Overview
Did you know... is a section you can see on the Main Page. Beginners should consult this Did You Know glossary if they don't understand any of the terms used. Beginners may like to start by looking at a summary of our many rules: this provides links to pages with more detailed explanations (which in turn may link to even more detailed pages).
Here are the ways you can help. The ways are listed in increasing order of the Did You Know experience that is required to do these jobs well. So beginners should choose from the top of the list. Statistics show most people who read this page don't click anything, but that wasn't the intent. Please choose from the list and read on; there's more.
- You can help proofread nominations.
- You can write a new article. But you might want to study the nomination process first or write your article in user space, or your article might be too old before it's ready.
- You can nominate a new article and write a Did You Know hook for it.
- You can approve or disapprove nominations.
- You can promote nominations to the preparation areas.
- You can help our software to schedule regular moves from the preparation areas to the Main Page, or do it the old way if the software isn't working.
This one-page format of "Learning DYK" is designed to be a database for the proposal; this one is for printing.
Nomination rules
If you have never written a Wikipedia article, see Wikipedia:Your first article. The following criteria are used to determine whether a nominated article is eligible for Did You Know:
- New – 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 (seven days old or less) when the article is nominated.
- Long enough – The article must have at least 1,500 characters of prose – not the whole article, just prose.
- Citations – The article must be cited like this.
- Neutral – Articles on living individuals are carefully checked to ensure that no unsourced or poorly sourced negative material is included. Articles and hooks which focus unduly on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided.
- Free of copyvio or plagiarism – Except for brief, clearly marked quotations, the article does not include material copied or closely paraphrased from copyrighted sources. Material taken from public domain or compatibly licensed sources is properly attributed in line with Wikipedia:Plagiarism.
- You knew this but – to settle arguments we wrote this stuff down.
The next step is nominating your article for Did You Know. You can ask a Did You Know regular or see this list of Did You Know administrators, or you can nominate it yourself as described here.
R1: Articles nominated for deletion won't be used unless/until they survive the deletion process.
R2: The article is likely to be rejected for unresolved edit warring or having dispute tags. (Removing the tags without consensus doesn't count.)
R3: There is a reasonable expectation that an article which is to appear on the front page, even a short one, should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress. Therefore, articles which include unexpanded headers are likely to be rejected. Articles which fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected. For example, an article about a book that fails to summarize the book's contents, but contains only a bio of the author and some critics' views, is likely to be rejected as insufficiently comprehensive.
R4: If your article contradicts an existing article, the contradiction should be resolved one way or the other before your article is approved. Don't expect Did You Know regulars to resolve the contradiction for you.
R5: If there is a stub tag, it should ordinarily be removed if the article is long enough for DYK.
R6: To some extent, Did You Know approval is a subjective process. No amount of studying rules, almost-rules and precedents will guarantee approval, nor will violating any rule guarantee disapproval. Just because an unfamiliar criterion isn't listed, doesn't mean you can't be disqualified. The subjective decision might depend on an attempt to circumvent the details of the rules, especially if the attempt doesn't address the underlying purpose of improving the hook and article.
R7: If the nominator is not one of the significant contributors to the article, then he or she should notify them of the nomination.Article length
C1: Articles must have a minimum of 1,500 characters (including spaces) of prose (not the entire article, just prose) as counted by this script. Did You Know defines "prose" to exclude infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables, block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, edit buttons, "citation needed" and similar superscripted text, and reference link numbers like [6]. More details here.
C2: Proposed lists need 1,500+ characters of prose as defined above. The listed items themselves are not counted as part of the 1,500 DYK qualifying characters.
C3: In practice, articles longer than 1,500 characters may still be rejected as too short, at the discretion of the selecting reviewers and administrators.
Citation requisites
D1: The hook may not be written yet, because that's part of nominating. But when the hook is written, the hook fact must be cited in the article with an inline citation, since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable. Once again, that rule is only for the hook fact, not for every sentence in the article. (Yes, we know featured articles don't have that rule, but that's because featured articles don't have hook facts.)
D2: The article in general should use inline citations of reliable sources. A rule of thumb is one inline citation per paragraph, excluding the intro, plot summaries, and paragraphs which summarize other cited content. Newly sourced BLPs are expected to be thoroughly sourced.
D3: Sources should be properly labelled; that is, not under an "External links" header. References in the article must not be bare URLs according to Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 29#Reference section.
D4: Wikipedia, including Wikipedias in other languages, is not considered a Wikipedia:Reliable source.
D5: Multiple sources are generally required, to ensure the article meets the general notability guideline.
Article sources
Any editor may nominate new articles for Did You Know. Some new articles may be found at:
- User:AlexNewArtBot/GoodSearchResult – This is an automated list of promising new articles generated by AlexNewArtBot (talk · contribs · logs).
- List of new article announcement pages
- New pages
- You can nominate your own new article. This is called a "self-nom".
Rules specific to nom type
New article nominations
- M1: For purposes of DYK, a "new" article is no more than seven days old when nominated (well, not exactly). This does not include articles split from older articles.
- M2: For purposes of DYK, 80% new is enough to be considered "new". To add enough new material to make an article 80% new is called fivefold expansion, because four-fifths is 80%.
- M3: Newly promoted good articles (that weren't approved earlier) are also acceptable as new articles
- M4: Try to pick articles that are original to Wikipedia (not inclusions of free data sources) and interesting to a wide audience. Working on existing unsourced BLPs, such as those listed at CAT:BLP, is also most welcome – the community is working hard to ensure that all BLPs are sourced in the future, and assisting in eliminating the backlog is a valuable contribution to Wikipedia.
- M5: Articles that have been featured (bold link) in blurbs on the main page's In the News section are not eligible, nor are items that have been on DYK before (pre-expansion, for example). Articles that have been linked to from the mainpage but were not featured links are still eligible.
If you have never submitted a Did You Know nomination before, you don't have to master DYKcheck. But maybe you should; DYKcheck automates prose character counting and some of our other rules, so you don't have to learn them. If you routinely approve hooks for others, you should install DYKcheck. If not, you can use DYKcheck without installing it. DYKcheck (or prosesizebytes, or prosesize, which give the same count) is the preferred method for counting characters in an article's prose, and usually carries the most weight at DYK, because it counts only the prose as defined by Did You Know rules, thus avoiding mistakes and providing an impartial settlement of disputed counting.
Counting prose characters without DYKcheck
You'll probably make a mistake trying to count this way, but you'll be close. Use a free website like this, or an external software program that has a character-counting feature. For example, if you are using Microsoft Word, select the text from the article page (or, in the case of "Did you know" nominations, the DYK talk page) – not the edit page containing Wikitext – then copy and paste it into a blank document. Delete everything DYKcheck doesn't count: infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables, block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, edit buttons, "Citation needed" and similar superscripted text, and reference link numbers like [6]. Click "Tools" ("Review" in Office 2007), then "Word Count", and note the "Characters (with spaces)" figure. Other word processing programs may have a similar feature. For Mac users, Apple has a Word counter widget available for Mac OS X 10.4 or later. Note: The character counts indicated on "Revision history" pages are not accurate for DYK purposes as they include categories, infoboxes and similar text in articles, and comments and signatures in hooks on the suggestions page.
