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

Queue 3 (13 June 00:00)

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Lucky Day (Doctor Who)

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@AirshipJungleman29, TheDoctorWho, Pokelego999, and Sammi Brie: The cited source doesn't say anything to support the hook fact. RoySmith (talk) 23:35, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

??? @RoySmith: Re-checked the source, the exact quote says "And it's been really interesting talking to people in the village because, you know, they're really excited and want to know how much prep goes into all of this. But it wasn't until I sat down the other day and realised - per block, we have an allocated budget for six-weeks, and we spent two-thirds of that budget on three nights filming here. So it just gives you an idea of quite how much we've got going on." TheDoctorWho (talk) 02:17, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we're not looking at the same source? I'm looking at [6], which is https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002bw76/doctor-who-unleashed-season-2-4-lucky-day. But, I did just notice it says at the top, BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues, so I'm wondering if we're just getting different versions of the page? RoySmith (talk) 02:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, wait. In the nom, you've got "Event occurs at 10:44–10:53", so I assume that quote is something that's said on the video. In the article, you're missing the "Event occurs at 10:44–10:53", so I assumed I was just supposed to find the supporting text on the page itself. RoySmith (talk) 02:50, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, the template used on the nom page and in the article is {{cite episode}}, and that's the link to view the episode. The time isn't included in the article cite, because that same source supports other claims as well, that extend outside of that time frame. I included it on the nom page for ease of verification for a reviewer. TheDoctorWho (talk) 03:46, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can indicate the times for the individual citations using {{rp}} with "location=time index 10:44–10:53". See SoHo Weekly News for examples. RoySmith (talk) 11:18, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edinson Edgardo Farfán Córdova

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@AirshipJungleman29, Thriley, and Davide King: The hook is supposed to be about the subject, not about subject's predecessor. In fact, I don't see how this article passes WP:N at all, i.e. WP:1E and WP:NOTINHERITED. RoySmith (talk) 23:44, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how 1E and NOTINHERITED are applicable at all, but if you disagree you are of course welcome to start an AfD. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:12, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would we have an article on him if he wasn't the successor to the man who went on to become pope? The fact that the article was created the same day the 2025 papal conclave ended makes me suspect not. I'm not foolish enough to start an AfD because I know how that would end, but we still need a hook that says something about Córdova independent of his predecessor. RoySmith (talk) 11:30, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we could say something about him and just him, but the current belief in DYK is that it has to be interesting, and what's most interesting about him is that he followed big footsteps. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:51, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, there's nothing interesting about him. That's exactly the point of WP:INHERITED. RoySmith (talk) 13:57, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say "nothing". I said that we have this interesting (leaning towards sensational) belief. Perhaps modify that, and then we can say something worth knowing about the new person on that unusual job, where "smell of sheep" is mentioned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:08, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would probably be looking for better sources than at current if I were to vote "Keep" at an AfD. Unless I am missing something, there appears to be only one source that is actually about him in any depth (as opposed to press releases and lists which just say "Fr. Cordova has been appointed X"). He's almost certainly notable, but I'd like to see more extensive coverage. Black Kite (talk) 12:24, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Catholic bishops are notable from their position. There are approximately 5,600 bishops that serve a population of nearly 1.5 billion catholics. Thriley (talk) 17:41, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, that much is clear from WP:CLERGY. But my point still holds that if we're going to put somebody on the main page, we need to be able to say something about what they've done other than hold some position which was previously held by some more famous person. RoySmith (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is hooky. The pope is one of the most well known people in the world. Taking a position that was just held by Babe Ruth, Donald Trump, Micheal Jackson etc seems hooky. Thriley (talk) 18:01, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think the hook fails the "hook must be about the subject" criterion, or at least its spirit, since the hook is arguably too attached to Leo XIV rather than actually being about him. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 18:06, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A hook which states the subject and the pope held the same position as bishop of a diocese in Peru is about the subject. It connects him to the diocese he serves and to the pope. Thriley (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're missing the point. If the hook fact is reliant on him being Leo XIV's successor in that position, instead of it being a hook where he can stand on his own, that is an issue. A hook that is about a subject's relationship with another person isn't necessarily wrong or even disallowed (I've proposed similar hooks in the past myself), but this is a different case since it's about succession and not something like inspiration. There has to be a better option here. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 18:34, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find interesting that here you argue for sticking to the subject, while in case of this song you brought in a fact around something only marginally related. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:49, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those are two different cases Gerda. The original hook seemed to focus too much on Leo XIV, whereas the new proposal is still more about Cordova than the Pope even if it still mentions Leo. In the case of the song you mentioned, the hook mentions Wilhelmus, but the hook was still primarily about the hook subject. I suspect this may be more of a language barrier in your case. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 07:02, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bill Cottrell

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@AirshipJungleman29, BeanieFan11, and Lullabying: I don't see how this passes WP:DYKINT. It's basically, "After leaving his first job, he got another job". RoySmith (talk) 23:51, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ALT2 is interesting to me. SL93 (talk) 00:02, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree. It's not necessarily the "after leaving their first job, they found a new one" that's the point, it's what that job is. Being in HR is very different from playing American football, so I thought the contrast was unusual. With that said, I wouldn't oppose a switch to ALT2 if consensus leaned that way. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:17, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anything becomes less interesting if you summarise it generically. It was interesting enough for me, see what NLH5 says above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:08, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This quote from the Detroit Free Press is the interesting story

"In the 1960s in pro football, the positions up the middle – quarterback, center and middle linebacker – were reserved for white players because they were 'thinking man's' positions," Acho said by text. "It wasn't until Bill Cottrell, who was extremely smart, that it was thought that black players could play center. He was the first."

