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This is where the Did you know section on the main page, its policies and the featured items can be discussed.

Do you have a suggestion for improving DYK, or would like to comment on the suggestions of others? Have your say at Wikipedia:Did you know/2017 reform proposals.

Queue 4 - spontaneous school combustion

... that after a bitter dispute over its curriculum in 1890, the High School of Montreal burned down? Moonraker, Yoninah, Cwmhiraeth

Well, a couple of things. Firstly, this reads as if the school spontaneously combusted, which of course it didn't. It should be "was burned down". Secondly, on inspection of the article, it wasn't the school in toto, but one school building (on "Peel Street"). Thirdly it's using two fair use images which it shouldn't be. So all up, this is an F minus. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:36, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The Rambling Man, on your first point, the hook is carefully worded. The source relied on makes it clear that arson was only suspected. What we are sure of is that it did burn down. There may be a difference of usage here, but where I am was burned down would mean someone did it, and to say was burned down is not supported by any of the sources. Fires do begin by accident and they didn't have forensic science in those days, even Sherlock Holmes was in his infancy. On your second point, the building contained the whole school, the boys ' and girls' divisions in separate wings. I'll check the images and take out any fair use ones. I wasn't aware of any. Moonraker (talk) 16:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The Rambling Man, there were indeed two fair use images, those of John Goodwin Lyman and Davidson Dunton, and I have taken them out. Moonraker (talk) 17:07, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I did consider adding "in a suspected case of arson" to the hook, given that one source effectively says arson was probable and the other says it was arson. However, maybe the sources I didn't look at say something else? Gatoclass (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Moonraker that "burned down" is more appropriate than "was burned down". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:47, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Regarding what was burned down, the article states: " In 1878, to bring the boys' and girls' schools together under the same roof, came a new building on Metcalfe Street, but the Burnside Hall was not sold until 1883.[39][8] In 1890, the school's building on Peel Street burned down," (admittedly across two paragraphs). So my reading is directly contrary to what is claimed above, perhaps that's an omission from the article. (Also, please reduce the size of the lead, five paras is too much, even for featured articles...) The Rambling Man (talk) 19:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The desire to read this hook as was burned down might stem from the way the sentence is constructed as temporal sequence - after event X, then event Y. Only deliberate human agency in the act of burning fulfills the sense of expectation, because event X is a purely human one. This might be the designed purpose of the hook - to create a tease that suggests, without being emphatic. Whether this is better than being explicit, I'm not sure. Adding "in a suspected case of arson", as per Gatoclass, would clear up ambiguity and therefore be more encyclopedic, though of course it lengthens the hook. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Quite so. And we need to resolve the other issue, it appears (to me at least) that it wasn't the "whole school" that was burned down (which is implied by the hook), just one building. Perhaps an important building, but nevertheless, per the current article, I don't believe it was the school in totality. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:38, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, the article says the bitter dispute took place in the 1880s (to whit: "There was a bitter dispute in the 1880s"), as opposed to the hook which clearly states that "that after a bitter dispute over its curriculum in 1890". This is getting worse by the second. Let's pull it and work on it before it further embarrasses the project. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate the point that TRM is making about how the hook reads, but also recognise that "was burned down" carries an implication of intent. The solution I would suggest on that issue is to re-word to avoid both problems, as something like "... was destroyed by fire", which fits with both the possibilities of arson and accident. TRM's points on the timeline and whether it was the entire school that was destroyed or not need to be resolved before the hook goes to the main page, however. EdChem (talk) 22:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I changed the hook to:

• ... that after a bitter dispute in the 1880s over its curriculum, the High School of Montreal burned down in suspicious circumstances?

With regard to what exactly burned down, my reading of the sources indicates that the Peel Street campus was either the only or the main building of the school, and certainly, the source in question refers to the fire that destroyed the High School of Montreal which seems to support the hook well enough. Gatoclass (talk) 09:36, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Then the article is incorrect. I said once already, the article reads: "In 1878, to bring the boys' and girls' schools together under the same roof, came a new building on Metcalfe Street, but the Burnside Hall was not sold until 1883.[39][8] In 1890, the school's building on Peel Street burned down". (a) when did the whole school move from Metcalfe Street to Peel Street? (b) why would there need to be a clarification of which street's building burned down if there was only one? The source may be generalising; if the article is to be believed, the source is not quite correct. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:48, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I pulled the hook. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it, but I can see that leaving it there is just likely to waste everybody's time with more disagreement. It's going to be a lot easier just to pull it now IMO and deal with the issues free of time limits imposed by the queue. Gatoclass (talk) 10:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, a lot of time could have been saved if this had been pulled when all these issues were first brought up. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:13, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Just to clarify - the issue here is whether the Peel Street building was the "High School of Montreal" in its entirety, or whether it was just one campus of the school. I was unable to resolve the question myself because the relevant sources appear to be offline, meaning that the article creator will probably be needed to resolve this. Gatoclass (talk) 11:09, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

And for the avoidance of doubt, whether or not the "burned down"/"was burned down" is resolved, there were three issues with the hook and the article, and this made it all the way to one hour before main page. There's little benefit to keeping these discussions going here, in future it would be better to kick them from the queue as soon as it's apparent there's something that needs to be resolved, not at (literally) the eleventh hour. Could have saved a lot of time. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Moonraker please respond. Gatoclass (talk) 17:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass, there was a real issue about the two non-free images, thank you to The Rambling Man for spotting that, and I fixed that within half an hour of his raising it. The original wording of "burned down" is supported by the source, but the solution of "was destroyed by fire" strikes me as even better. For 1890 there is nothing in any of the sources that says "the school had only one building at the time, and it was in Peel Street", but there is no evidence of the school having any other buildings either. However, the source that's relied on says this: "No one died in the fire that destroyed the High School of Montreal that day". I think that clears the point up. Moonraker (talk) 18:31, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

No, the article said In 1878, to bring the boys' and girls' schools together under the same roof, came a new building on Metcalfe Street, but the Burnside Hall was not sold until 1883.[39][8] In 1890, the school's building on Peel Street burned down". in other words, either its incomplete and missing when the school in its entirety moved from Metcalfe Street to Peel Street, or the school comprised more than one building and, per the article, "the school's building on Peel Street burned down" (leaving the building on Metcalfe Street, where per the article, both boys and girls were hosted). If I were you, I'd find a hook that can be reliably sourced and which matches the content of the article precisely. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:31, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I did a quick search for "High School of Montreal" & 1890, and quickly found this which says "In 1878, the school moved into a new building, not at the University St. location familiar to most Montrealers today, but on Peel St." So it appears the school had one building in 1890 on Peel St. This would indicate the school was in one location on Peel St. and the hook is correct - but the article is wrong when is says the school moved to a new building in 1878 on Metcalfe St. Then I found this which says "removed in 1878 to its new home under the Protestant Board of School Commissioners in a fine stone building between Peel and Metcalfe Streets." So I'm convinced this is just a matter of the building being referred to as both on "Peel St" and "Metcalfe St" because it probably spans the entire block. A few minutes of research could have cleared this up. MB 14:20, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with MB. One of the problems here is that the school occupied so many buildings at different times, most of them facing onto two streets, that even some apparently reliable sources get confused. But there is no problem if we focus on the relevant moment in time. The few minutes of research which would have cleared this up would have been to look at the source which is relied on, which is online and says plainly that "No one died in the fire that destroyed the High School of Montreal that day". Attempts to extrapolate something different from other sources which are not about 1890 or else not about the fire are just going to waste more of everyone's time. Moonraker (talk) 19:26, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't follow your line of argument. We're not wasting time, we're trying to get it right. From what MB has said, the article needed clarification. If reliable sources get "confused" then we shouldn't be "relying" on them for a DYK hook. You got the year wrong in the hook, you had issues with the prose in the article, you had fair use images that shouldn't be used, that wasted a lot of time, so I suggest you come up with a better, less controversial hook which can be sourced correctly and that we get someone else to review it. "A few minutes of research" is not what we need to impose on people verifying hooks that should have been reviewed, approved and promoted. The article was deficient, the hook was deficient. That wasted a lot more than a "few minutes". Moonraker, you go from saying the RS's are "confused" to being utterly convinced they're spot on. This is too much wastage. Find another hook that doesn't rely on all this research which isn't (or wasn't) in the original article when I looked at it. It's not up to people like me to do research on your hooks on your behalf to compensate for gaps in articles that you have nominated. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Look, I'll make it easy for you. The article did (and as of now, still does) say this:

"In 1878, to bring the boys' and girls' schools together under the same roof, came a new building on Metcalfe Street, but the Burnside Hall was not sold until 1883.[39][8] In 1890, the school's building on Peel Street burned down"

Take off your "yes it's obvious from the sources that I'm reading" hats and read the logical sequitur of the article. Nowhere does it even previously mention anything about a building on Peel Street, let alone a fulsome quote to say the entire school had moved to Metcalfe Street. Or this now new information that "Peel Street" = "Metcalfe Street". The Rambling Man (talk) 19:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Moonraker please respond, surely this issue can't be too hard to deal with at this point. Gatoclass (talk) 12:45, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass, this is water under the bridge, the Rambling Man took the conversation back to the nomination page, and it seems to be over now. Moonraker (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 5 - difference between speed and closing rate

... that project officer Molt Taylor believed the rocket-powered Gorgon missiles, such as the Gorgon IIIC (pictured), flew at too high a speed to be properly controlled by a human? The Bushranger, Cwmhiraeth, Dumelow

No, according to the article, the issue was the " closing rate of the missile with a target aircraft", not the overall speed. There's a big difference, especially depending on what you're trying to destroy. The closing rate will naturally be a lot less than the speed of the missile. The hook is incorrect and should not have been passed, or promoted. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:16, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Not commenting on the hook accuracy, but noting that closing rate / closing speed (v_c) can also be a lot more than the speed of the missile (v_m) – it depends on whether the target is stationary (v_c = v_m), moving towards the missile (v_c > v_m), or moving away (v_c < v_m). EdChem (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, fair point on the physics, but nevertheless, "closing speed/rate" is not the same as "speed" of an object. Most targets for Gorgon were air-to-air, so the targets would be moving with significant speed from the missile, and usually that would be slower than the missile. I can explain why if needed. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:07, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Well spotted The Rambling Man, I must have falsely equated speed with closing rate when I reviewed this (perhaps I had in mind air-to-surface missiles instead). What I can read of the source from Google Books is "Molt Taylor fretted about the Gorgon's speed, control difficulties and the chase planes staying within sight of the missile ahead of them. He wondered about the limits to human direction of a missile capable of such velocities: "The entire operation is of such speed that the human mind is not capable of keeping up with the flight"", so I think actual overall speed is intended rather than closing rate. I think the fix is to change the article to refer to "speed" as per the hook. Hopefully Bushranger will be along shortly to clarify - Dumelow (talk) 22:23, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

TRM, I completely agree that closing rate and the speed of the missile are often different, and always in the case of a moving target. And yes, if a target is fleeing from an air-to-air missile then the closing rate will be (typically much) less than that of the missile. So yes, there is a problem with the hook, and it appears from Dumelow's post that it will be addressed. I was simply noting that your statement was flawed as I did not want an alternative proposed that asserted the closing speed must be lower than that of the missile, as that too would be incorrect. EdChem (talk) 22:28, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

No worries, I was viewing it purely from my own experience, so thanks for the correction. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:38, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I have pulled this until the issues have been resolved. Gatoclass (talk) 14:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man, EdChem, Gatoclass, and Dumelow: Having pulled myself out of Real Life...I suppose that is a good point, well spotted. I've changed the wording on Project Gorgon accordingly. Does this better fit the source and hook? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:38, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Having gone back and checked the sources provided in the original nomination, "closing speed" isn't mentioned anywhere, just "speed", indicating that the problem was not with the hook, but the article. So the elimination of the reference to "closing speed" in the article would seem to clear the way to return this nomination to prep, The Bushranger - although I think your reworded solution is overly verbose. Gatoclass (talk) 11:24, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I can get that way sometimes, especially late at night. My brain is still frazzled from a bad case of some form of gut-bomb that's been plaguing me most of the month; feel free to tweak if you think it's needed. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:08, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Other peaks in Oregon, Cline Buttes

Please STOP promoting geological messes to the main page.

"The Cline Buttes are a volcanic structure created as part of John Day Formation during the early Miocene epoch, approximately six million years ago."

John Day Formation may be Early Miocene, but neither the John Day Formation nor the Early Miocene occurred 6 Mya.

If no one at DYK can read geology articles at a high school level, just stop promoting them.

Whoever wrote this mess should fix it, or I'll just delete the geology section. It's too painful to continue reading.

--2600:387:6:80F:0:0:0:A3 (talk) 14:01, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: Who promoted this one to the prep area without catching this? I'm already chastising the writer of the article. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 14:46, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Cline Buttes should tell you everything you need to know. Reviewers and promoters tend to only worry about the DYK hook, rather than review the article for veracity. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:52, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

The post above from 2600 refers to an error in the body of the article. We cannot possibly verify every fact in articles submitted to DYK, any more than can be done at GAN or FAC. Gatoclass (talk) 14:52, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Really? I do usually check each sentence against the sources when accessible. Of course that only works for short DYKs. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:56, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, when I do GA or FA reviews, I usually check every source, that's part of the point. But it's hardly ever done at DYK, there's a checklist which can be ticked off in minutes, for that QPQ reward. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

That's very commendable Jo-Jo, but it's not a requirement at DYK to check every fact, nor is it a requirement at GA, nor at FAC. When we identify nominators who are consistently nominating problematic articles, they can politely be shown the door, but we simply don't have the resources to thoroughly fact check every article. Gatoclass (talk) 15:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Ironically it shouldn't be the nominator being shown the door, it should be the reviewer or the promoter who continually passes garbage to the main page who should be shown the door. Just take a glance up this page for a dozen examples over the past couple of weeks.... The Rambling Man (talk) 15:10, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not asking anyone to check every fact or to be an expert. I'm asking for the most basic knowledge of the topic. If you are promoting geology articles to the main page, know rocks, minerals, geological ages, high school geology level, not even college. --2600:387:6:80F:0:0:0:A3 (talk) 18:00, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

That's a good idea in principle, but the lure of a QPQ review is too much, people select items and do the checklist in minutes, and pass things which get close, if not onto, the main page, with errors in either the hook, the article or both. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:28, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• Wiki-teammates: I'm usually pretty careful about my facts. However, this oversight was clearly my fault. I think 6 Ma number came from earlier off-line draft that used source that said Cline Butte rhyolite came from Deschutes Formation. When I found more comprehensive source I changed text to read John Day Formation, but didn't change dates to match. My mistake! Thanks for correction article text! I’ve corrected infobox to match text.--Orygun (talk) 20:34, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Ergo Sum: Care to explain how you missed this error when you gave this article the tick? Were you short on time or something? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 21:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Coffee: As has already been stated, it is not the job of DYK reviewers to ensure that every fact cited in the nominated articles are supported within the assigned sources, nor is that expectation realistic. DYK reviewers use a heuristic of, iter alia, making sure the hook is associated in the article with a reference that seems reliable. This is not a perfect system, but it's the best we have. Ergo Sum 21:39, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• This is not a perfect system, but it's the best we have. No, that's completely false. If DYK reviewers want to do the job properly, then review the article, don't just follow the checklist. Check for grammar, check for spelling, check for dead links, check for bare URLs, check for incorrect sourcing, etc etc etc. What is happening now is most 100% _not_ "the best we have". The Rambling Man (talk) 21:44, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
• @Fram and The Rambling Man: (edit conflict) Apparently the new standard at DYK is that QPQs are just a minor formality and that reviewers are not required to even read the articles they are approving. This is extremely careless behavior IMO, but apparently just because our site isn't perfect errors are fine for articles the whole world can see. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 21:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Um, no, nobody said QPQs are a "minor formality", there is a long list of criteria that must be met, including checks for verifiability, neutrality, BLP and copyvio. What I said is that reviewers are not required to thoroughly fact check articles, we simply don't have the resources for that. But while you are reporting us to Fram for alleged negligence, perhaps you should also be blowing the whistle on ITN, OTD, GAN and FAC since fact checking of articles is not a requirement at any of those projects either. Gatoclass (talk) 09:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: That comment was about what Ergo Sum said... not you. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 10:53, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Again, not asking for fact checking. Again, if geology is such a foreign language to Wikipedia editors at DYK that they think the Early Miocene is 20 Mya, geology articles should not be put on the main page courtesy of DYK. Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia. I may not be able to dump alphabets at other editors, but I bet there is no rule saying if you don't know anything about geology, just throw down words, make things up. --2600:387:6:807:0:0:0:9F (talk) 15:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

• Cline Buttes looks to be a good effort and so we should thank Orygun for his work. It is not required to be perfect because we are not representing it as our best work; that's the FA slot. And while FAs are good, they are not perfect either. If 2600 and other grumblers want to achieve perfection then they have their work cut out for them. For example, note that our page on the Early Miocene is still quite poor, not having any sources at all. Andrew D. (talk) 20:39, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

  Noted, but how does that solve the current problem? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

The Miocene article states that the Miocene Epoch "extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago", which doesn't correspond with the statement in the Cline Buttes article that they were formed "during the late Oligocene or early Miocene epoch, approximately twenty-five million years ago". It also might be worth checking with WT:GEOLOGY whether it should be Miocene epoch or Miocene Epoch. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

It's sad, but amusing to see how many DYK editors come by to scream that there are no rules for Wikipedia articles when it comes to DYK.

