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DYK late

The next update is 40+ minutes late. I emailed Nixeagle. I have an article in the next queue (#3), and I was expecting credit. Royalbroil 16:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

That did it - it's working now. Royalbroil 16:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what did it, I don't think it was actually late in the bot's eyes. When I have time in a bit I will investigate the bot's settings and make sure they were not changed. (There are a few pages on here that tell the bot when the next update time is etc.) However the last update was run automatically. You should have my email in reply Royalbroil. —— nixeagleemail me 17:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
You guys might do well to when setting User:DYKadminBot/time to subtract a few seconds, even up to 60 seconds to account for differences in time between wikipedia and the server its on. So if you want 5 hours, set for 18000 seconds - 60 seconds... so set it to 17940. —— nixeagleemail me 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Oh, by the way, thanks for emailing me royalbroil, I would not be here now if you did not. —— nixeagleemail me 17:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
We've actually been getting a 5 hour 50 minute rotation for some odd reason. I've left Nixeagle a message on his talk page. - Dravecky (talk) 23:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I mentioned the 5 hr 50 minute issue in our short offline email discussion. Royalbroil 13:10, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Articles saved from copyvio deletion

A4 of Wikipedia:Did you know/Additional rules states that fivefold expansion is calculated from the previous version of the article, no matter how bad it is. But what about copyvios? I recently found Joan Snyder tagged as a coypvio. The article was created on December 5, 2008, and was a copyvio until {{db-copyvio}} was recently added to it on January 25, 2009. On the same day, I rewrote the article, using only two sentences from the previous version. I nominated the article for DYK, but it was rejected because "there is no consensus, and no time, for analyzing and debating the quality of each previous article version before determining how many of its bytes to count. Nor has there been a consensus for making an exception to A4 for copyvios." I believe that it should qualify for DYK because it would have been deleted as G12 if I didn't save and rewrite it. I could have allowed it to be deleted and then recreated it, but I didn't do so. I haven't found any previous discussions about A4 and copyright violations, so I would like to propose that copyright violations are an exception to A4. Cunard (talk) 23:09, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If it was a copyvio, then shouldn't the offending text be removed? It is not about subjective quality; it either is or it isn't a copyright violation. Certainly should be discounted, much like how if an article was vandalised so that it was 50x its real length. » \ / (⁂) 00:16, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I think this should be discounted. It's not "new", and should be regarded the same way as a quote (except that quotes are allowed, of course). Chamal talk 00:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think the copyvio revisions should be discounted in determining the criteria. The author could just wait for it to be deleted and start again to get a DYK, which would just be finding away around it but I have let copyvio replacements on the main page. Fine with me. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 00:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

As with any set of rules, there are always points which come up which don't seem to be covered in the rules... like the case of the cricket test match in Faisalabad in 2005 in which an explosion stopped play. (England were 92 for two in their first innings, in reply to Pakistan's 462, when the explosion of a gas cylinder stopped play in the session after the tea-break; luckily, the ball wasn't in play and it wasn't the decisive last ball of a limited overs match). In this instance, there's clearly no going back on the decision taken on Joan Snyder, but for the future I think it would be fair for Editor A to ask a friend (Editor B) to delete the copyvio text before Editor A begins to rewrite the article. The expansion could then be counted from the previous version of the article by Editor B, the slimmed down version. Xn4 (talk) 02:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't understand why make these red-tape rules? Why make an editor who is doing a commendable, but ofter overlooked job of saving speedies on worthy subjects jump through needless hoops? What you and YellowMonkey propose change nothing in substance, only in appearance. Why bother? Wikipedia is not bureaucracy, instruction creep, or red-tape factory. I think we agree that in spirit copyvio replacement is a totally new article and should be recognized as such. Renata (talk) 02:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Cunard, I think it should be ok to make exceptions in situations like this (if the entire content of the article was copy-pasted from somewhere else—as opposed to bits and pieces of the article being stolen from somewhere else—there's a clear case that the article should not have existed, at least in that form, and so if you rewrite it from scratch it is basically a new article, even if the subject itself is not new to Wikipedia), but is not necessary to write those exceptions into the rules. These kinds of things would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis; in addition to the issue of how much of the article was copyvio (in this case, it looks like the whole thing was) another issue is how much of the "rewriting" was new—ie did the writer blank the whole page and then start from scratch, or did the writer use the copyvio version as a scaffolding for what to write, and clean up things to make the writing "different" from the original? For reasons such as this (not to mention instruction creep), I don't think it would be wise to add an all-encompassing rule exempting all copyvio cleanup from normal expansion rules. Sometimes this sort of work might consitute a "new" enough article for DYK to recognize, and sometimes it might just be an unrewarded good deed.

The reason there is that part of A4 stating that expansion is counted from the previously existing article no matter what shape it is, is so that people don't bog down DYK by saying "ok I only expanded it 3x, but the text that was there was so terrible that my expansion has really improved it more than fivefold, so please go assess it" or "well it only looks like a 3x expansion, but actually I deleted all the old content and rewrote everything, so I've written way more than what the expansion looks like, please go count it for yourself"...that kind of assessment is just something we simply don't have time for, and character count is a convenient and impartial way to assess article expansion. Anyway, that's why I'm saying it is probably ok to IAR on copyvio rescues when the original copyvio was especially blatant (as in the case above), but in other cases it might be difficult to ascertain the extent of the copyvio and the extent of the improvement...cases like that need to be handled differently, so there's not much point making a sweeping change to A4 that would exempt both of them from the rules. Politizer talk/contribs 02:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, appreciate this answer as it emphasizes that judgment and discretion must be used. I do not see how this can be avoided. There cannot be a "rule" for every eventuality. Common sense has to enter into editorial judgment. —Mattisse (Talk) 03:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree. I must admit that I was a bit peeved when my new Romanesque art - the old one had turned out to be 100% copyvio, plus the odd word - was rejected last July. Johnbod (talk) 03:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Copyvios are not counted for the purpose of determining length of the x5 expansion. There are also precedents for not counting text that is clearly irrelevant to the topic of the article, but again, if someone wants to propose an expansion on such grounds, they should ask for an opinion here first in order to avoid disappointment. Gatoclass (talk) 05:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, but do you oppose something like "copyvios are not counted" in A4? If you do, I guess I'll have to save the link to this discussion the next time I need to explain what the truly unwritten rule is. Especially since I mistakenly thought the consensus was the opposite. Art LaPella (talk) 06:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
No, I don't oppose it, you are welcome to add it to the ruleset if you want to. Gatoclass (talk) 06:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
OK, I'll wait to see if there are more comments first. Art LaPella (talk) 06:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Good move, I think. Go ahead. We should encourage people to explain about exceptional cases like these when nominating, so that we can avoid wrongly rejecting suitable articles. Chamal talk 07:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 Done Art LaPella (talk) 21:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Another bot prob?

Nothing major, but check out the DYK template on Talk:K_pattern_flamethrower. Is that right (the %28)? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 05:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I think this problem was there before - brackets being replaced with that code that is used in the URLs. I remember this happened on user talk pages where the bot used these symbols for signatures. I thought it was fixed?? Chamal talk 05:03, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Japanese destroyer Kamikaze (1922): Missing DYK tag

Though i have received a DYK nom credit for the article, a DYK tag is missing on article talk. DYK entry (... that the Imperial_Japanese_Navy destroyer Kamikaze was one of the few larger Japanese warships to survive the Pacific War without significant damage?) is present in Archive at 15:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC). --Redtigerxyz Talk 13:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

This failure to properly tag articles with parentheses in their name is a known issue with the bot and requires that credit be manually assigned. I will take a look at the recent queues and issue the proper credit tags momentarily. - Dravecky (talk) 16:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Gone in 8 minutes?

I am not familiar with how the DYKbot works. Could someone take a look at this, please? Updating DYK with hooks from Queue 2 merely 8 minutes after updating with hooks from Queue 1 doesn't seem right to me. Did Charles B. Moores, Japanese destroyer Kamikaze (1922), An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, India-Mongolia relations, JUPITER trial, Steven Joyce, Tropical Depression Ten (2005) & Fred Shaw Mayer get their rightful 6 hours of exposure on MainPage? Or am I missing something? --PFHLai (talk) 23:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

...it sure doesn't look like it... —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 05:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
I've recovered that queue of hooks and put it back in rotation as queue 3. Even more troubling, the bot just did it again so I've backed up to queue 4 which had only been on the front page for 8 minutes and restored queue 5. - Dravecky (talk) 09:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds to me like it's time to disable the bot again, unless someone has an idea why it's suddenly doing this. Gatoclass (talk) 09:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for taking care of this, Dravecky. I hope we don't have to halt the automation, as Gatoclass suggested, but some close monitoring of the bot may be needed. --PFHLai (talk) 23:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

"(pictured)" at Wikipedia:Recent additions is broken

Since 13 days ago, the "(pictured)" text at Wikipedia:Recent additions is broken in the most recent additions. Gary King (talk) 04:18, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, our bot-fixer has been informed about that already, but he hasn't had time to take a look at it yet. Gatoclass (talk) 15:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Apostrophe template

To avoid bolding the apostrophe in a situation like Joseph Sadler's, we have been using <nowiki>'</nowiki>s, and lately we have been using {{'s}}. But they aren't quite the same. The template adds a thin space before the apostrophe; compare Joseph Sadler's to Joseph Sadler's. I'm not sure if it matters, but for now I'm going back to <nowiki>'</nowiki>s. You may want to comment at Template talk:'#Extra space before the apostrophe. Art LaPella (talk) 17:23, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I think {{'s}} is designed for use with italicised things, like Joseph Sadler's, and the space stops the apostrophe crashing into the slanted text that comes before. The somewhat similar {{'}} also has the thin space.
How about using &#39; -> ' <- instead? See: Joseph Sadler's Same number of characters as {{'s}} too, although a bit more opaque. --Testing times (talk) 18:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I think that the template may have been designed with ships in mind - i.e. USS Nevada's main guns...—Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 18:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
O sure, now I go to the template page, where it says it right there... —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs)
I prefer <nowiki>'</nowiki> to &#39; because succeeding editors are more likely to understand it. Art LaPella (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Spring cleaning

Bumped back from Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 39 to try and get a response.

I tried to take a shot at organizing all the stuff in Category:Wikipedia Did you know templates by making some subcategories (ie, templates used for preparing the next update, templates for user talk, etc.). Most importantly, you might want to take a look at the subcategory Category:Deprecated DYK templates, where I put the templates that (as far as I know) no one is really using, and thus might be worth deleting if we ever decide to get organized. I don't really know everything about all of these, so I might have put some templates in that category erroneously. Also, there were a few templates that I wasn't able to move into the proper subcategory because they're protected (the queues, etc.). Politizer talk/contribs 07:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Redirected some of the deprecated templates, MfD'ed three more. Politizer talk/contribs

Provide context for the reader

I have noticed a tendency for some DYK hooks not to provide context for the reader lately. Just now we have these cryptic hooks that could be improved by adding a few words (in square brackets):

... that Bob Foster’s win on a New Imperial [motorcycle] in the 1936 Isle of Man TT was the last time that Great Britain won a Lightweight TT [race]?
... that despite its acrid taste, [the mushroom] Lactarius vietus is edible after boiling?

Recently I also noticed the DYK

... that out of 281 T-26 tanks supplied to the Popular Front ([[:|example pictured]]), the Nationalists were able to capture 178 during the war, putting at least 50 into service against their former users?

did not identify the conflict as the Spanish Civil War. Perhaps this would have been clearer as DYK

... that in the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalists captured 178 out of 281 T-26 tanks ([[:|example pictured]]) supplied to the Popular Front, putting at least 50 into service against their former users?