and a hook should be built around that. I get that the first hook was pulled for lack of sufficient sourcing for the "first" statement, but the overcoming of the NFL's racism really is what we should be highlighting. WP:DYKINT says "Intriguing hooks leave the reader wanting to know more". If somebody really were intrigued by the idea of a football player going into labor relations and clicked through to find out more, they would be disappointed to find that we have exactly one sentence on this aspect of Cottrell's life. Surely if this is important enough to put on the main page, it's important enough to give greater coverage in the article. Looking at it another way, why does the {{Short description}} not say "American football player and labor relations supervisor (1944–2025)"? RoySmith (talk) 11:56, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is, are we actually sure that he was the first black center in the NFL? We've already had many issues with "first" hooks in the past, so if we are to revisit that angle, we actually have to make sure that the claim is watertight. I do think it is the most interesting fact in the article, but given how much of an exceptional claim it is, I don't know if it is the most practical. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 12:34, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So write a hook about his overcoming the NFL's racism with focusing on the "first" aspect. RoySmith (talk) 13:37, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@BeanieFan11: @Gonzo fan2007: Could either of you try to write a hook based on RoySmith's suggestion? @RoySmith: Did you mean to say "without focusing on the 'first' aspect"? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:43, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Something like, "... that it was thought that black men could not play the "thinking man's'" position of center in the NFL until the career of Bill Cottrell?" BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:03, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's the right idea. My only concern is whether we need to have more explicit attribution, i.e. "According to Jim Acho ..." and how to do that without generating something that's excessively verbose. RoySmith (talk) 18:48, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've bumped the hook to Prep 4 for now to give us more time to discuss. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:03, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Narutolovehinata5 and RoySmith: Well...? What sort of alternative variation of that do you have in mind? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:33, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Something like ... that according to an NFL alumni attorney, it was thought that black men could not play the "thinking man's" position of center in the NFL until the career of Bill Cottrell? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Roy, this is not interesting. It should be pulled. TarnishedPathtalk 11:58, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also agree with Roy. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:26, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I reopened the nomination at Template:Did you know nominations/Bill Cottrell. I suggest closing the nomination at timed out as well. SL93 (talk) 17:06, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SL93 @TarnishedPath @Khajidha What do you think of BeanieFan11's new proposal above? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My issue is that it doesn't say who thought such a thing. It could come across as racist without the context, and maybe even racist with the context. SL93 (talk) 23:21, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That people thought only white men were smart enough to play certain positions is indeed racist. We should not shy away from that. RoySmith (talk) 23:27, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should shy away from whatever could be interpreted in a bad way by our readers on the main page. SL93 (talk) 23:30, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It still comes across vaguely racist to me, in a sort of "he's a credit to his race" kind of way. I find the fact that he was an unheralded player from a high school with a poor record who became a starting lineup player professionally to be more interesting.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 23:56, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well we could do then ... that Bill Cottrell went from being an "unheralded" high school player for a poor team to a starter in the NFL? I don't see how the other hook is 'vaguely racist' though: I understand it as highlighting others' racism and how it was because of him that those racist ideas were proved wrong, which is something I think worth highlighting. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:08, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that it never needed to be proved wrong. They were only that way because of their racism. People who are targeted by racism do not need to seek validation from those who hold prejudiced views. SL93 (talk) 00:15, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like this hook. SL93 (talk) 00:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I personaly don't see a problem with the hook above which highlights the racist attitudes of the time. Howver this latest one is good too. TarnishedPathtalk 00:32, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
However, the hook doesn't state the time period. Even with the time period, it could be interpreted as Wikipedia still supporting the idea. By the way, it isn't just racist attitudes of the time. There are still plenty of people who are that racist. SL93 (talk) 00:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, why exactly would we want to highlight any racist attitudes of the time? SL93 (talk) 00:58, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because it's of interest? Anyway as I stated above he most recent hook is interesting also. TarnishedPathtalk 01:01, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As if it's only of the time period... Anyway, I'm glad you like the other hook. SL93 (talk) 01:03, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The hook about racism also seems a bit demeaning to Mr. Cottrell to me. It seems as if we are only interested in him because people were racist towards him. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith, Narutolovehinata5, Khajidha, SL93, and TarnishedPath: Seriously? I propose the most recent hook that everyone agrees with, I propose it at the nom, and then the response is to fail it because its there's already many football hooks and I don't see anything special about this particular person??? That is very frustrating. It'd been approved for 19 days then pulled because of concerns about the "first" hook – I'll add that those concerns were incorrect (the other "claimaint" brought up to that title isn't actually the first, and there doesn't seem to be any black center prior to him). Then I say that the other two proposed hooks work. I wait 27 further days for the reviewer to return to say that they're good to go. Then they get brought up here and so I propose a different one that everyone agrees with, I wait a few more days for someone to approve it at the nom, and the response? "drop it since there's already a lot of football hooks and he's not special"... That we're denying this historic black athlete who defied racism to play in the NFL from being on the main page for this is very frustrating. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:05, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feel your frustration mate. TarnishedPathtalk 15:13, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, there's always something. What about the first black athlete to play wide receiver? To be a place kicker? The first person of mixed-race? The first Albanian? The first queer? The first Jew? That's what I like about the timeout rule; we don't need to get into arguing about whether something deserved to be on the MP; the fact that it didn't get there in a certain amount of time is a dispassionate measure of whether people felt it was good enough.
It's good that nominations compete for a limited number of slots. Competition selects (albeit imperfectly) the better material. Some things don't make the cut, but this is true of all things. RoySmith (talk) 16:16, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If there's a hook on the first black wide receiver, I'd support it. The first Albanian NFL player? I'd support that too. I don't think the "amount of time" taken necessarily means it was not a good hook: e.g. for a 27-day period I was waiting for the reviewer to return to say it was good to go. Nearly a whole month. Does that mean it was an unworthy subject, because the reviewer took so long to return? I don't think so. And everyone agreed that the last hook was alright, so I see no reason this should have been declined. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It means that for two months, as reviewers and prep builders scanned over the list looking for hooks that caught their fancy, they kept passing it over and found something else. The NFL draft works the same way. The players get analysed every way possible: playing stats, how fast they run, how much they bench, how high they can jump, etc. But in the end, they get picked when somebody decides they're good enough to pick. Some guys don't get picked. RoySmith (talk) 16:36, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It means that for two months ... they kept passing it over and found something else. No, that's not what happened. It was reviewed within a few days, approved, and then soon after put into the prep before someone complained. ALT hooks were proposed, and we waited nearly a whole month with several pings before we could get the reviewer to return, who said it looked great. So that's half of the two-months just waiting for the reviewer to return. Then it was promoted after a week (a normal wait for an approved hook), and then you complained. So I proposed an ALT that everyone agreed with, and you respond by failing it because the first black center in NFL history is someone who's "not special". BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:41, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BeanieFan11 I said this up above, "ALT2 is interesting to me." I don't know why no one seemed to see it. SL93 (talk) 21:22, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, and TarnishedPath agreed it was a good hook as well. I see no reason why that hook shouldn't be allowed to be promoted. 21:47, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Big Four (cycling)

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Template:Did you know nominations/Big Four (cycling) was promoted to prep 1 on May 31.[1] In this edit,[2] @AirshipJungleman29: said "needs looking at", but have no further explanation that I can find. It was promoted into then pulled from Queue 1 in this edit[3] by AirshipJungleman29, who said "swapping problematic hook back into prep", but again, I canot find any explanation of the problem. Where is the communication and what is the problem? Courtesy ping @Verylongandmemorable:, the nominator. Flibirigit (talk) 02:11, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies Flibirigit and Verylongandmemorable, I thought I had left a section on this page, but clearly not. IIRC, the problems were a) that it was just one cycling journalist, and not one of any particular reputation, who used the phrase "lockdown"; b) that a one-word snapshot quote in the lead section almost always only says something that could be paraphrased (in this case it duplicates the previous sentence); and c) that having failed to win the most recent of the big races in question, the validity of the assertion is questionable in any case. There are enough superlative facts about the Four that a hook could be built around without relying on a reporter's assertions; could we try and workshop something different? Thanks, and sorry again for my lack of communication. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:36, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that the nominator has not edited in a few days. I will explore other hooks this weekend. Flibirigit (talk) 18:38, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some more ideas for hooks, trying to focus on facts/statistics rather than quotes:
AirshipJungleman29 any thoughts? Like you said, there are many superlative facts, particularly about their Grand Tour dominance, just tricky trying to phrase things so it is clear and impactful to a general (non-cycling) audience. Verylongandmemorable (talk) 19:48, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the first and, especially, the last. If someone else can review them, I'll change the hook in the prep set. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:16, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Queue 5

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Symphony in F major (Yamada)

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@NeoGaze, SL93, and AirshipJungleman29: The source says, "In 1997, the piece was re-constructed based on the few surviving parts and finally published by Shunju-sha Publishing Company in Tokyo as a part of the Anthology of Kousaku Yamada, Volume 1." This gives me the impression that the piece was published in 1997, not 2016. Should this be swapped with another proposed hook? Z1720 (talk) 15:49, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Z1720 Oops, my bad. Yes, I suggest replacing it for ALT2. Thank you for pointing the mistake out, it completely slipped me by. NeoGaze (talk) 16:52, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Magnoavipes denaliensis

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@OceanGunfish, PCN02WPS, and AirshipJungleman29: The source says that the species name translates to "bird with large feet", and this is also stated in the article. In the hook, should "huge" be replaced with "large"? Z1720 (talk) 16:03, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Synonym. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:12, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29: Yes, but I don't speak Latin and, while it might be a synonym the hook is referring to a translation and editors might want the most accurate word. Z1720 (talk) 16:58, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with AirshipJungleman29, its a synonym and acceptable as a hook use.--Kevmin § 17:14, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Huge is large. Bremps... 03:06, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Huge is large, yes, but large is not necessarily huge. It implies a greater magnitude. The hook should be amended so that it matches the article.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:19, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
May I opine that I don't think it matters as a synonym and so whatever reads best should be used. And that "with large feet" sounds better in this hook when read. Kingsif (talk) 22:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive promotion of Jilly Cooper