Using DYKcheck if you have a username
Copy the following phrase to your clipboard and then add the following phrase:importScript('User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js'); //DYKcheck tool
After saving, you have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes. Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), Internet Explorer: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5. For other browsers, see Wikipedia:Bypass your cache.
If you are on a Wikipedia page that starts with Wikipedia:, User:, Talk:, or anything with ":", go to a normal page like Dog. You should then see the words "DYK check" on the left side of your screen, assuming you use the default Wikipedia:Preferences. Go to the page you want to check and click "DYK check". The "Prose size (text only)" figure is the figure used by Did You Know. The text actually counted is colored yellow. If DYKcheck finds errors, they will be listed at the top of the page and colored red. The DYKCheck can take several seconds to compile the conclusion so watch for that.
Using DYKcheck without installing it
With or without a username, you can use the DYKcheck tool without installing it; just put thisinto your URL and hit Enter when you're viewing a mainspace page.javascript:importScript('User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js'); dykCheck();
Prosesizebytes
Prosesizebytes is similar to DYKcheck, but it only counts characters of prose without checking anything else. Experienced users use prosesizebytes anyway because it's a few seconds faster. Installing prosesizebytes, and using it with or without installing it, is about the same as for DYKcheck, but substitute the file name User:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js instead of User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js, and the button is labeled "Page size" instead of "DYK check". Or use the instructions at User talk:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js.
More information about DYKcheck
See User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.Fivefold expansion
F1: Former redirects, stubs, or other short articles in which the prose portion (not the whole article) has been expanded fivefold or more within the last seven days since nomination (well, not exactly), are acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles. For step-by-step guide on how to calculate whether the expansion is big enough and recent enough, see User:Rjanag/Calculating fivefold expansion by hand.
F2: Fivefold expansion means at least five times as much prose as the previously existing article – no matter how bad it was (copyvios are an exception), no matter whether you kept any of it, and no matter if it was up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article.
F3: "Seven days old" means seven days old in article space. You may write your article on a user subpage and perfect it for months. The seven days start when you move it into article space. Such moves are often overlooked when enforcing the seven day rule, so we may need a reminder. But if you move the edit history along with the article, we might not believe you moved it, because it isn't obvious in the edit history.
F4: If some of the text was copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate article.
F5: The age of the previously existing article used to calculate fivefold expansion depends on the date of the next version, not the date that version was created. Explanation here.
F6: The fivefold rule is controversial.
Calculating 5-fold DYK eligibility
G1: To calculate fivefold expansion since a specific day, which I will call July 18, 2008, for definiteness: 1. Count the characters in the prose-only portion of the current version. 2. On the article's history screen, click the latest time stamp before July 18, not the first time stamp for July 18. 3. Divide by the prose-only characters on that screen.
To explain the counter-intuitive step 2, I emphasize the difference between an edit's change, which you see by clicking "prev" on the history page, and an edit's result, which you see by clicking the time stamp on the history page. Although an edit's change and an edit's result are listed on the same line, the edit's change really comes between that edit's result and the previous edit's result. Similarly, an edit's result really comes between that edit's change and the next edit's change, even though an edit's change and an edit's result are shown on the same line.
Example. On January 1, 2006, a 100 character stub is created. At 1:00 on July 18, 2008, the 100 characters are expanded to 1000 characters. An hour later at 2:00 July 18, 2008, the article is further expanded to 2000 characters. When I say it that way, the expansion is clearly 20x (or equivalently, 95% new) and qualifies for Did You Know. But to count the 100 characters, they wouldn't be listed as 1:00 July 18. The 100 characters existed on July 18 before 1:00, but the 100 characters were the result of the previous edit. So you would have to click the 2006 edit to count the 100 characters, even though 2006 is much too old for Did You Know. If you made the mistake of clicking the first edit for July 18, you would get the result of that first edit and therefore miss the change of that edit, and count 1000 characters, resulting in 2x expansion and an unjust disqualification.
Multiple articles
L1: A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule. If your hook introduces more than one article, you can do a basic calculation by subtracting the number of characters in the bolded character string for each additional new article beyond the first. If having done that the hook length is still 200 characters or less, it is probably an acceptable length. If it is over 200 characters after the subtractions, it may still be considered eligible if the hook is reasonably compact and readable, but such hooks will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
L2: Text duplicated in more than one article in a multi-article hook only counts toward the 1500 character minimum for one of them.
What articles not to shoot for 5-fold DYK
K1: Some people think we're mindless bureaucratic meanies for wanting a 100,000-character article to be expanded to 500,000. But please don't miss the forest for the trees. We didn't want you to nominate a 100,000-character existing article; we wanted a new article. If it isn't new, you could still potentially nominate when it gets promoted to a good article.
Hook
Hook requirements
A hook is what you see, several times, in the Main Page's Did You Know section. Each hook begins with "...".
H1: The hook should be formatted like the hooks you see on the Main Page. Checklist here.
H2: The hook itself should be concise (fewer than about 200 characters, including spaces). More details here.
H3: The hook should refer to established facts that are not likely to change, and should be relevant for more than just novelty or newness.
H4: The hook should be neutral.
H5: The "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article and cited with an inline citation to a reliable source since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. A lot of submissions are made which fail to meet one or both of these criteria. Nominators should ensure that their submissions meet both of these criteria or their submissions will fail DYK eligibility.
H6: Articles and hooks which focus on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided.
H7: When you write the DYK item (or "hook") please make it "hooky", that is, short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article. An interesting hook is more likely to draw in a variety of readers. Shorter hooks are preferred to longer ones, as long as they don't misstate the article content.
H8: Once again, you need a new, qualifying article, not just a hook, no matter how interesting the hook is.
H9: Piping the article link is sometimes discouraged, but many hooks are better when the link is piped, and show on the Main Page that way. Disambiguated article titles like Gene Green (baseball) are always piped like this: '''[[Gene Green (baseball)|Gene Green]]'''
.
H10: Don't falsely assume that everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about.
H11: If the subject is a work of fiction or a fictional character, the hook must involve the real world in some way.
H12: No links to disambiguation pages. Here is the Wikipedia guideline.
H13: If the hook uses a possessive apostrophe after the qualifying article, use {{`}} or {{`s}} to keep the bold text and the apostrophe distinct e.g. "... that John's house (etc)?" If the article is in italics (e.g. a ship's name), use the slightly different templates {{'}} or {{'s}} e.g. "... that HMS Hood's anchor (etc)?"
Hook format
The hook format should resemble hooks on the Main Page. Specifically:
I1: Entries should start with an ellipsis of exactly three full stops (periods) (not the ellipsis character …) and a space. See WP:ELLIPSIS.
I2: The hook (or in the unusual case of multiple sentences, only the hook's first sentence) should end with one question mark. That is because the implied "Did you know ..." grammatically makes the first sentence, and only the first sentence, into a question that needs a question mark.