If the idea is to be cryptic so as to attract more eyes to article ("I don't know what this is, so I'll follow the link"), so be it, but I think more context helps. This is a suggestion - I know how hard the DYK folks work and am not trying to be critical, just asking this be something taken into consideration in the future. Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I actually thought the same thing about the SCW hook, but it was a little less than an hour away from being removed, so I let it go...but I agree with Ruhrfisch. Crypticy (is that a word?) is not bad in itself, but we can't be so cryptic as to not identify what we are talking about. =/ —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 02:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Ruhrfisch. Nominators need to be more careful to write their hooks well, and we as vetters need to be more careful to copyedit hooks to make them good. When bad hooks go to the front page, it's ultimately our fault for letting them through, not the nominators' faults for not knowing any better. Politizer talk/contribs 03:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
It is an easy trap to fall into. I know the article's author is familiar with the topic and so does not always see the lack of context. Similarly if you are checking the hook, you read the article and learn the context. Just something else to be aware of. Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

16 article hook for April 9 - anniversary of end of the ACW

It has been suggested that a potential 16 article hook related to the American Civil War introduced on January 21 be saved for April 9, the anniversary of the ending of the Civil War. It has also been suggested for 2 queues for that day since there are 16 related articles involved to the ending of the American Civil War. There is a suggested Alt 3 hook that several have liked that seems to work well, with the related picture. The articles then would receive much airtime for this important event in American history - especially if a DYK for that particular date. --Doug Coldwell talk 16:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Since it is an all day event, why not break it up into four different queues so that it marks the whole day? Ottava Rima (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
See my comment on the page. It's my view that the various buildings are not independently notable, that it should all be merged into the article on the National Historic Park.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't want to dismiss all of the building's outright, but I don't see enough to say that each is independently notable. I would like more detail to define notability. Otherwise, there are some historic areas (St. Mary's City, the first Catholic settlement in the US) that I would love to dump about 20 pages or so about various buildings but have only as much support for notability (probably more, to be honest because of it being the first capital of Maryland). Ottava Rima (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
The National Park Service says each of these buildings have significance by their association with the site of Lee's surrender to Grant, a major event in American history. It does show in the reference for Virginia for the Appomattox Court House National Park for each of these buildings that the National Register Status was documented on 06/26/1989. The NPS has broken each of these buildings up with separate descriptions in the reference giving Historical Significance as well as a Physical Description for each. Alt 3 has just a little over 200 characters for all 16 articles, a reasonable amount especially for that many articles all at once - an amount not higher than many of the 8, 9 and 11 DKYs in the Wikipedia:Did you know/Hall of Fame.--Doug Coldwell talk 18:49, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I spent three years performing archaeological research for various military bases to reach standards under the National Register, so I know a thing or two about the process. Give me some time and I will look through what I can find. There is a difference between a site and individual houses of notability. Normally, it deals with who exactly was there. Like I said before, there are dozens of houses at the St. Mary's site that would not be individually notable, but some would be. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
According to this site the mission of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is

Therefore, the purpose of Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is to commemorate the effective termination of the Civil War brought about by the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under General Robert E. Lee to the Union Army under Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865 and for the further purpose of honoring those who engaged in this tremendous conflict.

The primary significance of Appomattox Court House National Historical Park can be summarized as:
-the site of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union forces, April 9-12, 1865, effectively marking the end of the Civil War.
-the site of the Battle of Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, which led directly to the surrender.

The National Park Service has a separate number for each of these structures under their List of Classified Structures for Virginia and Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and list these as individual specific notable structures of significance. It has further individual information on each of these structures as being significant in their own right with many having separate pages for description and historical significance, each a Wikipedia article of pretty good size now.

Each of the cemeteries and ruins are listed also in the List of Classified Structures with their own specific number and information.

It appears the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, controlled by the National Park Service, has listed each of the structures and buildings (i.e. Appomattox Court House, McLean House, Clover Hill Tavern, etc) within the Park. It shows for each structure and building under Historical Significance that the National Register Status has been entered and Documented. The National Register Date: 06/26/1989.

According to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 all historic areas, including National Historical Parks controlled by the National Park System, are automatically listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This includes the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and all of its structures and buildings in its 77 List of Classified Structures, including but not limited to Clover Hill Tavern and Woodson Law Office and Bocock-Isbell House and Sweeney Prizery and the Park's cemeteries and ruins (each one listed individually in the NRHP under the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park) - all of which are in the 16 article hook DYK.

I believe that ALT 3 is a reasonable 16 article hook DYK that would get a lot of airtime on April 9, especially with its associated picture.

--Doug Coldwell talk 22:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Instead of waiting until April, February 12 would make more sense. It is the tyrant's 200th Birthday. I'm already going to have four DYK hooks just for the occasion.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 23:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd still like to see more work done to some of them before they are featured on the main page. For example, in Clover Hill Tavern, taking something from the original source like "steps to 2nd porch at the E end of the 1st floor. Gable end elevations have centered projecting chimneys and no openings. A wood shingle gable roof with a box cornice covers the building." and changing it to "There are steps to second porch at the east end of the 1st floor. The gable end elevations have centered projecting chimneys with no openings. A wood shingle gable roof with a box cornice covers the two story guest house structure." doesn't seem main page-worthy to me. I understand that the original text is public domain, so I don't think there's a copyright issue. Just a personal preference, perhaps. I also don't see that it's an interesting hook. Nothing is said about why it is special. As a reader, I wouldn't feel compelled to click on the articles and read about four houses, two cabins, and two law offices. GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Closer look

I performed a closer look at the National Register. We have a few options so I will lay out the information then say how I see it: "Appomattox Court House" is listed as not being a historical landmark (per this). There is a well house that is part of the same listing under the whole park (per this). There is also fencing listed under the same entry (per this).

Then we have buildings like the McLean House which have the same sort of entry (per this). It is also designated as not being a landmark. Grant surrendered there, so it is a moment of significance. Its wellhouse is listed with it, but lacks significance (per this). There are other buildings, including a slave house, privy, fence and kitchen that are listed separatly (example per this).

The Clover Hill Tavern had parole listings about the Confederates, but this is only a semi-notable feature, and the part that had it decayed long ago (per this). A guest house is listed with it, along with a slave house, fence and privy (per this). Patteson Hix Cemetaries is listed as existing at the time, and having bodies of county founders, but no real notability ( [ per this). The county jail has nothing significant to connect it to the event except for proximitely (per this).

I can go through the rest, but you can see that the level of notability (its part of the site) would list bathrooms, fences, slave quarters, and 77 individual articles if that is used as notability. Since the National Register does not designate it as a historical landmark and only as a park (thus, needing to fall under National Register like all governmental properties), the buildings cannot be deemed to be individually notable or there will be pages on clearly non-notable things (bathrooms, fences, etc). These should be deemed notable based on references only. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It would of course be open to anyone formally to propose a merger (hardly, I think, an AfD) for some of these sixteen new articles, presumably to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, and I imagine Doug would contest anything of the kind, looking for arguments at WP:N. Here at Wikipedia talk:Did you know, we surely can't prejudge the outcome of such discussions. I suppose the same arguments could have been put forward for the family of cricket articles by YellowMonkey which got through DYK just over a week ago, setting the present record of eleven new articles linked in a single hook. Are Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 and so forth notable in terms of WP:N? I'm not sure, but I formulated that successful hook, giving all of them the benefit of the doubt, at least for the purposes of DYK. I can't help wondering, is shelving this nomination until April a way to play for time? I should have thought Doug could ask for his present hook to be accepted or rejected now, and as I understand it he's asking for it to be accepted. People can always stand on encyclopaedic principles, but no other encyclopaedia (so far as I know) has anything remotely like our DYK. This is a fun page, not part of our mainspace, and the DYK column on the Main Page is merely ephemeral. Xn4 (talk) 01:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I agree totally with all the comments Xn4 has made. I would like to get the 16 article hook DYK accepted as soon as possible. --Doug Coldwell talk 10:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
So, I guess we can ask about a consensus on it. Is the 16 part hook the only one you want? Or are there other proposals that you are willing to offer? Any other arguments to be made (such as saying that a certain building appears on more than 10 pages in more than three sources, etc)? Or should anyone nominate some of the ones that appear non-notable to be deleted and wait until that outcome? Ottava Rima (talk) 04:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
My only objection is the amount of sources. The species based areas are scientifically notable. The players were notable by sheer bulk of information and they were notable players before (thus, the articles are more based on WP:SIZE constraints than needing to have separate notability). If the individual locations can be determined to be notable for some reason besides simple proximity, then that would be necessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Note - it leaves a strange taste in my mouth to read an article that is mostly about its "significance" and having the same thing stated over and over. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:14, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've yet to make my mind up on this particular submission, but I do think that with the increasing popularity of multis, we need to add a clause to the rules which stresses that users who want to submit long multis should consider canvassing opinion regarding their eligibility on this page before going ahead with creating the articles, in order to avoid possible disappointment. Gatoclass (talk) 05:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we expand that to possibly any "potientially controversial" submission or most of the controversial types? Add to the above, for example, those dealing with a 5x rewrite that had a lot of copyright info before or something similar. Also, I would like it if we made it clear that by submitting it here, it gives leniency on the timing so that people do not feel as if they are missing the 5 day window. Then, on determining it, should we go off consensus, simple up down, or find out if an admin is willing to add it (and then only have one person needed to support)? Ottava Rima (talk) 05:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
There is no need for "leniency on the timing" because just suggesting a hook is not the same as writing the articles for it. The whole idea of adding a recommendation to find consensus here first is so that people do not waste their time writing articles only to have them rejected later. And yes, acceptance of multis will be based on consensus like anything else. Note that I'm not suggesting that you must submit a multi for prior consideration, only that you might like to do it in order to avoid future disappointment.
I'm not sure about the "potentially controversial" clause. I guess it would be one way to approach it. Gatoclass (talk) 06:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Having had a moment to think about it, I don't think a "potentially controversial" clause would be useful because there is nothing particularly controversial about the copyvio exception, it's a longstanding convention to not count copyvios. So that can just be an addendum to the current clause about x5 expansion. In which case, we might as well give the other section a specific name, like "Submission of multi-hooks" or something. Gatoclass (talk) 06:56, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I meant the "potentially" part to acknowledge that sometimes drama randomly appears when items related to copyviolations are made apparent. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 16:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I have left a note at the NRHP wikiproject asking for further opinions on this submission. Gatoclass (talk) 08:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Why must all 15 (or 16 or however many there) new articles appear in the hook? Does anybody seriously think that a casual reader will religiously click on each of the links just because they are bolded? If anybody is interested they will undoubtedly read all the articles by reaching them from the links in the main Appomattox Park article. Anybody who isn't interested in the main article isn't going to feel cheated because the Jones house wasn't mentioned in the hook. Unless DYK is only about records and counting nowadays I can't see the point. Highlight a couple of the new articles if it makes an interesting hook by all means, but don't insist on a tedious list just because it bumps somebody up a chart somewhere. DYK shouldn't be a competition, and if it is...just count them anyway (add 15 on to your total on whichever unregulated chart and you are done). Yomanganitalk 14:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think its a size/amount of page issue as a notability issue of the individual buildings. I looked at the page originally thinking that I would quickly pass it as ready as I did for Doug's last large set. However, I live in DC and did work in order to help federal properties meet the National Register requirements for three years, so I have proximity and that background which led me to doubt if some of the buildings were truly notable enough. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
It turns out, after some further research, that in fact all the structures and building are in fact automatically listed in the NRHP by the fact that they are within a National Historical Park.--Doug Coldwell talk 15:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Your idea is unworkable Yomanangi, because if you are only going to give one DYK award per hook, users will just revert to submitting multiple hooks instead in order to get their DYKs, and that is exactly what we don't want. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with submitting a hook with 16 new articles, but that is not the issue here, the issue is whether these buildings are separately notable and whether 16 separate articles is the best way to present the information to end users. Gatoclass (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
If the attitude is now "I must have an award for every one of my qualifying articles regardless" that's a pity, as it means that DYK has become purely a competition among editors. Since the hook is repurposed from something to pique the reader's interest to a record of an editor's recent contributions, and we already have Special:Contributions and Special:NewPages for that, perhaps we could just transclude those pages into the area now taken by DYK. It would save no end of hassle. Yomanganitalk 15:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Lets put aside talks of awards for a moment. Doug put together at least 10 pages that I think would interest people. Besides those who would come to the pages out of interest, there are probably at least a dozen who would consider looking close enough to fix problems, add information, cats, etc. These two aspects are important. DYK is used by specialists to get their topic out, but also to hunt down people for gnome work or may know of things to add. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
But putting 16 articles out at the same time will dilute that effort. Unless the gnomes are particularly interested or dedicated they aren't going to go through all 16 (or 10 or whatever), and if they are they will probably go through all the articles regardless of whether every single one is linked. It's not about awards per se, but about what purpose DYK serves. A hook written solely to include any qualifying articles doesn't serve either the reader or the encyclopedia particularly well. Yomanganitalk 00:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
My concern (directly above this subsection) remains unaddressed. Some of the articles seem to contain reseach from a number of sources; others, like the example I have given, are simply pasted from a (probably public domain) government site with numerals changed to words and articles like "the" added. I don't believe that articles like that should be featured on the main page. GaryColemanFan (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Note that lately New County Jail has been expanded by 50% and Old Appomattox Court House, Clover Hill Tavern, Jones Law Office, Woodson Law Office, and Bocock-Isbell House have been increased in size considerably in the last few days. The others are fairly large articles already. Yes, there is room for expansion, especially in the History areas which others will have expert knowledge on. There is of course room for other improvements (i.e. grammer, spelling, etc) on all the articles. I believe all 16 articles are justified as an important part of American history, if not the most important part (reuniting of the Nation).--Doug Coldwell talk 19:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Under that theory, all buildings with a 16 block radius of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, etc, should have their own pages. Also, the outhouses, the slave quarters, the kitchens, etc, around the meeting should also be included. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:56, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
In reply to Yomanganitalk's remark on why having all 16 articles in the hook:
One thing I have noticed in checking out the 16 articles at various locations (i.e. libraries) is that the 15 articles on the "structures" in the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park happen in their browsers to open ("show") automatically exposing the linked names of the articles within the hook. If the reader is interested enough (i.e. Civil War buff) to click on 2 or 3 articles within the 16 article hook, then they will notice that they are all in the template box already opened ("show") and all they have to do is follow through and click any in the box. This is quite likely to happen IF they are interested in Civil War history. Now IF only the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is linked in a hook, THEN all they are going to get is 4 templates at the bottom - none of which they will know what to do with (click on "show"). Now lets assume a few do realize by clicking on "show" it opens the template box showing the linked articles - THEN they will probably click on all the templates "show", exposing hundreds of linked articles, NONE of which they will click any further because it is so over whelming. So, bottom-line is that IF they click on a few (or even a couple, likely) in the 16 article hook, they will realize that the remainder articles are at the bottom of the article they are presently viewing - increasing the odds they will view all of them. They don't necessarly have to go back to the hook each time and click on each article in the 16 article hook. So IF they have interest in clicking on a couple of articles in the hook, then they probably will click on the remainder because they are already available ("show") in the template box at the bottom of the article they are viewing. I believe that ALT 3 that Xn4 (talk) has submitted will receive good airtime, especially from Civil War enthusiasts and those that like making nitty gritty corrections to articles - SINCE they will be easy to find at the bottom of the article they are viewing already.--Doug Coldwell talk 22:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
From what I can follow it seems that you agree with my point that you don't need 16 bolded links in the hook. You are expecting that if the readers are interested and they click two or three of the links in the hook they will discover the template and go from there. As I said, write an interesting hook with a few of the articles linked. Hooks should be about hooking the reader, not a method of pointing out how many articles somebody produced on a single day. If we forget about serving the reader then standardising the hook as "... that User X wrote these articles recently:[List of articles]" will be more efficient. (Doug, I'm not aiming at you but at the culture that has developed of DYK as an editors' competition; your hook just provides a convenient...err...hook.) Yomanganitalk 00:43, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
No Yomangani I am not agreeing with you. I am saying that with 15 possibilities it increases the odds they will hit two or three, some (any) two or three, finding the template and going from there. The hook will attract readers, especially if it were the first in the queue with its picture. The readers (probably Civil War enthusiasts or those interested in Parks) will be served.--Doug Coldwell talk 12:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