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Over the past weeks, works by author Jilly Cooper have featured in DYK with excessive frequency. I note that the policy states that DYK is not "A means of advertising, or of promoting commercial or political causes." I would argue that featuring a book by the same author basically every other day is advertising/promoting a commercial cause. 62.238.249.119 (talk) 05:46, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From memory, when there are a lot of similar hooks, promoters try to space the hooks out. I checked Lajmmoore's edit history and found 16 Jilly Cooper related nominations since 8 April, which is quite a lot. 4 are still on the approved page. TSventon (talk) 06:33, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all! @62.238.249.119 the full quotation I think you're referring to is: "A means of advertising, or of promoting commercial or political causes. While it is fine to cover topics of commercial or political interest, DYK must not provide inappropriate advantage for such causes (e.g. during election campaigns or product launches)." I'm interested to hear what other editors think, but from my point of view, I'm just working through the works of author who sold 12 million copies of their books and is under-represented on Wikipedia. Lots of editors have particular interests that they work through and this isn't the only recurring DYK (or GA or FA) topic. Off the top of my head I can think of Alexander McQueen, Christian hymns, American network stations, aquilegias and this author. I expect there are others. If the articles are read, I think they are very neutral, as are the hooks. The article content is often critical, and these criticisms are sometimes used in the hooks. One point of note is that there is a new series of the recent Rivals adaptation due to be released in the autumn, and I was actually trying to avoid promotion by working on the Cooper's works in advance. If promoters more generally have a concern I'm very happy to be advised, to wait for hooks to feature before nominating a new one, etc. I just also want to be emphatic that there's no commercial intent on my part, I edit about women primarily and this is just one aspect of that interest. Thanks al! Lajmmoore (talk) 08:04, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The key phrase here is "(e.g. during election campaigns or product launches)" this adds very relevant and essential context to the guideline. Without that added precision, then we would not see dozens of articles about extinct ants and unusual fungi. We have seven million articles and Jilly Cooper, her journalism, politics, her books and films include quite a lot of notable subjects for articles. Its tempting to apologise that we haven't covered her better before. Jilly Cooper is now getting a good number of new articles. If deletion isn't relevant then DYK should certainly reature new articles like these. This is the kind of activity that keeps the Wiki (and DYK) refreshed with new and diverse articles. Its not excessive promotion... its not even promotion. This is DYK's role to show new articles. Well done Lajmmoore. Victuallers (talk) 08:30, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Victuallers Aww, someone remembers my prolific ant article days of yore. It feels like so long ago now, lol!--Kevmin § 16:41, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In general, it'd be nice if we were able to space out our hooks so that this kind of thing doesn't happen, but in practice, it's really difficult for promoters to keep track of that. Maybe at some point we start limiting editors to one DYK a week, but that seems like overkill. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:42, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all, just to echo what Victuallers said, this isn't breaking any rules and this kind of work should be encouraged. I completely understand where the confusion has come from, maybe we need better documentation explaining the rules on this to avoid future missunderstandings. John Cummings (talk) 08:43, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the issue is necessarily having so many nominations about a particular topic or subject. That's been a thing with DYK since forever. It only becomes an issue if we have too many hooks about something that run within a short period of time. Remember the Swiftpedia complaints from the past? There's nothing wrong with contributing about Cooper, the only thing we need to do is probably to space out those runs more. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 08:55, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We will eventually run out of new articles about works by this author. Most of the time, high frequency of DYKs in the same topic area are the result of editor interest, not of promoting commercial causes. If we did not run anything that might cause additional sales, we could not run any hook about books, films, music, cars, or places where somebody might go on vacation. Most of us are trying to promote our new articles, not the subjects of these articles. —Kusma (talk) 08:58, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is really a promotional problem, let's face it apart from Tackle! (written in 2023 and currently on the Approved Hooks list), most of these novels are quite old. I think we do need to space them out a little, though; 16 nominations in the last two months should not mean 16 appearances in DYK in two months. Black Kite (talk) 09:10, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That hook ran in March 2009. I'd say that met the 'intriguing' part of DYKINT.--Launchballer 00:31, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I mean, I get why the complaints. We've always had repeating topics on DYK since DYK was a thing, but 16 hooks about the same person within a short amount of time does sound like overkill. It's not exactly "promotion" or "advertising" the way the IP saw it, but I can see why a non-DYK regular or a non-editor reader would get that impression. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:25, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I second the opinion of the editors who think care should be taken to space out DYKs about the same topic. A goal of DYK is 'To highlight the variety of information on Wikipedia, thereby providing an insight into the range of material that Wikipedia covers'. Constantly featuring articles from the same very particular niche topic makes an impression that is the exact opposite of variety. It is annoying for the readers who do regularly visit the main page and have, out of what is supposed to be the sum of all knowledge about the world, a single editor's current obscure interest arbitrarily imposed on them again and again. It also does create the impression that the editor is trying to convince the readers that the subject is, in fact, important and not obscure, and that they should be interested in it. For the strength of this effect, not only the frequency but also the length of the series matters - the Alexander McQueen series has been going on for much longer than the Jilly Cooper one and I believe that this makes the annoying effect in question stronger. More radically and controversially, I also think that when editors are creating a series of articles on very closely related topics - as in 'all collections of Alexander McQueen' and 'all paintings of Amrita Sher Gil' - it is good sense for them to simply refrain from nominating more than one of them for DYK. It may make the editor feel proud to have their work featured again and again, but it is not considerate to the readers and does not take into account the objective of the main page as a whole. It is perfectly possible to enjoy making articles without their necessarily getting the maximum possible exposure.--Anonymous44 (talk) 15:22, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to add, if there'd been a guideline about spacing these nominations out, I would have followed it (& I expect everyone else who has themes they edit to would as well), but without one it's hard to know. On the nominations that are not yet promoted, I'm going to go back and de-Cooper them a bit, and add a note about spacing them out Lajmmoore (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    & just to add the outstanding nominations at the moment are for Tackle!, Imogen (novel), Rupert Campbell-Black and Rivals (novel). I checked the hooks and have asked for reviewers to check revised hooks for Tackle! and Rivals - the other two don't mention Cooper. I'm planning to write more articles on the topic, but I won't propose any more DYKs on Cooper until these have run. Lajmmoore (talk) 17:53, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Spacing them out seems reasonable. (Actually, I was going to mention the McQueen TFAs, which are much more prominent and often draw several complaints every time they run - and from different people, too.) Maybe it may be helpful to limit hooks on any specific topic to one or two per week. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:48, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Desirable? Maybe. Helpful to have as a rule? Certainly not. Prep builders already have to follow a large number of rules; we should not expect them to be aware of everything that has been on the Main page in the last two weeks. —Kusma (talk) 18:01, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not a problem really, though. Someone will spot if whatever "rule" has been broken and we can just shuffle them around. Black Kite (talk) 18:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    So nobody will be responsible? —Kusma (talk) 18:47, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Kusma, good point. I would say that I prefer this as a guideline, rather than as a hard-and-fast rule, or else there may be some collateral damage. Also, I said "week", but what I really meant was "a group of seven sets". Most of the time, we run through seven sets in a week anyway. However, whenever sets run for only 12 hours instead of 24, it would be a bit restrictive to impose a restriction of one or two hooks for every 14 sets. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let's make a decision here. One per week sounds reasonable? Black Kite (talk) 18:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would support a guideline of 1 or 2 hooks on the same topic for every 7 sets. Usually, this is the same as once or twice a week, since sets typically run for 24 hours. However, my suggestion would also account for periods where hooks are switched out more frequently than every 24 hours. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:50, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I just realized this might be overly restrictive for certain users like @Sammi Brie or @Gerda Arendt, who are very prolific DYK nominators but also focus mainly on relatively small topic areas. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Answering to ping. My first barnstar was - in 2009 - to a comment in a similar situation, at the time "too many" hooks related to Ghana. - At the moment, I don't feel like a prolific contributor. My biggest "similar topic" project was Bach's cantatas: the composer went mostly by a one-per-week speed, which might be good for DYK as well. All these compositions are individual masterworks, btw. Please don't forget not to establish too many rules, and to make room for exceptions ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:18, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    One Jilly Cooper hook sounds ok. But one American football player? One opera singer? One skyscraper? One building in New York? One Gibraltar related hook? One hook about a Mormon? The concept of "same topic" would certainly need some refining. —Kusma (talk) 18:54, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't even considered this point. To give one example, Ennis House and Samuel Freeman House (both houses in Los Angeles designed in the same style by Frank Lloyd Wright) would count as similar topics. But how similar are these articles to the Acres (designed by the same architect, but in a different geographical area and a different style)? Or Modulightor Building, by a different architect in a different style and different location, or Dalton Old Pump House, whose only similarity is that it also happens to be a historic building? It can get messy quite quickly, I think. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think there's also a point that different editors might be working on a similar theme and both nominate at the same time - thinking we had a lot of nominations from different editors for women from Ukraine when the war was declared a few years back. There's perhaps some thinking to be done around that. I'm not a promoter though. Lajmmoore (talk) 19:51, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Queue 7

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2024 European Athletics Championships – Women's 4 × 400 metres relay

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@AirshipJungleman29, Editør, and MallardTV: I don't see how this passes WP:DYKINT. The hook is basically "A sports team won two events". How is that interesting or unusual? RoySmith (talk) 12:30, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Come to think about it, I sort of agree. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Come to look back, I may agree. MallardTV Talk to me! 12:48, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The surprising thing is that an all-white team won? —Kusma (talk) 12:57, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't that be specialist information? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:35, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And also probably WP:OR. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:01, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'm going to pull this. People can work on a new hook back at the nom page. RoySmith (talk) 16:10, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The replacement hook for Franco Mastantuono isn't actually true RoySmith—he hasn't joined Real Madrid yet and won't until after the Club World Cup. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:52, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In Queue 7, change "* ... that Real Madrid player Franco Mastantuono played youth tennis on a national-level?" to "* ... that River Plate player Franco Mastantuono played youth tennis on a national-level?". He hasn't made an appearance with them yet which was pointed out at User talk:Sahaib#DYK Franco Mastantuono nomination. Sahaib (talk) 07:03, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sahaib @AirshipJungleman29 thanks for the alert. How about I make it:
which is not only shorter, but also makes it more clear that he played two different sports. And would be more likely to comply with WP:DYKDEFINITE The hook should include a fact that is unlikely to change prior to or during its run on the Main Page. RoySmith (talk) 10:15, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was the one who added the modifier to the hook. I did consider "footballer", but considering how vague that word is and how we recently had a discussion about "football" hooks, I thought it was better to try to avoid mentioning the word "football" at all. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:28, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of people (i.e. me) may have no clue what sport Real Madrid plays. I get that there are multiple sports which are called "football", but none of them are tennis, so no matter which version of football you're thinking of, the concept of "he played a different sport as a youth" is still there. RoySmith (talk) 10:33, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hook seems fine. Sahaib (talk) 11:12, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Done. RoySmith (talk) 11:16, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith I see your point. A bunch of similar athletics articles was promoted to GA in a short period of time, so I tried to combine these two in one hook. I will think about a new hook for the two articles, and if I can't make that work, I will try to come up with two separate hooks. – Editør (talk) 20:09, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A side note: the requirement to review four other nominations diverted some of my attention from writing the hook for my own nomination. – Editør (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Namespaces in principle