I3: Don't write "... That". That is, don't capitalize the first word after the ellipsis (usually "that") unless it's a proper noun.
I4: The hook must link to a qualifying new article.
I5: The title of the new article must be in bold.
I6: If your article title appears unpiped in the hook, don't capitalize the first word unless it's part of a proper noun, even though that word is always capitalized in the article title.
I7: No redlinks in the hook.
I8: No space before the question mark. No period before the question mark.
I9: No external links in the hook.
Hook length
Q1: The hook itself should be concise (fewer than about 200 characters, including spaces and the question mark, but excluding the "..." or any "(pictured)"). While 200 is an outside limit, hooks slightly under 200 characters may still be rejected at the discretion of the selecting reviewers and administrators. Multiple articles are an exception. You can count the 200 characters manually. Otherwise, select the text as it displays to the public (not from the edit screen which contains wikitext), and then copy and paste it into a blank document using a free website like this, or using an external software program like Microsoft Word that has a character-counting feature. Don't use the character count on the suggestion page history screen, which includes signatures and other comments.
Images & presentation
Image rules
Pictures accompanying the DYK hook should be:
- J1: freely licensed suitably and freely (PD, GFDL, CC etc.) licensed (NOT fair use, see Wikipedia:Non-free images) because the main page can only have freely licensed pictures;
- J2: suitable, attractive, and interesting at a 100x100px-wide resolution;
- J3: already in the article; and
- J4: relevant to the article.
J5: The standard image code is <div style="float:right;margin-left:0.5em;"> [[Image:filename.jpg|100x100px|ALT TAG]]</div>. If you do not use this code, the layout of the Main Page may be affected in some browsers.
J6: You can usually use a flag for a topic with a national connection.
J7: The hook should be modified to include (pictured) (or perhaps (pictured, flag of Zdxyrastan) or whatever) in the appropriate place to make the connection to the image. The words "pictured", "flag of Zdxyrastan" (or whatever), and the parentheses, should all be in italics.
J8: Sounds: Sounds accompanying the DYK hook should have similar qualities to pictures, and should be formatted using {{DYK Listen|filename.ogg|Brief description}}
Presentation format
E1: Either write out your nomination naturally, or optionally, format your nomination using {{subst:NewDYKnomination}}.
E2: Add it to the suggestions page under "Articles created/expanded on [date]", where the date is when the article was created or when the expansion started. If the date is over seven days old and you can't find it, sorry, it isn't considered a new article.
E3: Note that you should only use one of the above templates for the original hook. If you want to suggest a second, alternative hook for the same article submission, just type it in manually. The above templates output useful code for each submission and if you employ them for alternative hooks, you will mess up the page formatting.
E4: When saving your suggestion, please add the name of the suggested article to your edit summary.
E5: If you nominate someone else's article, you can use {{subst:DYKNom}} to notify them. Usage: {{subst:DYKNom|Article name|June 2}} Thanks, ~~~~
Post nomination
Objections to your nomination
A1: Hooks are subject without notice to copyediting as they move to the Main Page. The nature of the DYK process makes it impractical to consult users over every such edit. Also, watch your nomination's subpage to ensure that no issues have been raised about your hook, because if you do not respond to issues raised your hook may not be featured at all.
Patience
A2: If there is no response, please bear with us: we won't reject the hook unless someone has raised an unsatisfied objection, even if it has reached the Template talk:Did you know#Older nominations section, according to this. Or if the hook has been approved, we are especially unlikely to delete the hook until it goes on to a preparation area for the Main Page. Other hooks listed in the same section as your hook are also waiting, and scrolling to the bottom of the page gives you an idea of how much longer to wait, as described at Daily headings on the suggestions page.
A3: If you can't find the hook you submitted on the suggestions page, in most cases it means your article has been approved and is in the queues or preparation areas for display on the Main Page. You can check whether your hook has been moved to the queue by reviewing the queue listings. You can also check the Main Page, and check the archives (where it goes after being on the Main Page).
A4: If your hook is not in any of the queues or preparation areas, not already on the Main Page, and not in the archives, it has probably been rejected. Nominations can be rejected if the hook is very old and has unresolved issues for which any discussion has gone stale. If you think your hook has been unfairly rejected, you can query its rejection on the discussion page, but as a general rule rejected hooks will only be restored in exceptional circumstances. So be sure to satisfy any objections to your nomination before that happens.
Proofreading
This page is about proofreading hooks, although proofreading articles is also helpful. Only a few thousand people will look at a Did You Know article during its twelve hours of fame – but almost a million people will load the Main Page during that time, including the hooks, although most people don't really look at the hooks. Source http://stats.grok.se/ . One Main Page misspelling or comma can change the world more than you realize.
Places to look for mistakes
- Template talk:Did you know, whether hooks on that page have been approved yet or not. Even if the hook is rejected, it's a good idea to fix typos as you find them, because the reason for rejecting the hook might be corrected in the future. The rest of this page is mostly about proofreading here at Template talk:Did you know, but you can also proofread the following:
- Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 2, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 3, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 4, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 5, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 6
- Template:Did you know/Queue/1, Template:Did you know/Queue/2, Template:Did you know/Queue/3, Template:Did you know/Queue/4, Template:Did you know/Queue/5, and Template:Did you know/Queue/6. You need to be an administrator to change them directly. Otherwise, suggest corrections at Wikipedia talk:Did you know.
- Template:Did you know, on the Main Page. You need to be an administrator to change it directly. Otherwise, suggest corrections at WP:ERRORS#Errors in Did you know?. Some prefer to proofread Did You Know as it appears on the Main Page, so they won't miss any changes others make during preparation (described here). But that means the public is exposed to errors until they are reported and fixed. Also, if everyone wants to make their contribution last, then who would be first?
- Don't forget image captions; they can have typos too. Usually the images on Template talk:Did you know don't have captions yet, but at the preparation areas and beyond, they do.
Proofreading Template talk:Did you know
If you find proofreading mistakes at Template talk:Did you know, first decide if your change is big, little, or in between. In general, changing a couple words without changing the intended meaning is a little change. If an entry sounds as if English isn't the author's native language, then changing several words can be considered "little". For a little change, just change it; nobody really wants to know that you added a space after their three dots. For an in-between change, change it and then explain what you changed. For a big change, suggest a rewritten hook using an ALT. Look through the rest of the page to see how ALT's are formatted.
Remember to check ALT hooks in addition the the hook at the top, some of which occur in the middle of a paragraph full of comments. Just because an ALT isn't formalized as an ALT, doesn't mean someone can't copy it to a preparation area without noticing typos.
Hook proofreaders who are familiar with the rules of Wikipedia:Did you know/Nomination can ensure compliance with those rules. User:Shubinator/DYKcheck automates some of that process.
Specific errors to look for
Of course you should fix or question anything that's wrong, but here are some specific errors you can look for. Most of them are from our nomination rules, linked above. The search for many of these problems should be automated. See User:Art LaPella/Proposed Main Page proofreading bot, which was mostly written in 2007.