1. The hook must be cited.

2. There must be words.

It's an article!

Factually Accurate? Who cares. Completely made up? Okay for DYK. Wouldn't know science if gravity made you fall? Start writing.

It is simply not true that all Wikipedia rules are cast away for DYK. Wikipedia should stop allowing DYK articles to violate verifiability. If it's wrong, it's not verifiable and does not belong in an encyclopedia. Stop making up support for misinformation. What is going on! --2600:387:6:807:0:0:0:5D (talk) 23:02, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Onto Canadian geology, Prep 5

"The La Loche Formation marked the beginning of the deposition of the Elk Point Group at the onset of a marine transgression over the Canadian Shield."

If the La Loche Formation is part of the Elk Point Group, why doesn't the Elk Point Group article mention the La Loche Formation?

--2600:387:6:80F:0:0:0:A3 (talk) 14:39, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I suggest this article be removed from the prep area, until someone with a background in geology can read it.

If I linked a formation to a group, that formation would be on the group page. I went to the group because the group stratigraphy seemed off in the formation article. I didn't see the formation on that page, could not find any synonymy, but the stratigraphy in the formation article appears to be off from the group article, too. --2600:387:6:80F:0:0:0:A3 (talk) 18:47, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

The diagram on page 3 of this source appears to put La Loche in the Elk Point Group. The fact that it isn't listed in the Elk Point Group article proves nothing, because Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Gatoclass (talk) 19:38, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I guess what it proves is that DYK reviews are a cake-walk and no-one really does any genuine checking of facts, they just do the QPQ-required minimum. Sadly, 2600:... we have no solution for this, it's been a problem for years, and every time they launch a contest or a project or double the rate of hooks, this kind of thing is rushed through to the main page without real diligence. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh yes, I'm sure reviewers were checking these geology articles much more diligently before we went to two sets a day, because ... um ... oh, I can't think of a reason. Gatoclass (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

What an odd thing to say. We're getting more of these because of competitions or a run on topics from one particular editor. If you dare deny that we've seen a quality dip lately, then what hope remains?! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

None at all. So you might as well quit now. Bye then. Gatoclass (talk) 20:27, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

That remark is wholly uncalled for @Gatoclass:. This talk page is directly for the discussion of the quality of the articles we're promoting to the main page. And that's what's being discussed here. Yes, we have slowed down the rate of promotion, but that only makes the case for there being no reason to not properly check easy (geology time frames can be seen in literal charts on our site) facts for errors even stronger. Arguing that less than accurate info in our articles should be okay on our Main Page just seems a bit strange to me. I think what we should be discussing is how to ensure that promoters actually check for basic issues, and that if they feel that's too much work, then they can find other areas of the site to help out in. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:45, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

It's okay Coffee, I'm used to dealing with Gatoclass and the others who take a while to accept that my complaints are founded in the pursuit of excellence (not perfection) and the protection of the main page. It's a sad fact that I spend so much time on this very page pointing out issues that are overlooked by the shambolic DYK review process, now exacerbated by the doubling of the set preparation rate. It's clear that those reviewing, promoting and creating queues are not paying sufficient attention to some of the fundamental requirements of DYK, let alone considering that these items appear on the main page. I won't be quitting, much to the disappointment of Gatoclass etc, I'll redouble my efforts to focus on the many shortcomings of the process that allows garbage onto the main page. Just take a look at this talk page, how many threads relate to poor hooks, incorrect hooks, incorrect articles? All in the last couple of weeks. Of course, we can just pretend none of it exists, or we can do something about it. I know which camp I'm in. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• @2600:387:6:80F:0:0:0:A3: I have  Fixed the issue you identified, the table in Elk Point Group now reflects the existence of the formation along with the correct data and sourcing. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say the formation isn't in the Elk Point Group; I said the information in the La Loche Formation article was confusing as to its stratigraphic position in the group, and when I went to check the Elk Point Group article the La Loche Formation isn't mentioned, and it appears that the information in the La Loche Formation article is wrong. If the La Loche Formation was mentioned in the Elk Point Group article, or if that article contained the synonymy, then I could have verified, quickly, from another Wikipedia article (yes, perilous unreliable source) and quickly edited the La Loche Formation article. I still think the sloppy writing merits giving the entire article a review before pushing it to the main page. I will look at Coffee's article, maybe. --2600:1700:FB00:9C00:706B:67B8:A648:F19F (talk) 22:09, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Now the two articles are visibly in disagreement because of short cuts taking in reading and writing knowledge of stratigraphy. --2600:1700:FB00:9C00:706B:67B8:A648:F19F (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 2

• ... that the World's Fair subway line in New York City only operated for nineteen months during the 1939 New York World's Fair?
• @Kew Gardens 613: @Tdorante10: @Epicgenius:

Why is this hooky? Plenty of structures are built for Olympic villages and then dismantled. The same seems to apply here. This is a GA; could a better hook be found? Yoninah (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I thought it was hooky when I read it, it's not too often that rail lines are laid down only to be torn up a few months later, especially in a major city. I think we sometimes strive too hard for the outlandish in hooks - a hook that is just plain informative is often all that is required. Gatoclass (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I think the same fact could be more hooky if phrased differently. What about ALT1 ... that the World's Fair subway line, built for 1939 New York World's Fair, was closed three days before the closure of the Fair?ALT1a ... that the World's Fair subway line, built for 1939 New York World's Fair, was closed the day after the closure of the Fair? Alex Shih (talk) 18:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I think ALT1 is better, though there's no source for the date of the closure of the World's Fair. The 1939 New York World's Fair article says it closed on October 27 (so the train stopped running the next day, not 3 days before). Yoninah (talk) 19:44, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Yoninah: That would have been a bigger issue. I was following the IND World's Fair Line article, but apparently the 1939 New York World's Fair page had two separate dates (October 27 and October 31) for the closure. October 27 is the correct date, and I've added a source, and altered the ALT1 accordingly. What do you think? Alex Shih (talk) 20:14, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Alex Shih: I think your proposed hook sounds a bit better than what I originally proposed. The only thing is "closure" is repeated twice. How about ALT1b: epicgenius (talk) 20:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

ALT1b: ... that the World's Fair subway line, built for 1939 New York World's Fair, was closed the day after the Fair ended?

@Epicgenius: I like your 1b proposal better. I'd say let's go with this. Alex Shih (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm sorry, but what is hooky about that? You would only expect a specialty line to close after the event it serviced is ended. If nothing better can be found, we should just stick to the original hook, which in my opinion is perfectly acceptable. Gatoclass (talk) 21:01, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: Fair point, but wouldn't the same argument be used against the original hook? That you would only expect a specialty line to operate for the duration of the event. Alex Shih (talk) 21:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

The unhookiness is at least partly due to including too much info.
ALT1c: ... that a subway line in New York City only operated for nineteen months?
MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 22:16, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

None of the above are hooky. I'd like to see the quote "extravagant and wasteful" being used in the hook, that gets juices flowing. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:20, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

And actually, the idea of doubling the fare, and implementing a cool turnstile system (per To enter the station, an additional 5-cent fare was charged on top of the standard nickel fare. Eighteen special turnstiles were used at the World's Fair station that permitted traffic flow in both directions and accepted two different fares depending on the direction of travel. Fairgoers disembarking from trains paid a nickel as they exited through the turnstiles while passengers entering the station from the fairgrounds paid a ten-cent fare upon passing through the turnstiles) is far more interesting than anything I've seen written above.

ALT2: ... charged twice the fare...

ALT3: ... included special turnstiles which accepted different fares...

ALT4: ... to the double fare employed to finance ... in 1940 ... was finally ended in 1975....

Come on people!!!!! The Rambling Man (talk) 22:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

How about:

• ... that a proposal to make the World's Fair subway line to the 1939 New York World's Fair permanent was rejected?

- That's the best I can do at short notice. Apologies for the failure to reply to other proposals above but I have to log off now. Gatoclass (talk) 23:37, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: That sounds good, especially with the fact that the 1964 World's Fair was hosted in the exact same spot. I'd like to also entertain The Rambling Man's proposal about turnstiles, too. epicgenius (talk) 00:13, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

• ...that the World's Fair subway line employed special turnstiles to collect different fares based on whether a passenger was going to or from the 1939 New York World's Fair?

Considering the speed at which preps are being promoted to queues, I'm moving the hook back to the noms area for further discussion. Yoninah (talk) 00:24, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, a good move. I'd once again advocate something more innovative, like the fares or turnstiles, because train lines come and go all the time, that's not interesting. That fares were doubled to pay for it yet that doubling continued for decades after is interesting. That they paid different fees depending on which direction they went, that's interesting. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:10, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

How about:

• ...that passengers leaving the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line were charged twice as much as passengers arriving by the same line?

- Similar to Yoninah's hook above but emphasizes that it was the passengers leaving who got slugged, which suggests a rip-off. Gatoclass (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Gatoclass. I've moved this whole discussion over to Template:Did you know nominations/IND World's Fair Line. Yoninah (talk) 13:55, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Carolwood Pacific Railroad

Lines and prep (now queue) 2, an unhappy marriage? The replacement hook is "... that the Carolwood Pacific Railroad, a ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in his backyard, included a tunnel underneath his wife Lillian's intended to plant a flower garden?" which reads rather weirdly near the end. Add "spot" or remove "to plant a" perhaps? Even then it isn't the most elegant hook, but it would at least be an improvement of sorts... Fram (talk) 14:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you added that comment to this thread, but I already addressed that issue. Gatoclass (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Because this was, if I'm correct, the hook that replaced the World Fair subway hook? Because having a fourth section about the same set of 8 hooks would expose the quality problems of DYK a bit too much? Anyway, you changed it from a planned flower garden to an existing one with your change (and "I already addressed that issue" sounds like you did so before my post here, when in reality it happened 30 minutes later). TRM introduced that sentence part exactly to address this issue[1], so reverting to your own wrong version is not really "adressing" the issue, is it? Worse, you promoted the hook and moved it to queue, removing one layer of checks. If you then also start reverting corrections back to your own version not supported by the article... Fram (talk) 15:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

A little touchy this morning aren't you? All I did was wonder out loud why you were tacking a comment about a new issue to an old thread about something else. I realized after posting that that you probably did so because the thread is named "Prep 2", but still, new issues are usually presented in their own thread. Anyhow, no biggie. In response to your question, no, this didn't actually replace the World Fair subway hook, I used it to replace the FA Cup hook that had been raised as an issue below. With regard to the timing of my edit, yes I made that edit about 20 minutes after you posted the above but did so before I actually saw your post. With regard to the change, I'd already checked the source before promoting the hook so I knew the tunnel actually went under the garden, the hook is not wrong it is accurate. Gatoclass (talk) 15:45, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for the typo, but as Fram says, either we support the hook in the article or we don't. Have the DYK rules changed lately? Interesting that you'd rush a hook straight through the prep system into a protected queue too, when it would have been much more appropriate to take a hook from the next prep set which might have been properly reviewed. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:48, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No problem, everybody makes mistakes. With regard to the hook, as I said, I'd already checked it to ensure it was accurate. And while the article itself doesn't exactly say in so many words that the tunnel went under the garden, I think it's clear from the context that it did. So I'm not seeing an issue there. But if you think the article needs rephrasing, feel free to do so. Gatoclass (talk) 15:58, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Hook pulled. "A little touchy"? No, amazed that some people still think the basic DYK rules (about, e.g. the fact being in the article with a source that supports it) don't apply if they are the admin who promote the hook and move it immediately to a queue. "Disney's wife, Lillian Disney, objected to the plan that part of the layout be built in an area where she intended to plant a flower garden.[15] As a compromise, Disney had an S-curve tunnel built underneath the future spot for the garden." Fram (talk) 15:54, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Pulling the hook was totally unnecessary Fram. With regard to the issue you raise, see my response to TRM above. Gatoclass (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

"And while the article itself doesn't exactly say in so many words that the tunnel went under the garden, I think it's clear from the context that it did. " Two people apparently didn't believe it to be "clear from the context", but you reverted one and shrugged off the other. If changes to the hook are not allowed or contested, then pulling is the logical solution. Perhaps that's what you meant when you said "totally unnecessary"? Fram (talk) 16:12, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I think this kind of hook ownership and then protection is actually bordering on abuse of position. That hook was plucked from nowhere, we had no time to review it properly and yet it somehow made it to a protected queue in next to no time, despite the fact the admin doing all that knew there some doubt over its suitability. More haste less speed, I suggest we go to one set a day, just look, Prep 2 today needed 25% of it to be "fixed" after the set was ready to go. Omnishambles once again. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

The hook was "plucked from nowhere"? Um, no, that wouldn't be the hook I promoted, which just happened to be identical to the hook originally proposed on the nominations page and passed by the reviewer.[2][3] The hook "plucked from nowhere" would actually be the one you decided to substitute at the last minute with no consultation whatever - managing to botch the grammar in the process.[4] However, again, no biggie, BRD and all that - and anyone can make a mistake. Just don't expect me or anyone else to take your thoroughly hypocritical accusations seriously.

Anyhow, mission accomplished today, you've managed to burn up another evening I could have spent doing something constructive around here. Just don't be surprised to see me ignoring any further comments, because I have much better things to do than spend my time dealing with baseless attacks from the usual quarter. Gatoclass (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

"At the last minute" = 14 minutes after it was added to the prep area. Please explain how that would be "at the last minute" in any normal cycle of hook reviews? The only reason it was "at the last minute" in your view was because you gave the hook less than 1 hour in the prep area between the time you promoted it and you moved it to the queues. Please don't blame your problems on others with such flimsy arguments. "Just don't expect me or anyone else to take your thoroughly hypocritical accusations seriously" indeed. Fram (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Queueing completed updates isn't a "problem", it's what administrators are supposed to do. What I would describe as a "problem" is when administrators needlessly pull a hook from the queue when there is absolutely no valid reason for doing so. Also, you've had how many hours now to make a simple fix to the article in question to resolve your alleged issue, and still haven't bothered. Why not? Gatoclass (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the "problem" here is really with the way in which the transition to two sets has abjectly failed. Preps are being flung together, queues being promoted too quickly, errors getting almost to the main page if it weren't for reviewers like me and Fram giving a damn about quality. It's clear the DYK community cannot handle the throughput of 2 sets per day. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

(ec) Hardly baseless. The stuff being promoted at the moment needs serious outside scrutiny, the standard QPQ review process is failing desperately – I don't blame you or the others for all these mistakes, the rush to get things to the main page could have been avoided months back but we waited until now to double the rate, and clearly the DYK community isn't ready or capable of dealing with that. Far too many issues, as noted on this very page. It speaks for itself. I'm absolutely and extremely happy for you to do something else and leave other admins here to deal with the mess, or even leave it to ERRORS to cast the spotlight once again on the serious lack of quality control coming from this neck of the woods. For what it's worth, I didn't set out to "burn up another evening" of yours. That's entirely, 100%, without doubt, on you. Cheers! P.S. Oh, why don't I just get "template editor" privileges?? Ummmmm...... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay Fram, The Rambling Man, I have edited the article to address the issue raised, please let me know if this addresses your concerns so I can return the hook to the queue, otherwise we are going to end up with a short update on the main page. Gatoclass (talk) 18:51, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

It's okay by me, let's not go through the excruciating agony of arguing the toss next time, just fix things per the rules or pull for further work, and we'll all be happier. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:27, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, but I probably still need the endorsement of Fram, otherwise I can see myself getting accused of "wheel warring" (though there is actually nothing critical about a queue page). Fram? Gatoclass (talk) 19:52, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I am the contributor of this DYK. I added the following new alternate hook to the Carolwood Pacific Railroad's DYK page: ... that the Carolwood Pacific Railroad was a ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in his backyard?. It's a shortened version of the original hook, and I don't think anyone will have a problem with it. Jackdude101 ^talk cont 20:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 2 - James Robson's world cups

... that James Robson has been to six Rugby World Cups with the Scotland team and on six British and Irish Lions tours? Cwmhiraeth, Paul2520

The article seems to adequately source that he was at least appointed for his sixth Lions tour, (it would, of course, be preferable use a source that post-dated the event to demonstrate that not only was it announced that he would be going, but that, in fact, he actually did....) but I don't see anything referencing six World Cups. The article mentions World Cup once in the lead (from where the hook appears to be derived) and once in the main prose, but only mentioning the 1991 tournament. It would appear to be reasonably simple to solve, but once again, this is moments away from being loaded up into a protected queue. Seems like another series of pretty basic failings of the review and promotion process to me. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:07, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

(Also pinging Drchriswilliams... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:07, 26 January 2018 (UTC))

I have added an extra reference to James Robson (doctor) which covers both hook facts. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

The ref that should have been there when it was reviewed and promoted? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:54, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the article, Cwmhiraeth. The Rambling Man, the original citation [5] in the nomination says, "Six World Cups from 1991 and six Lions tours...", so I think this should have been cited in the lead (though the new reference looks good and is more recent). = paul2520 (talk) 14:31, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure it should have been. It's a pity these things weren't covered before it was promoted. They're usually easy fixes but, for example in this case, they're astonishingly easy to spot if reviewers and promoters are even just following the checklist... The Rambling Man (talk) 15:45, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 2 - greatest footballing comeback?