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Hiya, I'm back with the namespaces after 8 months (has it really been that long? ;), and I'm back here to (re-)discuss whether in principle, people here would be supportive of a comprehensive namespace move. One of the earliest references to there being a problem with DYK namespaces was all the way back 12 years ago in 2012! After doing a serious rescan of the previous discussions, as well as some great points made by RoySmith, BlueMoonset, and Chipmunkdavis I'm back to re-ask if people would in principle support a name-space change for DYK pages

  • Option 0: Do nothing – keep namespaces and pages as is
  • Option 1: Highly limited – only move namespaces for a very select number of pages to achieve maximum effectiveness with minimal effort
  • Option 2: Limited – Move namespaces of more pages, but still retain existing page structure
  • Option 3: Standard(?) – Move namespaces of all pages to be more rational, and rename and resort some sub-pages
  • Option 4: Comprehensive – a full rework of the page structure including fully rationalising the names, sub-pages and redirect

DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 20:42, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Option 3 in theory, Option 0 in practice. In principle, I do support rationalized namespaces for DYK. We should have done that years ago, and the current system never made much sense. However, as RoySmith has said, the ship has sailed at this point, and the intense amount of work needed to change everything for relatively little benefit, when the status quo already works and isn't broken, means it would be way more trouble than it's worth. If the only benefit is that our links and URLs would look "prettier" and make more sense, then that's simply not enough benefit to justify making such a major and time-consuming change.
DF, I understand this cause means a lot to you, but at this point, I would really suggest you drive your energy into actual, tangible issues that the DYK community is facing these days. The constant backlogs, reviews missing stuff, hooks not meeting interest or sourcing guidelines, errors slipping by despite multiple checks, editors reaching burnout from the pressures involved in building sets, etc. All of these are actual issues that the community has and affect how it runs. The namespace changes, while nice to have, are much lower down in the hierarchy of needs.
At this point, and I am going to be frank here: I would suggest that, for now, you let this idea go as it is simply not DYK's priority at the moment, no matter how much discussion you raise or how much you push the idea. We have more pressing issues to deal with right now, and given how passionate you are about changing DYK's namespaces, I think it would be better for the good of the project if you drive that passion to any of the other, more pressing concerns that I mentioned. I am sure that several of us are in principle open to the idea, but again, it's just not our priority and I cannot see it being one anytime soon, or frankly ever. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:22, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 0 in practice, one of the others in theory per NLH5 above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:43, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • We're slowly doing Option 1 over time. The next change should be to implement the better system for follow-up discussions that has already been proposed. CMD (talk) 01:48, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Option 0 in the medium term, NOTBROKEN is not quite true. I would support anything that moves nomination pages out of the template namespace, as they share almost no features with other templates. It is irritating to have information about "template data" or "Preview page with this template" displayed when they do not apply. We should work towards a system where on discussion pages like our DYK nomination pages, there is a working "reply" button. I do not offer to do the work needed to make the namespace change work, but anybody offering to do this should be welcomed, not driven away. —Kusma (talk) 10:31, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    With how complex DYK is and how so many pages have to be moved, it's probably going to be far more work than it's worth to move everything, just to fix bugs like the reply function. It is actually probably easier to just change the code to the Reply function so that it works in the Template namespace (or at least anything with the prefix Template:Did you know nominations), than it is to move thousands of nominations and do the necessary changes. Sure, that might require a discussion of some kind or at least talking to technical staff, but they'd probably understand. I get why there's some support for it, but we have to be practical here. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:38, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It is indeed maddening that Reply does not work on nominations, but I consider that a bug in the reply tool. RoySmith (talk) 10:40, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I do like the Reply tool, but it's not perfect. For one, it's impossible to edit multiple discussions at the same time with it, and at times it can be a pain to create subsections (particularly for RfCs) since there's no option to disable signatures. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:46, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, if we're looking for things to complain about, it also drives me mad that DYK, FAC, and GAN all are doing essentially the same job (i.e. reviewing an article) but they've all picked page structures and formats that are different enough that I can never remember how each one works without checking the instructions. RoySmith (talk) 10:50, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It may be worth radically rethinking some of these structures, whose "fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws" :) It is definitely worth thinking about what advantages Talk:MyPage/DYK would have over Wikipedia:DYK nominations/My Page and vice versa. Perhaps that means "if we put in any work into this, might as well go for Option 4 and not limit our options from the start". —Kusma (talk) 11:43, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having DYK in template space is actually quite useful IMO when it comes to doing edit searches and so on. And I'm not seeing a compelling reason to change it. Gatoclass (talk) 08:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ready for 2-a-day?

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@DYK admins: and other DYK watchers: There are seven promoted queues at WP:DYKNA and over 133 approved hooks. Does DYK want to go to 2-sets-a-day? If so, I hope editors will help us keep stay in 2-a-day for a while, as there are lots of hooks not transcribing at DYKNA. Z1720 (talk) 21:45, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please no. I don't understand this thought process: "there are lots of hooks not transcribing, therefore prep-builders and admins must work to the bone to solve this harmless situation." ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:01, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The backlog of hooks at WP:DYKNA delays the amount of time it takes an article to appear on the Main Page. Some editors are motivated by this, especially newer editors (I used DYK as motivation continue editing Wikipedia when I was starting out). If it takes a long time to get articles from nomination to Main Page, it might cause some editors to lose that motivation. If editors do not want to participate, they do not have to. Z1720 (talk) 23:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If anything, we should be making efforts to move away from 2-a-day. It burns out prep builders and may also invite complaints from nominators who wonder why their hooks only run for 12 hours instead of the usual 24. There's a reason why we made it so that 12-hour set runs now have a fixed timeframe instead of being indefinite. We don't want to use them too often. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:29, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)I know what would cause me, if I was a new editor, to lose motivation, and it would be having the article I worked hard on run 12 hours instead of 24, maybe when I and everyone I know are mostly asleep, just because others want to get rid of a meaningless backlog. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:32, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

a different idea

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What if we strengthened the timeout rules to cap the backlog size? There are something like 230 hooks in DYKNA; we could implement something like When there are more than 200 approved and unpromoted nominations, promoters may, at their discretion, promote, decline, or unapprove the oldest approved nomination at DYKNA (returning it to DYKN) until the backlog has returned to under 200.