If I may be so bold, I believe Yomangani's point is that this is not a "hook" in any meaningful sense. This laundry list of bold blue links will not "hook" the attention of readers. "Did you know that there are lots of very exciting historic buildings and ruins in some park?" --- One pound (talk) 00:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone look at article traffic statistics to see if being in a laundry list meaningfully increases an article's traffic stats, versus being in a hook that is interesting or intriguing? If the traffic stats are the same, than why waste time writing interesting and articulate hooks? Why not always have laundry lists if they put in as much or more clicks through to the article. —Mattisse (Talk) 00:27, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Keep in mind I am showing where the reader finds the other articles in the template box, not off the hook itself necessarily. Obviously these type of template boxes are useful since they are in many articles. In this case the 15 "structures" are divided up into 4 categories making them easy to understand: Public buildings, Businesses, Private homes, Other. The one in black is the article they are at, where the others are the linked articles in the hook. Once a person has hit two or three of the articles in the hook (possibly even one), it is likely they will realize the rest are in the template box SINCE the article they are now reading is now in black where before it was a linked blue article. The template box with these Categories are not a "laundry list", but a list of linked articles related to the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park subdivided into 4 different types, no one string more than 6 articles - 4 houses and 2 cabins. The template box opens ("show") automatically in any one of the 15 "structures" other than Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.--Doug Coldwell talk 12:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Notability
"If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article."
An article does not need to show independent notability (shows it played a distinctive role in the Surrender) to be a stand-alone article, just that it has reliable secondary sources - which all the articles have. In Old Appomattox Court House there are several references that state it did not play a role in the Surrender and several more could be found easily. To have notability (Wikipedia) does not mean that the "structure" has to be in the National Register of Historic Places, but all these structures in the articles happen to be. The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice." Notability is distinct from "fame," "importance," or "popularity." The Old Appomattox Court House is worthy of notice. Must be since Timothy H. O'Sullivan took a picture of it in 1865 and it is on the cover of many Civil War books like A Stillness at Appomattox.--Doug Coldwell talk 12:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
As I stated before, the only information seems to be generic information that each page has. Aren't there any excerpts that primarily discuss the building except in either the general terms common to all of the pages or the ones describing what the building looks like? Otherwise, all we have are a bunch of pages that basically say "this was a building". Please find more information and expand on it, please. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I believe the 16 article hook DYK should be approved or disapproved as soon as possible, since it mets all the criteria. The articles are all qualifying articles for new articles. The hook is interesting and will attract readers interested in the Civil War and in Parks as well as the normal gnomes interested in making corrections to new articles. The length of the Alt 3 16 article hook is no longer than articles half that size or even a quarter that size. This hook saves approximately 3000 characters that would be produced by 15 additional single hook DYKs. It would especially attract readers if the first one in the queue with its associated picture. Civil War enthusiasts will recognize the "court house" immediately and probably follow through to see what the articles are about.--Doug Coldwell talk 13:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Another reason I believe the 16 article hook DKY will attract readers is because of the pictures in the articles. Lets say one clicks on Old Appomattox Court House, which shows the 1865 version of the original "court house" and as it is today. If one were to then click on Clover Hill Tavern it shows the Tavern and pictures showing the printing of parole passes and associated buildings. If one were to then randomly click on the Plunkett-Meeks Store it shows the Store exterior and interior and the associated buildings. All the articles have associated pictures. If on any of the articles they clicked on the Wikipedia Commons link they get over 50 associated pictures related to the Park.--Doug Coldwell talk 14:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

It is great that Doug Coldwell has taken the time and trouble to create all of these article, but I think most of them should be merged together somewhere. I can't see the notability - each is a rather derivative example of its type, of which there must be hundreds or thousands of examples, and their only claim to fame is that they are near Appomattox Court House.

The people at AfD will have a better idea of how notable they are individually. I'll start with Woodson Law Office and Jones Law Office. -- One pound (talk) 00:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Woodson Law Office and Jones Law Office. -- One pound (talk) 00:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

This couldn't have waited 24 hours? The multi-hook has been in the queue for display sometime tomorrow. - Dravecky (talk) 01:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
It shouldn't have been promoted since the issues have still not been resolved. Gatoclass (talk) 02:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I would really like to know who promoted it. I'm having a hard time trying to figure that out, but it seems rather improper and also causes problems with the AfD nomination, which takes priority over DYK. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Dravecky. The AfD happened after it was promoted, so it's not really appropriate to say that D. messed up the [nonexistent at the time] AfD when he promoted it...Gatoclass is probably right, though, that it shouldn't have been promoted at the time, because of the outstanding issues. I presume the appropriate action would be for an admin to take it back out of the queue for now and BOLDly replace it with something else from T:TDYK or next or whatever. Politizer talk/contribs 17:41, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Dravecky knew that this was going on. You are not supposed to put them on the list while there are concerns. The promotion does not occur until it is listed on the mainpage. This is a very bad act, and Dravecky should have known better, especially when he weighed in at the AfD. This can be seen as undermining the neutrality of AfD by promoting something that is challenged against consensus and then giving it a status to make it seem more important. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so Dravecky made a mistake by IAR-promoting a hook that wasn't ready; it's over now, though, the hook has been on the main page and has gone back off the main page, and is no longer DYK's concern. Discussion of the problem articles can be continued at the AfD; they're not really relevant here anymore, and discussion of Dravecky's character isn't really relevant anywhere. In any case, I don't see much point in rehashing this at WT:DYK any longer. Politizer talk/contribs 17:55, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Dravecky does not get out of this because he was able to get it to the mainpage before anyone saw what was happening. This is a major mistake and Dravecky needs to be kept from promoting such pages in the future. You can try to sweep it under the rug, but that's not how things work on Wikipedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Anyone other than the hook nominator is allowed to promote a hook to Next at DYK; it's in the rules (WP:DYK#Updating the DYK next update page). Dravecky made one mistake, that doesn't mean he should be banned forever. I've made mistakes promoting hooks, too; everyone has made mistakes on WP, even you. We recognize that Dravecky made a mistake, now we can move on; the hook has come and gone, there's nothing we can do about it anymore anyway.
I'm not interested in "sweeping it under the rug"; I'm just trying to end a conversation that is not productive and no longer relevant. There's nothing more I have to say, though, so feel free to have the last word. Politizer talk/contribs 18:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I think you need to reread WP:Consensus. It doesn't matter if "anyone" can promote, which is not true because only admin can promote. What matters is that Dravecky purposely overrode consensus that he knew existed, did not withdraw it as is appropriate once it is blatant that he knew that it was a problem, then participates at the deletion review which demonstrates a pro-article POV that shows that he was not neutral in promoting it to begin with. This is a violation of many of the administrative ethical principles and a lack of respect to consensus and to the process. Wehwalt expressed a major initial concern. After looking in, I expressed the same concern. Two reviewers were trying to find a way to overcome the concern. Then others participated and some expressed their own concerns. If everyone acted like Dravecky, there would be no point as to having anyone do anything but have Dravecky decide all of the nominations. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Clarification: by "only admin can promote," Ottava Rima is referring to promoting hooks from Next into the Queue (and from the Queue into T:DYK), which is edit-protected. Anyone can promote hooks from T:TDYK to Next, as it says in the rules. The diff I gave above was the diff of Dravecky's promoting the hook from T:TDYK into Next. Politizer talk/contribs 18:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Politizer, only admin are allowed to promote DYK to the mainpage. Only admin are allowed to alter the mainpage. This has been the case and will always be the case. If non-admin are updating the DYK, then they are violating many consensus based rules and this will be brought up at ANI. Furthermore, edit summaries are not to be used to make personal attacks and you have a history of abusing that. Stop now. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Hey genius, you don't need to keep explaining to me what I already know. I didn't say anything about "promoting DYK to the mainpage." The diff I gave was not about the mainpage. I was talking about promoting to Next Update, a page anyone can edit (see the rule I already linked to twice above, "After confirming that a suggestion meets the requirements listed on this page, any editor may add a suggestion to the DYK template next update page and then delete the suggestion from the DYK template talk page."). I made it clear in my clarification above, which you apparently didn't have the time to read, that I was talking about Next Update and not the main page. Non-admins updating Next update is not a violation of any rules and if you bring them to ANI for it you will get bitch-slapped so fast it'll make your head spin. Once again I am in awe of how poor your understanding of DYK is. Non-admins can update Next, and they do all the time. You fucking moron.
I tried to help you out by giving you the diff that you specifically said you wanted to find, and this is how you repay me—by whining about the same old bullshit and being too thick-skulled to read or understand anything I say. Politizer talk/contribs 03:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Outdent - non-admin were never allowed to update the DYK next, because that goes onto the mainpage. You cannot get around the non-editing the mainpage by using any kind of list. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:18, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh boy. You'd better get me banned, then, because I've been editing it for months.
Come on, you bad boy. I know you've been wanting it. Politizer talk/contribs 04:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Ottava and Politzer: is this really a point to fight over? I mean, seriously...just walk away. Please. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 04:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm just tired of watching DYK people get bullied around by a guy who clearly doesn't even know how DYK works (not even after I gave him a link to the rules, twice, and quoted them in front of his face. I'll do it again for good measure: "After confirming that a suggestion meets the requirements listed on this page, any editor may add a suggestion to the DYK template next update page and then delete the suggestion from the DYK template talk page.") Politizer talk/contribs 04:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Alright. You've made the point...if he doesn't see your point now, he never will. Can we step away from the horse carcass now please? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 04:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Darwin Day

Just a heads-up... myself and some others are planning to create a number of thematic articles for Darwin Day, February 12 (the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth). See Wikipedia:Did you know/Darwin Day 2009. More contributions are welcome. That day will feature history of evolutionary thought and hopefully a Darwin-related featured picture as well, and I hope DYK will try to accommodate the new articles to schedule them for February 12; most of them will be ready to be deployed well ahead of time, so we'll move them to mainspace and list the hooks on February 6 or 7.--ragesoss (talk) 03:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

This is also the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, so I plan to have 4-5 Lincoln-related hooks that day as well.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 04:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Also keep in mind that the TFA for that day will be Darwin related, History of evolutionary thought, let's not overdo things on the Darwin side.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I would be surprised if the "On this day..." didn't mention both Darwin and Lincoln in addition to everything else. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal re multi-hooks

We had several objections to the running of Doug Coldwell's recent 16-part multi on the basis that not all the entries merited their own article. In my own opinion the hook should not have been run as it was, but I was reluctant to oppose given the obvious work Doug had put into it.