... that Manchester City's 4–3 victory over Tottenham Hotspur in the 2003–04 FA Cup is regarded by many as one of the greatest comebacks in footballing history? Cwmhiraeth, The C of E, Falastur2

Yes, it was epic. But a completely unreferenced "match" section, a few cn's sprinkled around, some tone issues in that same "match" section (to whit: "a superb left-foot curling shot", "good start took a knock", "Keane controlled superbly and stroked the ball"........)... this isn't ready and should not have been passed/promoted. P.S. I also fixed three dabs, but no need to thank me. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Well I guess the match itself could be considered the reference for what happened in it, in the same way as a book synopsis can be considered sourced to the book without referencing. But then, the superlatives would have to be eliminated as WP:OR. So I think this one will have to be pulled. Gatoclass (talk) 11:40, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

No, not all. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:45, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

That's like saying World War II itself could be considered the reference for what happened in it. Patently untrue. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:46, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Hardly the same thing, but regardless, I have pulled the hook. Gatoclass (talk) 11:50, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Well done you. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:03, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

England, the world, what's the difference? Fram (talk) 11:37, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

English cups really.. "greatest cup comebacks of English footballing history" vs "footballing history" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Galobtter (talk • contribs) 17:11, January 26, 2018 (UTC)

Overall it's an E minus then. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:46, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

More accurately, "FA Cup history", since that's what the sources actually say. Gatoclass (talk) 12:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

[Closed] Back to one set per day

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

---

Okay, as evident from this talkpage, we need to reduce back to one set a day. The backlog is somewhat diminished, but more importantly, the numbers of errors creeping into preps (and even queues!) is on the rise, and we need to stop it. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:28, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

If we do go back to one set a day—and we're currently very anemic in the queue and prep department, with only 16 promoted hooks—make sure that the set starts running at 00:00, not 12:00. Also, there's a hook about What a Beautiful Name that needs to run on January 28; it's currently in Prep 4, but may have to moved to an earlier set if the changeover happens before then. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Support going back to 24 hours. Pretty sure I said that going to 12 hours always causes quality problems, but consensus was still to do it. 24 hour hooks means fewer hooks to promote and so people aren't so rushed building preps and queues, so fewer errors. Joseph2302 (talk) 04:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

There are still 220 approved hooks so I think it is too early to return to one set per day. What there is though is a dearth of promoters, so please consider taking on this task. You don't have to do a complete set, even promoting one or two hooks is useful. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:51, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

There are actually 118 approved hooks. 220 is the number of total hooks. -Zanhe (talk) 17:30, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely no justification for going back to 24 hours, DYK has been running very reliably and we still have a substantial backlog to deal with. We can probably revisit this issue in a week or so, depending on how the backlog is standing. Gatoclass (talk) 12:18, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Complete justification for going back to one set per day. This has nothing to do with backlog but the plummet in quality, as evidenced on this page. Too many mistakes are being made. Far too many. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

There is no "plummet in quality", the rate of errors making it to the main page has been pretty much the same as it was before. We've had only one hook pulled from the main page in the 2 1/2 weeks since we went to a 12-hour cycle, and that was only for a hook appearing a second time due to an error by a newcomer to prep building (see thread below). I think we've actually been doing a pretty darned good job over the last two weeks, with lots of hook improvements for example that we normally wouldn't be getting when there are fewer users participating. So I'm sorry, but I see absolutely no reason for returning to a 24-hour cycle - if anything, arguably the opposite, I wish DYK could have this level of participation all the time! Gatoclass (talk) 13:35, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, you missed the point. The reason the pulls aren't happening at the main page is mainly because I'm reviewing every hook after it's been accepted and promoted into a prep set. If I'm lucky I have time to do something about the many issues before you turn them into a queue. The number of mistakes being made by reviewers and promoters has gone through the roof. If this last line of reviewing defence disappears, we'd expect around one error per set to be reported at ERRORS. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Who cares what the engine room looks like? It's the quality of the end product that matters, and that if anything has gone up because of the many hook improvements we've been seeing. The only current problem we have is the backlog, and the 12-hour cycle is steadily reducing that. Gatoclass (talk) 13:57, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

You're missing the point again. Reviewers and promoters are _not_ doing the jobs properly. The process is broken. Reviewers and promoters should not be passing and promoting articles and hooks which are erroneous or problematic. I think I'll take some time out and just start reporting the errors once they get to the main page, that should underline the point you're missing, and I won't have to race against you promoting hooks and protecting them without time to fix them all. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:02, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

In short, disruption to make a WP:POINT - your specialty at DYK, though I never thought to see you openly declaring yourself. Well, go ahead and do that. I will see you at WP:ARBCOM. Gatoclass (talk) 14:30, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

What a baseless argument. I'm a volunteer. If I can't keep up with the sheer volume of errors going to queues because you refuse (as you have done) to allow enough time for them to reviewed properly, it's you that will end up at Arbcom, not me. Your plaintive cry about having your evening wrecked can apply to more than just you - with one set a day, I could review them in less than half an hour and all was good, usually. Two sets a day is more like two hours, especially with all the feeble hooks, errors and other problems that have been sanctioned by the review and promotion process. I actually write articles and lists here, but seldom have time thanks to the tacit acceptance of the shoddy implementation of the DYK review process. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Well then, I guess we'll see how the "didn't have time to alert about errors before they hit the main page" argument holds up at ARBCOM, won't we? Gatoclass (talk) 14:51, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, I think we both know your case would be laughed out of court, you'd be trouted and advised to take such arguments to a plethora of other venues, and possibly worse for you personally. In any case, and as you well know, it's 100% down to me what I prioritise in my editing, and since you've made it clear that, according to you, there's nothing wrong with the DYK process at all, there should be no risk with me only now looking at DYK once it's updated on the main page, should there? You've only got to look at the reports on this page to see that everything's going to be just fine. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Off you go then. I'm sure your good friends at ARBCOM can be relied upon to see things your way. Gatoclass (talk) 18:11, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Um, pardon? Off "I" go? "good friends at ARBCOM"?? I think you're mixed up a little. You're the one bandying around completely baseless threats. I'm the one under the crosshairs. I have precisely zero fear of anything you could possibly achieve. In fact, this chasing me away from what now appears to be essential quality control at DYK may actually work against you somehow, not exactly the behaviour of an admin now is it? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I am not trying to "chase you away", I have no objection to you continuing to point out errors or improvements at this page, as I indicated above. What I said is that I would consider a move to delay your error checking until sets reach the main page as deliberately disruptive, and would take action accordingly. Maybe you are correct that such a case would be "laughed out of court" - I long ago gave up trying to predict the outcome of dispute resolution processes - but I have to call it as I see it. Gatoclass (talk) 18:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

All anyone has to do is to read through your responses to me on this page to make their own minds up. Deciding to de-prioritise reviewing DYK hooks and reporting errors at ERRORS is in no way disruptive, so I guess you'd better find some policy or guideline or something you can point at me for volunteering my time in a different order. I look forward to it. And if you're so confident, let's see you launch that case. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:56, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I agree with TRM that the process is moving much too fast right now. If I don't check in every few hours, whole sets are being moved into the queue with overlinking and formatting problems. Moreover, most of the time I spend building a prep set is spent sending nominations back for re-review because they weren't done properly. The QPQ process is not being taken seriously by many reviewers, and most hooks on the Approved page are not hooky at all. I don't know much about calculating burn rates, but if we promote one set every 24 hours we will eventually get through it. Yoninah (talk) 17:23, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

So how did we end up with a backlog in the first place? Obviously, because more than eight hooks per day are being nominated - right now, a lot more. If we don't reduce the backlog sufficiently now, it will just mean that we will be obliged to return to the 12-hour cycle again much more quickly. We should not be constantly yo-yoing our readership between 12 and 24-hour updates, if we stick to the 12-hour cycle for another week or so, we can have a much longer period of the 24-hour cycle afterwards. If we stop now, we are just going to be back to 12 hours that much more quickly.

With regard to sloppy reviews, that has been a systemic problem at DYK and it needs to be addressed, but it has nothing to do with the backlog, they are separate issues. People are not rushing through their reviews any more than they were before just because there is a 12-hour cycle, there is no connection between the two. Yes we do need to address the systemic issue, but it will be much better to look at that after we have reduced the backlog and are back to a 24-hour cycle, when we will have more time to deal with such issues. Gatoclass (talk) 17:45, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The volume of sloppy reviews, bad hooks, problematic articles, and errors in general is directly related with doubling the rate. It's simple. So halve the rate. There's no deadline. I look forward to yet another pointless trip to Arbcom, and see fish and chips for tea! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass the backlog is a mirage. As I tried to say above, many hooks are simply not ready for the main page. If you want, I'll stop building prep sets and start doing second reviews on all the "approved" hooks so they can be ready for promotion. And I won't be afraid to fail nominations that have been lying around for weeks, creating your "backlog". Yoninah (talk) 19:22, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yoninah, you know that as a DYK stalwart I very much respect your opinion, but what do you mean, the backlog is a mirage? There are more than eight hooks being nominated every day, if we return to a 24 hour cycle, we're just going to be back to 300 hooks again before long, and we'll have to do this all over again. Worse, if there's no determination to tackle the backlog at all and just stay forever on a 24 hour cycle, which is what some folks apparently want, this project will be unmanageable in six months, it's going to simply collapse of its own weight. I put up my hand to help out when we went to 12-hour cycles, and since we did, I have been verifying at least one set every day and moving it to the queue, and there have been almost no issues with the sets I have promoted, so where exactly is this supposed hurry occurring? It's not in the queue, since I am doing one set every day which means the other admins have no greater workload than they did before, and it's not with the reviewers, who are not at all affected by the cycle, because they can take however long they want to complete a review. The only place where there is increased activity is in set building, where two sets per day have to be built instead of one, and I know that is more work for you and Cwmhiraeth, but it really only means you need to build one set per day apiece rather than one set every other day - and I can't imagine you skimping on checks just because of that.

Now, maybe more people should be putting up their hand to help you guys out - far too much has been left to you two in recent times - but nonetheless, I don't see how the 12-hour cycle could possibly be impacting the quality of reviewing in any part of the process, as I've outlined above. If reviews are getting worse, then I think that has to be an isolated issue, unconnected to the 12-hour cycle. So it seems to me that going back to a 24 hour cycle is not going to improve the reviewing one iota, it will just add the additional problem of the backlog, and if the backlog isn't tackled periodically, the DYK process will simply collapse. Gatoclass (talk) 20:02, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

No, reviewers and promoters who continually fail to meet the expected standards need to be asked to stop, or made to stop. I suppose you think it's just a coincidence that problems have risen exponentially since we went to two sets per day? Just look at this page. It's awash with problems that should have been picked up before promotion. You need to slow down, DYK needs to slow down, who cares about the backlog until we resolve the root of the issue? Ignoring it is just another case of missing the point, and not something I'd expect from an admin. Send me a link to the Arbcom case once you start it. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but you neglected to mention that almost all the threads have been started by one person, namely, you. So has the number of problems really increased, or is it simply that you decided to radically increase your level of scrutiny in order to prove your point that DYK "can't handle two sets a day"? Because to be perfectly frank, I'm pretty confident that if I put my mind to it, I too could find a plethora of issues with which to clog up this page - regardless of the cycle period. I've always found plenty of issues when reviewing hooks and sets, I just choose not to make a song-and-dance of every issue I find. Gatoclass (talk) 20:53, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I didn't "neglect to mention" anything. I apply the same level of scrutiny to every page I review. Why wouldn't I? Or do you have a comment to make about that? Nothing has radically changed except the quality of promotion, the quality of review, the quality of items being accepted for queues. DYK can't handle two sets a day, that's obvious. Yet again you choose to insult me, yet again I'd urge you strongly now to start the Arbcom case you've threatened me with so we can discuss this with a wider audience analysing your approach, your tone, your accusations, your insinuations. I care about main page quality. That's all. Check my contributions if you dare. I'm here with nothing back the encylopedia and our readers in mind. Let's go to Arbcom, see how they deal with your approach. After you. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yoninah, I see I neglected to address your offer to simply fail nominations that have been around too long. That might indeed eliminate the backlog - though I think you are going to have to fail a lot of hooks. But I am struggling to see how that is going to improve the quality of existing reviews. It also strikes me as a rather arbitrary process, and one which would probably need a considerable amount of planning. I'm really not at all keen to take on such a discussion when I am already spending an hour a day or more reviewing one or more sets (not to mention the other distractions one has to deal with on this talk page). Gatoclass (talk) 20:28, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Funny, then I'm spending an hour or more a day re-reviewing them all. The process is broken. Pushing more and more hooks through is not the solution. We should stop it right now and get back to a manageable scenario, and sod the backlog until the root cause of the poor reviews and poor promotions can be fixed or excised. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:32, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: it does seem that you, TRM, and I are all spending hours checking prep sets. And even so, errors are popping up in every single prep set. I would say something is "broken" here. Yoninah (talk) 20:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

As I said above, Yoninah, has the number of issues really increased, or is it just that we are all scrutinizing the sets more carefully because we went to the 12-hour cycle? Because I have to tell you that the number of errors I am finding is roughly consistent with the number of errors I have always found at DYK. Gatoclass (talk) 20:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)"It is BROKEN, It is OBSOLETE, DELETE DELETE DELETE!" _{(See Broken Matt for context).} On the contrary, it is not broken. It is a situation where we should not be arbitrary with the 2x24 but more conciliatory and remind reviewers to be careful about what they pass and also to nominators that we are mindful of what passes and thus they should check what they propose. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

No, you're missing the point. GatoClass (and others) seem to believe there's nothing wrong with the current system of massive triage after review and promotion. What's the point of a two-stage review/promotion process, followed by a "queue" process, if so many errors are making it all the way? Reviewers and promoters aren't changing for the positive, and a "gentle reminder" is not what is needed. SLOW DOWN, THERE IS NO RUSH, even if the WikiCup is now up and running. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:53, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, so what's the first thing you do? SLOW IT DOWN. Or, alternatively, threaten one of the core reviewers with a trip to Arbcom after making it clear they're no longer welcome. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Gatoclass: I'm not able to compare the error rate to times past. Perhaps you're right. But the speed at which things are being moved up into the queue does make it difficult for editors to check and fix the errors themselves. Perhaps that's why we're seeing so many error reports here. Yoninah (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• Well, apparently, it's because one single editor is making a "song and dance" out of everything. Talk about WP:ABF. From an admin. Wow. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps you didn't consciously set out to prove a point, but I do find it hard to believe that suddenly, the minute we go to a 12-hour cycle, the number of issues has jumped exponentially overnight. It seems much more likely to me that the issue is one of increased scrutiny - by all of us. It may be that I'm wrong - certainly, I'm paying attention when Yoninah says she thinks there is an issue - but the whole thing just seems a little too coincidental to me. Gatoclass (talk) 21:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't care less what you suddenly think about my reviews (which I've been conducting for some years now). You are assuming bad faith and you are not acting as an admin should. And I'm still waiting for my link to the Arbcom case. Either step up or step away. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:34, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass just to keep you in the picture, DYK has now moved to my lowest priority daily monitoring, I will be working on OTD first, FLC second, my content creation third, and if I have time, DYK. That means, by the very nature of the time available to me, that I will post everything I find to ERRORS unless it's in a prep. Feel free, now, to take me to Arbcom. If you don't wish to do that, please don't bother making absurd and baseless threats which don't hold water in any policy or guideline, your threats have driven me away, way to go on that, "admin". The Rambling Man (talk) 21:04, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