That'd be the main mechanism here. We could play around with a few things here: one, we might want to give nominators some kind of warning before entering a purge like this. Two, we could change the 200 number, or even separate our starting trigger and ending trigger (the way we did with the old rules on 12- and 24-hour sets). Three, we could expand the range of noms that are subject to this rule to the n-200 oldest, or to all of them. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:40, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support an idea like this, but I do have a question: what if they're stuck not because of any hook issues, but simply because they haven't been promoted yet? It would seem unfair to time out nominations just because they're yet to be promoted, especially when there are no actual issues with the nomination and they're just waiting for their turn. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:47, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the promoter feels it's worth saving, they're allowed to promote it, so it doesn't force any noms out of rotation. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favour; I don't know how many others would be. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:57, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely NOT, you do not get to penalize the nominators due to the selection preferences of the promoters skipping over a hook they personally may or may not have a lack of interest in. DYK should never devolve into the wikpedia equivalent a highschool year book popularity contest.--Kevmin § 00:07, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal would probably exclude hooks that are already approved and are just waiting to be promoted. It would instead focus on nominations that remain unpromoted because of outstanding issues or concerns. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:10, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This would be "back to the roots" for DYK, which used to be a showcase of Wikipedia's newest articles: Back in 2006 or so, nominations that had not made it to the Main Page after a week or so were routinely discarded as no longer new. I think in our system (which allows anyone to promote hooks), if some hooks do not make it to the preps after a long time, that is a good indication that nobody finds them interesting. This does not require "popularity", just one single person who finds the hook compelling enough to promote it. —Kusma (talk) 09:12, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Kusma the aspect this misses is that "Back in the day" we were churning and burning Four sets per day, not a single set per day, that how we managed to move though the nominated material so rapidly. The slowdown has been that since then we've increased the duration on the main page and added two full additional checks of every single hook that didnt exist in 2006. Penalizing the nominators for the excessive amount of work that has been fored into the process from outside sources is not how we fix the process.--Kevmin § 14:43, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Kevmin, we have indeed added several layers of quality control to almost all aspects of the process, which helps us prevent nonsense or copyvios on the Main Page. The part of "quality control" that has become worse is that of interestingness: we have mostly dropped the "timeout" method that made it possible to not run hooks without explicitly rejecting them, and DYK is usually full of boring hooks. I am looking for a way to get rid of boring hooks without much discussion and without hurting people's feelings. —Kusma (talk) 14:53, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, I thought you were opposed to this to preserve the integrity of the content-review process – but now you're saying it'd be better if we went back to promoters and admins not doing content review at all? Going back to a time when DYK churned out content that was mostly unvetted? I thought I understood where you were coming from, now I'm a little lost. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:33, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Im opposed to the triple check system that was forced into DYK by a very select number of opponents to the DKY process as a whole around 10 years ago. Those users actively weaponized MP:Errors as a venue to vilify DKY and paint the picture of the project being unvetted and lawless. What percentage of the issues that were being brought up here over the last 3 months were "interesting" based and could have just gone to main with out any commentary speeding up the whole process. I would say the quickest way to avoid "stale" nominations is to dump the "interesting" rule all together, sine a group of 7ish mostly US/UK editors are in no way representative of the global readerships interests.--Kevmin § 15:15, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I think that's just not an accurate assessment of what prep building is. Most of the time a "cabal" member (never too late to start prep building, there's no barrier to entry!) spends vetting a hook has nothing to do with interestingness. And... yeah, I guess if you're opposed to rigorous vetting to make sure the content we air is actually true and policy compliant, then it'd make sense to run four sets a day. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:14, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Without the triple check system, this article that we caught literally today would have gone on the Main Page. That doesn't seem like a great result to me. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To kind of zoom out on why I think this is necessary (sorry for a long post): I think we're out of options. We've always been getting more nominations than we could reasonably handle, and our approaches to that have burned out the people who do this and given us a reputation for low-quality output. That's because fundamentally, our backlog isn't a "backlog" problem, not in the way that, say, maintenance categories or CCI cases are a backlog. In terms of our end product, we've virtually always had a set ready to go at the next update – that's the goal, not getting the number of approved noms down to 0.
Fundamentally, this is a resource allocation problem – we have a limited number of spots. DYK sets are 9 hooks each, and our resting pulse is one set per day. But we receive and approve more than 9 nominations a day, and so without intervention, the backlog would just keep growing forever and ever and wait times to actually get on DYK creep up to the order of months, even years. In fact, it's already been doing this – we used to do 12-hour sets when we had 120 approved noms, but we stopped doing that, and right now we have over 230.
We don't need the backlog to be 0, but it can't just keep growing indefinitely – articles aren't really "new" when they've been sitting in line for months, and it doesn't make nominators happy, either. So we have two choices on how to better allocate our spots: we can make more, or we can be picky. For a long time, we tried the "make more" strategy – more sets in a day, more hooks in a set. The result was that, combined with conflict-averse DYK reviewers, we burned out promoters and admins and gave DYK a reputation for hooks that are sloppy and boring. In the last few years, we've turned this around a little bit and pivoted towards being pickier – in part because we've gotten better at this and in part because the promoters have said they can't take it anymore. Any promoter can tell you that the 12-hour-set sprints are miles south of fun, and we're not getting paid. But now that DYK runs at a somewhat more sustainable pace, being picky hasn't been enough – the backlog has swelled.
Practical considerations aside, the north star is still the readers. If we can – while staying true to our principles – build engagement, build a following, turn around DYK's reputation for hooks that are sloppy or boring or sensationalist, we'd be doing our readers a service by giving them informative content that makes them curious about the world. We'd be doing content creators a favor by giving their better works more time in front of the audience, and we'd be doing promoters a favor by not making them do work they're refusing to do anyway. The inclusionist/deletionist debate was so fierce at AfD because it took us a long time to figure out that unlimited space still doesn't mean unlimited editor-hours – but here, we also have limited space. It should be clear which way we have to go.
So, to the regular nominators: I know competition isn't your first choice, and it's not mine either. But competition is already happening. So, would you rather wait 3 months or more for a spot that may or may not be a full day, may or may not have your image, may or may not run when you're actually awake, and may or may not embarrass you and us and the project if it turns out we didn't vet it correctly? Or would you rather roll the dice? There is no secret third "demand more labor from others" option, and so far, there hasn't been a wave of nominators volunteering to help. And at the end of the day, competition really does make our sets better for the readers. I can't stress that it enough. It should just be the primary consideration. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:56, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't see enough people agreeing with this. SL93 (talk) 08:06, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I don't really gain or lose whether or not this passes – I'm just not interested in breaking my back to keep the backlog down, or promoting hooks that I think shouldn't run. If nominators are fine with waiting increasingly long periods of time (including nominators whose hooks we do want to run) because I think we're all feeling that way to some extent, then I guess it works out. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:25, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we have to be more willing to reject bad hooks. The issue is that some nominators tend to be very unhappy when the hooks they want are not the ones that are ultimately used. One of the reasons why nominations take a while to get reviewed is because they just aren't interesting enough. Of course, "interesting" is subjective, even with our current definition of "interesting", but maybe we can have some kind of baseline. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 08:26, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we rejected 80% of all hooks that failed DYKINT – which we definitely do not – nominations with no viable hooks could, on average, get through by just throwing 5 hooks at the wall. I mean, you've seen it happen. The hook-by-hook method really hasn't been enough to keep the backlog down or make DYK sets better. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:29, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I don't agree with it. We have always handled all comers and I see no reason to change. We might just need to have dedicated drives the way we used to do, the problem is likely that the three-days-of-12-hours-then-back-to-24 is probably not sufficient to reduce the backlog. I would suggest deciding on a time to run a backlog drive, and then notifying all previous DYK admins of the drive in order to increase manpower. Gatoclass (talk) 08:29, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anyhow, we currently have a full queue so why haven't we switched to 12 hours? Gatoclass (talk) 09:01, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because the people who do most of the work have voted with their feet. You're an admin, so you have the technical ability to do it. Just follow the instructions at WP:DYKROTATE. RoySmith (talk) 17:43, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Gatoclass: We've had seven filled queues for most of the last 24 hours and still have seven, as I just queued a set you've clearly already checked. Whatever the state of the Approved backlog, that's a bottleneck that needs relieving. I strongly recommend spending the next three days at 2-a-day.--Launchballer 00:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Done, thanks. Gatoclass (talk) 02:45, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Gatoclass: Thank you. I rearranged some stuff to accommodate the Rosa Parks date request, but we should be fine now.--Launchballer 09:55, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I think timing out nominations that not a single prep builder has found compelling enough to promote is en excellent and fair way to both deal with the backlog and improve quality at the same time. DYK used to be more selective and time out nominations after days, not months; the idea that there is a right for a DYK nomination to make it to the Main Page if it complies with all rules is something from a decade and a half ago or so and was not a good move. —Kusma (talk) 09:16, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See my comment above, (As a long time contributor), DYK wasn't any more selective at all, it was way less burdened with triple to quadruple checking nominations, while having a shorter run rate. --Kevmin § 14:43, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't help but agree with leeky's essay re. the problem here. How about we break down the practical options for keeping optimal output without requiring more work, and let people vote on which options they prefer. Feel free to suggest more, but I see it as: A. be more selective about hooks at any or all points in the review process, B. promote hooks in general order of approval at the rate we have now, with the same amount of checks as now, C. go to 2-a-day sets, promoting without one or both of the final checks, or D. reduce hooks per set and let the 'backlog' build. Putting it like that, I would rank A first. Kingsif (talk) 19:53, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be honest, I think that giving users "the discretion" to reject as many approved noms as needed to get the number of approvals to under 200 is ... stupid (let me know if I'm reading When there are more than 200 approved and unpromoted nominations, promoters may, at their discretion ... decline ... the oldest approved nomination until the backlog has returned to under 200 wrong). I'd rather have my nomination wait three months for a 12-hour slot than "roll the dice" and have my nomination arbitrarily rejected because it "took too long for someone to promote it". BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:21, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would also rather have 12 hours rather than no time at all. SL93 (talk) 20:28, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @BeanieFan11: It would not be "arbitrary", because the more interesting hooks would arguably have been promoted before. Anyway, we either need more people to do the work required to get articles on the Main Page (prep builders and prep to queue promoters) or we need to restrict what can go on the Main Page. Appeals to get more people to share the workload have been tried regularly with only little effect, so it is not clear that we can afford to run 2/day DYKs for long. Rejecting boring nominations is better than burning out our prep builders and queue promoters. If you have a less stupid idea, please explain what it is; leeky's suggestion seems significantly less stupid than burning out people to reduce the backlog. —Kusma (talk) 13:29, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Kusma to be very clear you mean to say "not interesting to a group of less then 7 souls" who have a very select view of what THEY view as interesting, regardless of what the hundreds of millions of daily main page viewers will look at. DYK is NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST, AND NEVER WAS ONE. The "interesting" caveat was added originally out of fear that suddenly every nomination would be "the sky is blue" level boring, ignoring that even that level of hook will drive traffic to a new article. I will 100% take a delayed appearance over a cabal of 7 people forcing their persal view of interesting on the entire project.--Kevmin § 15:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The cabal are the people who show up to do the work. I hereby present you with an invitation to join the cabal. RoySmith (talk) 15:12, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I mean "interesting enough to at least one Wikipedian other than the page author that this Wikipedian promotes it to a Main Page prep". If there are only seven people who do Main Page prep work, more power to them. I don't know why you are talking about popularity contests: do you think that "one Wikipedian finds the article interesting" is too high or too low as a bar for Main Page appearances? —Kusma (talk) 16:08, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    When assembling a prep area, I try to make it as interesting as possible, with the best lead hook and a snappy trailing hook. But it requires real crystal ball gazing to spot the best hook. Have a look over the DYKSTATS and see how many you would have spotted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:01, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Straw poll: quantity or quality?

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The basic tension in the discussion above is whether we want to publish more hooks at the expense of quality, or if we want to press for better quality at the expense of rejecting more submissions. So, let's do an informal survey. Indicate where you stand below (sans editorializing).