In order to prevent similar dilemmas arising in future however, I'm proposing that future multis based upon NHRP must get prior approval at this page first. I'm also toying with the idea of having a requirement for prior approval of any multi with more than say, four articles. Comments please. Gatoclass (talk) 04:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, a hook like that looks plain ridiculous (no offense to the people who worked a lot to get those articles to a good state). We should have some restriction to avoid this kind of thing, and this seems to be an ok idea. We could discuss here and decide of it looks ok or not. Chamal talk 04:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't think there's a need for restriction/red tape rule. If an article is broken up into small pieces, people will automatically tag it for merging. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 04:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
The problem is, it makes it very difficult to say no when someone has already gone to the trouble of creating a whole bunch of articles. I don't want to have to deal with the wikidrama, which is why I am proposing a method of dealing with these multis prior to nomination. Also, merge discussions can take a long time and we only have a five-day window to say yes or no to a hook. Gatoclass (talk) 07:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't think anyone expects much from DYKs anyway, so why worry about it? Have you received complaints? (When you said "We had several objections ..." - what does that mean? From whom? How many? If 2 or 3, who cares, as there have been that many against the multis to begin with. ) —Mattisse (Talk) 04:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
And YellowMonkey has a great idea - what a wonderful way to get articles merged! (Or ADF'd). —Mattisse (Talk) 04:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

On second thoughts, perhaps making it compulsory is going a little too far at this stage. I think what I'll do instead is just add a recommendation to the rules that users consult here first to avoid possible disappointment. Gatoclass (talk) 07:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK with me. Anyway if the hook doesn't look all right, let's hope someone notices it (if the reviewer doesn't) and does something about it. Chamal talk 15:08, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not seeing the point of a 16-article hook. Couldn't the creator just space the uploads to mainspace and do 4x4-article hooks or simply 16 1 article hooks? - Mgm|(talk) 11:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
That was mentioned as an idea but Doug did not accept it. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
He didn't accept it because he wanted a 16 article hook. Doug could have written all that and made a very fine article about the Park. He chose to go for a record instead. Now WP has an article about ruins that I doubt anyone will ever search for. One way to prevent it without having a hard limit is to increase the minimum character requirement if you want a multihook. Let's say, just for the sake of discussion, let's say 500x + 1000, where x is the number of articles you want in your hook. So if you wanted a 16 article hook, each article would have to be 8,500 characters. That way, you increase the chances that people are going to write quality articles if they want to do this.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
8,500? That's ridiculous.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 18:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Play with the idea, then. If someone wants to do that kind of thing, a higher standard should be set to ensure the articles are worth having.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Without leads and formating, my pages are almost to that standard. I still have to fill in information from one book (and halves of two additional books) and go through three biographies for minor information, critical responses, and some other things. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
As I understand it, the problem is that the goal of interesting DYK hooks conflicts with the goal of setting a record. If 16 articles need 8,500 characters each, then that makes that goal higher, and perhaps more glorious and attractive. Consider how many people die climbing Mount Everest. I would think the solution is just to insist that all hooks, especially anything that looks like some sort of record, fulfills all the other criteria including that it must be interesting – not just "Did you know that X has an A, B, C, D, E, F, ..." Over 4 articles in a hook probably turns the hook into either a boring list or an essay, so some kind of extra review makes sense. Art LaPella (talk) 22:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The easy solution is to remove the hall of fame and kill the records. :) My hook, for example, cannot really be split any further (two time periods) except to have about 14 hooks at once. Since I am mostly building the page (the early plays and later the later plays) for FAC, I need to fill in all of the little pages together, so I might as well put them together (or cram up DYK with 16 different listings, which is really bad and I've done that before ala Christopher Smart and the 8 individual DYK proposal mess). If it would alleviate any concerns, you can make it so that mine wont be listed, as I just want them to display on the main page to attract people to the pages to make reviews, etc, to help in the FAC process (two people are working with me, but random gnomes and the rest are always good). Ottava Rima (talk) 23:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I agree with Art LaPella. Personally I think when it comes to multi-article hooks we should remember Wikipedia:Use common sense instead of trying to add a bunch of more rules. If a collection of hooks is unable to be practically organized into a single hook that is articulate, interesting, and succinct than it should be broken down into multiple hooks. Certain groups of articles are more likely to yield a usable multi-hook than others. Placing a cap on the number of articles allowed in a multi-article hook is bad because, for example, sometimes a group of eight might work perfectly but a different group of five might be too awkward to yield a good hook. I really think it needs to be judged on a case by case basis. I wouldn't be opposed to adding a "common sense clause" to the rules when it comes to multi-article hooks. Something like "multi-article hooks must be clear, articulate, interesting, succinct, and visually viable for the the main page" (I think that 16 article hook looked horrible for example). I also think Ottava Rima's suggestion to remove the multi-article hook record is an excellent idea. Its one thing if a group of articles fit together naturally in the normal process of things but its another to attract people towards multi-article hook records. This is like encouraging people to stuff beans up their nose.Nrswanson (talk) 23:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
    As a note - if anyone feels that I might be biased against the records - I have two 15 part hooks planned plus five other hook sets of 5+ planned to be finished or near finished in 30-40 days. As you can tell, its the same people listed over and over and it doesn't really mean much of anything. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) re Art and Nrswanson: it's always good to make sure hooks we pass are interesting, but I don't see there ever being a rule saying "hooks must be interesting"; as has been reiterated numerous times above, it would be an impossible standard to maintain and it would just lead to drama. In my [admittedly brief] time working at T:TDYK, I never had problems by just sometimes saying stuff like "length checks out, but the hook is pretty bland; can you find any more interesting facts in the article?", and I never needed to cite a rule to get people to listen to me. Like Nrswanson said, it's about using common sense. And, even more so, it's about working with the nominators to find an acceptable hook, rather than just citing a rule and saying "doesn't meet the criteria, toss it." Half of the hooks that come through here are in unacceptable shape when they first show up, and get dragged up to main-page standard through collaboration among DYK people and between them and the nominators. (I'm all about collaborating with the nominators; I mean, the first thing I ever did for DYK was making the {{DYKproblem}} template for it.) Politizer talk/contribs 01:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with the spirit of collaboration and that improving hooks should happen in the approving process. However, contrary to what you said, "interesting" is a requirement under the rules for content and has always been there. (not the additional rules but in the regular rules) Several articles in the past have failed to get promoted simply because nobody could think of a good hook. Usually we can eak something out so it rarely happens, but I have seen articles fail to get promoted for this reason. Multi-article hooks should be held to the same standard.Nrswanson (talk) 01:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I've had to fail articles for that, too (fortunately, usually the nominator is understanding about it when it comes to that). But, like you've said, that's the exception to the norm; personally, I have passed hundreds of hooks that I thought were boring, but were still saying something noteworthy, and just happened to be in a subject that I find dull or stupid. The vast majority of the time, we have to bite our tongues and just go with the flow (which is why I used to get so excited and hyper when someone brought in a genuinely crazy hook), and it's very difficult to quantify when exactly we shouldn't (ie, to draw an objective line between hooks that are boring but can be passed, and hooks that just stink). Other than my common sense and mood (which vary drastically from one minute to the next), my personal gauge was always whether the hook would be interesting to someone who is crazy about that subject—a hook like "joe schmoe wrestler got X smackdowns" is totally boring to me, but maybe a wrestling nut would find it cool, whereas "joe schmoe wrestler is a wrestler" would bore just about anyone—and if we do have to make an official rule I think it should be something along those lines. That would definitely be a lot fairer than measuring hook interestingness by sentence structure (to paraphrase and slightly misrepresent Art's earlier suggestion). Politizer talk/contribs 01:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Again, "interesting" is already in the rules for hook content so nothing needs to be added. I agree with everything you just said in terms of that rules application. I don't think we need to specify things more than we already have in the rules as long as we treat it with common sense (i.e. what you just said above). The problem with multi-article hooks is that they often become rambling un-focused sentences (especially 8+ hooks) which in effect make them both annoying to read and boring. In such cases I think the interesting and concise rules should be applied and the multi-hook broken down into at least two seperate hooks that could be more focused. I'm all about the use of multi-hooks to save space but not at the cost of DYK quality.Nrswanson (talk) 01:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I happen to disagree, hooks with many articles can be highly readable or they can be turgid, just like any other hook. In regards to the "interesting" argument, I make an exception for long multihooks as they are saving us considerable space, apart from which all the long multis I have seen are at least as interesting as many of our other hooks in any case. Gatoclass (talk) 08:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Agree, most standalone hooks are pretty turgid anyway. The only question mark is about borderline unnecessary group hooks for articles that might not need to be in individual form so much. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
So how do we prevent repetitions of what I will politely call the Second Surrender at Appomattox?--Wehwalt (talk) 02:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
LOL, it did seem a bit that way.
I think one thing we can do at least is to discount toward the 1,500 char limit any text in multi-articles that essentially repeats the same info. For example, if two or more submitted articles have the same intro, the intro is only counted toward the 1,500 char limit of one of the articles and not the rest. In Doug's recent multi for example, we had essentially the same paragraph about "x being significant because of its association with the Appomatox surrender" in all 16 articles.
Also I think in regards to the NRHP, only items which have their own unique NRHP number should have their own articles. That I think would at least be a start toward preventing article spamming. Gatoclass (talk) 08:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
And now that it occurs to me, another way to discourage article spamming would be to withdraw awards for any articles that are subsequently merged or deleted. So if you've got a total of 60 articles and two are deleted and another one is merged, your total goes to 57. If you've got a 10 article hook in the Hall of Fame and two of the articles are deleted, it becomes an 8 article hook. This give users an incentive to create quality articles on notable subjects, rather than spamming likely merge candidates in hopes of finding a sympathetic DYK reviewer. Gatoclass (talk) 08:53, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
The question, then, is if that is feasible? The enforcement would be based on the current honor system, which may or may not work. Perhaps we need someone willing to go through the Hall of Fame once a quarter to clean up? Ottava Rima (talk) 16:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Well, if it is in the top few, people might notice YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 23:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I would think so. We could also ask people to voluntarily adjust their stats, since an article creator or expander is the one most likely to be keeping tabs on it. Gatoclass (talk) 03:36, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Future 5-6 article KRM hook

To prevent future problems, I am planning a 5-6 article hook concerning the Kentucky Railway Museum. The museum itself will get a 5x, and then four separate articles on train cars that are each separately on the Register, and then another property next door to the museum which would have been used as a hotel during its train days. All are in New Haven, Kentucky. See National Register of Historic Places listings in Nelson County, Kentucky for the related articles.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 04:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't see anyone objecting to that one, because the trains obviously were famous before they were put in the museum....YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 05:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Is there any end to the National Register of Historic Places? Or is this the wave of the future DYKs? (Is this US-centric?) —Mattisse (Talk) 04:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
There has been a bunch for some time. Over 80,000 properties are on the Register.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 05:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Umm, no wonder I have lost interest. Oh, well, that will take up the next several years. —Mattisse (Talk) 05:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Actually, we get a lot less NHRP articles than we used to. There used to be one or two in practically every update. Gatoclass (talk) 07:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Having many articles in one hook as is proposed reduces the number of US-centric hooks created rather than increasing it. I'm sorry if any editor has lost interest in DYK but would hasten to point out that there is a lot of other wiki-work that can be done as a potential better use of one's time than staying here to repeat how bored you are staying here. Just an idea. - Dravecky (talk) 17:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Bedford, do the trains have their own separate articles in the register or is it all covered by the one article? If the latter, I would be inclined to say no. Gatoclass (talk) 07:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The trains/cars are each independently on the Register; their articles have not been written yet.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 07:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
If they have independent entries I can't see a problem. Gatoclass (talk) 08:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You haven't said anything about the building next door. Is that listed on the register? If not, how is it notable? Ottava Rima (talk) 03:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I would worry about all the buildings with the radius of... what did you say, Ottava? Is DYK encouraging the creation of trivial articles? —Mattisse (Talk) 04:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Are we seriously going to go through this again? If they pass WP:N, then leave them be. Wikipedia isn't paper, so even if only one person a day searches for something on X building and come to our article for info on it, it's a net positive. Leave this be please. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 04:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The building is on the register, and did regularly serve train patrons during its time. If you like, I could send you the links to the individual forms for each place. The only item not on the NRHP is the museum itself.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 04:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
It was more of a curiosity. Hotels tend to have more of a weight on the national register, especially when they were private businesses and (unless its owned by the feds) not mandated to be on the list. (I could really put up about 300 buildings on the Ft Benning property up for listing at DYK based on the standards of fed properties being listed on the national register - I have all of the construction reporters, orders for building, what time periods, architecture documents, notable individuals who worked there, etc, but I don't see mandated federal properties really having any real weight. Private properties, definitely). Ottava Rima (talk) 06:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Huh? Saying things doesn't make them true. On what do you base these assertions (about the various weights you speak of)?--Aujourd'hui, maman est morte (talk) 06:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
I worked as an archaeological researcher during graduate school and spent the majority of my time helping Federal properties meet the requirements of preservation for the National Register. Federal properties are mandated to be on the list for preservation. Private properties are not. It it takes a lot for a private property to meet the requirements: notable building, part of an architectural or cultural movement, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I've placed the hook on February 2's section; it should be fairly interesting.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 02:29, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Help please

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but something is wrong with the picture in Template:Did you know/Queue/2. I'm not an admininistrator so I can't fix it myself. Cheers.Broadweighbabe (talk) 17:49, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks for the heads up. Gatoclass (talk) 08:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Credits

I didn't get credits for Øystein Sørensen (1 Feb) or Ndiss Kaba Badji (3 Feb). Both are listed at Recent Additions, though. What's the cause of this problem? Punkmorten (talk) 10:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Could be that the bot messed up, or that the credits weren't listed correctly in the queue (ie, my template messed up). Does anyone remember which queue this was from so I can check the history and see if the credits were listed correctly there? Politizer talk/contribs 14:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Verification

sorry, I'm sure it's a FAQ, but how can I get the John Maynard (cricketer) nomination verified?