Search strings
Some routine proofreading errors can be found by searching the whole page for the following strings:
- "..t" to find a missing space after the three dots, which are called an ellipsis. Add the space. Note this trick only works if the hook begins with "that", "the" or some other word beginning with "t".
- " ?" to find a space before the question mark at the end of the first sentence (remove the space)
- "...." to find an ellipsis with more than three dots (remove all but three)
- "}.. " (that's a curly bracket and two periods) to find an ellipsis with only two dots (it needs three)
- "'.. " is a variation of "*.. " if AltN is used
- "}that" to find an ellipsis that is missing altogether
- "} that", "'that", "' that" are variations of "}that"
- "pictured) " (note the space) to find (pictured) or (object pictured) unitalicized. Our convention is to italicize that word or words when there is an image.
- "'')" (single quote, single quote, parenthesis) is a sign of italicizing "pictured" but forgetting to italicize the parentheses, according to J7
Errors typical of Did You Know
- the link to the article should be bold (sometimes the article link is missing altogether)
- the hook should end in a question mark (in case of a multi-sentence hook, the first sentence must end in a question mark, and User:Shubinator/DYKcheck can't automatically check the total hook length)
- hook length. If it's over the limit of about 200 characters including spaces, I link to User:Art LaPella/Long hook, combined with {{subst:DYK?no}} (which shows as
), to explain this problem. With practice, you can recognize a hook that's too long by how many lines it occupies on your screen, after mentally excluding wikitext that isn't counted.
- Don't capitalize the first word of the article title, just because it's capitalized in the title (unless it's a proper noun)
- Excluding Template talk:Did you know, the word (pictured) should be just after what is actually pictured – especially after the picture has been changed. Therefore, there should be one and only one word (pictured) in the entire list.
- Duplicate "that", duplicate ellipsis, duplicate question mark ... "that that" at a preparation area or beyond is especially common.
- Also, if you know all these rules, you can be alert to answer routine questions about those rules.
Errors you would proofread on any page
Remember, almost a million people will at least load this stuff, so routine proofreading is more important than on just any page.
- spelling
- grammar
- capitalization
- apostrophes
- MOS:NUM
- WP:DASH
- commas after phrases like "Cleveland, Ohio", "Paris, France", and "June 5, 2009" (see comma article), and around nonrestrictive appositive phrases
- correcting links to disambiguation pages according to this. User:Splarka/dabfinder.js helps find them. Another way to find short pages, which are usually disambiguation pages, is to click "preferences", "Misc", and then change the "stub link" number.
- italicize books, court cases, ships etc. as described at MOS:TITLE
- Wikilink unfamiliar words
- correct a missing space between a word and the wikilink symbols "[[" for the next word, or between "]]" and the next word
Update process
Approval
First-time reviewers may find the DYK reviewing guide helpful.
B1:Approval is verifying that all the rules of articles and nominations have been followed, while recognizing that no list of rules can cover everything. The nominations to approve are found at T:TDYK. DYKcheck is intended to automate some of this verifying.
B2: You don't have to be an administrator or a Did You Know regular to approve or disapprove a nomination. Of course the judgments of regulars are less likely to be challenged.
B3: You are not allowed to approve your own hook or article.
B4: At the suggestions page, what do "length, date, and ref verified" and its synonyms mean? Roughly speaking, "Length" (synonyms "size", "article length") means article length; "date" (synonym "history") means new article, and "ref" (synonyms "reference", "source") means citations. "AGF" or "good faith" (referring to Wikipedia:Assume good faith) means that the approver didn't read the reference (it wasn't on the Internet, or it wasn't in English, or a fee was required).
Symbols
B5: If you want to confirm that an article is ready to be placed on a later update, or that there is an issue with the article or hook, you may use the following symbols (optional) to point the issues out. The first two, and the last one, are almost always used when finally verifying or rejecting a hook, because these are what DYK volunteers look for when they are looking for hooks to prepare a new update, or clearing out rejected hooks.
Within the context of Wikipedia's "Did you know..." (DYK) project, reviewing refers specifically to the process by which a nominated hook and the associated article(s) are evaluated, improved, and eventually either rejected as irreparably unusable or approved. This page is intended as a guide to aid editors in the reviewing process. Keep in mind that, in the end, Did You Know approval is a subjective process. No amount of studying rules, almost-rules and precedents will guarantee approval, nor will violating any rule guarantee disapproval. (D13)
Pick a nomination to review
Nominations are listed at Template talk:Did you know. On that page, the nominations are generally arranged in chronological order, with the oldest nominations at the top of the page. It is best if you start with one of the older unreviewed nominations.
Review the article(s)
To qualify for DYK, an article needs to meet several special criteria, in addition to being checked for normal encyclopedic issues. The fact that an article has been accepted as a Good article should not be considered an assumption that the article meets these criteria.
- Check that within the past seven days, the article either:
- was created (ie a new article);
- had its readable prose expanded at least fivefold;
- was listed as a good article.
The DYKcheck tool is helpful in evaluating this, or if you want to figure it out yourself, detailed instructions are here. Older articles or expansions can be allowed.
- If a new article incorporates text copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a pre-existing article.
- Fivefold expansion means at least five times as much prose as the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was (copyvios are the only exception), no matter whether any of it was kept, and no matter if it was up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise to nominators, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article.
- Check that the article hasn't been featured on the Main Page's In the news section and hasn't previously appeared as a "qualifying article" in an earlier DYK. (Articles that have been only linked from ITN or DYK, without being the qualifying article, linked and bolded, are eligible.)
- Check that the article is long enough. Articles must contain at least 1,500 characters of readable prose.
- In addition to at least 1,500 characters of readable prose, the article must not be a stub. This requires a judgement call, since there is no mechanical stub definition (see the Croughton-London rule). If an article is, in fact, a stub, you should temporarily reject the nomination; if the article is not a stub, ensure that it is correctly marked as a non-stub, by removing any stub template(s) in the article, and changing any talk-page assessments to start-class or higher.
- Check that the article contains appropriate citations.
- The hook fact(s) must be stated in the article, and must be immediately followed by an inline citation to a reliable source. This rule applies even when a citation would not be required for the purposes of the article.
- The article in general should use inline cited sources. A rule of thumb for DYK is a minimum of one citation per paragraph, possibly excluding the introduction, plot summaries, and paragraphs which summarize information that's cited elsewhere.
- Sources must be properly labelled in a References (or similar section), not as "External links".
- References may not have bare URLs such as [1] or http://example.com
- Any direct quotation must be marked as such (generally using quotation marks for short quotes and blockquote for longer quotes) and cited to a reliable source.
- Do not assume that any criteria are met based on the fact that the article is a good article.
- If the article is entirely or substantially sourced to offline, foreign-language or paywalled sources, verify the basic facts, or at the very least, the existence of the article subject.