Please put any extended commentary or discussion in the discussion section below. RoySmith (talk) 18:07, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I want DYK to publish more hooks

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I want DYK to concentrate on quality

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  1. RoySmith (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Per what I said above – we're here to serve the readers, simple as that. And DYK can't do more than its promoters are capable of doing, so if you want to increase output, come help out. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 20:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3. We should be more selective so we get a better overall result. —Kusma (talk) 10:18, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  4. I don't want my hook up only 12h and I don't want to do 2 QPQs—Bagumba (talk) 10:57, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Ultimately, the people that are DYK's main interest are not nominators but rather readers. Presenting them "bad" hooks provides a disservice and can cause more harm than good in some situations. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:37, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Quality is important. We should be more careful about actually having exceptional hooks. There are articles I've written that I don't nominate because I know they don't have good hooks. ~Darth StabroTalk • Contribs 15:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    (with leniency towards new contributors; but someone with 25+ hooks should really be good at getting a very interesting hook and not just some simple fact) ~Darth StabroTalk • Contribs 15:10, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  7. I think the best way to increase quality is to be more strict on WP:DYKINT (and maybe make it more stringent) – there are a significant portion of currently approved DYK hooks that I simply do not find interesting. I think this can be seen by promoters silently choosing not to promote hooks, which means they stay in /Approved for quite a while. Of the five in /Approved that were created/expanded in April, I find 4 of them to be uninteresting – whilst this is just an anecdote, I think it does show a bit of a broader problem with "interestingness" DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 15:21, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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False equivalence. Promoting fewer hooks will do nothing to improve quality, it will just mean that reviewers will spend less time on the project. Gatoclass (talk) 18:15, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think running fewer hooks absolutely increases the quality of the average set – unless you think that our selectivity criteria are random or actively harmful, of course selecting for quality increases quality. But even if that weren't true, we still get a quality boost from actually running DYK sustainably. Being more selective means we have more time to check hooks before they run, and also fewer promoters and admins getting burned out, so they can check each other's work (it's not great when preps are only built by one or two people, for the same reason every project can't have only one CheckUser). We'd get a larger and more experienced promoter corps scrutinizing a manageable, curated output – I'd say that's for sure a quality increase. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 20:31, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not totally sure what "quality" we are talking about here. In terms of scrutiny / rate of being called out at ERRORS, I am not sure that we can expect significant improvements. But if we were free to not run boring hooks or those with slightly questionable sourcing, we could easily improve the value of DYK for readers. We might also discourage people from submitting every single article they create to DYK; as leeky says that would help with managing the overall volume. —Kusma (talk) 06:16, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We just have to be more proactive with rejecting nominations and be willing to push back against uninteresting hooks. Oftentimes, we are reluctant to do so given that it will very likely hurt the nominator's feelings, plus some nominators tend to take hook and/or nomination rejection worse than others. There's a tension: on the one hand, we want to reward editors for their work and give them an incentive and something to be proud of. On the other hand, not every article is a good fit for DYK, and sunken cost nominations often result in poorly-performing and/or uninteresting hooks. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 06:30, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure that our current mechanisms for rejecting boring articles are working or can be made to work, given how subjective "boring" is. —Kusma (talk) 10:21, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This project is running on a 24-hour cycle most of the time these days. Have you noticed an increase in hook quality during 24-hour cycles? I can't say that I have. Gatoclass (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That has nothing to do with the present discussion: we are rarely rejecting hooks, independent of whether we are in 12 hour or in 24 hour mode. —Kusma (talk) 18:48, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree wit Gatoclass, this is a false equivalence, that is being based on very different historical and modern project structuring. As someone who's been participating since 2008, "interesting" was historically used to at the same rate as now, if not less to deny hooks, and in the whole of that time it has consistently been mis-used to deny hooks that are of little interest to the reviewer, rather then to call out "Sky is blue" level facts, which is explicitly what the "interesting" rule was put in place to ostensibly address. I will again note that the entire collection of editors participating in DYK in any aspect is no were near a statistically valid number of people to determine any one hooks interest to the totality of a 12 or 24 hour period (46.8 million-ish) of main page viewers. Im going to be blunt, exactly what negative effect to Wikipedia will happen if a "boring" hook is run?--Kevmin § 17:05, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll agree with @Kevmin on this last point. There's some stuff we need to make sure we get right. We need to make sure we're not violating copyright, or WP:BLP, and that the fact we publish is actually true. Making sure our hooks are interesting is a "nice to have", and a far more nebulous thing to control since what's interesting to one reader is not interesting to another. RoySmith (talk) 18:37, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reviewers are hopeless at determining what is interesting and what is not. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:55, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All reviewers? I highly doubt you would do any better for a concept that goes by opinions. SL93 (talk) 02:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Fewer hooks is not going to result in more interesting hooks. Quite frequently, the longer a discussion about a hook and the more participants, the worse the hook ends up getting. It is basically due to the design-by-committee problem, coupled with the fact that getting agreement on interest is difficult and that many users, quite frankly, are not great judges of hook interest to start with.
    You might get a marginal decrease in errors, but at the expense of disenfranchising a great many nominators. And even that is questionable since in my experience people just head for the exits when there is less work to do. Gatoclass (talk) 16:40, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It wouldn't make individual hooks more interesting, no – nothing we can do about nominator creativity. But it would make sets more interesting on average. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:50, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If it doesn't make individual hooks more interesting, how is overall set interest going to improve? Gatoclass (talk) 17:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Less uninteresting hooks per set equals greater set interest? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:38, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "Interesting on average", according to what statistically significant percentage of the 24+ million people that will view the hooks in a 12 hour run? DKY:INT was never meant to be used as a popularity contest gateway for hook validation, only to prevent the lowest end of obvious. The current usage of the rule has massively crept away from that. 10 people are not a valid judge of what 24 million people will click.--Kevmin §
    "10 people are not a valid judge of what 24 million people will click." Why not? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:38, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    A statistically significant sample size for a population of 24 million (with a 5% margin of error), is approximately 385 people. per google, it seems very clear that under 10 is not the same as 385, the interests of 24 million should not be decided by a less then 10 people. This becomes even more clear when the 12 hour period encompasses swaths of non-US/UK population.--Kevmin § 17:54, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Update to the credit system

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Thanks to Shubinator, the credit system can now accommodate promoted sets reviewed by multiple admins/template editors! The set promoter signs the {{DYKbotdo}} as normal, but if another person confirms a specific hook in the set, they can modify the DYKmake and DYKnom credits to reflect that:

* {{DYKmake|Example|Editor|subpage=Example|sign=~~~}} returns

  Example – Editor (give) (tag) – View nom subpage – signed by theleekycauldron (talk • she/her)

and that'll get reflected when DYKUpdateBot gives out the credits to the nominators. That's all, happy editing! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 00:02, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Prep 1 (25 June 00:00)

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Marine Terrace MRT station

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@History6042, Icepinner, and Arconning: This is a very poor photo to run. I had to click through to the article, read the image caption, and then look long and hard at the photo before I could figure out what it was trying to show. Let's not run this. RoySmith (talk) 01:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith I can try to take another photo if you want. The photo in the article was submitted as part of the DYK nomination as it would provide visual aid to the hook (a family tree of chairs is an interesting subject for a public artwork in a train station so I imagine people would want to see a photo of it). The reason why it's so hard to see the actual subject was because the photo had to be taken by following de minimis guidelines as Singapore does not have Freedom of Panorama (FOP) for paintings. It should be noted that the artwork itself is rather big and would be rather challenging to photograph the subject such that it follows the above laws. However, there are two versions of the artwork, with the other one being directly above the platform. Based on the photos I took, it appears that one is salient compared to the photo you brought up, though it would have to cropped in order for the subject to be more prominent, yet it still has to follow the above laws. Would you prefer that? Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 02:14, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Icepinner it is unfortunate that getting a better photo is problematic, but that doesn't change the fact that this photo isn't suitable. What's the other photo? RoySmith (talk) 02:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith Here it is Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 04:25, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Icepinner unfortunately, that's really no better. RoySmith (talk) 04:42, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith what about it is not good? Is it that it doesn't fall under de minimis? Is it not prominent enough? I'm guessing it might be the latter since the image will be shrunken down. Honestly at this point I'd prefer if the image was removed, I'm not gonna retake a photo since it's hard to take a photo of the subject following the above conditions. Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 05:15, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My objection is that it doesn't show the subject well, especially at the small size it will be show on the main page. RoySmith (talk) 11:57, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does feel like showing a subject through a de minimis photo defeats the stated purpose of de minimis. CMD (talk) 12:38, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The irony that I did not realise... well the more you learn. Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 12:55, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Icepinner: Since the artwork is the main subject of the photograph (even if it's a small portion of the picture), I'm concerned it wouldn't pass c:COM:De minimis if the artwork is copyrighted. Just because it isn't a great picture of the artwork doesn't mean it isn't a copyright issue. Jay8g [V•T•E] 02:57, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't the solution just be to not run with the image at all? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 03:13, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. When I said "Let's not run this" I was referring to the image. RoySmith (talk) 03:21, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jay8g I intended the main subject of that photo to be the hallway. Anyways, yes, public artwork in Singapore is copyrighted. See the above image if it's suitable or not Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 04:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Jay8g @Narutolovehinata5 @RoySmith sorry for pinging you all again but after thinking about it, I have decided that image should be removed. The hook would still be interesting in itself and it would be a challenge to retake the photo with the above conditions. Feel free to remove it. Icepinner (formerly Imbluey2). Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 05:18, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have started a deletion discussion on Commons for both images since I'm not convinced they pass de minimis. Either the image should be removed from DYK (which seems to be the consensus of this discussion) or the nomination should be held until the deletion discussion is closed. Jay8g [V•T•E] 08:49, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Queue 5 - first