As an outsider, can I not that the DYK process comes across to those unfamiliar with it as very bureaucratic, which is offputting. I'd be happy to have a peruse through it and make some streamlining suggestions for you to consider... I'm happy for every comment to be rejected (this isn't for my ego).

Finally, it seems the pages are quite backlogged. Are you short on volunteers? Perhaps some advertising coverage at the Signpost could help? --Dweller (talk) 12:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much all you can do is wait; noms generally get reviewed from the bottom up (oldest to most recent) and Maynard looks like he's still around the middle, so he'll probably get looked at soon. Sometimes you can message a particular reviewer asking him to take a look, but it depends on the person; some people find it annoying and might be less inclined to review your hook, whereas others (probably most) are happy to take a look.
As for the backlog...this amount is pretty standard for DYK, I think, but in any case, anyone is welcome to review other people's hooks. Despite how it looks with all the bureaucracy, the basic rules are pretty simple: is the article long enough/expanded enough, is the fact referenced in the article with an inline citation, and is the hook interesting and NPOV? The rest of the details you pick up pretty quickly as you go. Politizer talk/contribs 14:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree that some of our process pages could probably do with a revamp. It's a matter of finding the time and energy to do it though. I have a thousand things I would like to get done on the encyclopedia, and a job like this would be low on my set of priorities. Gatoclass (talk) 16:10, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we could work on further moving some of the official rules into the additional rules, and turning the official rules into sort of a DYK version of WP:5. Something like "the four pillars of DYK nominations: 1 content is new or sufficiently expanded (link to the specific rules about size, counting, etc), 2 hook is verifiable (link to rules about inline citations and whatnot), 3 hook is interesting and appropriate (link to rules about NPOV and whatever rule might come out of the above discussion on interestingness), 4 article is in good shape (link to rules about no cleanup/dispute tags, no stubs, etc.). I'm probably missing something, but whatevs. The main idea is to make the front-end rules simple and attractive enough not to scare people away from becoming reviewers (since the current rules seem to have scared Dweller), and keep enough detail at Additional Rules so that we have precedents/consensuses to point to and avoid teh dramaz. Politizer talk/contribs 17:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all. --Dweller (talk) 20:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there anything in particular you found daunting Dweller? It might be helpful to know. Gatoclass (talk) 03:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

February 13/14

Seeing how themed DYKs are all the rage, did anyone notice that Friday 13 and Valentine's Day are neck and neck this year? "Bad luck" and "love"; it should be easy to come up with topics. Lampman (talk) 02:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Be careful

Regarding Water puppetry, which is the lead hook on T:DYK right now...it's a nice article and I was about to go thank Gryffindor for bringing it to DYK, but in the process I noticed that it does not seem to be a new expansion. Current version is 3875 characters; version before expansion was 3669 (please correct me if I'm wrong and I'm missing some move or something like that), which is not really any expansion at all. Looking at the diff of when the hook was promoted, it looks like no one checked the article history. Let's all please be careful to check article history and length in the future. I'm not trying to point fingers or anything (it's not any one person's fault; three different people reviewed it and missed this, and I know I've made the same mistake before as well), but just trying to give a friendly reminder. Thanks, Politizer talk/contribs 06:16, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate linking in Did You Know

On 1 February 2009, a DYK reads: "that landscape architecture firm West 8 designed the so-called "Reptile Bridge" between Leidsche Rijn and Utrecht in the Netherlands?". Rather than "Reptile Bridge" wikilinking to an article about the bridge (which would be interesting), it individually links to articles about the two words "reptile" and "bridge" (which is not very informative). Incidentally, there is no such linking in the "West 8" article itself. Perhaps we can be a bit more careful with wikilinks? Cheers. Truthanado (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not inappropriate so much as not ideal. Bridge is an okay link, reptile perhaps not relevant. Please note in this case, there is no Reptile Bridge article. Generally hooks are checked for # of characters, that they're referenced in the article, NPOV and at least minimally interesting. They're then copied into the queue as is. To make secondary links in hooks more relevant, you can suggest alternate hooks for future DYKs at T:TDYK. I have doubts about it being made a rule though, given the two pages of rules (WP:DYK WP:DYKAR). Currently the rules say to check that it's not a disambiguation page and no redlinks. TransUtopian (talk) 22:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC) (edit: Since you've contributed to DYK, you already know most or all of this. Sorry.)

Old stone jail hook

Should my old stone jail hook, currently ont he front page, say "was the last stone jail" instead of "is the last stone jail", as it is no longer a jail, but instead a b'n'b?--King Bedford I Seek his grace 22:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I just saw this and it's off the Main Page already. Art LaPella (talk) 05:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Expiring nom overlooked?

Other than an Alt hook suggested by Alansohn, there's been no action on my Jan. 28 DYK nom of Tony Jannus Award. Why?  JGHowes  talk 02:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC) (later): As someone with 15 DYK's to my credit, I think an explanation is in order as to why this one was simply ignored without comment—I've never had this happen before. The nom met all criteria, is well sourced and, I thought, interesting. At least an explanation would be nice. JGHowestalk 13:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Far from being ignored, the hook is in Queue #2 which should place it on the Main Page in the next 18 hours or so. - Dravecky (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I must get my glasses checked! I looked in all the usual places earlier today (queues, edit summaries, etc.) and didn't see it.  JGHowes  talk 16:06, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
No worries. Sometimes the Queue page doesn't properly display its most current state until you hit the "purge" link. - Dravecky (talk) 16:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

DYK timer

Now the Bot is updating after 5 hours and 52 minutes. This is worse than the the old frequency of 6 hours and 5 minutes and both are worse than setting the damn thing to perform every 6 hours. Can we make it 6 hours and 00 minutes?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 15:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

It's still more punctual that most humans. Let's worry about the bot's problem with missing edits, per Wikipedia talk:Did you know#DYKAdminBot may have malfunctioned above, first. --PFHLai (talk) 15:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, especially since the bot should still be running on the 5 hour pace the timer is set for but never actually achieved with the timer set to 18000 seconds. I don't know if nixeagle ever figured out what the heck was up with the timer. In the meantime, I've going to change the alert back to 6 hours since all it's doing now is reliably going to yellow alert for 52 minutes 4 times a day. - Dravecky (talk) 15:45, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I see it is now 6 on the dot. Thanks. Now we just got to get it going at 0:00, 6:00, 12:00 and 18:00.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

DYKAdminBot may have malfunctioned

I think there's been a glitch ... the Queue 1 hooks (starting with the Flora of Saskatchewan hook) did not make it on to the main page. The stage in the process where the bot copies them to the main page and leaves the edit summary "Adminbot automatically updating DYK template with hooks copied from queue 1" seems to have been missed. All the credits and everything else were done. I'm copying this to Nixeagle's talk page as well (bot owner), but must dash - my lunch break is over! Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 13:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I have retrieved the unused set of hooks from Q1's history and placed them on Q2. I hope the bot will actually post them on MainPage this time.--PFHLai (talk) 18:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Heads up

It's been almost 81/2 hours since the last update...(look at the history of T:DYK...) —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 15:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The bot just put up Queue hooks #2... COMPLETELY skipping the first hooks yet giving everyone credit anyway. I think the bot f'd up. Wizardman 15:35, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like someone will have to block the bot and go back to updating by hand, until nixeagle has had a chance to fix it. Politizer talk/contribs 15:39, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
As a result of the issue noted above, I got a DYK credit for Carol Hutchins, but the hook never made it to the main page. Presumably, other hooks are in the same situation and should be put back in queue. Cbl62 (talk) 16:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
I have retrieved the unused set of hooks from Q1's history and placed them on Q2. I hope the bot will actually post them on MainPage this time. --PFHLai (talk) 18:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Double creds though? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 18:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd left out the {DYKmake} and {DYKnom} templates to avoid double crediting (see Q2). Hope this works. --PFHLai (talk) 18:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I also noticed that someone got double credits. First [1] + [2] and later [3] + [4]. Punkmorten (talk) 21:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a different episode of errors by the Bot. The same set of hooks from Q4 were posted on MainPage twice, archived twice and most of the credits were given out twice. Apparently, after posting the hooks on MainPage at 19:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC), the Bot forgot to blank Q4 and replace them with {{User:DYKadminBot/REMOVE THIS LINE}}, and no one noticed. When Q4's turn came up again after a cycle of updates, the same hooks were posted again at 01:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC). I've removed the duplications from the DYK archive and the usertalkpages. Hope this helps. --PFHLai (talk) 19:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Can someone block the bot until nixeagle figures out the problem? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 20:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
The bot is forgetful and needs a supervisor/nanny/follow-upper to complete any unfinished businesses at each updates. I don't think it has made any harmful edits to deserve getting blocked. If it makes ~20 of the 25+ edits it is supposed to make at each update, whoever monitors it only has to do ~5 any time before the next update. If it's blocked, we have to make all ~25 ourselves AND we have to watch the clock. Letting it run may also allow nixeagle to watch for patterns of omissions and may therefore be helpful in determining the cause(s) of its problems. --PFHLai (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Absolutely, as inconvenient as it is to have to check up on the bot, it was way more inconvenient not to have to have to bot at all. - Dravecky (talk) 15:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Hmm - that makes sense. Never mind :) —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 17:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Another glitch

Same as what Hassocks reported. The bot thought it had updated from queue 4, and did everything except update the DYK template. It gave out credits, reset the clock, and cleaned out queue 4. I've emailed Nixeagle. Shubinator (talk) 22:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Can the CN article be given a pass?

I know it doesn't strictly meet the 5 times guideline, but I've made a lot of effort on completely re-writing this page into something I think is much better. It went from 8k to 27. I'd like to put it up for DYK, and if the answer is "no" due to the rule then perhaps I can be given a couple of days to expand so it does hit it? Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What's the "CN article"? --NE2 02:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Looking at Maury's recent contributions, I'd guess Numerical control. BencherliteTalk 02:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it won't pass if it's 8k to 27k. Expansion is counted from the previous version of the article, no matter how bad it is and how much of it you have completely rewritten; this is to provide an objective measure and to avoid lots of arguments over how much an article has "improved" (with the fast turnover necessary at DYK, we usually don't have time to perform such in-depth and subjective assessments). If you have it up to 4.5x expansion or something like that we would be able to bend the rules, given how long an article it already is, but at the current expansion it would probably not pass. I recommend you spend a couple days expanding it more (as you suggested), if there's enough justified material to add without artificially bloating it; just make sure you do it fast enough that it doesn't get outside of the 5-day limit.
Also keep in mind, even if you can't reach 5x expansion for DYK, an article of that size and which you have worked on this much would probably be a great candidate for GAN :). Politizer talk/contribs 02:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Just did a count on the Numerical control article (which I assume is the article you're working on). It appears that the current prose size (not counting wiki markup, tables, etc.) is only 22k characters, not 27k (counted with User:Dr pda/prosesize.js, which is about a 3x expansion from what it was before (about 7600). You'll definitely need to expand it more before doing a DYK...if you can't expand it that much, though, you can definitely at least get it to GA. Best, Politizer talk/contribs 03:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Pass. We'll just let readers find it the old fashioned way. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Change to DYK award description

Up until now the description of the {{The DYK Medal}} award has been simply "Award for significant contributions to DYK." Unfortunately it appears that some users are interpreting this as an award for less than 25 article contributions, which is not AFAIK how we've generally used it. So I've been WP:BOLD and altered the description as follows: Award for significant contributions to the operation of DYK, excluding article contributions.