I think we're missing a point here. We're finding issues with hooks. Without analyzing the motives of anyone involved, it's fair to say those issues shouldn't exist. The 12 hour cycle is putting pressure on the promoters, definitely. But here's the thing; it doesn't increase the pressure on the original reviewers at all. They are not working towards a deadline. And they are supposed to be doing it all, really; the promoters are supposed to check things, and ideally shouldn't have to deal with any article issues. So, how do we fix issues with the original reviews? The speed of the main-page cycle doesn't affect them. Vanamonde (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Gatoclass that there is not an increase in errors since the schedule changed to twelve hourly. Many of the things that TRM calls errors are not anything of the sort. Often they are minor infringements of DYK rules, non-issues like "spontaneous school combustion", "citation needed" issues where TRM has tagged the article, or criticisms of hooks as being uninteresting. I don't see any major substantive error mentioned on this page. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:01, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid there's been a massive hike in errors from reviewers and promoters. Just look at this page. Attempting to claim that actual errors in articles and hooks are "non-issues" is perhaps part of the problem. To completely ignore the vast swath of issues and hooks pulled on this page over the last couple of weeks is a clear indicator as to why things are getting worse and worse, not better. For so many "non-issues", we've had a vast number of hooks pulled after being "promoted", haven't we? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

TRM: Just a question. I saw you recently nominated Ingvar Kamprad for the frontpage where it now is. Do you believe the Kamprad article is error free? I was lightly editing it before you nominated it, and I had concern about the quality, not least the net worth/"charity" foundation section which frankly is a mess and looking into the underlying sources I could see it should have been written differently, but didn't try to fix it because his financial arrangement was so complicated, it would be impossible for me to write it in a way that I would feel assure was 100% correct. And isn't this how Wikipedia is: Based on the sources we rely on, and the time and competence we have, we often have to settle for less than 100% accuracy? Iselilja (talk) 21:51, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Iselilja No, no, I think you may have missed the point of ITNC, I nominated it so it would receive more attention, not because it was perfect and ready to go. I made no judgement on its overall quality. Perhaps you misunderstand the difference between the ITN and DYK process? I'd be happy to clear up any misunderstandings you have, of course. And to respond directly to one of your themes, I've never suggested we should strive for 100% accuracy, nor demanded it (not that I have the ability to do so), yet DYK is posited on getting one sentence of one article right, and it fails to do so time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time. It's not about settling for less than 100% accuracy, it's about holding those who are continually making errors in review and promotion accountable for those errors. Cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal

I feel the argument is bit pointless. Regardless of the perceived error rate in hooks, we have no choice but increase the throughput when there's a big backlog and decrease it when we run out of approved hooks. I propose that we set numerical limits, e.g., automatically decrease to 1 set per day when the total number of approved hooks falls below 80 (10 days' supply), and automatically increase to 2 sets per day when the number exceeds 240 (30 days' supply). -Zanhe (talk) 19:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Actually no, we don't have "no choice". There are other options, such as failing nominations, failing those which are stalling, removing the necessity to give pretty much every DYK nomination a pass to the main page after (sometimes) months of effort. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:51, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Only a tiny number of hooks stall for a long time; removing these will not make much of a difference. Looking at the pending hooks right now, only about a dozen are more than 2 months old. -Zanhe (talk) 20:19, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Fine, I'd say we axe anything older than a month, so that'll help. Next thing to do is to request reviewers and promoters who are making continual mistakes to stop attempting to perform that role. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:22, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Actually, only 15 unapproved hooks are more than 1 month old, and most hooks are approved or rejected pretty quickly. There's nothing that stops anybody from requesting people not to perform a task, but to force them to stop is tantamount to topic ban. I doubt any DYK regular is incompetent enough to deserve a TBAN. -Zanhe (talk) 22:54, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• The point being that we continually excuse the symptoms, and don't find a cure. Poor reviews and bad promotions need to stop, and the rush to do them at 2 preps per day has caused a huge decline in quality. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: Back to one set per 24 hours

I propose returning to one set of DYKs per 24 hours. (If the results of this poll/survey or discussion get confusing, inconclusive, or argumentative, someone can create a simple, neutral RfC about this later on.) Softlavender (talk) 16:12, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support. I like one set per day, because it levels the odds of one's DYK being viewed. With the two sets per 24 hours, those DYKs that are live when the least amount of people are online get far fewer views than when the most people are online. (This seems to correlate to when most residents of the 48 U.S. states are awake, and is a population-related thing.) Softlavender (talk) 16:12, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support plus the error rate, as evidenced by this page alone, has sky-rocketed. Giving independent reviewers (i.e. those outside the QPQ process) more time to view each promoted hook and associated article is a good thing and the backlog can wait until such a time that the process actually provides a reliable route to the main page without the creation of multiple errors per set. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree with this as the primary reason; there's far too much sloppiness at hand for the queues to be rushed to fill a twice-a-day quota. Plus I support any other measures (such as those mentioned elsewhere in this thread) to reduce errors and eliminate problematic nominations and reviews. Softlavender (talk) 07:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support - 24 hours is needed for editors to properly review these before having administrators promote these to the main page. There simply weren't so many erroneous promotions, and it was going through the DYK backlog at a perfectly acceptable rate. Let's hold ourselves to a high standard at the main page. There's no need to rush. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 07:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support fewer errors when we are at 24 hours for each set. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support - The backlog has been trimmed substantially now so there is no need to accelerate the process for the time being. A return to 24 hours also allows more time for hooks to be reviewed to improve overall quality. Kosack (talk) 08:40, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support: Backlog trimmed, some special occasion hooks coming up. Although far from being a permanent solution, it's about time to switch back to 24 hours once again. Alex Shih (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - Backlog is still too high to revert to a 24 hour cycle. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - I'd like to stick to 12 hours for a few more days, otherwise we are just going to be back to doing this again that much sooner. Also, I dislike yo-yoing the readership between 12- and 24-hour cycles, we should try to keep our routine as stable as possible. Gatoclass (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support - sorry, I'd like to keep it at 12h, but the error-rate recently has been too high, especially when some are escaping those patrolling the queues and finding their way onto the Main Page (there was one particularly egregious example yesterday where the hook was simply wrong). Black Kite (talk) 19:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

We've actually had very few errors reach the main page. I took a look through the history a couple of days ago and there have been no more tweaks or changes than when we were running on a 24-hour cycle. I think we've handled the 12-hour cycle really well. Also, do we really want to be having the same squabble over the cycle every two or three months? The less often we have to do this, the less drama involved for everyone. Gatoclass (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Comment this is beyond a joke now. We have a clear consensus to go back to one set per day. Please implement it immediately. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:10, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

IMO it's a little unfair to hide the discussion in a subheader in an old discussion. I would probably have completely missed this if somebody hadn't mentioned the poll in a newer thread. Gatoclass (talk) 20:21, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Well you haven't missed it, you commented on it an hour ago, so now it's time to follow the community consensus. This discussion has been going on some time, so despite your personal preference, you as an admin need to follow the community here. If you start the "We've actually had very few errors reach the main page" thread again, then I'll remind you that I've fixed two or so hooks per set and that will no longer be happening. You need to respond, per ADMINACCT, to the community here, or move away from DYK altogether, as Fram noted. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

24 hours isn't long to leave open a poll, and most of the people who have commented here thus far are not, so far as I'm aware, regular DYKers. How about we leave the poll open for 48 hours and then see how it looks? Also, this really should be moved to the bottom of the page in its own thread so everybody has a chance to see it. Gatoclass (talk) 20:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

More filibustering. Unbelievable. Un-be-lievable. How about you get to do what you personally want? No need to move the thread, it's here. This is how talk pages work, I would expect you, as an admin, to know that. We have almost universal consensus for one set per day now. The denial over the drop in quality is becoming borderline disruptive. You seem to be virtually the only person who can't see that this page is littered with issues about hooks. Now the main quality control aspect has been hounded out, you will reap what you've sown. Do your duty (your word I think) and listen to the consensus. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:48, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support though I have a DYK coming up for Waitangi Day (February 6th New Zealand time), which might complicate things. I'll post a section about that specifically below. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:51, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Okay then, back to 24 we go. But if even a simple straw poll is now going to turn into threats to resort to ADMINACCT, then in future we are going to have to set some conditions on how long these polls are open in order to avoid this kind of acrimony. Gatoclass (talk) 21:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

  No, don't get me wrong, your abject reluctance to follow the community consensus here is just one element of your failure to meet ADMINACCT. There are plenty of others, and if any more issues occur, then you'll get your wish of us seeing each other at Arbcom. And no, we don't need to set conditions. That's not what we do here. And it's certainly not up to you to decide such a thing. The sooner you come to realise that the better for all of us. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:23, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Too much traffic to justify this, no evidence this will solve systemic problems with DYK. Gamaliel (talk) 21:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

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

Hook gets another go

Please see WP:ERRORS, not only do we have quality issues with numerous hooks (see above), but now it appears we're repeating hooks (Marie Grice Young) for no apparent reason. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

It appears we had a relative newcomer add the nomination to prep[6] and forget to close the nominations page,[7] so that Yoninah loaded it into another queue the following day. I will give the user in question a reminder. Gatoclass (talk) 13:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't believe I did that. Yoninah (talk) 21:12, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Not hard at all to do when the nomination is still open! You would have had to look through every queue and prep to realize it had already been promoted Yoninah, indeed, the article may have already gone to the main page. This was somebody else's error, not yours. It's just something that happens from time to time. Gatoclass (talk) 21:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

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

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

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:05, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Attention needed by an administrator @Gatoclass, Alex Shih, Casliber, and Mifter: or whoever. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I am on mobile now, can someone check if Main Page is balanced with just 7 hooks? Alex Shih (talk) 11:09, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

This looks okay with 7 hooks, so I'll tag it for the bot as soon as I check the hooks. Vanamonde (talk) 11:12, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Done. Vanamonde (talk) 11:32, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm a little late to get back here today, I was intending to add an extra hook to make a full set of eight, but since the page balance is about right I will let it go this time. Gatoclass (talk) 12:07, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 4 - DigiDay

This article has as section of awards, many of which are unreferenced, and is now tagged for improvement. Cwmhiraeth, Feminist, BD2412, The Bushranger The Rambling Man (talk) 11:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I just cut it out; all primary sourced so promotion really. Any important award with secondary reporting should go in reception or whatever - doesn't make sense to have what is essentially a "praise" section. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That section seems to be added by an IP user. Now that this has been removed, I think this can continue. feminist (talk) 12:55, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yep, just the unreferenced paragraph in "Other projects" to deal with. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:07, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That was also added by the same IP user referenced above, who made a lot of poor editing choices, including separating out a single line into an unnecessary "Name" section, and adding other poorly referenced or unreferenced material. I think the best thing to do is to entirely go back to the version before those edits. bd2412 T 13:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right. I'm sure this would have been picked up before it was moved to a queue. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:55, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and reverted back to the last good version. bd2412 T 13:56, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 1 - Rafinha

" ... that in February 2013, the Brazilian footballer Rafinha received a salary hike of 566%?"

• This has a maintenance tag on it. But more to the point, pay rises like this aren't really anything unusual. To take the example of England, youth team players earn in the hundreds of pounds a week but if they sign a full contract that can rise to thousands, even tens of thousands a week in the Premiership. The same goes for players signed from lower league clubs (the average wage in League 2 is £800 a week, in the Premiership £32,000). Even a player moving from League 2 to the Championship could expect an average 650% hike in salary. The differences in other countries may be even more extreme, given that many lower leagues in Europe, for example, are not even professional. Black Kite (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

  Agreed, I reviewed it earlier and ran out of time. The hike would be impressive if it was going from 50k to 300k a week, but this is trivial really. The likes of Dele Alli and Jamie Vardy both experienced such "hikes" yet to a substantially higher level than Rafinha. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:18, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

  Plus, re-reading (the sentence I had to correct), His contract termination fee was set at $130 million for foreign clubs and $23 million for Brazilian clubs. He also thanked Zico, saying that he was grateful to him not only as a player but also as a person.[3] Rafinha's salary was increased from $3,000 to $20,000,[4] a salary hike of 566%.[5], so his termination fee was set at $130 MILLION, yet his salary was set at $20 THOUSAND? This is simply bonkers and can't be realistic. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• Incidentally, his salary rose from R$3,000 (£660) to R$20,000 (£4,400) per month. About the same as an English League 1 player. (That means his termination fee was about £26m - so the article is completely wrong because it's using dollars, not reals (R$). I'll fix that now). This needs to be pulled, though. Black Kite (talk) 00:17, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• Pulled. Gatoclass (talk) 17:25, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

New World Trade Center

... that the new World Trade Center is still not complete? Cwmhiraeth, Epicgenius, Usernameunique

Um, so what? Many buildings or infrastructure projects are not complete years after they have been started. Looking at the nomination, ALT1 (at one time projected to be incomplete until 2037) is far more interesting. And, per our usual customers, I would imagine the vast majority of our English-speaking readers would know that the new WTC is incomplete. It's common knowledge. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The Rambling Man, I'd be happy with ALT1 as well. However, I found the current hook interesting, as it brings to mind One World Trade Center, which is complete; one might not immediately think of the rest of the complex. ALT1, by contrast, (or so my reasoning went) might just make someone think "but then they dealt with the construction delays, got back on track, and finished it up." --Usernameunique (talk) 21:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, so in a sense the hook is more misleading than hooky, because of course the "World Trade Center" is a complex, and not just a couple of big buildings. But nevertheless, there'll be some no doubt mega ceremony once it's all complete, and therefore it's not a surprise that we haven't seen the completion yet. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

If it's misleading, maybe we can go with ALT1 instead. People know about the WTC and its not being complete, so adding the actual date might be hooky. epicgenius (talk) 22:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I would say so. Suggesting that it would take nearly two generations to fix up WTC is really actually interesting. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:12, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

It is, considering World Trade Center (1973–2001) broke ground in 1966 and was completed in 1973. The fact that the new WTC would be completed in 36 years, longer than the amount of time the first WTC existed (28 years), is interesting. epicgenius (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Then that should be the hook! The Rambling Man (talk) 22:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is considered original research (28 years is calculated from the old WTC's article and is probably not in the new WTC's page). How about ALT3: epicgenius (talk) 22:31, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

... that the new World Trade Center was once projected for completion in 36 years, longer than the original complex had existed?

Very good. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:35, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but how is it good if the hook fact doesn't appear in the article? Returning to the noms page for further work. Yoninah (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Yoninah: I added a note to the new WTC's article. The 28 years are per WP:CALC. If that doesn't work, we can just go with ALT1. epicgenius (talk) 00:19, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

New black dress

... that Away was described by People as "the little black dress of luggage", due to its celebrity appeal? Cwmhiraeth, Casliber, TonyTheTiger

No, Away is the name of the company. The article in People does not describe the company as the new "little black dress", it describes one specific product, "The Carry-On". Not only is the hook completely incorrect, but there's no context for "little black dress" (e.g. little black dress), and this is actually borderline advertising. All-in-all, this is woeful. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Returning to the noms page for further work. Yoninah (talk) 23:14, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 1 - Richard Gibbons - needs a tweak

According to the source, his group wasn't banned as a "Seed of Rebellion", but a "possible Seed of Rebellion". The extra word is important. Black Kite (talk) 00:44, 28 January 2018 (UTC)  Done Yoninah (talk) 11:24, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 4 - The Three Garridebs

Surely this wasn't a film, but a TV programme? The article even states this (performed live from a teleplay for television). Black Kite (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I added the "clarification" of it being a film because that's in the title of the article. Perhaps it needs to be moved and the hook reworded. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:38, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see that last comment before changing it to "program", per Black Kite's suggestion. I think "program" is okay, a program can be a film after all. Gatoclass (talk) 11:20, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

*Prep 5 - World's Fair Subway Line

"... that passengers leaving the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line were charged twice as much as passengers arriving by the same line?"

• Not what the article - or its source - says. It says this - "To enter the station, an additional 5-cent fare was charged on top of the standard nickel fare ... Fairgoers disembarking from trains paid a nickel as they exited through the turnstiles while passengers entering the station from the fairgrounds paid a ten-cent fare upon passing through the turnstiles". In other words, those arriving paid the standard 5c fare plus 5c as they arrived, whilst those leaving paid 10c - i.e. the same amount. The source ([8]) clearly says "a 10-cent fare to and from the exposition grounds" and even more clearly "Fair-bound passengers ... would have already paid 5-cent fares at other stations". Black Kite (talk) 01:01, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
  • How about switching it with this? epicgenius (talk) 01:33, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

    ... that passengers traveling to the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line paid double the subway's standard fare to enter the fair, and paid another double fare upon re-entering the subway?

    • Or for brevity, "paid double the subway's standard fare on their journeys both to and from the fair"? Black Kite (talk) 01:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

      • Sure. epicgenius (talk) 02:17, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

        ... that passengers traveling to the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line paid double the subway's standard fare on their journeys both to and from the fair?