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Just bringing a first hook to people's attention even though it appears to be fine. ... that Carlo Rinaldini was the first person to propose a temperature scale that split the interval between the freezing and boiling points of water into equal degrees? SL93 (talk) 08:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a particularly bad example of a "first" hook. Not only is it the kind of thing that's difficult to prove, the cited source doesn't even make that claim. RoySmith (talk) 13:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RoySmith I'm not so sure. The first source says "Not until 1694" which implies that what the subject did in 1694 was the first case of it. Pinging nominator Hike395. SL93 (talk) 13:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DYKHOOK says Superlative hooks such as first/biggest/most ... require sourcing that discusses the set in some detail A source which "implies" something doesn't meet that standard. RoySmith (talk) 14:16, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RoySmith I guess implied is the wrong word because "Not until 1694" would be more than implying as it is a way to say for the first time. I honestly don't know how anyone can see that differently. SL93 (talk) 14:18, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Page 66 of this book verifies it as well. SL93 (talk) 14:07, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused. I don't see Rinaldini mentioned at all. RoySmith (talk) 14:21, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The book goes by the other spelling of his last name. The Wikipedia article says, "Carlo Rinaldini, or Renaldini". "The need of a standard scale, easily made and based on constant phenomena that can be reproduced at will, was felt by all who used thermometers, and an important practical pro posal to secure this desideratum was made in 1694 by Carlo Renaldini, a former member of the Accademia del Cimento. and professor of mathematics in Padua. At that date, and in the eightieth year of his age, he published a work on natural philosophy , in which he suggested taking the melting-point of ice and the boil ing-point of water for two fixed points of ther mometer scales, and dividing the space between them into twelve equal parts." SL93 (talk) 14:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is also this. It really wasn't difficult to prove. SL93 (talk) 14:31, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now I'm really confused. That source says:

While Hooke was the first to take the freezing point of water as a fixed point ... Huygens was probably the first to suggest two fixed points, the second point being that of boiling water

and later on it says

Nearly thirty years later ... was again proposed by Carlo Renaldini

So while it's clear that Renaldini made some contribution to the design of the thermometer, it's not at all clear exactly what particular thing he contributed that could be claimed to be a "first". RoySmith (talk) 16:16, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. The next sentence mentions that he came up with the equal degrees part, and the last part of the sentence says that it was not adopted until the eighteenth century. SL93 (talk) 16:55, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The first reference (by Benedict) states:
Not until 1694 did Carlo Rinaldini [...] suggest taking the melting and boiling points of water for two fixed points on a thermometer scale. He divided the space in between them into 12 equal parts.
The second reference (by Howarth) states:
The earliest attempt to calibrate thermometers on the basis of standard fixed-points was made by the Italian mathematician Carlo Renaldini (1615–98) in 1694. He suggested using the freezing and boiling points of water as fixed points and dividing the scale distance between them into twelve parts. Each scale point was defined by the temperature attained on mixing cold and boiling water in proportions of 11:1, 10:2, … , 2:10 and 1:11, but it was later realized that his method of calibration was inherently unreliable.
I interpret the "Not until 1694" the same way that SL93 does. However, if editors wish, we can tweak the phrasing of the hook. Would substituting "calibrate" for "propose" make it better? I worry that makes it a bit too obscure for a general audience, but I'm open to tweaking. — hike395 (talk) 14:27, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also noticed that the book is in chronological order. SL93 (talk) 14:29, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If RoySmith is concerned about sticking very closely to sources, how about
... that Carlo Rinaldini was the first person to calibrate a thermometer by using the freezing and boiling points of water as fixed points, dividing the interval into 12 equal degrees?
— hike395 (talk) 14:43, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That hook seems too complicated to meet the guidelines. Maybe we should just move away from the "first" angle entirely? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 14:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Narutolovehinata5: Are you proposing saying that he simply proposed the scale or calibrated it, without talking about that he was first? That would seem puzzling to an average reader, I think. Originally, I proposed the hook
... that Carlo Rinaldini proposed an experiment that discovered convection in air?
but DragonflySixtyseven thought the thermometer hook was better. — hike395 (talk) 14:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How about something like:
  • ... that 17th century mathematician Carlo Rinaldini studied the life cycles of insects, was said to have discovered air convection, and contributed to the design of a practical thermometer?
RoySmith (talk) 16:26, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Even though the original hook is correct, this one is more easily accessible for readers. SL93 (talk) 16:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I really like Roy's hook. Can I suggest a modification, with wikilinks?

I am suggesting this, because Rinaldini was debating whether insects came from plant galls, not insects in general; and his thermometric ideas turned out not to be useful in practice. What do other editors think? — hike395 (talk) 17:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With the added context, I think this is a stronger hook. Kingsif (talk) 19:45, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit worried about the "said to discover air convention" claim. We're stating it in Wikivoice, but the article claims that it was one person who credited him for it. Do we know if others did too, or if it was only Middleton (who doesn't even have an article!) who did so? If it's too unsafe, we could just delete that from the hook and just mention the insects and thermometers parts. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:12, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Middleton credited Rinaldini with the discovery,[1] while other authors have credited Middleton with giving Rinaldini the credit.[2][3] In the Italian Biographical Dictionary, Giannini gives Rinaldini credit without mentioning Middleton.[4]

An even snappier version of the hook is

per WP:FEW. Pinging @SL93 for attention. — hike395 (talk) 10:25, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds good. I didn't receive the ping for some reason. SL93 (talk) 17:52, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Swapped. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:31, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Middleton, W.E. Knowles (1971). The Experimenters: A Study of The Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. p. 35. ISBN 0-8018-1250-X.
  2. ^ Boschiero, Luciano (2007). "What it meant to be a Cimento academician". Experiment and Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany: The History of the Accademia del Cimento. Vol. 21. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 93–109. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6246-9_4.
  3. ^ Brush, Stephen G (1973). "The Development of the Kinetic Theory of Gases: VII. Heat Conduction and the Stefan-Boltzmann Law". Archive for History of Exact Sciences. 11 (1): 38–96. JSTOR 41133371.
  4. ^ Giannini, G (2016). "Rinaldini (Renaldini), Carlo". Dizionario biografico degli italiani (PDF) (in Italian). Vol. 87: Renzi-Robortello. Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana.

Talk:Wilberforce University

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Hi all. I recently started a five-fold expansion of Wilberforce University with the intention of nominating at WP:DYK. After significantly expanding the history (which is still on-going, I'm not done) I attempted to update the lede section to reflect the new key points made in the article in this edit. Other editors apparently took issue with the expanded lede, and then preceded to chop the lede to even shorter than before I began my expansion (removing an entire paragraph from the old lede present in the article prior to my editing). I've reverted it for now under the argument that is does not meet WP:MOSLEDE criteria, but that decision was objected to on the talk page and its possible the short lede will be restored.