If someone objects to this I'm open to discussion, but I do think that there should be a separate award for contributors to the day-to-day running of DYK, so if we're not going to use this existing award we should create a new one specifically for this kind of contributor. Gatoclass (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Lack of lead sections in submissions

This is something that has been bugging me for a long time. We get a great many articles that contain no formatting at all except maybe a few paragraphs. There is no introduction and often no sections except for the refs/footnotes. Basically, these articles are just slabs of text and they look very drab and unininteresting. For the shorter ones, they also tend to look like just a handful of paragraphs strung together - which is what many of them are, but without headers the impression is even worse.

I don't think we can justifiably mandate the addition of headers throughout an article, but I don't see why we could not make it a requirement that all DYK submissions include a discrete lead section, which means a section separated from the rest of the text by a header. Every article really should have a lead section giving a brief summary of the contents in any case, so I don't think anyone could argue that this is an unreasonable requirement. I had to add section headers to at least six submissions this evening, and quite frankly I'm getting a little tired of tryng to make other people's articles meet minimal standards of presentation. Gatoclass (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Those articles that just meet the 1500 character threshhold usually look very odd and distracting with section headers. Headers need not be required unless there is over 3000 characters.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 17:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree that some people have the opposite problem, being overly fond of adding a section header for every second sentence. However, as I said I'm just proposing a requirement for one header, to create a lead section separate from the main body of the article. I don't think one can argue that is excessive, even for a short article. Gatoclass (talk) 05:30, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I think getting into mandating section headers, leads or other WP:MOS details would be a bit of instruction creep. The simplest solution is to up the minimum characters to 2000, 2500 or 3000. More fully developed articles tend to be better formatted with more defined leads and sections. As Bedford noted, 1500 char articles look very odd with headers and leads. By their nature they really just are stubs and "slabs of text". If 1500 is our bare threshold, then we shouldn't be disappointed with the quality of these "stubby" articles. AgneCheese/Wine 17:38, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Sorry Agne, but I must disagree. Even a 1,500 char article is considerably improved in appearance with a discrete lead section. Even a single header makes an article look better organized and more substantial - and by making a lead section a requirement, we may actually encourage submitters to become a little more conscious of the organization of their information, which can hardly be a bad thing. Gatoclass (talk) 17:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
I'll repeat my usual refrain here: there's no need to "mandate" anything other than that the reviewers always have the right to reject or delay an article for being crappy, no matter whether or not the rules give a specific reason for why it's crappy. It might cause teh dramaz from time to time, but we have to exercise judgement now and then. There will always be people whining that our rules don't cover enough (sometimes I'm in that camp) and people on the other side whining that we don't use discretion enough (sometimes I'm in that camp, too), so there's no point trying to satisfy all of them. rʨanaɢ (formerly Politizer)talk/contribs 03:06, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree to the spirit of Gato's argument - there should be some basic formatting in articles. I don't think we should mandate it, but no headings in an article look like a "run on paragraphs" that are difficult to read. I often add at least one heading in an article because I assume that if it has none that the contributor is relatively new to Wikipedia. Royalbroil 05:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
How about we just make it a recommendation then? "It is recommended that the submitted article contain a lead section, per WP:LEAD" or something? Gatoclass (talk) 06:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Section headers aren't needed for 1.5k articles, which are basically just a stub. Otherwise, people will write a 1,k articles, put headers in and then put in an unecessary header and lead to puff up a stub. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 01:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

People could do that already if they wanted to. Requiring (or recommending) a separate lead section is neither here nor there in that respect. Gatoclass (talk) 13:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
You could, of course, just require articles to be well-written, which would require good organization and paragraph structure. Whoa. Crazy. Awadewit (talk) 11:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I am not too fussed - I always saw DYK as an experiment in a quick peer review for improving articles in a nice collaborative way, hence improvement in formatting etc that occurs around the nom is a good thing. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Bot failed to clear again

Just for the record, the Bot failed to clear the queue page after doing the credits again. I note that the update included a hook containing a nomination with parenthesis again (). Could this be a common factor in the Bot's occasional failure to clear queue pages? Gatoclass (talk) 06:23, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It failed to do so a second time, and also seems to be randomly missing credits, so please check carefully after it updates, thanks. Gatoclass (talk) 11:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Here we go again

4 minutes only? --BorgQueen (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

And were did this lot go after it finished its turn on the Main Page? It's not listed at Recent additions. Manxruler (talk) 19:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Can't someone just revert? [5] --maclean 20:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just done the next best thing: I've queued them up to go back on the front page as the next set of hooks to be promoted. Some folks may (temporarily) get double credits on their talk pages but that can be resolved at the time, if it happens. - Dravecky (talk) 20:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
For some reason the User:DYKadminBot (contributions) did not update the Wikipedia:Recent_additions (hist) and reset the Template:Did you know/Next update/Time (hist) at 16:56, as it should have. Somebody calling themself "toolserver" updated the archive from ip address User:91.198.174.194, but there was no substance in that update, and they did not reset the time. So when, after finishing queue1, DYKadminBot checked the vaue in Template:Did you know/Next update/Time, which was not reset, it just decided it was time for dealing with queue2, which it started on at 17:00. Maybe technical problems some time between 10:57 and 16:56 caused the bot to get out of sync. (Sorry for the bad prose above). Oceanh (talk) 20:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC).

Made it to 8 minutes this time[6] Is one of those hooks jinxed? --maclean 23:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As a general hint, constructs like this: ?"? look suspicious and may give unpredictable behavior in parsing routines. To play safe in an unstable programming environment it's best to avoid ugly expressions. Oceanh (talk) 01:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC).

And what really happened to the group of hooks that included one I collaborated on, Fredrik Kayser? They should be listed at Recent additions, and they still aren't. Manxruler (talk) 01:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I've added them to the archive. I also updated the "problem" set of hooks that was only on the front page for four minutes on two occasions, as the bot seems incapable of dealing with that set. Gatoclass (talk) 04:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Extremely urgent request/plea for hook review

There are roughly 244 hooks on the suggestions page but only 10-12 of them have been verified—and several of those are being held provisionally for February 12th. I struggled to put together the set of hooks in queue 4 and there are now no longer enough verified hooks to assemble queue. If people could devote some attention and energy to this urgent matter, it would be greatly appreciated. - Dravecky (talk) 21:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to zip through some now ... only have about ½ hour before bedtime though, so might not be able to look at many. Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 22:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I'll get on it right now. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I'll take a whack at a few. By the way, I'm working on a script to help out with DYK stuff. Right now I've got it to show who created an article, the date the article was created, and the prose size at the click of a mouse. It also checks for some subtler things – if the article has been at DYK or ITN before, and if the article is a stub. The next feature I plan to add is the date the article was at 1x assuming the page is now at 5x. Other parts in the works include: checking if there aren't any inline references, checking if the article was moved from userspace, and checking if the article was first a redirect. I think I'll finish the script in a few weeks, but if you want to try it out, I can put it up early. Shubinator (talk) 06:10, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Sounds great! I think checking for moves in the history will be particularly useful, as that always used to slip by me. rʨanaɢ (formerly Politizer)talk/contribs 11:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
There are still nearly 200 unchecked hooks and only a baker's dozen verified ones. I do appreciate the efforts everybody had made so far but the situation is still pretty dire. - Dravecky (talk) 23:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

POV Image file name

I reviewed Abraham Lincoln Statue and am concerned about the name of the image file used File:Hodgenville tyrant statue.jpg as it seems very POV to me (just to be clear it is a photo of a statue of Abraham Lincoln, whom User:Bedford has called a tyrant). Since the image is on Wikipedia (not Commons), I can copy it to a new file name and delete the old file, but wanted to get consensus on that first. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that the file name is inappropriate. Go ahead. --BorgQueen (talk) 14:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I copied it to File:Hodgenville Lincoln statue.jpg and will fix the alst link to it next. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:55, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
More of the same, and its parent article. Art LaPella (talk) 17:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Fixed the utterly ridiculous "War of Northern Aggression" in that link (it didn't even link to American Civil War...) —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 18:09, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
I crossed out "its parent article" because it's linked so that fixing one fixes the other. Art LaPella (talk) 18:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Ray LaMontagne hook in Queue 5

I am not sure if this is the right place to note this, but I just wanted to point out that the Ray LaMontagne hook currently sitting in Queue 5 does not have a question mark at the end. -Whataworld06 (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Whoops. Fixed it. - Dravecky (talk) 23:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit button bug?

When I click the edit buttons for a select section, I keep getting the wrong section. Is there a bug somewhere?--King Bedford I Seek his grace 01:27, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably because someone else is removing stuff to put on the next update page. When a section is removed and you're trying to edit an earlier version, you get the wrong section to edit. Try reloading the page when that happens. Chamal talk 01:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Finally got the right section. That was a first for me, and I'm no newbie here.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 01:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Sections are identified by number not name. So if section XYZ is number 64, when you edit XYZ the web address it loads ends with "action=edit&section=64". But if between the time you loaded the main page and you edit XYZ, someone has added a new section before XYZ, the section you'll get is the one just above it and not XYZ.
What I do is I always edit sections in a new window so the main page is still accessible. Then if the wrong section is opened I look at the main page to see where this incorrect section is in relation to the one I want to edit. In the above example it is one above XYZ. Now I simply change the "64" in "action=edit&section=64" to "65" and reload, which should now give me XYZ. I hope this helps. --Bruce1eetalk 06:02, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Backlogged?

Is it just me, or is DYK much more backed up than normal? Grsz11 03:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not just you. We need lots of folks to do a lot of reviewing, stat. - Dravecky (talk) 04:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to check... (Additional Rule D6)

I'm preparing an article in userspace ... well, a list with a large prose section. Anyway, in the list section, the text content is very nearly complete, but in the "Image" column—where a thumbnail pic is provided—I have only managed to provide 14 images out of about 40 so far. The intention is obviously to get a picture of every item in the list, but this may take a while (I have to travel to get them). If I moved it to mainspace now and submitted a hook, would it be ineligible per Additional rule D6 (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...)? If so, I could probably get another 10-12 images on Saturday... or should I hold back in userspace until all 40-ish images are in place? Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 21:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps if we could get a peek at the page it would be easier to make a judgment call. - Dravecky (talk) 23:31, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
User:Hassocks5489/Brighton Church Sandbox 1, perhaps, looking at your recent contributions? Frankly, I wouldn't quibble if there were missing photographs (there are featured lists that don't have photos for each entry!) - D6 is more aimed at the article that's clearly half-written but is nonetheless over the minimum length requirement. BencherliteTalk 23:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't think this is a problem. Some images is better than none, and to me this list looks more complete than most of what passes through DYK. I don't think you have anything to worry about. rʨanaɢ (formerly Politizer)talk/contribs 04:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree, no problems there. Gatoclass (talk) 05:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks all! (And yes, the sandbox has an inaccurate name ... my Crawley sandboxes are all full of other half-finished stuff!) Hassocks5489 (tickets please!) 08:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

DYKbot skipped

Queue four appeared to have been deleted without actually being on main page. DYKbot skipped 4 by going from 3 to 5. What's wrong?--King Bedford I Seek his grace 03:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The bot is going a bit daffy, but not quite enough to shut it down entirely. I've moved the missed queue of hooks to queue 2. Thanks for keeping an eye on this. - Dravecky (talk) 04:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
No, looking at the DYKAdminBot's contribs Queue 4 credits were given out 0-8 minutes prior to updating with Queue 5...
Also, can an admin check the DYK section of WP:ERROR? That lead hook is confusing w/o italics. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 04:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
The italics issue was answered there, and removed later because the hook is no longer on the Main Page. Art LaPella (talk) 20:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