I agree with Black Kite that the original hook wasn't entirely accurate, but Epicgenius' new hook is not really hooky. Should we take this back to the noms area to find a better hook? Yoninah (talk) 11:22, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

How about:

• ... that passengers traveling to the 1939 New York World's Fair via the World's Fair subway line paid the standard five-cent fare to board, but had to pay the fare again on arrival? Gatoclass (talk) 11:37, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

• I like that better. More likely to get someone to read the article. Black Kite (talk) 12:04, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, substituted. Gatoclass (talk) 14:02, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

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

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

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Fair use image abuse

I had to direct someone to remove two illegally used fair use images from the Montreal school fire hook the other day. Now we've got another case, that of John Hunt, Baron Hunt of Fawley, slipped into Prep 5 at some point, which is illegally using the RCGP crest in the article. This has to stop. We cannot promote articles to the main page which are illegally using fair use images. And I don't want to hear the "well it's not the image in the nomination" nonsense. It doesn't matter. Check the images for correct usage, or leave the hook unpromoted. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:53, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I did check all the images before promotion, but I didn't think carefully that this fair-use image didn't belong in this article. Thanks for catching it. Yoninah (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 5 - cocaine and guillotine

... that after contracting diphtheria, John Hunt was one of the last people in England to have his tonsils painted with cocaine and removed by guillotine? Cwmhiraeth, Yoninah, Whispyhistory and Philafrenzy

Great hook, but the source states "Hunt reckoned it must have been about the last time that this procedure was carried out in Great Britain" so the individual in question reckoned it must have been about the last time it happened in Great Britain? Hardly reliable and clearly no mention of England. Could maybe be rephrased that Hunt believed himself to be one of the last to have the procedure in Great Britain. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Yoninah (talk) 11:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

yes, ok thank you Whispyhistory (talk) 11:27, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 6

• ... that Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles carries over 700 different hard-to-find sodas?

@Michael Barera: @Nomader:

Two citations are given for this hook fact. Footnote 1 says the store carries "well over 250 kinds of soda". Footnote 4 says it carries "more than 700 flavors of soda". I don't see "over 700 [kinds] of sodas" in the sourcing. Yoninah (talk) 11:32, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the distinction? Gatoclass (talk) 11:52, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm guessing that "kinds" refers to brands, whilst "flavours" may refer to numerous different flavours of the same brand (hence, higher number). It's a pretty vague distinction, though; I would say, for example, that orange-flavoured Brand X is a different drink from cherry-flavoured Brand X. Other sources this (yeah, Daily Mail, but run with it) says "700 varieties", this (NY Post) says "over 750 types". Incidentally, Galco's own website says "over 700 flavours" as well. I'd stick with it, or change it to "flavours of". Black Kite (talk) 12:14, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

The Daily Mail source was pulled from the page as non-RS. Neither of the current sources combines "hard-to-find" with "700 kinds". I'm also inclined to change it to:

ALT1: ... that Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles carries more than 700 flavors of soda? Yoninah (talk) 12:51, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd be OK with that change, or changing it to the slightly simpler "over 700 different sodas". Michael Barera (talk) 13:43, 28 January 2018 (UTC).

"more than 700 different sodas". The Rambling Man (talk) 13:45, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done OK, changed. Yoninah (talk) 15:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 6 - synth

... that New York City's Broadway Junction station sees 100,000 daily riders – more than 90% using it to transfer? Kew Gardens 613, Tdorante10, Epicgenius, Cwmhiraeth, Muboshgu.

This is a nice hook, but the issue I have is that the stats used to synthesise the "more than 90%" come from different times. The "9,189" comes from an average calculated through 2016, while the "100,000 daily riders" is based on a NYT piece written in late-November 2017 which states "Currently, about 100,000 riders pass through Broadway Junction". So in summary, this "more than 90%" is calculated from a 2016 figure divided by a late-2017 figure. It may be factually correct, but I don't think it proper to derive a numerical claim from measurements made at quite different times. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

How about replacing "more than 90%" with "the vast majority"? That, at least, is supported by the NY Times. epicgenius (talk) 14:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, or do MTA release figures for daily riders? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Not until March. They release average weekday ridership, and weekend & holiday ridership, around March 20 of each year. The exception was last year when the data wasn't released until April. epicgenius (talk) 16:34, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, well go for your slightly less precise description which is cited. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:36, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done Fixed. (It's now in Prep 3). Yoninah (talk) 18:47, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Stuart Mustow

Greetings, can someone more familiar than I with BLP best practices comment on Template:Did you know nominations/Stuart Mustow? It contains some article text supported by a self-published press and while the self-publisher may be reliable by themselves, I am not certain if it's OK under WP:BLPSPS. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:36, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

postmarketOS QPQ review

I feel like this is a hard fail, however, out of a preponderance of caution it would be appreciated if someone else might take a glance at it? Chetsford (talk) 01:36, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Might be worth testing the subject's notability at AFD. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I've failed the DYK nomination and have nominated it for deletion. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:42, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 3

There seem to be some inconsistencies in the spelling of Pieter Brueghel the Younger between the article and the hook and picture caption. I originally had all as Peter Breughel the Younger but don't mind as long as we are consistent. Philafrenzy (talk) 05:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I referred to the Pieter Brueghel the Younger page, which says in the lead: before 1616 he signed his name as Brueghel and after 1616 as Breughel. Since this painting was produced in 1633, I used the latter spelling. Yoninah (talk) 12:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

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

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

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 11:16, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 2 - Yanmen Pass

Cwmhiraeth, LlywelynII, Constantine. Yanmen Pass has a maintenance tag for a fully unreferenced section. I'm sure it wasn't there when it was reviewed, passed and promoted. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed it was not there when I promoted the article, nor when it was nominated or reviewed. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 2 - Paul Y. Hammond

Cwmhiraeth, Wasted Time R, Lionelt. Paul Y. Hammond has a list of works, around half of which aren't mentioned in the main body and are unreferenced. I imagine these must have been added after the review/promotion. I would recommend the addition of ISBNs to resolve this if someone can find them all. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: Several of these books pre-date ISBNs. And the metadata of common publication sites is often misleading – for example Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the 20th Century was originally published in 1961, but WorldCat lists it as its 1977 reprint and Amazon and Google Books both list it as its 2015 reprint. But if you actually look inside at the copyright page, it's still the 1961 edition and that's the biographically meaningful date. Anyone who's worked with old-enough academic volumes is familiar with the metadata problem. So there's no way I can cite these publications with accurate ISBNs or the kind of url-based citations you want. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:17, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Unacceptable source for hook in prep 3

Template:Did you know nominations/Samuel Abu Jinapor @Crosstemplejay, Cwmhiraeth, and Yoninah:

• ... that when Samuel Jinapor was appointed deputy Chief of Staff to the President of Ghana, some felt his family's closeness to the opposition party would compromise Jinapor's loyalty to his party?

This is sourced to this [9]. This source seems to me to be totally unacceptable in a BLP as it is not simply negative, but filled with (seemingly politically motivated) vicious attacks like "the big question is that, what possibly will these two brothers be discussing? Who owns the car they are driving and what means was the car acquired? Can it also be accepted that, Samuel Abu Jinapor is aiding and abetting crime as they (NPP) always accuse NDC of corruption? Could it be part of the corrupt money his brother John, used to acquire the car they are riding?" Using such a source in the article is already unacceptable; using it as the source to base a DYK hook on is out of the question. Unless there is a much better, more neutrally worded source to support the hook, it should be pulled. The article should be closely read to remove all similar sources, and statements based on such sources. Fram (talk) 14:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Pull it. Some of the promoters have gone off-wiki (or at least off-DYK) temporarily, so it's left to people like you and me to try to maintain quality. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:18, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Pulled from Prep 3 and nomination reopened. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 4 - Robin Turner

... that the footballer Robin Turner scored twice on his home debut for Swansea City, equalling the number of goals he scored for former club Ipswich Town in nine seasons? 97198, Number 57, Cwmhiraeth.

This needs to be checked. Other records (e.g. The Who's Who of Ipswich Town) indicate that Turner scored a couple of times in the league, a couple of times in the FA Cup, once in the League Cup, and once in another contest, all while at Ipswich. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:58, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, the article actually states "league goals", but the hook doesn't. Hence the problem. I guess the (very important) distinction wasn't clear to the reviewers/promoters. I've fixed it, this time. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:19, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks The Rambling Man. An oversight on my part. Number 57 15:45, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

DYK and COI/paid editors

Template:Did you know nominations/Denise Stephens raises a few issues, including:

1. If an article was created and/or nominated by paid a COI editor, should that be explicitly disclosed in the nomination?
2. Should articles created and/or nominated by paid COI editors be eligible for DYK?

Personally, my instinct would be for a blanket ban: No DYK if any COI or payment is involved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

One imagines that DYK should follow whatever guidelines the project overall has deemed appropriate for such scenarios. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm more concerned about whether she is actually notable. In US academia, being an "associate professor" does not count for much. Edwardx (talk) 20:00, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Right, well response (a) DYK should follow Wikipedia's response to COI/paid editing and not make it's own rules up (b) if you don't like the notability, WP:AFD is the place to determine it. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:16, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Paid editing is frowned upon but not actually forbidden so as long as it's disclosed (WP:PAID). COI editing is discouraged but not actually prohibited (WP:COI). That's for general wiki practice. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:33, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

(ec) It's not so black-and-white, @TRM.

WP:DYK "showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process". Allowing COI/paid editing does not require that it be eligible to be showcased.

COI/paid editing is subject to some restrictions, and it would be perfectly reasonable for the community to choose (if it so wished) to decide that one of those restrictions is that COI/paid content doesn't get showcased. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:38, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• notified[10] at WP:VPP. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia should have a site-wide guideline with which DYK complies. Unless you're going to apply it to all other aspects of the main page. By which point just use the site-wide approach. A "special approach" to DYK is yet another burden the project could do without. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support banning paid/COI editors from DYK. The thought of such editors getting extra pay for DYK exposure is repulsive. -Zanhe (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per site-wide application of tolerance with honesty and compliance with all other guidelines and policy. If it improves Wikipedia, no problem. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Regarding question 1, as I understand it, DYK articles are new or newly expanded, so the relevant edits should comply with the paid editing disclosure requirements in Wikipedia's terms of use. So I don't see any need to repeat a disclosure in the nomination. The answer for question 2 depends if the community wants to alter the goals for DYK to acknowledge the work of unpaid editors, versus all editors. isaacl (talk) 21:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Oppose this would discourage people to declare their COI/paid editing status. If people do it properly, then they should be judged on the usual DYK criteria. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:32, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with the above that people would just not declare it if the rules said that. Furthermore, if the hook and article are of decent enough quality and of the required standards, then who are we to rob the community and the wider world of being able to see it and improve it? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• I agree with editors who say that DYK should follow what the rest of the project does, so there should not be a blanket ban. Of course, if it is found out that there was undisclosed paid editing in violation of the Terms of Use, before the hook makes it to the main page, the hook should be disqualified by that. And there is nothing wrong with reviewers setting a high standard that anything that sounds promotional should be fixed before approving a nomination. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

  But are we seriously having a discussion on whether or not a DYK hook should be "disqualified"?? If someone is caught paid editing without disclosure etc, a DYK credit is probably the last thing we should really give a toss about. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Agreed. Although in that case, they should lose the DYK too. Joseph2302 (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose We already have the Terms of Use. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• yes for disclosure and no weak support for ban. If we don't ban, It should absolutely be disclosed here - editors with any sort of COI and acting in the spirit of the COI guideline (and for paid editors the spirit of the PAID policy) should disclose locally in whatever forum they are in, to be sure that people with whom they are interacting understand that they have a COI. So yes it should be disclosed. But it should not it be barred? - I could see a situation where we don't, and the DYK nomination should be reviewed on the content merits, with the COI in mind (this is the purpose of the disclosure). I want to remind folks that the heart of the scandal around the Gibraltarpedia matter, was that the project had seventeen DYKs in a single month, and one of the editors organizing it (and doing DYK nominations) was being paid by the Gibraltar Tourism Board for organizing the project. Whatever you think of paid editing or GLAM stuff, the optics of that were terrible. It was actually a thread at this talk page, here, that first raised that issue, as was reported on here for example. So I weakly support the ban to make things simple and avoid repeating what happened with Gibraltarpedia and the Tony Ahn stuff... but this is much less of a big deal to me than disclosure. If the ban fails, then we absolutely should require disclosure Jytdog (talk) 22:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC) (nuance this Jytdog (talk) 15:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC))
  • @Jytdog: the nom which prompted me to open this discussion was Template:Did you know nominations/Denise Stephens, where the paid editor @Skyes(BYU) has disclosed their status on their user page, but did not repeat that disclosure in the DYK nom. The DYK reviewer @Whispyhistory spotted the userpage and noted it ... but shouldn't Skyes(BYU) have disclosed it in the nom? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
    • This is hard thing, since nobody has to undergo training before they start doing stuff. The COI guideline makes it clear that somebody with a COI (paid or not) should make it clear to who ever they are talking with, in whatever forum, that they are conflicted. Sometimes people fail to do this out of ignorance; sometimes they are trying to hide. I haven't looked at what went on here in particular but I will do. If there is a template used for nominations it would be good to include something about disclosing any COI in it, and in the instructions... Jytdog (talk) 22:45, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
      • @Jytdog: yes, the template is {{NewDYKnomination}}. I really like the idea of including a COI disclosure line in it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
        • OK, it would be easy to slot in there (conceptually at least; i have no idea how hard it would be to implement). Let's see if consensus develops to do that... Jytdog (talk) 23:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Oh, hm. The person is working for BYU so is GLAMish. But yes they should have disclosed this at the nomination. Will leave them a note. Jytdog (talk) 22:52, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per TRM etc. On the other hand, Denise Stephens doesn't look very notable to me. Black Kite (talk) 23:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support COI and Paid editing being forbidden on the main page unless it passes GA or FA review (which include detailed analysis for POV). We have had instances of paid editors charging money to take an article through DYK and get it on the main page for promotional purposes, which disgraces Wikipedia and puts the credibility of the main page at risk. I have added a note about this discussion over at WP:COIN. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:34, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Has anyone not noticed that the source given for the hook doesn't support the wording of the hook? The hook states "that Denise Stephens discovered a planet larger than Jupiter?", whereas the Salt Lake Tribune article being used as a cite states that the planet was discovered by three of Stephens' former undergraduates. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:50, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Oppose hard rule - I'm against undisclosed paid editing and all, but I guess that provided that the payment was properly disclosed, and the edits otherwise follow our policies and guidelines, then provided the edits are constructive, then I don't think such edits should prohibited in DYK. Nevertheless, whenever such edits are paid, more scrutiny should be given to such edits to ensure that they don't fall afoul of WP:COI. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:53, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
• Comments - as far as the specific case leading to this - the editor seems to have tried following the spirit of our rules, but it's not among the best work on Wikipedia. Not the best application of our rules, only marginal notability (at best), not the best coverage of an article's subject. Shouldn't be disqualified from DYK based on policy, but ...

As far as the broader issues raised, many folks have said that we don't need a special rule for DYK and Paid/COI, but rather should follow a "site-wide guideline". We have a site-wide policy WP:Paid and a site-wide guideline WP:COI that should all but eliminate any paid editing at DYK, and eliminate much COI editing here. It would be easier to just inform everybody "No paid editing on DYK articles, and COI editing should be declared on the nomination."

Part of WP:PAID that applies here

• Editors must disclose their employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any paid contribution to Wikipedia. (italics added) which means that even nominating a DYK requires disclosure.

from WP:PAY, parts of the guideline WP:COI - note that some folks say about this guideline that we don't need to follow guidelines - but they rarely say that about other guidelines

• you should make the disclosure on your user page, on affected talk pages, and whenever you discuss the topic;
• you are very strongly discouraged from editing affected articles directly.
• you may propose changes on talk pages (by using the {{request edit}} template), or by posting a note at the COI noticeboard), so that they can be peer reviewed;
• you should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly; (bolding added - this is very tough for paid editors)
• you should not act as a reviewer of affected article(s) at AfC, new pages patrol or elsewhere;

Since paid editors have to follow both the policy and guideline - it's fair to say "please don't bother even trying". It's pretty hard for other financial COI editors to work with here as well. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

A couple more notes:

In case of doubt on any DYK nom, please just inform WP:COIN and they'll check it out in detail.

