status being added to the nom template. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 21:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
- DYK is complicated enough for new users, and adding additional rules is not the answer. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:32, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Ed, we are talking about implementing a new acceptance criterion that has achieved consensus. If you can suggest a way to go about that implementation that also simplifies the rules, I would be thrilled to consider it. However, failing that, our options are to introduce new rules to cover newly-sourced BLPs, or continue the present practice of rejecting them completely. Personally, I am strongly in favour of supporting efforts to deal with the backlog of unsourced BLPs. EdChem (talk) 07:02, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Ah, apologies, I didn't realize this had reached consensus before. I'm obviously in the minority, so carry on :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- No problem. FYI, the discussion is here, and follows on from the now-archived Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 61#DYK as a possible part the sourcing of BLP drive. EdChem (talk) 07:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- I found the first one before and saw almost unanimous support – that's how I know I am in the minority! Good luck and I hope this change, in whatever form it takes, turns out well. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Done rule changes implemented. EdChem (talk) 04:56, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:DYKSTATS
Would anybody object if i moved this page to WP:Did you know statistics or WP:Did you know/Statistic? This is to make it in line with the rest of the pages in this project. Simply south (talk) 03:03, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- I would object. But only because a statistic is a single number. So, moving it to WP:Did you know/Statistics would be ok. :) EdChem (talk) 06:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Ahh, the amazing wonders of typos! Simply south (talk) 14:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- If no one properly objects by this Friday, i'll move it. Simply south (talk) 11:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
- It is done. Simply south (talk) 23:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- If no one properly objects by this Friday, i'll move it. Simply south (talk) 11:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
- Ahh, the amazing wonders of typos! Simply south (talk) 14:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
8-hour cycle
Just happened to notice there are only 109 hooks left on Suggestions! Time to go to an 8-hour cycle. Does someone remember how to do this? I haven't done it myself for ages. Gatoclass (talk) 10:44, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Done (hopefully). Materialscientist (talk) 10:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
- Why not keep with the normal cycle but reduce the number of hooks? Simply south (talk) 15:00, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Given that there are only very few articles approved at the moment (23 to be precise) and all six queues are empty (with one prep ready to be promoted), an 8 hour cycle would appear sensible. Schwede66 03:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
- Make that two preps. ;) Also, just saw this, so trimmed Prep1 down to seven hooks. - The Bushranger Return fireFlank speed 03:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't think that's what PFHLai is getting at. If DYK is significantly longer than OTD, there is a gap at the bottom of OTD which looks bad. Sometimes that gap can be filled, sometimes not. In either case, it's not really OTD's fault: DYK has the resources to check its output against both today's and tommorrow's OTD, whereas OTD has no effective means of knowing what DYK will choose to show (and, in any case, DYK's output is so fragmented that such information would be next to useless). What I think PFHLai is asking for is for people to look at the OTD when constructing their queues, so as to keep a constant page-length regardless of the number of hooks. Physchim62 (talk) 03:20, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
- Seven hooks usually leaves a gap at the bottom of DYK on my screen. Not so long ago we were routinely running 9 hooks and there were no complaints. I think we should stick to 8, and if we start running low on hooks, go to an 8-hour cycle. Gatoclass (talk) 04:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
- Q4, which is the next one to go live, has six hooks (just in case you hadn't noticed). And with regards to the discussion above, we are of course talking about two separate issues. There's firstly the attempt to balance the two columns on the homepage. The second issue is what I was referring to, and that is that we are running low on approved hooks, and we should thus slow down the rate with which we publish them. Whilst the first issue affects the second, they are two issues and they should both be addressed. Schwede66 02:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Did the transition to a 8-hour cycle work? I ask because the T:DYK/Q still shows that the queues are being cycled every six hours. Since I could barely find enough usuable hooks for a six-hook update, the replace rate desperately needs to be slowed down. –Grondemar 13:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
- We didn't change it. The cycle doesn't need changing because there are 169 total hooks at T:TDYK. The problem you had is in regards to the number of verified hooks, not the total number, which is a different issue. Gatoclass (talk) 14:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Queue 3
The lead hook is way in excess of 200 characters. Schwede66 18:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- True, but the "(pictured)" doesn't count. It could be shortened by calling him W.W. Talcott instead of William Wilson Talcott. Cbl62 (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- If it must be shortened, this would bring it under 200 characters: ... that ice cream manufacturer W. W. Talcott (pictured) jumped to his death from an excursion steamer into Lake Michigan with rocks in his pockets after failing to extricate his wife from a "love cult" in 1922? Cbl62 (talk) 18:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Accepting Newly-Sourced BLPs
I have made the changes agreed to in the discussions above, so we can now all expect to see some nominations under this category. The requirements for these articles are:
- must start from unsourced within the last five days; typically these articles can be found in CAT:BLP
- must be two-fold expanded and above 1500 readable characters
- must be thoroughly sourced – this is a subjective standard, but there is discretion for rejecting nominations with poor referencing, especially if references for significant facts about the person are missing. One or two references makes an article no longer unreferenced; it doesn't make an article main page worthy.
- must satisfy all usual requirements about the hook – watching for unduly negative or uninteresting hooks is particularly important here
I will be posting notices about the new DYK rules at appropriate noticeboards. Please, help to spread the word; I see this as DYK contributing to the drive to eliminate the unsourced BLP backlog, so we want the news of the rule change to be spread widely.
On a related issue, it would be very helpful if someone who knows how templates work could modify the nomination template to have a new status other than "new" and "expanded" – perhaps a status=newblp option (or similar)? I looked at the template and am nowhere near skilled enough to attempt such a change. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 05:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
- I love this change. As for the template, that thing is the most complicated template I have ever seen. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
BWV 70
The hook about BWV 70, now in prep 4, "... that performance of Bach's cantata Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! for Advent was acceptable in Weimar but not in Leipzig, because Leipzig didn't allow music during Advent?" is not precise, because music was permitted in Leipzig on the first Sunday of Advent. Suggestion: "... that performance of Bach's cantata Wachet! betet! betet! wachet!, for the Second Sunday of Advent in Weimar, was not acceptable in Leipzig during Advent?" --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
- Corrected as suggested. Materialscientist (talk) 04:15, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Reminder: last 15 hours of voting in the ArbCom elections
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For the election coordinators, Tony (talk) 09:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Bad hook
The item in the hook for Peter Shivute is not explained in any way in the article text. How this escaped the attention of the DYK reviewer is beyond me. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
- With multi-article hooks, the hook fact does not need to be mentioned in all of the articles. You will find the information from the referenced hook in the third article, Supreme Court of Namibia. --Allen3 talk 03:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
- (ec) Allen said it better than I was going to. Further. This particular hook is just a "quirky hook" and its detailed elaboration in the articles won't improve them. Materialscientist (talk) 03:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
- I'm no expert on the ins and outs of DYK rules, but I think most readers would expect the hook to relate to the first link. I certainly did. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Can we put this in a queue already? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
- You don't think we should wait for the date that was decided for it before? Less than a month now. SilverserenC 08:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
- It's been there since August, the original author has retired... does it really matter when it goes up? I'm just sick of seeing it on T:TDYK... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:25, 8 December 2010 (UTC)