My new favourite spot

How can I get involved with non-admin duties here? I'd like to check articles and help clear out the backlog, but have little experience here. Any ideas would be appreciated, as I'm not sure how one becomes involved in DYK. Thanks! Law shoot! 09:27, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Just take a look at what people are doing on the Suggestions page. You can review hooks there, which means you make sure the hook is accurate and the article is presentable and meets DYK criteria. We are always happy to have more hook reviewers!
When you have a little more experience, you can prepare updates, which means moving a set of hooks to the Next update page. Welcome aboard! Gatoclass (talk) 09:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
We could use an extra set of eyes in for the hooks in the holding pen. These will need to be used within the next day. • \ / (⁂) 10:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I've reviewed all those hooks now, so he'll have to start somewhere else :) Gatoclass (talk) 12:27, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
OK. So I can look at hooks and see if they are backed up with references? What is the holding pen? Law shoot! 10:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Very quickly, all the hooks are nominated on T:TDYK. The holding pen is something put in place for special events. We had a holding pen for Christmas hooks to run during the Holiday period. Currently we are preparing hooks for both Darwin Day and the Lincoln anniversary, here, for tomorrow.
Anyone can review them - all you need to do is check them against the rules. Prose length, date of creation/expansion, correct citations are the things to look out for; whether or not the prose has actually been expanded 5x, whether the hook is cited, all the rules are covered on the page. Some special exceptions are covered in the additional rules but they aren't something you need to worry about just yet. Once you have reviewed a page, you can use the ticks to indicate whether the article is worthy of inclusion, or requires further work. If there is any issues, this page is well read and can help out. :) • \ / (⁂) 10:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank's e-one! Law shoot! 02:07, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Again

[7]: Is the bot ever going to be fixed? --BorgQueen (talk) 21:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I've put the hooks back in the queue and reset the counter. Let's keep an eye on it... and has anybody had any luck getting nixeagle to respond lately? - Dravecky (talk) 01:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Looking it over, I think you put the wrong set of hooks back up.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 03:23, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep, DYKadminbot just re-posted the exact same hooks as were on the previous six hours, and recredited everyone.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 03:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

USS Connecticut (BB-18)

Why is this article appearing in the DYK when it was created in 2003? AP1787 (talk) 17:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It is possible that there was a 5x expansion between 6 January and the current time. However, it doesn't look like there was enough of an expansion. Someone may have thought that there was enough to warrant it. Who passed it? Ottava Rima (talk) 18:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Someone double check, but it doesn't look like they made the 5x expansion in 5 days. Jan 30, Feb 1, 2, 3, 4. The 5x seems to appear about Feb 5/6, which misses it. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
It was passed by Shubinator and promoted by me. The first edit to set the clock running was at 8:56 UTC on January 30 and by 22:28 UTC on February 3 the article had been expanded from a pre-edit prose character count of 4191 to 21736, or just over 5x in just over 4.5 days, well within the 5 day guideline. - Dravecky (talk) 19:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Ottava - prose was 5x. In the original article, the infobox took up a large percentage of the 'byte count'. Cheers, —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 19:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
According to this counter, with copy and pasted entries without formatting, there are 3,850 (need 19,250 for 5x) characters in the Jan 6th version. I'm also getting only 20,300 for the February 5th number. So, it seems like there is something a little off here. For the Feb 3rd number, I'm only getting about 18,100. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
It was nominated by this edit, on February 6, and therefore it was submitted in the "Expiring noms" section. Therefore, it doesn't comply with WP:DYK#Selection criteria, but that's fairly normal; the real de facto rule is described more honestly by Additional Rule D8. Art LaPella (talk) 20:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


  • Major copyright violation found in the Feb 3rd version used to justify the expansion.

Feb 3rd:

In the summer of 1920, Connecticut sailed to the Caribbean and the west coast on a midshipman-Naval Reserve training cruise. The next summer found her in European ports on similar duty, and upon her return to Philadelphia 21 August 1921, was as signed as flagship Train, Pacific Fleet. She arrived at San Pedro, Calif., 28 October, and during the following year cruised along the west coast, taking part in exercises and commemorations. Entering Puget Sound Navy Yard 16 December 1922, Conne cticut was decommissioned there 1 March 1923, and sold for scrapping 1 November 1923, in accordance with the Washington Treaty for the limitation of naval armaments.

Naval dictionary:

In the summer of 1920, Connecticut sailed to the Caribbean and the west coast on a midshipman-Naval Reserve training cruise. The next summer found her in European ports on similar duty, and upon her return to Philadelphia 21 August 1921, was as signed as flagship Train, Pacific Fleet. She arrived at San Pedro, Calif., 28 October, and during the following year cruised along the west coast, taking part in exercises and commemorations. Entering Puget Sound Navy Yard 16 December 1922, Conne cticut was decommissioned there 1 March 1923, and sold for scrapping 1 November 1923, in accordance with the Washington Treaty for the limitation of naval armaments.

Even the typographic error with "Conne cticut" was copied over.

This version cannot be used to justify a 5x expansion. We need to go through and see what else was still a copyright violation before this page was accepted. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Um hold on a sec: DANFS, as a work of the U.S. federal government, is PD - that's why we have so many U.S. Navy ship articles (they are all copied over). —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 20:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Public domain requires an acknowledgment of the source. This would, at the very minimum, require quotation marks. Regardless, copyrighted or pd information is not counted towards prose size, especially when this would have to be block quoted. Thus, the article fell short about 2.5k characters from reaching the 5x expansion. Ottava Rima (talk) 20:16, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh my goodness. Check any U.S. battleship article that is not BB-35, BB-36 or BB-61 through 66. They are all close DANFS copies (well, some differences as people have edited them over the 6 years they have been here since being copied over in '03, but very close).
I was still working on this article on February 3rd, which is why that para was still in there - that was the last part of the article I had to get to, as I worked on the ship's history from beginning to end. Also note that that is completely changed and referenced now. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 20:22, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
If they contain uncited copied information then we have a major problem. Seeing as how two of them are FA class, I am going to inform SandyGeorgia of this. Regardless if the edits were changed or not, it was declared above that the February third diff was the one chosen as proof that it made the 5x expansion within 5 days, which it clearly does not. Along with what Art points out above, this article is disqualified to be a DYK and should never have been selected. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Every battleship article that is NOT those. I.e. BB-1 through BB-34, BB-37 through BB-60. Also, in those, it is cited, but not with in-line citations. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 21:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
In-line citations is not enough. Direct language needs to be in quotes. I put a note saying that they need to be checked for language that is direct or "too similar". If a few articles have a known to have a problem, then chances are many others have a problem. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Um, no, it doesn't. See also: Talk:USS Nevada (BB-36)/GA1#question/suggestion on DANFS sourcing.
I have invited comment from WP:SHIPS and WP:MILHIST on this matter. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 21:39, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
BTW, this is why we have {{DANFS}}. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 21:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
No it doesn't? That violates every single copyright law out there. You cannot take direct wording from any source without quoting it and attributing it as a direct quotation. It is simply not acceptable. I am thoroughly disgusted by the practices of articles that you are involved in and I wish nothing further to do with you. I will take this up with OTRS and the rest and expunge these problems from Wikipedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I have discussed this with Raul on IRC; he said that (quotes for different posts):
"DANFS is public domain. You can do anything you want with it" "at least from a copyright perspective" "he might be right about the need to cite it though" "per the citing sources policy"
I believe that the "citing" is covered by {{DANFS}} and/or in-line citations, especially when all copied text has been changed (see: USS Connecticut (BB-18), USS Nevada (BB-36), USS Iowa (BB-61)) —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 22:29, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Ed, let me make it clear that I am not attacking you or anyone who worked on the articles. Lets be clear about that. However, most people around here know my involvement with the 1911 Britannica and how I have been slowly trying to purge it from Wikipedia and replace it with a higher standard. With that said, let me express the concerns: they are two fold. The first is that PD should be cited and attributed so people can know exactly what the PD language is. The second concern is that failing to do this would lead to people citing direct language to another source, meaning, you have a quote taken from one source but you put in a second source to "verify" it. Thus, you would be attributing a direct quote to the wrong source. This is a major headache and a problem with pages that use to be part of the 1911. This needs to be known and made aware of so people can purge the old language out completely. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

(Out) DANFS text is used at least in part in over 8,000 articles. This has been discussed several times before (one such discussion here). As long as {{DANFS}} was present at the time the text was in the article, it's perfectly fine, copyright-wise. Parsecboy (talk) 22:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Ad Ed and Parsec pointed out, Template:DANFS, which adds the following text:

This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

is designed for use on any article that includes text copied verbatim from that source. So suggestions of copyright violations and/or plagiarism are a bit much… — Bellhalla (talk) 22:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this is on strong legal grounds. As I pointed out, this is fine when the whole article is taken from the source. However, when you start adding attributions to other pages and cite information that may be directly quoted from the PD source, that is a major problem. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:02, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) If anyone has problems with the use of DANFS text, you'll have to talk to people at WP:SHIPS, who have been doing it for a long time and, as Parsecboy points out, have consensus in their favor. A long time ago I ran into an article that was a direct copy of DANFS text and I almost had it speedied, which is how I got my induction into PD-copying issues. Personally it's something that I don't like, but it's been going on for a long time and in many areas so if someone wants to start a battle about it this isn't really the place; it's so ingrained here now that it would have to be subject to a community-wide discussion, RfC, etc. All DYK can do is maybe decide that articles with PD text are ineligible (which is a decision we haven't made yet; personally, I just always refused to review articles with PD text, and left them to someone else); if there you want greater community-wide action to be taken, DYK is really just a tiny part, and you would also need to have an open RfC and (hopefully before that) talk to people at WPSHIPS and WP:Plagiarism, both of which have discussed these issues a lot. rʨanaɢ (formerly Politizer)talk/contribs 23:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Its not that per se. Its that the original complain is over the blockquote of information that was neither quoted or blocked in as it should have been. It was decided by the consensus that large chunks of information from a published source does not count towards prose size anymore. In this situation, it would matter in terms of if this page met the 5x expansion or not. Ottava Rima (talk) 23:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
On very large article expansions, especially those that have been further expanded after the 5-day window, I am quite willing to accept a 4.9ish-x expansion as permitted by the guidelines so discounting that one brief passage of PD text would not have changed my decision to promote the article. - Dravecky (talk) 23:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm confused here. That wasn't even used to count towards an expansion - I rewrote the entire paragraph when I finally finished the expansion of the article. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 00:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Dravecky claimed that he was going off of that page. As per Art, the nomination was too late to be considered. Regardless, Dravecky's math is way off. It would be, at most, 4.7 x expansion with the inclusion of the last paragraph. Less than 4.5 without. This is troubling, seeing as how this is yet another page with problems with copyright issues and not meeting the guidelines that Dravecky has promoted in recent history. This is a pattern that should not be happening. The page is instant disqualified by what Art has said. Dravecky should have seen that one too. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Further note - both users that Dravecky bent the rules for are also members of the WikiCup. If this is a coincidence or not, it is obvious that Dravecky should stop reviewing entries done by WikiCup participants to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Dravecky "claimed" no such thing. As it's been a couple of days, I couldn't tell you the exact edit I looked at when reviewing the article, already approved by another editor, for promotion. I merely did the math that anybody here could have done to point out that 5x expansion took place in 4.5 days and your initial charge was incorrect. In any case, based on the character count I used my math was not "way off" and the article appeared more than suitable for promotion based on the presented expansion. Oh, and I am in no way connected to or involved with the WikiCup and have no idea who might be so involved. But, hey, thanks for continuing to slander me and question my judgment. - Dravecky (talk) 01:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
You stated "by 22:28 UTC on February 3 the article had been expanded from a pre-edit prose character count of 4191 to 21736" above. As I pointed out, this is clearly not the case, as it fell short by at least 2k. Your character counter was wrong. And yes, I am questioning your judgment because you keep coming up in problematic situations. You are either reckless or have been passing articles off without a thorough look through for those involved in a competition that tries to rack up as many articles passed as possible. Either way, this questions your judgment to pass these articles. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I've stated for the record that I am not involved with this "competition" in any way so the notion that I've show favor to anybody involved is beyond the pale. I have tried to engage you calmly and rationally, showing you that your charges and accusations are incorrect. As you keep shifting the goalposts and persisting in a curiously personal attack against me, I am choosing to disengage from this discussion and return to productive work. Good luck in your future endeavors. - Dravecky (talk) 02:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Personal attacks? You can try to shift responsibility by claiming that my concerns are "personal attacks" (which is a severe abuse of the term) all you want. However, that does not mean that you didn't pass multiple articles off with copyright concerns. Do you even check them before passing them? It only took a cursory glance to find language that seemed to stick out and seem unnatural in the document provided here and in Doug's pages. If you are unwilling to stop copyrighted material from hitting the mainpage, what does that say about Wikipedia? If you happen to pass one more set with copyright problems I will call for your desysopping or your complete ban from passing anymore hooks. This needs to stop now. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
The article in question contained, at one point, a paragraph or two in the public domain that was by the time I actually reviewed the article to be promoted (which is after another editor already checked it and approved it) apparently rewritten and properly integrated into the text of the article so at no time was this an article with "copyright problems" headed for the front page. We agree on one thing: "this" needs tp stop now. - Dravecky (talk) 10:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Check again. That is not a paragraph or two, and that book is definitely copyrighted. It goes throughout the whole page. This is still in the current edition and was in the version displayed on the main page. This is completely unacceptable and you should have caught this. You didn't catch the major copyright problems with Doug's pages nor this one. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