- Check the article to make sure there are no dispute templates. Any such issues need to be resolved before the article is used for DYK. Also, check the recent edit history to make sure that there wasn't a dispute template that was removed without fixing the problem. A list can be found at WP:DISPUTETAG. An orphan tag is not a dispute tag, and not a validation for rejecting or holding up a nomination.
- If the article includes information about living individuals, make sure it does not violate Wikipedia's policy on biographies of living people. This applies even if the article subject is not a living person.
- Check that the article does not contain plagiarism or close paraphrasing. The Earwig tool can be helpful for this.
- Consider whether the article deals with the subject in a neutral manner.
- DYK nominations for articles at WP:AfD should be held pending the outcome of the deletion discussion. If the article is retained, the DYK nomination can proceed, and of course, if deleted, the DYK nomination must be rejected.
- Special occasion hold requests
Review the hook
Assuming that you have a qualifying article, it's now time to review all the hooks, including any ALT hooks that have been suggested.
- Check that the hook is properly formatted. If there are formatting problems, you can probably fix them yourself.
- Check that the hook is short enough. If it's just a bit too long and you can shorten it with a minor change, do it yourself. If shortening the hook would require a more significant change, note the problem. You can also suggest an alternate (ALT) hook that is shorter. Just remember that you shouldn't then approve your own ALT hook.
- Consider whether there might be neutrality problems. If there is a problem, consider suggesting a more neutral ALT hook.
- Consider very carefully whether the hook puts undue emphasis on a negative aspect of a living individual. Err on the side of caution, and when in doubt, suggest an ALT hook.
- Consider whether the hook is "hooky". Try to avoid hooks that take the form of "... that X is Y?" Interesting hooks will often include one or more of the following:
- An unlikely juxtaposition. (Example: ... that American football safety Jordan Kovacs went from being a walk-on to being the second leading tackler in the Big Ten Conference?)
- An unusual nickname. (Example: ... American country blues singer Lottie Kimbrough was nicknamed "the Kansas City Butterball"?)
- A superlative or record. (Example: ... that with a leg-span of 30 centimetres (12 inches), the giant huntsman is one of the world's largest spiders?)
- A tease, giving only part of the relevant information. (Example: ... that the discovery of geometrical body Gömböc in 2006 helped understanding the body shape of turtles?)
- Review all proposed hooks for the article(s). If you are unable to approve all hooks, be clear about which is/are acceptable and which is/are not. Consider striking through (
like this) any rejected hooks to make it clear that they should not be used.
If there is an image
If there is an image to go with the hook, you will need to do a little extra checking on it.
- Make sure the image is free of any copyright restrictions. Fair-use images are not permitted for DYK.
- Check that the image appears in the article.
- Ensure the image has an alt text useful to those with visual impairments, if necessary, per WP:ALTTEXT.
- Consider the relevance of the image to the article and to the hook.
- Consider the quality of the image, and its clarity at 100 by 100 pixels, the size at which DYK images appear on the Main Page.
Finishing the review
After evaluating both the hook and the nominated article, check the nominator has reviewed another DYK nomination under the QPQ agreement (WP:DYKSG#H4). However, people who have made fewer than five DYK nominations are not required to do another review. If in doubt about the number of previous nominations, look for edits giving DYK credit on the nominator's talk page (possibly using DYKUpdateBot). Note that not all nominations are credited in this way and the bot also credits DYK creations and expansions, not just nominations. If in doubt, ask as part of your review process.
Type your review in the section for that nomination. You should begin your review with one of the five DYK review icons. This allows the nominator and other editors to more quickly understand your review decision, including the severity of any problems. It is also used by the bot to keep the tally of how many hooks have been passed. After posting the icon, indicate all aspects of the article that you have reviewed; your comment should look something like the following:
Article length and age are fine, no copyvio or plagiarism concerns, reliable sources are used. But the hook needs to be shortened.
Be sure to give a thorough explanation of any problems or concerns you have, since several other editors may comment on the nomination before you return.
Symbol | Code | DYK Ready? | Description |
---|---|---|---|
![]() |
{{subst:DYKtick}} | Yes | No problems, ready for DYK |
![]() |
{{subst:DYKtickAGF}} | Yes | Article is ready for DYK, with a foreign-language, offline or paywalled hook reference accepted in good faith |
![]() |
{{subst:DYK?}} | Query | DYK eligibility requires that an issue be addressed. Notify nominator with {{subst:DYKproblem|Article}}
|
![]() |
{{subst:DYK?no}} | Maybe | DYK eligibility requires additional work. Notify nominator with {{subst:DYKproblem|Article}}
|
![]() |
{{subst:DYKno}} | No | Article is either completely ineligible, or else requires considerable work before becoming eligible. Notify nominator with {{subst:DYKproblem|Article}}
|
If the outcome of your review is anything other than an approval ( or
), please consider notifying the article nominator(s); you can do this with a personal message on their talk page or by placing {{subst:DYKproblem|Article|header=yes|sig=yes}} there, replacing Article with the title of the nominated article. This will automatically create a new talk page section and will automatically append your signature, so there is no need to do either of those.
The icon — coded as {{subst:DYK?again}} — may be used by creators and nominators to indicate that a nomination that previously had a problem is ready to be reviewed again after changes were made to resolve the issues identified.
An article cannot be officially promoted until a reviewer has given his/ her approval ( or
) to at least one of the article's hooks. Nominators are encouraged to work with reviewers to come up with hooks that meet the standards of the DYK process, and new alternate hooks can be proposed by anyone (nominator, reviewer, other third party) in an effort to produce at least one viable hook. Once a reviewer has conducted a thorough review of the nomination and given his/ her approval by placing the requisite symbol on the discussion page along with a statement indicating which hooks are ready, and if no other reviewer subsequently disagrees with this assessment, an uninvolved editor will soon review the discussion and likely close it and promote the article. If the article does not qualify for DYK for some technical reason or if the participants cannot agree on at least one viable hook, the discussion will eventually be closed by an uninvolved editor and the article will not be promoted.
Resources
- Wikipedia:Did you know/Onepage lists current DYK rules all in one place. It comprises many subpages transcluded onto a single page, so if you need to refer another editor to a specific item, it may be helpful to link to the specific subpage rather than the full listing.
- Template:DYKrule is a handy template for linking directly to a specific rule.
- DYKcheck is a JavaScript tool created and maintained by Shubinator that many editors find helpful in checking an article for DYK eligibility.
- Duplication Detector is a tool to help check for plagiarism/copyright infringements.
- {{DYK checklist}} is an easy-to-use checklist that helps with reviewing DYK nominations.
Preparation areas
The instructions below are guidelines about content to keep in mind when preparing the prep areas. For technical instructions about how to move a hook to one of the prep areas, see Template talk:Did you know/Approved#How to promote an accepted hook.
Rules of thumb for preparing updates
- N1
- Users are encouraged to help out by preparing updates in the six prep areas. You don't have to be an administrator. Note that promoting your own articles is generally discouraged, and promoting your own articles before they have been independently verified is disallowed. When possible, it is also best to avoid promoting the same article that you reviewed, nominated, or created. (It is almost invariably possible to avoid this conflict of interest, so eschew such promotions. Ask for assistance at WT:DYK if you've run into a seemingly intractable situation.)