So why is the specific case not against policy? The editor should likely declare as a Wikipedian-in-Residence, who only have to declare their employer on their user page. Perhaps there is a reason they haven't done so, so please check with other WiRs (e.g. User:Wittylama) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

WiR/GLAM editors are supposed to use the resources of their host institution to improve articles (e.g. images from the British Museum to illustrate articles about art or archeology). When a WiR/GLAM editors writes about their host institution (in this case, faculty at their employer's institution) they are solidly in COI territory. This is discussed at Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Wikipedians_in_residence,_reward_board and see also the guidelines on meta. Jytdog (talk) 03:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"When a WiR/GLAM editors writes about their host institution (in this case, faculty at their employer's institution) they are solidly in COI territory. This is discussed at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Wikipedians in residence, reward board" That page says nothing about faculty. Please stop putting your own overly-restrictive spin on agreed poliices. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Most university PR is about the Great Stuff their faculty is doing. This is directly in line with that.Jytdog (talk) 15:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"Most university PR" We were discussing Wikimedians in Residence, not ""university PR". You continue - wrongly - to conflate the two. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

You are not dealing with the issues here; that is what it is. This article and DYK are definitely university PR and this is not even a little ambiguous. This is not what the WiR program is for, and when WiR people do this sort of stuff, they are no different from say a person who is actually working in the university PR office and should behave accordingly per PAID and COI. Jytdog (talk) 18:50, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"The issues here" are not a single article, but a proposed change to DYK policy which as written would prohibit WiRs from working here; in that context, "this sort of stuff" is not PR. You still continue - still wrongly - to conflate the two. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Since I was tagged by Smallbones here... These kinds of debates about paid-editing and COI really irritate me so much. They conflate the ideas of covert advocacy on an article (in breach of NPOV and usually also RS), with the idea of being paid. In a venn-diagram of 'advocacy' and 'payment' there is certainly an overlap - undisclosed paid advocacy. But there are people who do the former and not the latter (ideologues, fanboys...), and the latter but not the former (e.g. experts, academics...). What we ought to be cracking down on is paid [and undeclared] ADVOCACY not paid EDITING. This is ESPECIALLY since the concept of 'paid editing' seems to be thrown around so loosely as to also include anything related to an academic's field of expertise, not merely about when editing the article about their employer/boss/company. If we start inventing bans and disclosure rules for DYK about 'paid editing' we not only a) duplicate the rules already in place about COI disclosures, AND make it that much harder to convince cultural/educational organisations to get involved in content creation on Wikipedia. What next, are we going to stop people like Doc James from being allowed to submit DYK nominations on medical topics because he is paid! to be a doctor? Wittylama 14:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose: As much as I am against paid editing in general, I am against adding anymore additional unnecessary rules to DYK. Notability and promotional concerns should be dealt with at the nomination page for what it is; as long as the article and hook conforms to policy and guidelines, I have no issues with them appearing on DYK. Alex Shih (talk) 07:13, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

To clarify, I support disclosure, but any signs of UPE should be subject to immediate block already. I oppose adding this additional rule to prohibit editors with COI from DYK, as I think the rule would be unnecessarily redundant. Alex Shih (talk) 06:23, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose: Mostly per TRM. Wikipedia already has site-wide guidelines regarding Paid/COI, the existing DYK guidelines are (for the most part) concerned with the quality of the article not who made it. Notability is handled by AFD. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Although I am against concept of paid-editing in its entirety, I don't see any benefit that this proposal will provide or the problem it is seeking to solve. If content (paid, unpaid or unknown) passes all other criteria and makes it to the last hurdle of DYK I see no point of barring it, after all it is just few hours that they remain on the main page. Without detailed problem that paid articles caused on the mainpage, this looks like a solution in search of problem. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:33, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:BITE, WP:BURO and WP:CREEP. DYK is intended for new content and so is especially suitable for new editors. Naturally, these may come with some baggage but it's part of our mission to help them integrate well. For example, I nominated a bunch of articles for DYK which were written by the Women's Classical Committee. This group naturally includes lots of women classicists and so, in promoting their academic field and gender, they have a vested interest and some of them are professionals. But such an interest is true of most of our content creators who naturally prefer to write about things that interest and involve them. So long as the material is of reasonable quality and presented to us in good faith then it's fine. Andrew D. (talk) 13:18, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as, once again, the Wikimedian in Residence baby is in danger of being thrown out with the spamming bathwater. (Disclsoure: I am often paid as a Wikimedian in Residence). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• There are two proposals; it is becoming unclear as to what people are !voting on. (people are also using the words "oppose" and "support" in opposite ways, which is going to make the close difficult) Jytdog (talk) 15:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• No and No - Yes, those are two different proposals but I oppose both. 1) DYK is not the place to deal with undeclared PAID/COI problems. If someone lied when creating the article, they won't admit it during DYK review and there is nothing DYK-specific to be done in those cases anyway. And 2), if an article is created in compliance with policy, it hould be eligible for DYK. It would be counterintuitive if we banned articles from DYK that are otherwise not treated differently. Regards SoWhy 15:17, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• No and No. The Rambling Man expressed it best for me. Gerda Arendt (talk 15:28, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support ban Wikipedia is not a means of advertising or promotion. We have had examples in the past where paid editors use their ability to nominate a page for DYK as a means of soliciting future clients. If having a Wikipedia page can be an advertisement in itself, regardless of the neutrality of the wording (which I very strongly believe to be the case), then having the article appear on the main page is even more so. Putting paid advertisements on the main page is against everything Wikipedia stands for, and is arguably native advertising, which brings with it legal considerations in several jurisdictions. Under no circumstances should we allow this. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:31, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support ban. Even asking the question is like, there's this guy going around the neighborhood selling stolen auto parts, shouldn't we buy them if he's offering a good price? No. The answer is No. – Athaenara ✉ 15:35, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• By the way, Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#‎Tony Ahn PR/Reputation Management has a long discussion of one of the most cynical examples of this, someone who knew the ins and outs of Wikipedia and how to persuade innocent non-promotional editors to support his sleazy cause, he prided himself on getting his clients DYK'd and hence on the main page. – Athaenara ✉ 15:41, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• And related: Template:Did you know nominations/Tony Ahn. – Athaenara ✉ 15:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support ban NOTPROMO and all that - even if the article is neutral, appearing on the main page for promotion shouldn't be allowed, which is the general aim of paid editors in DYK.... Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

  WP:NOTPROMO does not say that articles that conform to the rules can be treated differently because of who created them. Regards SoWhy 17:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support/Oppose Support disclosure but oppose the ban. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Not necessary. Symptom of moral panic. Disclosure  as standard. !dave 18:40, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
  • The only people panicking anytime that phrase is brought up is the people panicking over the moral panic that doesn't exist. En.wiki policy is already clear that spam is not allowed (which in a way makes this conversation redundant, as even a neutrally written advertisement is still an advertisement, and thus forbidden by policy), and those of us who favour a tougher stance on it are simply trying to make sure existing policy is enforced. Please stop decrying this moral panic: if it exists, it is not on the side you think it is on. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose both disclosure and ban. The Wikipedian in residence issue is of particular concern, as noted above, but also this would apply to things like institutional editathons. Let's not make some editors wear a Scarlet Letter, and also open the door to endless debate over where the line is. It is clear from other guidelines that, for example, a history professor can write about history, a biochemist can write about biochemistry, the "hard line" is if someone is PAID to write a SPECIFIC article, not if they happen to be editing wikipedia during their work time. Frankly, the extreme (and absurd) application of this would argue that if you have any knowledge about anything at all, and maybe once had a job doing it, then you must have a COI. By that standard, EVERYONE has a COI. Example, I'm a lawyer, so do I have a COI any time I edit an article on a legal topic? I think not. Their article and editor is either in line with policy or it is not. DYK has enough to do without having to play COI traffic cop too. Montanabw^(talk) 18:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. DYK is a subset of article writing; we don't need more warnings and labels. In this case an excellent COI disclosure was added to the talk page. I would argue that we don't need to know there is a COI to recognize writing that is spam. Are we all nit wits? What happens if we start to label everything is that, one, we lose the ability to discriminate for ourselves and two, we bias ourselves. In this case if the article was not neutral BHG might have gone to the editor's page and noted the COI then taken some action. (Not a criticism of BHG just another approach) We are sailing in the water of totalitarian control, power in the hands of a few which I personally don't like. The encyclopedia that anyone can edit is not the encyclopedia that a few can control. Already we have issues: WiR is being conflated with COI issues and this has given some the implied permission to harass. Second, positive content is being confused with COI/spam /advertising as we become almost fixated on COI. Some warning/ notice labels are fine; too many and we are creating problems for ourselves and have lost sight of the founding statement which is unique in its simplicity and ease- the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Note I am not advocating for COI editing here just for the tone that comes when we don't lose sight of the overarching goal of the encyclopedia. When we become fixated on an issue the ease is gone and so probably the editors. The editor in this case may become a good Wikipedia editor as she moves from what she is doing now to other areas. She needs support not more regulations.(Littleolive oil (talk) 20:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC))
• Oppose broadly as it's already taken care of by other processes; agree with Alex Shih. Hmlarson (talk) 22:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Already the article has to be within policy, which includes disclosure of paid editing, lack of promotion, and neutrally written. Also the topic has to be notable enough to be retained. Anyway I do not think an extra rule is required. I would be more concerned about the QPQ reviews of such people. Every one has some sort of I in the COI, so the standard checking should reveal if COI causes a bias. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• support disclosure -- consider a possible ban later. The motivation for this is that at lease some paid editors have been usign their ability to get DYKs as a credential. amd therefore have a motive in tryingtoget DYKs that would not otherwise be featured. Thenomination process needs to make sure to consider this element in the decision. DGG ( talk ) 03:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per TRM and Joseph2302. Double sharp (talk) 03:26, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support a total ban on DYK nominations from paid editors and even DYK that include contributions from paid editors. I make no secret of the fact that I support a total ban on paid editing in all its forms except perhaps for WIR. There is no foundation in claims that allowing any form of paid editing will encourage paid editors to declare theier activity which is but a very small tip of an extremenly large iceberg that is already undeground (under water?) The last place we want their spam or advertorial is on the mainpage. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose as a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denise Stephens, I see one editor has commented "Are we here to build an encyclopedia? Or to run a fanzine for football fans and porn users?" Well no, we do a good line on disused railway stations too .... but again, I think people are missing the wood for the trees. If an article written by a paid editor is that bad, we already have WP:CSD#G11. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose but support disclosure, per DGG. Gatoclass (talk) 20:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support a ban that explicitly excludes GLAM editors and Wikipedians in Residence. Gamaliel (talk) 20:31, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose in favor of just going with existing paid/COI policy. Don't see why we need a special case here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support. The "focus on content, not the contributor" arguments fail to recognize the fact that, except in the most obvious cases, volunteer amateurs generally cannot identify the promotional content inserted by marketing professionals. The claim that the restriction would deter good-faith COI contributors from disclosing is a slippery slope leading to abolishing all COI regulations, which is absurd. I think we need to find a way to systematically distinguish the GLAM, WiR and other potentially productive paid editors from the undesirable kind of paid advocates that most of us would like to get rid off. I often see policy proposals aimed at the latter opposed by those who think of the former, which I think is very unfortunate. Rentier (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Rentier: "The "focus on content, not the contributor" arguments fail to recognize the fact that, except in the most obvious cases, volunteer amateurs generally cannot identify the promotional content inserted by marketing professionals." I can't easily find a way of calculating how many of the 5,800 articles I have deleted were because of WP:CSD#G11 "Unambiguous advertising or promotion", but I would be surprised if I have deleted less than 2,000 articles as blatant spam. Do you have any examples? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support both proposals, with an exception to the ban for GLAM/WiR editors only when "using the resources of their host institution to improve articles", as Jytdog describes above. DYK is especially attractive to promotional/COI editors due to its prominent placement and relatively easily satisfiable requirements. A bright-line rule is necessary to deter them. James (^talk/_contribs) 23:40, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose, I'm sympathetic to #1 but ultimately if they're playing by the rules then they should already have disclosed in accordance with the TOU their paid editing status. Totally opposed to #2; if the content is good enough to meet DYK's standards then why shouldn't it be put up there? Biased content should be rejected for being biased, not because of it's origin. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 01:52, 1 February 2018 (UTC).
• Strong oppose both. The first part per The Rambling Man - there is nothing to be gained from a special rule and potential for it to cause problems. The second part per Joseph2302's comments about discouraging compliance with the COI and disclosed paid editing policies. If someone is a disclosed paid editor there are enough rules in place already, and if they add content suitable for a DYK listing then they're improving Wikipedia which is something we should encourage not restrict. If they aren't following the rules about paid editing that currently exist, why would they follow any new ones? If someone is engaging in spamming, intentional non-neutral editing, etc, then they should not be near the mainspace regardless of whether they are paid or not. Thryduulf (talk) 04:13, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly support disclosure, and support blanket ban. There's too much pressure from promoters wanting their promotional material to appear here, and too much potential for the whole DYK process to become corrupted by promotional material. Better to put a clean stop to it. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Simple wording

This should be non-controversial. We already have a policy and a guideline to deal with this. Some folks have already said that we should just follow these, but others seem to be arguing for a special exemption for DYK from them.

Perhaps the most relevant part of the guideline is that COI editors (which includes paid editors) "should make the disclosure on your user page, on affected talk pages, and whenever you discuss the topic," (bolding added) which includes the DYK template. So I'll propose the following simple wording

Paid editors and other editors with a conflict of interest should declare this when nominating an article for DYK. The article's talk page should also contain a COI or paid editor disclosure. Any deviations from the WP:PAID policy or the WP:COI guideline should also be reported, either on the template page or at WP:COIN.

Support as proposer. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:16, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• The original question 1 did not assume that the editor paid for editing the article in question was making the nomination. Did you want to propose wording that covers the case where an editor is nominating an article that was created/expanded by someone else who is a paid editor? The case where the nominator is the paid editor for the nominated article is already covered by existing policy. isaacl (talk) 16:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Well the specific case discussed was a self-nom, but to make it clear I added "The article's talk page should also contain a COI or paid editor disclosure." (and further bolded the WP:COI extract to include on affected talk pages, and whenever you discuss the topic," (bolding added)). That should cover it and avoid the question of "What if the nominator didn't know the article was paid for." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:20, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Note: Tony Ahn and his crew, as discussed at length in the COI/N discussion I linked above, were experts at getting other editors to ride point for them on these things. – Athaenara ✉ 17:33, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Of course if you are nominating a DYK at the behest of a paid editor - that should be disclosed per WP:COIRESPONSE and WP:COIATTRIBUTE. And the proposed wording avoids the exceedingly rare case of "What if the editor who nominated the article at the behest of a paid editor didn't know that the paid editor was paid?" In general IMHO we should avoid letting extremely rare "borderline" cases determine what we decide here. Trying to make this complete for every possible case just makes it complex and opens other interpretations and borderline cases, and plays into the hands of paid editors. Let's just stick with the sense of the current policy and guideline. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
    • I feel the current policy and guidelines on disclosure are enough when paid editors are nominating their own articles. So the only additional case covered by question 1 is as follows: Let's say there are nice paid editors who just want to improve Wikipedia's articles (maybe Wikipedians-in-residence). So they create articles and don't ask anyone to nominate them for DYK. Then an editor who goes through new pages looking for DYK opportunities sees an article and nominates it. Maybe it's more important to remind reviewers to look at the article talk page for disclosure notices. isaacl (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The thing to do would be include it in the template for creating the DYK nomination. This looks fairly easy if we can get consensus for it. Jytdog (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

That would really be all that is needed. I'd hope folks would also read WP:PAID and WP:PAY. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

For those opposing disclosure of any COI here at DYK, can you please explain how the community should avoid another debacle like the Gibraltarpedia matter? The heart of the scandal was that the project had seventeen DYKs in a single month, and one of the editors organizing it (and doing DYK nominations) was being paid by the Gibraltar Tourism Board for organizing the project. Whatever you think of paid editing or GLAM stuff, the optics of that were terrible, and this is what was made hay of in the press, and damaged the reputation of Wikipedia. It was actually a thread at this talk page, here, that first raised that issue, as was reported on here for example.

In my view if the COI is disclosed then the people who work this board at least can be aware of what is going on, review the nomination with the COI in mind, and can consider whether something is getting (to import a policy that may not usually be applied to the trend in DYKs) UNDUE weight. I don't much care for blanket bans or more "regulation" but disclosure locally is really just common sense.

Those who don't learn from the past, blah blah.