But DYK requires originals right? so the copied part doesn't count. Otherwise there will be a flood of people cutting and pasting Us govt country profiles from the CIA and hundreds of copied Education/Transport/Tourism in XXX will pop up. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 01:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(many e/c's, @ Ottava above) There are no copyright problems. I've said it above, and you are ignoring it. And considering that the article I expanded was 9,114 bytes on 6 January, I think that 4.7x or 4.9x is close enough.
(after) And stop bringing WP:CUP up. The reason why I wrote and expanded this so that we have a relevant article for TFA on 22 February - the centennial of the Great White Fleet. It wasn't for the Cup or any other reason. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 01:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Furthermore, the Cup is a competition between individual editors - so he would have failed my hook if he was trying to help himself in it. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 01:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
ed17, any PD information is not appropriate for character counts. This PD information, if used properly, would have had to be block quoted to be included. Block quotes are no longer counted. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

This book is not in the public domain. This diff, which is the first to be over 5x expansion, contains information worded in a far too similar manner:

  • "Based out of Philadelphia, Connecticut trained midshipman for the next eleven months." and "Connecticut spent the next eleven months based out of Philadelphia training midshipmen" All that did was take one end of the sentence and switch it around. This is a violation.
  • "On 2 May 1920, 200 midshipman boarded the ship for a training cruise" and "On May 20, 1920, BB-18 arrived at Annapolis to pick up 200 midshipmen for a training cruise"

I could go on, but as you can see, there is wording that is far too similar to fall under adequate citation guidelines. Thus, more text is in violation and should be dismissed towards the expansion even at a later date. A more thorough check would be necessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/USS Connecticut (BB-18). —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 03:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
I disagree that the wording is "far too similar". One or two sentences that contain similar information does not amount to a "copyvio". Gatoclass (talk) 04:00, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Its not one or two sentences. That was a selection at random. It goes through the whole document, and my whole life deals with copyright. Taking phrases from a source and not quoting the phrases is the very definition of copyright infringment, Gatoclass. This needs to be stopped. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

PD text does not have to be blockquoted or put in quotemarks. It can be reused in any way an editor sees fit. However, in an article that includes both DANFS PD text and considerable amounts of text from other sources, it would obviously be helpful if the DANFS text was cited to source where appropriate. Gatoclass (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

PD text does indeed have to be quoted. Think about it this way: Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain. You can't just quote Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" speech without putting quotation marks around it and saying it is from Shakespeare. Clearly, a rapper is free to adapt the speech, since it is in the PD, but when you cite it word for word, you need quotation marks and an attribution. This is simple and easy - when you quote something word for word, it requires quotation marks and a citation. Awadewit (talk) 12:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Likewise, you must distinguish original authorship of any work. Copyright vs Public Domain means the ability to -profit- off of another person's work without paying royalties. It does not mean that full attribution is no longer necessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Given that the use of unattributed public domain text is plagiaristic, can you guys point out which policy or guideline says attributed public domain text must be quoted and/or in blockquote format? I'm not aware of such a requirement. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:51, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
The essence of WP:V would put forth the need for a citation regardless if it is a quote or not. Now, This spells out clearly that it is any source, not necessarily a source whose copyright is still in existence. This essay discusses what a quotation should be (based on academic understanding of what could be considered material that is under the right of someone else) - "In general, using three or more consecutive words from a source is a quotation." Not having quotes does not mean that it isn't a quotation. It just means that it failed to cite the quotation properly, and can be viewed as a copyright problem. The only difference between "PD" quotes and "Copyrighted" quotes is that Fair Use limits how much you can take from a copyrighted source (a small number unless it is absolutely necessary for an educational point and only if it is appropriately done and does not violate the author's ability to profit) vs unlimited sized quotations if its from a PD source. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:17, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
WP:PD clearly states that For all practical purposes on Wikipedia, the public domain comprises copyright-free works: anyone can use them in any way and for any purpose. Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required to avoid plagiarism.
So, one must attribute a PD work, but one is under no obligation to place PD in quote marks, since you can use the text in any way that you see fit. End of story. BTW, instead of this nonsense, we currently need more hook reviewers, for anyone reading this. Gatoclass (talk) 15:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Agreeing with Gato that this discussion is not really productive. It seems that the discussion began as a discussion of how PD text should play into character count for expansion purposes, which is relevant here... but an extended discussion of whether PD text should be in articles or not, in terms of plagiarism issues and WP:V policy, is a broad discussion that is not really appropriate or constructive here, and has already been discussed numerous times in the places I linked above. The discussion could be carried on elsewhere. rʨanaɢ (formerly Politizer)talk/contribs 18:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Gatoclass, attributions means to label the source. This would require quotation marks also unless you are declaring that the whole document is from that source. And nonsense? Copyrighted material displayed on the main page is not nonsense. We have had over 4 ANI major consensus builds that almost removed the whole DYK process because of people allowing copyrighted material on the main page. As I pointed out, a -non-Public Domain source- had directly lifted passages in the page passed by an admin who didn't bother to check the page properly. The fact that you ignored that is highly troublesome. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Ottava, did we not go over this (sort of) on IRC? "Passages" is inaccurate - "one sentence" is closer...and to expect an admin to catch one sentence is unreasonable. Just leave this alone, for crying out loud. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 04:30, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here. The DANFS is certainly in the public domain, and a can be copied by anyone without any copyright risks. So copyright is not a concern here. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other on using the DANFS template versus inline citations. Raul654 (talk) 19:45, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The issue isn't copyright - we all agree it is in the PD. The issue is to what extent the copied text needs to be cited. All direct quotations, whether from PD text or not, are supposed to be surrounded by quotation marks and cited. The issue is not just one of copyright. We don't cite Shakespeare or Milton without quotation marks (texts in the PD) - why would we cite the DANFS without quotation marks? The point is that we can't copy word-for-word without proper attribution. Period. Awadewit (talk) 10:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
That is just not how we treat encyclopedic text that is copied from the 1911 EB or the 1913 CE or the DANFS, and some other sources. It should be attributed, and probably more clearly so than is often the case, but a major change in concensus is needed before it is treated as "quotations". In the case of the older encyclopedias that would be complicated because the text could not then be given the necessary updating, rewording for fancy language, & corrections, without the page looking an awful mess. Of course, ideally all such text would be replaced by proper new text, but we are a long way off that in some areas. Personally I don't feel overjoyed at new material being added from such sources, but that has the backing of concensus. Johnbod (talk) 11:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
This is one of the silliest conversations I have ever seen on Wikipedia, frankly. It doesn't matter if the entire community thinks it is fine to copy this text without quotation marks - it isn't - it is plagiarism. Plagiarism is entirely separate from copyright. Whenever text is copied word-for-word, it must be encased in quotation marks and its source clearly marked, however messy that may be. Consensus is not always right and in this case it is demonstrably wrong. Awadewit (talk) 12:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
WP is not a term paper! Johnbod (talk) 12:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
How well I know that. This is a question of basic ethical standards as well as transparency. Our readers deserve to know who wrote what. Awadewit (talk) 12:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
The resistance is the belief that using previously published material is good enough for Wikipedia meeting the idea that what we produce as amateurs could be much better. In disguise, it's called a question of ethics. Don't let what exists constrain you or your writing. Be better. Always. --Moni3 (talk) 19:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Lets not forget that there were passages that were taken from copyrighted sources, so its not just about PD text but about using sources in general. We are trying to create an -original- document. We can rely on quotations and blockquotes as part of that, but when we start passing it off as our -original- work, then thats a problem. Quotations and blockquotes are signifiers that it is not ours. Pages that relied on the 1911 were taken in whole and then marked as that. If we are to pass off a whole page as ours, then we need to have limited quotations so people can know. But none of this matters except that the text is not admissible for character count at DYK. Simply not blockquoting a section that should be blockquoted is not acceptable to get around the fact that blockquotes are not counted towards the character count requirement. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
(@ copyvio from copyrighted sources) Ottava, I'll say it again with stronger wording. When talking about the copyrighted source that you claim I copyvioed from, you say that I took "passages" from it. That is totally and completely inaccurate - "one sentence" (on accident) is what you should be saying. Seriously. I'm going to go to AN/I if you keep on claiming that I copyvioed when writing that article, becuase this is ridiculously stupid and bordering on harassment. In essence: find me more evidence or back away from the dead horse. Thanks.
(@ copyvio from PD source) - Why don't you take this to a policy talk page if you guys feel so strongly...arguing here at DYK isn't going to alter the policy. —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 16:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Let me make this clear - your wording took more than three consecutive words at a time from a clearly copyrighted source. This happened on multiple lines. If you were one of my students, you would have been recommended to be expelled. Regardless, copyrighted violation information does not count towards character count just as blockquotes do not. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:02, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Let me make this clear: as far as I know, it happened in one sentence on one line. What other lines would you be happening to refer too? —Ed 17 (Talk / Contribs) 17:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Character counting is a matter for DYK consensus. Copyright rules are a matter for experts, preferably lawyers, and discussing a change belongs at Wikipedia talk:Copyright violations. Art LaPella (talk) 17:23, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)I agree with Art. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel here; go talk it over with the copyright mavens over at the appropriate page.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This was displayed on the main page because an admin here failed to check for copyright problems. There were problems with PD and still copyrighted texts. Although ed says "one sentence", I have pointed out two consecutive sentences that contain problems. That was from a cursory glance. This is completely unacceptable to have such things on the main page. We have had people banned from DYK for many months because of copyright problems. I would recommend that Dravecky be suspended from passing DYK for a month because he failed to check here, on Doug's pages, and on other pages. I would also recommend that Ed be suspended for a month for having multiple copyright problems on the page and still thinking that it is acceptable to contain full phrases without quotations from copyrighted sources. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Who are you talking to? Me? The only thing I suspend around here is disbelief.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

More random checking, you be the one to judge which one is from Wikipedia and which one is from a copyrighted text (p. 37):

  • "On April 25, 1907, President Theory Roosevelt officially opened the Jamestown Exposition. Battleship Connecticut was named official host for vessels visiting from other nations [...] Sailors and Marines from Connecticut took part in many events ashore. On April 29, the governors of Virginia and Rhode Island joined many foreign dignitaries for festivities aboard Connecticut'"
  • "President Theodore Roosevelt opened the Jamestown Exposition on 25 April, and Connecticut was named as the official host for the vessels that were visiting from other countries. Sailors and marines from the ship took part in various events ashore, and foreign dignitaries, along with the governors of Virginia and Rhode Island, were hosted aboard the ship on 29 April. Evans closed the Exposition on 4 May on the quarterdeck of Connecticut. On 10 June, Connecticut joined in the Presidential Fleet Review; she left three days later for an overhaul in the New York Naval Yard"

The similarities are far too close. I can continue, but I am finding that just about every use of this source contains passages in violation and this should never have been approved. Only an immediate prohibition on these members is an appropriate response to this. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The similarities are... similarities, at best, and hardly the kind of blatant copyright infringement that could reasonably be expected to be caught during the DYK review process. - Dravecky (talk) 19:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Oh, oh… Both have the phrase "President Theodore Roosevelt" (assuming a typo in the former example). That's a copyright violation right there, isn't it, Ottava, since it's three or more words from the source? ;) Seriously, though, how would you suggest conveying the information from the source so that it passes your "copyright violation-smell-test"? Help us out here… — Bellhalla (talk) 19:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Even more phrases. This is a severe violation. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
AN/I hadn't closed for renovation, last time I checked. Who do you think the Jets will start at QB with Favre retiring?--Wehwalt (talk) 19:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Fine, since you think that calling for his ban from DYK for a few months in response to abuse of copyrighted information doesn't belong on the talk page anymore, I have taken it up at ANI. We all know that there will be a problem by having non-regular DYK analyzing if a ban. However, since no one was willing to take copyright problems on DYK seriously, it was a necessary move. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
You have got to be kidding, Ottava. By the definition you propose on your talk page, we can't include text from any source. Oops, there goes WP:V...--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:38, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
There are hundreds of thousands of critics that are able to publish while using such academic standards and not create copyright violations. It is quite easy. This is completely inexcusable. Five random passages looked at, all five had blatant lifting of phrases. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
So take it to WP:CV. This isn't the appropriate venue for such concerns. Gatoclass (talk) 08:02, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

ANI

This is the current focus of discussion on this matter. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

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