- N2
- Choose approved hooks (
or
). These will be on the approved nominations page, including the Special occasions section on the bottom of that page.
- N3
- The accepted length of an update is a fixed number that changes on occasion, usually six, seven or eight hooks (currently eight). This is not an absolute rule but it is the currently accepted standard length for an update, depending on page balance, so the items selected fit with whatever else is on the Main Page at that time. Check by using the links on the prep page you're working on. For example, for Prep 1: "See how this template appears on both today's Main Page and tomorrow's Main Page." to see if the DYK template balances the rest of the main page layout.
- N4
- Make sure to choose a varied selection – don't choose half a dozen people hooks, for example, or a bunch of hooks about one particular country or topic. Variety is the spice of life. (However, see the following clause for an important qualification).
- N5
- Because of the preponderance of submissions on US topics and biography hooks, it is usually appropriate to have roughly 50% of hooks in a given update on both US and biography topics, but no more than half. That is to say, in an eight-hook update you should have roughly four hooks per update on US topics, and four on biography. These are not mutually exclusive, for example if you have two US bio hooks that would count as both two US hooks and two bio hooks. Note that "roughly 50%" means just that – this is not an absolute; you can have less of either if there are not many currently available such hooks to choose from on the Suggestions page. Note however that as a general rule you should never have more than 50% of hooks on US, biography or any other topic, except when doing so is unavoidable.
- N6
- Also, mix your hooks up. Try to avoid having two hooks of the same general type next to one another in the update (for example, two US hooks or two bio hooks together). Putting several US hooks next to one another in an update makes the update look US-centric; the impact is greatly reduced if you interleave the US hooks with hooks about different countries. In the same spirit, try to avoid putting two bio hooks together, or two hooks on any other subject.
- N7
- Try to avoid putting inappropriate hooks next to one another. For example, don't put a sad hook next to a funny one; it looks incongruous and jerks the reader uncomfortably from one emotion to another.
- N8
- Hooks on the approved nominations page that include images often get verified first. Users sometimes then just go and grab a bunch of the nearest verified hooks for the preparation areas, which can often include several of these verified picture hooks. Not every submitted picture can be featured in the picture slot of course, but since only one picture can be featured per update, try to leave the good picture hooks behind for another update if you possibly can.
- N9
- Consider picking at least one funny or quirky hook if there is one available and putting it in the last (bottom) slot of the update. Just as serious news programs end on an upbeat note to bring viewers back next time, ending on an upbeat or quirky note rounds an update off nicely and encourages readers to come back next time for more.
- N10
- Don't be afraid to ruthlessly trim hooks of extraneous information and clauses. A lot of people who submit hooks tend to overestimate the amount of information that is required, but the end result is a hook that has too much information and is difficult to process. We don't want our readers to work hard, we want to make reading the DYK section as accessible and enjoyable an experience as possible! In general, the shorter and punchier the hook, the more impact it has. As it says on the Suggestions page, the 200-character limit is an outside limit not a recommended length—the ideal length is probably no more than about 150–160 chars. Note however that some hooks cannot be reduced in length without losing essential information, so don't assume that every hook that is 200 characters long requires trimming.
- N11
- Please disambiguate linked words in the suggestion. Here is the Wikipedia guideline.
- N12
- Make sure to include the article name, date, nominator, and creator under the "Credits" section to allow others to return it if a dispute arises.
- N13
- It is the promoter's responsibility to make sure all review issues have been resolved, that the hook is verified by sourcing within the article. The promoter acts as a secondary verification that the nomination was reviewed properly. The article should not have any problem templates on it at the time of promotion.
Lore
How a DYK suggestion makes its way to the Main Page
A DYK suggestion goes through five steps from nomination through appearing in the Did you know section on the Main Page to removal from the Main Page.
- First, an editor nominates an article by creating the appropriate subpage and transcluding it on Template talk:Did you know. Discussions about individual suggestions also appear on the subpage, such as suggested improvements of the proposed DYK text (the hook), or comments about the eligibility of the article under the requirements (see WP:Did you know/Article).
- If the suggested DYK meets the requirements, any uninvolved editor may add the suggestion to a DYK preparation page and close the nomination subpage. In practice, to ensure that all suggestions are given fair consideration, the oldest suggestions listed on the suggestions page are selected first, to ensure that they don't go stale before they are chosen. DYK entries listed on a preparation area are not final, and may be edited or rejected by any other editor. If they are rejected, the nomination subpage discussion is reopened.
- When there are about eight hooks (the prescribed number may change every few weeks) at a preparation area, an administrator moves the page on to one of the protected queues. The administrator moving the suggestions to the queue may edit or reject any DYK entries at their discretion.
- Approximately every 12 hours (other frequencies may be specified), WP:DYKADMINBOT moves a page from one of the queue files onto the Main Page. So DYK entries appear on the Main Page for about twelve hours, with about two updates per day. DYK entries listed on the Main Page are not final. Non-admins may report errors to the Main Page errors page so they can be dealt with. Admins can amend, edit, replace, and remove entries in the DYK template while it appears on the Main Page. Wheel warring prohibits one admin from undoing one another's administrative actions. In particular, wheel warring prohibits one admin from reinserting a DYK hook onto the Main Page that was removed by another admin. In one example, aggressive wheel warring over a Main Page DYK hook led to desysopping by Jimbo Wales.
- The bot archives old DYK entries that are removed from the Main Page, and gives credits (notices on nominators' talk pages).
Errors
Notification of DYK errors regarding what is currently on the main page may be posted at the Errors in the current Did you know... section of WP:ERRORS. DYK errors on the main page may be addressed by an admin through changes to the DYK template.
- Admins
- If a factual error is reported when the hooks are on the front page, try to replace the hook with another fact from the article, rather than just removing it.
- In the case it has to be removed, try to replace it with another hook from the suggestions page.
- If it is the first hook and hence has an associated picture, you must replace it with another hook with a picture.
Debatable rules
- Does the first word always have to be "that"?
- Can there be multiple sentences in a hook?
- Is IMDb a reliable source? Previous discussion here.
- Occasionally someone objects to linking an unfamiliar word to Wiktionary on the front page, but such objections have always been overruled.
- Do the 11 characters in " (pictured)" or the 27 characters in " (specific object pictured)" (i.e. including an introductory space) count towards the 200 character limit?
Overlooked rules
These rules are listed elsewhere, but they are often overlooked at Did You Know:
- There must be a space after the ellipsis.
- The link to your article should be in bold (e.g., '''[[Manx cat]]''').
- The hook should end with a question mark.
- For a hook with an accompanying picture, the string (pictured) is all in italics, including the parentheses.
- For titles or words with dashes see WP:DASH.
- For hooks containing numbers see MOS:NUM#Numbers as figures or words.
- Make sure your article title conforms with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
- A 'new' article is no more than seven days old. This does not include articles split from older articles, although an article sufficiently expanded from a section of an older article can be a fivefold expansion. The word "fork" is sometimes used to mean Wikipedia:Splitting.