So, I am interested in hearing a response to that from folks like User:The Rambling Man amd User:SoWhy, and anybody else of course. Jytdog (talk) 15:47, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Yet another false extrapolation. No-one is "opposing disclosure of any COI here at DYK". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't know why you thought I said that. I said we should comply with the site's blanket approach to COI and paid editing. Read my statement again. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

What he said. COI is not a problem of DYK, it's a site-wide problem. The proposal here was to institute a special check at DYK and that's something we don't need. We should treat articles created in violation of PAID/COI like the rest of the project does, not create special DYK rules or procedures. Regards SoWhy 16:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

User:The Rambling Man and User:SoWhy, the COI guideline calls for local disclosure. Why would you then oppose having COI disclosed as part of the DYK template which would indeed be exactly in line with sitewise guidance? Jytdog (talk)

Because we don't need to repeat site-wise guidance at every hierarchical step of Wikipedia. We don't do it for V or RS or NPA or other policies, why we'd pick this one and roll it out at just one or two "key" locations, I know not. Anyway, I've made my point abundantly clear so no more badger cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"V" is a policy, not a stage an article goes through where we are actually evaluating it. DYK is much more akin to say AfC where we very much look for local disclosure of COI so the reviewers there, review with the COI in mind. Other similar stages an article goes through are GA or FA review, and I would expect COI/PAID to be disclosed locally there as well. The primary reason disclosure is made, is so that review can be done with disclosure in mind. That is what disclosure is for- it is not just some silly checkbox we tack here and there randomly. Jytdog (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

My guess is that checking for verifiability is already ingrained in DYK reviewers, so they already are well aware to make appropriate checks. How about we add item 4(b) to the eligibility criteria, to examine if there are any signs that appropriate disclosures have not been made? isaacl (talk) 20:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Fail, DYKs frequently fail on V, even after they've been reviewed. Local disclosure is covered by the site-wide guidance. Nothing more needs to be added here. If someone is going to hide it, they'll hide it. If someone inadvertently fails to state it, yet the article gets passed (!!) by the DYK review "process", (and even after being re-reviewed by an independent reviewer), there's no actual harm done to the encyclopedia. That's all there is to it. Now, remember, no badgers! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I should have worded that differently: I disagreed with the previous statement that verifiability isn't something to be evaluated by DYK reviewers. Perhaps it should be given a subitem under eligibility criterion 4. isaacl (talk) 20:53, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The key question is on how many guidance pages are we going to put reminders to comply with Wikipedia's terms of use? There are lots of embarrassing situations that can arise, some of them with non-paid editors too. It's a gradual tragedy of the commons: sure, it doesn't hurt to put one more reminder about X on page Y, but as more and more points are added to more pages, people are less likely to read and retain the details. And paid editors interested in following the rules only need to read about the disclosure requirements once; protests from them that they didn't see a mention in subsection XYZ on guidance page ABC aren't valid excuses. isaacl (talk) 17:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, there is only one page that really needs a clear reminder, i.e. Special:CreateAccount. If there was a big message that undisclosed paid editing is forbidden when people register their account, no one could ever claim to not have known about it. Regards SoWhy 17:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"those opposing disclosure of any COI here at DYK": I am not one of those, the question wasn't "any", at least I understood that the question was if we need "extra" declaration on top of what is required project-wide, and I say "No". The normal declaration on user and article is enough for me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

So this thread arose, because a DYK reviewer felt that they "discovered" that the nominator was a paid editor instead of having that simply diclosed locally. This is something that happens to people, when they assume they are dealing a volunteer and find out after the interaction begins that the person has a COI of some sort.

This sort of unpleasant surprise happens, and when it does, it is kind of icky for everybody, and is easily avoided. This is why the COI guideline calls for people to disclose locally. Jytdog (talk) 18:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

And the local disclosure is mandated by the site-wide guideline: COI editors (which includes paid editors) "should make the disclosure on your user page, on affected talk pages, and whenever you discuss the topic," (bolding added). i.e. disclosing on this page is not an extra disclosure, simply the same type of disclosure required from everybody. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:13, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

"mandated" is not really the appropriate word. These discussions about COI become so difficult because so there is some much ...overloading and misdirection. Jytdog (talk) 18:33, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

What about having paid editors perform two or three reviews for every one they submit? This is somewhat apart from the specific question(s) on the table above. DYK, as with other "formal" community processes (e.g. I'd like to see the same thing at GAN) requires a great deal of time/effort by volunteers -- time/effort which is spread quite thin at times. Paid editing is allowed, and can be done in a way that follows community policies and guidelines as well as the terms of use. But when paid editing activities place a great burden on structured community processes, it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask for a little extra engagement with those processes. Sorry if this has already been suggested somewhere above -- coming to this when it's already rather long. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Honestly I would rather that paid editors didn't do any reviews at all, too much risk of QPQ between paid editors. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

If they're required to disclose, that would be rather transparent if we had a rule against doing so. Doesn't seem like something that would preclude having them do 2 reviews. Of course that's presuming there is not a ban on it (which it does not look like there is going to be). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Skyes(BYU) is one of my student workers. She just started working this month. I do review the pages my students work on but there is no substitute for having feedback from other editors, so thank you for that. I think the process of going through DYK is more rigorous than a new page patrol and if anything, it provides a good check on the neutrality of new pages. There is a real problem with gender imbalance in the hard sciences in Mormonism, and I felt like we could work to combat this by making pages for Mormon women in hard sciences. I made Cynthia B. Lee and had a successful DYK nomination with her page, but I think the key difference is that she doesn't work at BYU. Skyes(BYU) made Laura Bridgewater as part of this effort and most recently the Denise Stephens page. I've also worked on pages of other previous BYU professors because we had their papers in special collections. Obviously, I'm opposed to banning paid editors from DYK nominations. I am open to hearing a good solution to frequent disclosure of my paid editing for a GLAM institution. Maybe I could put it in my signature? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Rachel Helps (BYU): You make a good case for my argument. I am 100% certain that a key factor that made my other half sign up to the Women in Red World Contest is that there was money involved. I myself am happy to have got some books as a prize for doing the West Country Challenge. I don't think I'd have been motivated to expand A431 road and Colston bun without some sort of hope of an intrinsic reward at the end of it. In both those articles, I really felt I was trying to squeeze blood out of a stone a bit too much just to get it past a magical 1500 character limit that would count towards a prize, and you can almost see it in the edit summaries. Of course, in my case, the reward was entirely dependent on the work being done properly. I got paid (if you count a free lunch as "paid", which I do because there ain't nothing else) for improving The Minories, Colchester and taking it through DYK, but that was more of a token of gratitude that I'd voluntarily done the work for them. PS: And thank you Wittylama for expressing my views more eloquently than I have been able to.Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 3 - Ollagüe

• ... that the steam plume of Ollagüe can be seen (pictured) from large distances?

• A few issues here. On the one hand, in the image there is a plume on the left hand summit, but that looks like smoke. So a steam plume isn't "pictured" (Ollagüe is, but that's not what the caption implies). A DYK image should actually show what we're reading about. Also, "large distances" is too vague. 10 miles? 50 miles? 500 miles? Black Kite (talk) 23:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

• Edit: the phrase "steam plume" is not mentioned in the target article. The source says "fumarolic clouds", which are a lot more than H2O. Black Kite (talk) 23:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Black Kite: Please see the above discussion over at #Prep 3 - Ollagüe's plume. An alternate hook has already been proposed there. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:53, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, missed that. Will comment above. Thanks. Black Kite (talk) 23:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I was moving this hook to Prep 5 and missed this conversation. I fixed the caption to indicate the left side. The target article says fumarole, which was simplified to "steam plume"; I piped a link. Yoninah (talk) 00:07, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• Moving section from above to here, to keep everything together:
• ... that the steam plume of Ollagüe can be seen (pictured) from large distances? Jo-Jo Eumerus, User:7&6=thirteen, Narutolovehinata5

This is pretty much meaningless. And not really hooky at all. Father Ted's cow size sketch springs to mind. What about something like:

... that Ollagüe has a vigorous fumarole that is visible from tens of kilometres? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:56, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

That's better. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

No problem. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:13, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Can the image caption be made clearer as well? There clearly isn't any sort of plume coming from the right-hand peak. Black Kite (talk) 23:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I fixed the caption. I don't see anything about "tens of kilometers" in the article. Yoninah (talk) 00:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The "tens of kilometers" was used in the nomination. It's an extant ref that just needs bringing out in the article. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:42, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Brought it out in the article, as "over 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away". The right/left thing was just an error on my part. I did use "steam plume" because that's what fumaroles usually are and look like, while "fumarole" is a technical term. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:35, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done Thank you. Offline hook ref AGF and cited inline. I'll replace the hook in the prep set. Yoninah (talk) 13:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Shanique Speight

Greetings, I am wondering if the hook proposed in Template:Did you know nominations/Shanique Speight is overly political. The article is about a lawmaker in New Jersey but the hook appears to be more focused on Cory Booker's political actions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:29, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The use of "improper" in the hook seems to imply malicious intent, which isn't really reflected in the source. Perhaps that's just my opinion. Alex Shih (talk) 11:34, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

There is no definition of "improper" that says that the word means a deliberate action in violation of known rules, they all say something like not in accordance with accepted rules or standards. Nowhere is "malicious intent" implied, inferred or insinuated. The mention of Booker is merely intended to make the hook more interesting. Alansohn (talk) 15:50, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Queue 3

The word "closeup" needn't be in the caption. And Persoonia elliptica should be italicized. Yoninah (talk) 20:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Gatoclass (talk) 20:43, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Also in Queue 3, the Persoonia saccata credits need |subpage=Persoonia elliptica. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

This was not done in time, so I manually fixed the {{DYK talk}} on the article's talk page. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 00:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Mandarax. Gatoclass (talk) 15:10, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Question concerning repeats

Well, this certainly sucks.

I had 5×'d Xiangshawan and was looking how to format the nomination since there's an existing one at Template:Did you know nominations/Xiangshawan and hit this. Is it new? It had never come up before for me, but I had the impression articles could show up at creation and 5× and GA status, if anyone actually cared enough about them to take them through that. I understand not wanting to have a single editor game it by writing a barely-passable article, quickly boosting it to the real article s/he should have written in the first place, and then running it back through again; something like this, where an editor put in the time to fix what had been a confusing and badly done stub, what is the benefit of a blanket exclusion policy? — LlywelynII 09:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I am not quite sure to what you are referring, but if it is supplementary rule D1 that states "Items that have been on DYK before are ineligible" it seems perfectly reasonable to me. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's particularly reasonable myself. What's the rationale behind it? The only reason I can think is that it might cause a bit of reader WP:ASTONISHment to see the same article listed again. But I think that would only be relevant if there was a very short period between the listings. Because otherwise, it's not like we have too many DYKs and they're competing for space, is it? We had to reduce the turnover rate because we weren't getting enough entries in. And the idea behind the section is to reward the activity that led to it, i.e. creation, 5x expansion and GA promotion. So if an article happens to have all three of those on separate occasions, I say reward them all. Why not.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:09, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

​We indeed have too many DYKs coming in, which is why we switched to a shorter 12 hour cycle to reduce the backlog.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

(ec) There's no good reason other than the fact we could easily see the same target article featured on the main page in the DYK section three times within a very short time period, e.g. a matter of weeks. If you would like to modify the ruleset, I suggest you make a proposal that we can discuss and then try to form a consensus against. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:18, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

A better response would have been to become more selective, and double the attention given to each hook for decreased error rates. EEng 16:17, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, apologies then. I don't know why I imagined there was a shortage of entries. I actually came to this question because I'm expanding an article and was wondering if I had to "decide" whether to give it a hook here on 5x or to wait for the better version after it goes through GA. But yes, reducing errors seems a useful goal as well.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:32, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I had this same problem two years ago, after the Second Avenue Subway article passed GA. The page had appeared on DYK in 2004 on the basis of being new. Even though Template:Did you know nominations/Second Avenue Subway didn't exist, I was told that the article could never be run at DYK again.

Now, back to the reason why DYKs can't be renominated. The following is a theory only, though. I think this is because it wouldn't be exactly "new" content if it appeared at DYK twice. After all, there are more than 5 million pages, and probably 50,000 to 100,000 of them have appeared in DYK at some point, so there's still many more pages that have the opportunity to be displayed at DYK.

Just to clarify, again, this is my own opinion about why DYK's aren't re-run. I personally think it's a counter-intuitive rule. If an article is created and nominated for DYK, it lowers the incentive to expand the article five-fold. epicgenius (talk) 18:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

DYK is almost overdue

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

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

Then, when the time is right I will be able to update the template. Thanks and have a good day, DYKUpdateBot (talk) 10:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

The update of Prep 4 to the main page seems to be a few hours overdue. Yoninah (talk) 14:34, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Ping some admins @Gatoclass, Alex Shih, Casliber, Mifter, and Vanamonde:.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:38, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Fix Vanamonde93 Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:40, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Or we can pretend that we've already switched to a 24 hour cycle as per Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Proposal:_Back_to_one_set_per_24_hours... Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I know the update is late, I didn't get much sleep last night, as a result of which, I logged on here much later than usual and was unable to post the update in time. I was about to start my usual set review before posting this and will do so shortly, if you can wait a little longer I am still willing to do that, but I'm about to take a short break beforehand. Gatoclass (talk) 14:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I personally don't have any great desire for haste, was just pinging to see if/make sure things were occuring Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:57, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Done. Alex Shih (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Alex Shih just posted an update so we are good for the next 12 hours, thanks Alex. I will review the next update and post it in probably an hour or so and then we will be good for the next 24. Gatoclass (talk) 15:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good, Gatoclass. I will double check the hooks too and leave the rest to you, thanks. February 1st feels like the high time to go back to 24 hours set. Alex Shih (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Alex Shih, I was thinking that we should probably run for another day or two as we still have around 200 hooks in total, I'd like to see it down to 180 or so before switching to 24 hours as the longer we can stick to 12 hours now the longer it will be before we have to do this all over again. Anyone else have an opinion on when we should return to 24 hours? Gatoclass (talk) 15:20, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Now, clearly, per all the supports in the section way above. Don't delay just because of your personal preference. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. There is clear consensus to change back to 24 hour hooks. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, back to 24h please. I've picked up 3 errors and 2 confusions - and that's just me - in the last few days. It's needed. Black Kite (talk) 18:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

This already has strong consensus above, there's no need for another round of "when shall we do it" questions. Please, any admin now fix it to 24 hours per set. We don't need Gatoclass' permission here, and the consensus in two threads is clear. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello? Clear consensus on two threads now. Back to one set per day we go. Or perhaps we just go on filibustering.... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Gatoclass, Alex Shih, can you please delay the switchover by 12 hours? Right now, the next set will be changing at 14:45 on February 1. Far better to change at 02:45, or indeed any time before 12:00, and then have the next one go at 00:00 February 2. Otherwise, the auto update will move later by 15 minutes daily, eventually getting to 00:00 in early March, far from ideal. Thank you. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset: You are right (Sorry about having you mention this every time). I've temporarily reverted back to 12 hours, triggered the bot, and reset back to 24 hours again while manually drifting to 0:00 UTC so that we are back to clean slate. The current set will only be on Main Page for 19 hours this way, but I think that's fair enough. Alex Shih (talk) 05:57, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Trump Street - a controversy-sparking, ticking time bomb... right where we don't need it

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

---

I know we like to "hook" readers in... but this is a serious accusation to make on our main page, even ff it is tongue-in-cheek type fun. I highly suggest the currently approved hooks by @Ceranthor: be correctly marked as disapproved, due to the nature of the Arbitration Enforcement measures active in the area. Knowingly alluding to actual connections between Trump and Russia when there's a very real investigation currently going on to find out the answer to this question, is not something I think the WMF is going to find too hilarious when it hits our most viewed Wiki's main page. ​ ​ ​ — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 19:45, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• I'm making a note of issues to raise with Katherine Maher on Saturday. I'll add that to the list and let you know what she says. Andrew D. (talk) 19:50, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Andrew Davidson: I would highly appreciate it. This is a very serious issue, and it needs to be resolved at a much higher level immediately. Ceranthor should have known better than to approve these, and I'm not even going to speak to how ashamed I am to see some of our editor's comments there. This is not a joke. This is a very, very serious matter. And we are an encyclopedia. There are plenty of things to joke about on April 1st... this is not one of them. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:00, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the original hook (that Trump is directly connected to Russia?) is inappropriate but ALT1 (that Trump Street is directly connected to Russia Row?) just reads like a bit of harmless fun to me. Gatoclass (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Aye, the hook Ceranthor approved is witty but also fairly risky. I do not mind using one of the alts that don't directly imply wrongdoing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:57, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gatoclass: (edit conflict) Alt1 is not what's approved though, only Alt0 and Alt2... both of which are completely unacceptable. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:00, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Well somebody verify ALT1 then and we'll run that. Gatoclass (talk) 20:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I am fine with ALT1. I actually prefer it, too. ceranthor 20:06, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Also support Alt 1. It is ok to be interesting, but not to be misleading. To somebody who doesn't go to the linked articles after reading the hook, Alt0 and ALt2 are both misleading and potentially libelous. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:11, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Re-ticked for Alt1 only. ceranthor 20:18, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I tried to check whether Alt0 might be ok for April 1st, but even then it is borderline as a lie if they don't click on any of the links (in terms of trying to distinguish between misleading and a lie, the April Fools DYK guide says the former is ok and the later is not). If this didn't concern a BLP, I'd say go with it, but we are meant to be cautious with borderline BLP calls. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:33, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I have no desire to provoke needless controversy. ceranthor 20:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I wrote the original hook "Did you know that Trump is directly connected to Russia" because I thought it was funny (although I think I'm on record in saying I didn't care if it was tossed out and not promoted). In fact, I thought it was laugh-out-loud funny and has already been posted online in a reasonably neutral manner. It's no different to what Punch and Private Eye were doing years before the internet, let alone Wikipedia, even existed. Or Spitting Image. Or that old "Land of Confusion" video with Ronald Regan getting confused about which button says "Nuke". There can be no possible protection of privacy since this has been headline news for a year and Trump has been gobbing off about on Twitter for ages. The right to satire and parody is important as it kicks back against dictatorships and repression (if you want serious criticism - Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations is thataway). Nobody ever had an issue with me suggesting George "Dubya" Bush carried around a copy of President of the United States for Dummies - why are you all so terrified of Trump? I can only assume it's because you really are worried he'll sue the WMF off the face of the earth. I get the point that we shouldn't respond in kind, but I don't see me talking about shithole countries, calling all Mexicans rapists and thinking grabbing women by the vagina is actually alright if you've got lots of money, so....... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:21, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, quite right Ritchie333, "Did you know that Trump is directly connected to Russia" is funny, that's what it should say.Smeat75 (talk) 22:17, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Other alts might be somewhat more active, with something like