- Fix redirects in hooks – see MOS:DYKPIPE.
- WP:NOTADVERTISING
Instruction creep
Did You Know can be criticized for instruction creep. But it is important to distinguish instruction creep from documentation of that instruction creep. Instruction creep is bad because it takes longer and longer to understand all those instructions before you can actually do anything. But documentation of instruction creep eases the process of trying to learn all the unwritten rules before you can do anything. A ten-pound law book is bad, but a thousand-pound library of precedents one needs in order to guess what the unwritten laws are, would be worse. Did You Know nominations are approved by different reviewers, and there isn't an easy way to get them all to behave predictably.
For instance, when determining if a Did You Know article is long enough or expanded enough, we don't count the whole article. "Did You Know defines 'prose' to exclude infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables, block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, edit buttons, "Citation needed" and similar superscripted text, and reference link numbers like [6]." Wouldn't it be easier to just count the whole article, and use the length Wikipedia provides on each page's history page? That would allow shorter articles, so let's say the 1,500 character limit is raised to about 2,500, or to whatever number would eliminate lowering the bar as a reason to count characters the hard way. That simplification hasn't been done, because it has been argued that a short article can be padded to reach the minimum, just by adding categories and such. But prose can also be padded (example), and poetic justice for anyone who disagrees would be to fill his user talk page with 100 different ways to tediously repeat that point. So it's unclear that complicated character counting rules are worth all the extra effort of computing and debating them.
But imagine how much worse that computing and debating effort was before the process was documented. If this simplification is desirable, it will happen when everyone can agree to follow a new, simpler rule, not by ignoring the existing rules so that no one but regulars can know what they are, or requiring weeks of studying the suggestions page to get any idea if a submission would be accepted or not.
These rules aren't intended to cover everything, and we even have a rule than says so: R6.
WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY says "Written rules do not themselves set accepted practice, but rather document already existing community consensus ... "
In conclusion, the only thing worse than a million written rules, is a million unwritten rules.
Daily headings on the suggestions page
T:TDYK has daily headings like "Articles created/expanded on February 18", with nominations as subheadings. We don't have an automated system to maintain the daily headings yet. So as Universal Time midnight approaches, someone should add a heading for the next day, near the top. T:TDYK#Older nominations should be moved down a day, so it will always be seven days old. And if it's below the "Older nominations" header, the last daily heading near the bottom of the page can be removed when it contains no more nominations, except for nominations with unsatisfied objections.
Recognition
The article, article's creator(s), and the DYK nominator may be recognized as contributing to DYK through the credit templates posted by DYK on user talk pages. When an article is first nominated for DYK, the hook may be followed by (i) 'article by XXX; nom by YYY' or (ii) 'self-nom.' These help DYK determine which user talk pages to post credits. For instructions on providing recognition, see DYK credits.
The following templates are used to credit the article creator and the article nominator as well as give notice on the article talk page that the article appeared on the Main Page:
- Article creator's talk page: ({{UpdatedDYK}}) {{subst:UpdatedDYK|2 June|2020|Article name}} --~~~~
- Nominator's talk page: ({{UpdatedDYKNom}}) {{subst:UpdatedDYKNom|2 June|2020|Article name}} --~~~~
- Article talk page: ({{dyktalk}}) {{dyktalk|2 June|2020}} (check if small style templates in use, if so add small=yes parm)
These awards may be given to recognize a user's contributions:
- – {{The DYK Medal}} – Award for significant contributions to the operation of DYK, excluding article contributions.
- – {{The 25 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 25 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 50 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 50 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 100 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 100 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 200 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 200 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 500 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 500 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 1000 DYK Creation and Expansion Medal}} – Award for 1000 or more creation and expansion contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 25 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 25 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 50 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 50 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 100 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 100 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 200 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 200 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 500 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 500 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
- – {{The 1000 DYK Nomination Medal}} – Award for 1000 or more nomination contributions to DYK.
Wikipedians are listed by top number of DYKs, at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs. Also, successful submission of a Did you know? piece is one part of Wikipedia's triple crown, an award for outstanding editing contributions within a set time; and Wikipedia's Four Award, a non-timed recognition of article creation and guidance in which the article creator shepherds it all the way to featured article status.
DYK credits, medals, etc. may be recognized on a userpage through the following userboxes:
- -- {{User DYK}} -- Userbox, user has authored/created x articles featured on DYK.
- -- {{User Did You Know}} -- Userbox, highlights an individual DYK article created by a user.
- -- {{User Did You Know2}} -- Userbox, user has been a significant contributor to X articles on DYK; the total number of DYK article's created + DYK article's nominated.
- -- {{User Did You Know3}} -- Userbox, user has successfully nominated x articles created by others to be featured on DYK.
History of Did You Know
DYK made its first Main Page appearance on February 22, 2004. The article, pencil sharpener, was developed by Raul654 who had been an editor with Wikipedia for about six months at that time and now is a bureaucrat. An April 2004 screen shot shows DYK located in the space now occupied by In the News. Credit recognition for article creators started on November 24, 2004, DYK began placing DYK notifications on article talk pages on January 13, 2006, and nominators started receiving credit on May 13, 2006.
Other Did You Know pages
These Did You Know rules pages are listed at Category:Wikipedia Did you know rules. Besides those, the DYK process is divided over many pages:
- DYK template (Did you know) - T:DYK - the template that appears on the Main Page
- DYK template talk (Suggestions) - T:TDYK - where new DYK suggestions are proposed and discussed
- DYK preparation areas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), where hooks are held waiting for a promotion by an admin to the queues
- DYK preparation area clear (blank preparation area) - T:DYK/C - a copy of a DYK preparation area page that lacks hooks, which can be copied over a preparation area page to restore it to a pristine, empty state, ready for new candidates
- DYK queues (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), where hooks are promoted by an admin and wait there turn to be automatically updated to the main DYK template
- DYK archive (Archive) - WP:DYKA - where old DYKs are archived
- DYK archive navigation template - Template:DYK archive nav
- DYK archive header - Template:DYK archive header
- DYK navigation box - Template:DYKbox
- DYK project talk (Discussion) - WT:DYK - where general discussion takes place
- DYK project guide - WP:DYK/G - general guidance
- DYK Admins - WP:DYK/A - List of admins with significant interest in DYK
- DYK Non-admin participants - WP:DYK/NAP - List of non-admins who are actively involved in one or more aspects of DYK.
- Category:Wikipedia Did you know contributors
- DYK Hall of Fame - WP:DYK/HoF - Wikipedia's online museum established to recognize and honor individuals for noteworthy contributions to the advancement the Did You Know (DYK) project.
- DYK Hall of Fame talk page - WT:DYK/HoF - talk page for the DYK Hall of Fame.
- Main Page/Errors in Did you know... - WP:ERRORS - to report DYK errors on the Main Page
- Wikipedia:Did you know/Halloween 2008 - Speciality DYK project
Glossary
5x
See fivefold.
admin
See WP:Administrator.
administrator
See WP:Administrator.