ALT 1 (b)... that Trump Street heads into to Russia Row? (c) ... that Trump Street careens into to Russia Row? (that might be too liberal a use of careens) (d)... that Trump Street stops in Russia Row? (e)... that Trump Street ends in to Russia Row? ATL2 That Russia Row leads to Trump Street, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• I don't see anything wrong with it at all, As noted it's funny and we should occasionally post humourous stuff like this!, If Coffee is so sensitive over something so trivial as this then maybe Wikipedia isn't for them. –Davey2010^Talk 22:27, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I suggest you retract that attack. @Fram, TonyBallioni, Primefac, The Wordsmith, NeilN, and Sandstein: see above. User has harassed me repeatedly, (have diffs) and now this. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:36, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
  • @Fram, TonyBallioni, Primefac, The Wordsmith, NeilN, Sandstein, BU Rob13, and Worm That Turned:: see this too: thank trolling. This user has been formally requested to not contact me as well. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

"thank trolling"? Since I have also "been formally requested to not contact" User:Coffee along with, what was it, sixteen others yesterday, could I just clarify, this unfamiliar, to me, term "thank trolling" means I must never click on "Send public thanks" on an edit he has made? I wouldn't want to step out of line.Smeat75 (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Replied on users talkpage. –Davey2010^Talk 23:02, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• • • @Davey2010: Please knock off poking Coffee. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:43, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, stop stirring Coffee up. EEng 22:56, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, as I read BLP policy and that arbitration case about it you have two choices when someone makes a BLP claim like this, 1) compromise or 2) get an RfC, active consensus that it's not a BLP problem. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I’m sensitive about this too Davey. This will provoke needless controversy and drama. Just skip it. Mr Ernie (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, yes a ticking time bomb, not like those ones that go off with a bang? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:48, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• As David Eppstein put it early in the discussion on the nom page [11]: "In authoritarian countries, creators of artworks may remove material that their government might find controversial". Is that what we've been reduced to? —David Eppstein EEng 22:56, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I’m not in the government. Also EEng please specify who the “bunch of wussies” are in your edit summary. Mr Ernie (talk) 23:02, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

As much as I admire DE, that's just silly -- no one is afraid of any government in this. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Mr Ernie and Alanscottwalker appear to have completely missed the point of my comment. Yes, you're not in the government. The comment was directed at you, and other people like you who are not in government but nevertheless try to censor along the lines they think the government would want. It is a quote from our article on self-censorship, which often is a more powerful censoring force than official government censorship. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:13, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I’m trying to follow site policies as I understand them and prevent unnecessary disruption/drama. If the government is watching, let me ask them to widen the road in front of my neighborhood - morning traffic is miserable. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

One of the relevant policies (and yes, it is policy, not just a guideline) is WP:NOTCENSORED. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:11, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, please, David Eppstein, you've managed to make your comment more silly by doubling down. It is clearly you have missed the point - I said no one is acting to censor themselves, and certainly not for fear of the government - it is difficult to imagine a more garbage rationale than yours, over whether "street" is in a DYK about . . . wait for it . . . a street. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

The most relevant policy is BLP. The hook as proposed flatly failed BLP, because there is an ongoing investigation to determine the extent of the connection. I’m not sure why you seem to not be able to understand this. Mr Ernie (talk) 02:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:BLP doesn't apply to street names. nagualdesign 02:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Point out how readers could see it was referring to streets in the original hook or stop trolling. Mr Ernie (talk) 04:36, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So because you disagree with me I'm a troll, eh? Does that make you Billy Goat Gruff?

I would suggest that clicking on either of the links would probably do the trick. nagualdesign 05:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Point out how readers could see it was referring to streets in the original hook... Oh, I dunno. Maybe because of the ...tendency in US English to drop the "street" qualifiers (cf: Haight-Ashbury)... ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 05:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• Ridiculous and meritless complaint. Not even close to a BLP violation. Only in death does duty end (talk) 22:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Only in death, I really want to be ok with ALT0 as it is very amusing once the joke is known (the reader clicks on one of the articles). The issue is when the reader doesn't go any further than the main page and doesn't click on either of the links. In this case the reader might take it seriously (if they don't realise that it is April 1st) or they might notice that it is April 1st and then might think that Wikipedia is treating Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections as a joke. Both are bad results. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Why can't Wikipedia remain the one place to present information from the neutral point of view? If you want to mindlessly bash Trump, CNN is that way. I oppose all versions of the hook because none of them are neutral. This is just a thinly veiled attempt to use Wikipedia to make a political point. Rentier (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, for fuck's sake, get a grip. It's got nothing to do with any political point. If we had an article about uranium being discovered on Mt. Everest, I'd write some hook like "Hillary let the uranium go" in a flash. WP:BLP concerns information about living persons. Information. Information. An obvious play on words is not information because no reasonable person would interpret it as an assertion of fact. EEng 23:23, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

No. A completely factual version is neutral. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

The factual versions that use the full names are neutral, and are still funny because of the associated pun. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:18, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Quite apart from anything else, the original doesn't really work because in the UK we don't drop the qualifier "Road", "Street" etc. There is nothing at all wrong with ALT1 and I'd run with that, and ALT3/4/5 are OK as well. Black Kite (talk) 23:20, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• I really think that everyone needs to care about this a little less. ALT1 is set to go, and it isn't worth having a fight about. If anyone feels like the sky will fall unless we Easter egg-link it to make it sound like it's not about streets, I suggest getting a hat, or maybe read WP:RGW. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• In past years we've run the following on 4/1:
  • ...that John F. Kennedy was shot dead in an ambush by government agents who had foreknowledge of his whereabouts?
  • ...that Ben Affleck died while shoveling snow outside of his house, leaving behind an unexpectedly small estate speculated to be worth as little as US$20,000?
  • ... that Gordon Brown and Kim Jong-Il are both known for their athletic abilities?
  • ... that Tom Cruse was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantly charging hostile Indians?
  • ... that Nick Clegg is sorry?

All BLP violations, I suppose? EEng 23:55, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

How about "DYK investigators finally mapped out Trump/Russia intersection?" It skewers all. --DHeyward (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• Anyone who reads this hook and thinks "Aha! If Wikipedia says so, it must be true..." without ever clicking on any of the links in it absolutely deserves to be humiliated by their rabidly-Trump-supporting uncle on Facebook who uses links to Wikipedia to prove them wrong.

In other words: This is clearly a joke (of the "satire" variety), and anyone who can't take a joke deserves to be the butt of it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:31, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

None of the Alts are BLP violations, even the funniest one, because they aren't about any living person, they're about street names. Talk about a storm in a coffee cup. Some people need to lighten up a bit. Maybe even a lot. nagualdesign 01:27, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

nagualdesign, unless a reader clicks one of the links, the hooks appear to make assertions about a living person (the whole point of the joke), which puts ALT0 and ALT2 firmly into BLP territory. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 02:27, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I happen to have worked in the area of defamation law. It is black letter law that a defamatory statement on a front page cannot be cured by a retraction set out on an internal page, because there is inevitably some proportion of readership who will only read the defamatory statement and never proceed to the retraction. bd2412 T 03:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, if it was defamatory in the first place. I guess Politico (All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts) and Newsweek (THESE RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS ON THE U.S. TREASURY LIST HAVE TIES TO TRUMP AND HIS CAMPAIGN) must need your services badly, since by your analysis their reporting is defamatory. Defamation isn't the question here, just our own policies and guidelines. EEng 05:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

• I'm searching WP:BLP for how to to deal with jokes about real people... I can't seem to find it... Maybe it's at WP:DONTGETYOURPANTIESINAWAD?

Come on. This is obviously a joke, and I don't give a damn what anyone says about retractions: this is NOT a defamatory statement. If one wants to interpret it literally, it's about roads with no connection to living people. If one wants to read the obvious implications into it, then one has to accept that it's also obviously not serious: because it's still about motherfucking roads! (on a motherfucking plane!). You can't simultaneously insist that this is about Donald Trump and not obvious satire. It doesn't work that way, and I'll eat my damn shorts if anyone can find a libel judge who would side with such a ridiculous argument. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:00, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry Pants but you’re just wrong in this case. It’s a violation of our policies because the original hook can’t stand on its own. You have to click the link to the article to understand the “joke.” Mr Ernie (talk) 04:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, Ernie, but you're just wrong on this one. Hyperlinks are not exactly an unusual and little-understood phenomenon on this here internet thingy, and woe be unto he who thinks he understands what a link means without at least checking the URL. (In case anyone's having trouble puzzling that one out, the "serious" version is: Hyperlinks are a well understood and extraordinarily commonly used method of conveying additional meaning through text. The suggestion that one can grasp the meaning of text which is hyperlinked without taking in the link is akin to suggesting that one can grasp the meaning of a body of plain text that has had a random number of words in random spots removed from it. It's possible in theory, but phenomenally stupid to even try. It's exactly for questions like this that legal constructs such as the Reasonable person exist. No reasonable person would read a sentence with bolded, hyperlinked words and presume that the hyperlinks do not convey additional meaning beyond the text itself.) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 05:04, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

MjolnirPants. From your perspective, sure. Try explaining all that to my grandma. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 11:51, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

What about WP:EGG? --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 12:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

That's for articles, not for humour Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Insertcleverphrasehere: Would you say your grandma is representative of the average internet user? And if she is on the internet, does she not know what hyperlinks are? I'm sorry, but that's not a convincing retort. If you grandmother is so inept with internet norms, then she's almost certainly not on the internet. If she's that inept and on the internet, then she's certainly not representative of the reasonable person on the internet, and we wouldn't be obliged to cater our content to her standards.

My 78 year old father manages his own web site, by the way. (Nothing special, just family photos, a family tree, and some info on his life and interests.) Wrote the entire thing by hand in Notepad++, too. HTML5, CSS and jQuery. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:07, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Here readers would see the link displayed as ..., not the hidden reference to the page ..., unless they clicked on the link or hovered their mouse cursor over it. If a physical copy of the article were printed --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:30, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I have no idea who you're quoting, but I might point out that Wikipedia is not a physical encyclopedia, but a web encyclopedia. If someone were to print out the page while ignoring the hyperlinks, that would be just as silly and stupid as ignoring the hyperlinks while reading it online. Not something a reasonable person would do. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia is written for everyone, not the 'average user'. If we put Alt0 up, some people are going to read it seriously, scoff, and leave the page without clicking one of the links. They might even think that it represents vandalism. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 17:40, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

And some people will read Andrew Wakefield and conclude that he was oppressed by big pharma because all dem big wurds is hard t'reed. We can certainly write for everyone, but we already have a project where we write for those who are "below average" in terms of their ability to take in the information we offer. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:16, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

all dem big words – There are Republican big words too. EEng 18:22, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

They're the best words. Really great words. Everybody agrees. Nobody has better words. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

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

DYK for Waitangi Day

I see that it is quite likely that DYK will be swapping back to 24 hours. I have an upcoming DYK (Treaty of Waitangi) which would ideally be up for all of Waitangi Day (Feb 6th) in New Zealand, which awkwardly straddles two UTC days roughly evenly (UTC+13). Not sure how to address this, but I'd be happy if it were swapped out for Wainui Falls (another approved and pending DYK of mine) halfway through the day, so that it went roughly Wainui Falls for the first half of Feb 5th (UTC), then Treaty of Waitangi for the second half of the 5th and first half of the 6th, then back to Wainui Falls for the second half of the 6th (both are hooks with images so would occupy the same slot). Is this a technical possibility? — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:54, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere, I'm afraid it is unreasonable to request manual swaps. It is unfortunately a normal occurrence that special occasion requests run for only a portion of the day in local time. Since we've indeed just gone back from 12 hours to 24 hours, you would still be getting 13 hours on the correct day, an hour longer than you would otherwise have gotten if we stayed at 12 hours. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Well thanks for your response anyway. Better than nothing I suppose. It should run on the 6th UTC then so that it is up in evening I guess. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 01:07, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree it should run in the PM in NZ as more Kiwis will see it. I have also created Template:Did you know nominations/Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi for that day if someone could review it in time please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Suggestiong new hooks while reviewing articles

I have been wondering a bit what is the correct procedure when you want a slight change in a proposed hook. Now, for instance, I would suggest that one word in a hook is left out, just because I think it is superfluous. Should I make a new hook proposal myself, encourage the nominator to make a new one or could I just strike one word in the hook myself? Iselilja (talk) 21:43, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Just do it yourself if it's non-controversial. It'd be nice to let the nominator know, of course. But be quick, once it gets hurried through to a queue, only admins will be able to do any modifications, and if you raise issues too late, you may be subject to the Gatoclass clause. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:52, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Prep 6 - Sutton Hoo helmet

... that Rick Kirby's Sutton Hoo Helmet (pictured) weighs 900 kilograms (2,000 lb)? 97198, The C of E, Usernameunique

This is contextually meaningless to most people reading Wikipedia, certainly without the Sutton Hoo link. The original Sutton Hoo helmet (note the lack of capital H), weighed around 2.5kg, so if and only if you get the link to the original helmet (which is not mentioned or linked), then you'd realise this one weighs around 250 times more. But otherwise, it's "SO WHAT". A far superior hook would be to stat that Kirby's sculpture was 250 times heavier than the original, or something, linking to them both for context. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

The Rambling Man, it's a big sculpture that weighs a lot—I think that's interesting with or without the comparison to the Anglo-Saxon piece. Michelangelo's David weighs 12,000 pounds; does that need to be compared to the weight of an average man to be interesting?

But that's not to say that yours is not also perfectly fine:

... that Rick Kirby's Sutton Hoo Helmet (pictured) is 360 times as heavy as the original? --Usernameunique (talk) 22:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, without a link to the original helmet (which I know very well) and without some context (many of Henry Moore's sculptures weigh in excess of a ton) the hook isn't helpful. So contextualising it for our "less knowledgeable" audience is a great idea. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

... that Rick Kirby's Sutton Hoo Helmet (pictured) is 360 times heavier than the original? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's common knowledge that Henry preferred the larger lady. Most readers will probably not even have heard of Sutton Hoo, let alone it's helmets. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Administrative action is needed to change the hook in Queue 6 before it goes live. Yoninah (talk) 11:45, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

 Done Alex Shih (talk) 13:22, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Further edit required: replace'''[[Rick Kirby]]'s''' with '''[[Rick Kirby]]'''{{`s}}. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:50, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mandarax: Actually I just fixed that 15 minutes ago, although I didn't use the template. Alex Shih (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, it's closer now, but the apostrophe is still bold, so the template should be used. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 18:57, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I see, done. Alex Shih (talk) 19:02, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Joseph Stamler

I was looking at Template:Did you know nominations/Joseph Stamler. I noticed that the article meets the fivefold expansion, but only if you do not count 24 revision-suppressed versions that were copyright violations.

So here's my question: would the fivefold expansion be counted from the copyvio version, or from the last clean version? I did the latter. epicgenius (talk) 02:03, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

According to DYK supplementary rule A4 Fivefold expansion is calculated from the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was (copyvios are an exception)]​Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:52, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Don't know about the rules, but we should not request expansion of copyrighted material. I remember one case when it was handled that way, BWV 131 (long ago, the removed material was not counted, after longish discussion). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:51, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Common sense would suggest that we should not count the expansion from the version including copyvios, but from the last copyvio-free version prior to the edits made by the person bringing the article to DYK. Vanamonde (talk) 13:07, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

All right. I will review from the last non-copyvio version then. Thanks everyone for your feedback. epicgenius (talk) 14:02, 1 February 2018 (UTC)