AGF
See Wikipedia:Assume good faith. At Did You Know, AGF means to assume that a referenced fact is actually in the reference, even though you haven't read the reference. This is acceptable if the reference is offline, or if the reference is in a foreign language, or if you have to pay for a subscription before you can read it.
ALT, ALT1, ALT2 etc.
means an alternate hook for the same article. It could be a slight rewording of the same idea, or a completely different hook. ALTs are suggested at the suggestion page after the original hook. Often an ALT is selected instead of the original version.
approval
A nomination needs approval, with a or
before it can proceed to a preparation area. See WP:Did you know/Approval.
April Fools' Day
is observed at Did You Know. See Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/Did You Know, and if you aren't familiar with Western culture see April Fools' Day.
archives
at Did You Know means Wikipedia:Recent additions, where old Did You Know hooks are stored indefinitely after they have been on the Main Page.
article
At Did You Know, "article" means the article being introduced on the Main Page by a hook. For instance, if the hook is "... that Jon Olav Alstad was elected to the Norwegian Parliament at the age of 25?", then it introduces the article Jon Olav Alstad (not Norwegian Parliament, which isn't in bold print). Rules for the article are here.
bare URL
is like http://example.com with the URL visible to Wikipedia's readers.
copyvio
See Wikipedia:Copyright violations. If there was no previous article except for a copyvio, then replacing it with a non-copyvio article is considered a new article, and it doesn't have to be expanded fivefold.
characters
A character is a letter, or a space between letters, or a punctuation mark, or anything else made with one keystroke (or one shifted keystroke). The next sentence is an example of how to count characters. This sentence has 32 characters. Count 4 for the four letters in "This", 1 for the space between "This" and "sentence", 8 for the 8 letters in "sentence", 1 for the space after "sentence", 3 for "has", 1 for the next space, 2 for the "3" and the "2" in "32", 1 for the space, 10 for "characters", and 1 for the period. 4 + 1 + 8 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 10 + 1 = 32.
There are occasional debates on whether Wikipedia should count article size using "characters" or "bytes". Better terminology for that debate would be whether to use prose or the article's history page, which counts the whole article. For ordinary text, one character occupies one byte, and only one byte, so the character count and the byte count are the same.
credits
at Did You Know means bot-generated messages on nominators' user talk pages, thanking them for contributing after the nominations have made it to the Main Page.
Did You Know
See the Did You Know section of the Main Page for the visible, short explanation. The system that produces that section is also called Did You Know, and the writeup this glossary belongs to explains it in detail.
double-DYK
is a hook that introduces two articles.
DYK
See Did You Know.
DYKADMINBOT
See WP:DYKADMINBOT.
DYKcheck
is a script that checks nominations for errors. See WP:Did you know/DYKcheck and User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.
DYKproblem
is a template used to tell a nominator that he needs to deal with a problem or question on his nomination. See Template:DYKproblem.
DYKsug
has been replaced with NewDYKnom. See {{DYKsug}}.
expansion
at Did You Know means to expand an existing article, that is, to add text and make it longer, hopefully expanding it enough to make it qualify as a new article.
fair use
fivefold
means five times. For instance, if an article has 1000 bytes of prose (not the whole article, see the "prose" entry), it must be expanded to 5000 bytes of prose (not the whole article) to be considered new, and thus eligible for Did You Know.
good article
A good article (GA) is one that has been reviewed via the good article nomination process and been listed as a GA. New GAs are considered to be eligible for Did You Know; it is as if they were newly created on the day they became a good article, so they must be nominated as quickly as a newly created or newly expanded article.
good faith
See AGF.
hook
An example of a hook is "... that Jon Olav Alstad was elected to the Norwegian Parliament at the age of 25?" The Did You Know section on the Main Page contains about eight hooks, usually starting with "... that" and ending with "?". They are called "hooks" because they are intended to hook the reader into reading the associated article. Rules for the hook are here.
IGF
In Good Faith. See AGF.
image
is a picture. See Wikipedia:Image
inline citation
negative
At Did You Know, "negative" means criticism in a hook, as in the Wikipedia:Biography of Living Persons policy.
NewDYKnom
is a template used to format a nomination. See {{NewDYKnom}}.
nominate
To suggest or propose. At Did You Know, "nominate" means to suggest a hook and its associated article. "Nomination" can mean the hook, the article, or both.
offline
at Did You Know means a reference that you can't get online, that is, on the Internet, usually because the source is a book or similar library resource.
preparation areas
are Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 2, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 3, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 4, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 5, and Template:Did you know/Preparation area 6. Approved hooks are moved from T:TDYK to a preparation area and organized into a group of usually about eight. From there, an administrator will eventually move each preparation area page into one of the queues, after which DYKADMINBOT will move it to the Main Page. See "update".
prose
At Did You Know, only characters of "prose" are counted when measuring the length of an article, whether it's to meet the 1,500 character minimum, or to calculate whether an article has been expanded fivefold. Characters of prose are counted by the User:Shubinator/DYKcheck script, which excludes infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables, block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, edit buttons, "citation needed" and similar superscripted text, and reference link numbers like [6].
Prosesizebytes.js
is a script that measures the characters in the prose portion of the article. See User talk:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js. DYKcheck is now preferred to prosesizebytes.
Prosesize.js
is an older form of #Prosesizebytes.js. DYKcheck is now preferred to prosesize.js and to prosesizebytes.js.
queue
is what Americans call a "line", as in "line up and wait your turn". At Did You Know, it means Template:Did you know/Queue, where Did You Know pages wait for their twelve-hour turn to go onto the Main Page. There is room for six updates in the queue.
reliable
means Wikipedia:Reliable sources. The word is often used in a way that sounds as if we are loosely calling people liars, but all it really means is that a source is on the list of what we consider to be reliable enough.
run-on
is described at run-on sentence. It does NOT mean a rambling sentence that runs on and on! If you don't understand the grammatical distinction in the run-on sentence article, then please do not use the term "run-on".
self-nom
is a nomination of a hook and an article you wrote yourself. This is permitted and encouraged.
T:TDYK
is both the shortcut to Template talk:Did you know (the DYK suggestions page) and a shorthand way of referring to it.
template
See Wikipedia:Template namespace
text
See prose.
twofer
Two articles introduced in the same hook.
update
A single set of approximately eight hooks to be displayed on the Main Page for about six hours. Each update is individually prepared in a preparation area and moved into the queues by an administrator, then onto the Main Page by DYKADMINBOT.
user subpage
See Wikipedia:User subpage. You may write your article on a user subpage, so you will have time to study the Did You Know process before your article is disqualified for being too old. The seven days (and the exception) don't start until you move the article into Wikipedia:main namespace.
verify
See approval.
x
as in 5x or 1.3x, is a way of expressing how nearly an article has reached fivefold expansion. From 2000 bytes of prose to 3000 bytes is a 1.5x expansion. It would have to be expanded to 10,000 bytes of prose (not the whole article, just prose) to be 5x and qualify as new.