I'm concerned that the proposed short lede (see here) does not sufficiently summarize the key points of the article as required at WP:MOS and for this reason may fail WP:DYKCRIT. It's possible my analysis is incorrect, and others agree the short lede is the better path. Regardless, there is now a conflict over the lede section and I would appreciate additional input as to what should be included or not included, and how best to summarize the article so it complies with WP:MOS guidelines and can pass WP:DYKCRIT. All opinions welcome. Help in reaching a WP:CONSENSUS would be appreciated. Thanks to any who are willing to lend their editorial eyes and thoughts.4meter4 (talk) 21:51, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how a dispute over the length of the lead section might in any way fail WP:DYKCRIT 4meter4. Far more important, for DYK purposes, are the numerous unsourced passages and table rows.
That said, purely on an MOS basis, I would point to WP:LEADLENGTH, which notes that most lead sections are between 100 and 400 words. Your preferred lead section (for a body of 4,500 words) is 500 words, and your fellow editors seem to prefer a 78-word lead. Try compromising. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:12, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29 Yes, the unreferenced passages are from the article prior to my expansion which is not completed. As I said, I am working on it. It is not ready for review which is why I haven't yet nominated it. The goal is to finish fact checking, adding citations, and expanding. As for the lede conflict. I am trying to compromise but I can't get anyone to actually dialogue about specific content in the lede and ways that it could be tightened while still addressing the article's key points. Hence why some new input would be helpful. It would be good to get an impartial person to help facilitate a dialogue towards compromise; particularly someone familiar with DYKCRIT and MOS policies. Best.4meter4 (talk) 22:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So why are you at this page, if the article is nowhere near to being nominate-able and DYKCRIT not applicable? I'd suggest using the dispute resolution processes in future. Best, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:33, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29 I can have it ready for DYK in the next day or two, but not if there is an edit war in progress. Instability is an issue in passing review. Additionally, I think I was already clear that I was worried the proposed lede would fail DYKCRIT; specifically the WP:DYKCOMPLETE criteria. I am not going to put in a ton of time into expanding an article only to see it fail at DYK. I'd rather move on to another project if that's the case. I've seen articles with insufficient lede sections get rejected in the past. If that's going to be an issue, I want to know now so I don't waist my time putting in a lot of work on a project that won't have its moment on the main page. I can edit elsewhere and have that success.4meter4 (talk) 22:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's easy to stop an edit war; just let the other editor have their way. RoySmith (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could, and I may do that. But I won't take it to DYK if I do. I would be ashamed to have it featured in that state. If I were a reviewer I would reject it for being incomplete.4meter4 (talk) 22:58, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The other editor has suggested splitting out the history section, so that is one DYK possibility. The article had 2016 words of prose on 25 May, so a fivefold expansion would be over 10,000 words and probably long enough to split according to WP:SIZERULE. TSventon (talk) 23:22, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
DYK doesn't enforce most of WP:MOS. If you want to argume about the length of the lead, WP:FAC is where you should go :-) In any case, my personal opinion is that people tend to write leads that are too long, and I'm inclined to say that your version falls into that bucket. On the other hand, the shorter version seems kind of stingy, so I agree with Airship that you'll probably want to end up somewhere in the middle. One rule of thumb I was taught is to pick one sentence from each major section as a first cut on what your lead should contain. RoySmith (talk) 22:25, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good rule of thumb. I would add that expanding the lead before expanding the body is putting the cart before the horse. It would be easier for everyone to figure out what should be in the lead if they can see the text it should be a summary of. CMD (talk) 03:14, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did expand the body significantly before expanding the lede, and the text I added was a summary of the new material added to the article's body.4meter4 (talk) 04:29, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And that summary was already quite long. If you intend to expand the article still further, much of that would have had to be trimmed to incorporate new material. CMD (talk) 04:45, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis Not really. The new material in the lede falls in line with the required material WP:UNIGUIDE#Article structure which requires we cover content like other names of the institution and whether the school is public or private. The new material I added revolved around these specific criteria for university ledes in which we cover that institution was a public-private university (which was missing before) and the other common names used in publications about the school during a 60 year period of the school's history. Explaining the other institutional names (which are likely search terms) and the fact that school was for six decades not a solely private institution but a public-private university are required components in the guideline for lede sections on university pages. The later history of the school is not nearly so complex, and does not require much summary as the content in it isn't listed under the key concepts in WP:UNIGUIDE#Article structure. In other words, no further summary required.4meter4 (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well I'm not sure where the specific criteria for university leads comes from, but this is something that would be much easier to assess if the body wasn't incomplete. CMD (talk) 01:58, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Prep 2 (21 June)

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A

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Resolved
Not my article, but I'm genuinely curious: why does the lead need expanding? It's not part of the DYK criteria as far as I can tell. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 16:04, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Leads are an important part of WP:DYKCOMPLETE. Keep in mind many readers might only read the lead. CMD (talk) 16:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not only that, the article is nonsensical! Seriously, has anyone actually read it? Half of it is dedicated to things that are only barely related to its title. This is the sort of thing that has a far higher chance of getting through during the "full-speed-and-damn-the-consequences" 12-hour periods. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:10, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, seriously @Toadboy123, History6042, and Gatoclass: are you actually trying to say that all three of you read through the article and somehow failed to spot that most of it had nothing to do with the article's title? 605 words on the "Olympic Village Concept", 200 words on "The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games", 300 words on "Restrictions on entry", none of which have anything to do with "Australia at the 1924 Summer Olympics"! This is not one, or two, but three failures of responsibility. (I'm not even going to comment on whatever bad-faith gaming A little sheep0115 is trying to pull.) ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:19, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AirshipJungleman29, perhaps I should have been more forthcoming in the above post. I did a quick scan of the article and, like you, struggled to connect some of the content to the topic. I concluded that the article meant to say the "Olympic Village Concept" originated with the 1924 games, but I felt it needed more explanation in the lede. The above post was meant as an opener to discussion of the content, not a limit to it. Gatoclass (talk) 16:32, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That seems tenuous, but even so, this needs pulling. Even the bits that are relevant to the article—the "Performance of athletes in games" [sic] section—are full of poor writing. Oh, and they're cited to Wikipedia. This is just ... unbelievable. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I spent more than two hours on set verification this morning, and did not have time to dot every i and t of every article I looked at. I scanned the article, saw a potential issue and flagged it by bringing it here. As I said, the issue raised above was meant as a starting point not an end point. Had I not raised a concern, the article might have made it through to the main page without further consideration. So the reproofs are neither helpful nor necessary.
But I do find it amusing that in one thread I am being castigated for alleged laxity, and in the next for overzealousness. Small wonder nobody wants to bother participating on this project anymore. Gatoclass (talk) 17:12, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly what I imagine ChatGPT would give me if I told it to generate 2500 words about Australia at the 1924 olympics. Either way, this clearly needs substantial work and I will pull. Eddie891 Talk Work 16:39, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I had my way, AI horseshit would qualify for revision deletion as grossly insulting to Wikipedia.--Launchballer 17:10, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd support that proposal. Kingsif (talk) 21:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

B

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Resolved

C

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Resolved
  • Racing Mount Pleasant - GNG concerns - the sources all looks either local or a bit ropey. Second opinions welcome. Pinging nominator Suntooooth.
    It is borderline, but Stereogum and Alternative Press both giving significant attention to the Racing Mount Pleasant singles meets GNG, in my opinion. They definitely wouldn't've met GNG before those singles, but I'd be surprised if an AfD passed on it now. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 10:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are they accepted reliable sources? All the sources I looked at looked either local or with no identifiable editorial team. Gatoclass (talk) 10:39, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Will get back to you in a bit - busy for a few hours. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 11:07, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stereogum and Alternative Press are both on WikiProject Albums' reliable sources list. If that's not good enough, I'm not sure what is. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 14:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those sources still look a bit scratchy to me, but whatever. I guess this one is resolved in the affirmative then. Gatoclass (talk) 04:42, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

D

[edit]
I changed one word. If you think it needs copyediting some more, let me know. ping Gatoclass Fdfexoex (talk) 09:55, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't have brought it here for just one word. The writing is clunky and hard to follow. It needs a good copyeditor, preferably someone with a bit of a science background, to go right through it, sorry. Gatoclass (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the article is poorly written, but that's not one of the DYK criteria. Maybe one could argue that WP:DYKCOMPLETE applies, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. RoySmith (talk) 12:31, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Whether or not it's formally one of the criteria, it's been informally one at DYK for at least a decade, after the project copped trenchant criticism about featuring "trash" on the main page. I don't expect perfection but I do expect an article to be at least comprehensible and this one is at best borderline. For example: The composition of the tail can be determined by modelling the transits caused by the dust tail. For Kepler-1520b and K2-22b one work found magnesium-iron silicates fitting the transits well.[3] I really have no idea what that is supposed to mean and I think many readers are likely to have the same problem. Gatoclass (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Set builders needed

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There is currently only one complete set in prep, we need some set builders if we are going to keep the 12-hour cycle going. Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 09:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have one complete set and sets with five, seven, and six. I can probably fill some of those gaps myself.--Launchballer 10:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm putting together a set now. Thanks, DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 16:16, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We now have 4 complete preps in addition to the full queue of 7 sets :) DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 22:09, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Papua New Guinea special set request for 16 September 2025

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As I raised in an already archived discussion earlier this month, this 16 September 2025 will be the 50th anniversary of Papua New Guinean independence. There have been some calls for more diverse special occasion sets, and you cannot get more diverse than Papua New Guinea. That it is a 50th anniversary also seems a very strong case for a special set, and hopefully planning ahead will help avoid last minute procedural questions.

16 September 2025 is three months from now. There is some discussion above about nomination timing, and while there are various opinions nobody has suggested keeping 6 weeks. Thus I think safely that nominations could be made from 16 July (I read no consensus on other changes, but if it gets closed otherwise perhaps even earlier nominations would be fine). Perhaps 2 September 2025 could be a soft limit for the end of the nomination period, providing a month and a half for submissions and then some buffer time for any issues found during prepping/queueing.

My theme suggestion is anything related to Papua New Guinea, it does not need to specifically relate to independence. There is plenty of unwritten or super stubby material out there to get to two 12-hour sets if there would be consensus for that. I guarantee to write a set myself if needed, although I hope others could join, as the ideal purpose of such sets would be to generate interest in writing new content for chosen topics. (If there are excess, all the better, they can fly free in the normal selection process.)

Any considerations I am missing here? Assuming consensus, looking forward to any participation! CMD (talk) 12:20, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All in favour. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:25, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
aye! would depend on what kind of hooks we actually get, I wouldn't wanna throw in any random fact because it's Papua New Guinea related, but I like the idea :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 09:05, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, no probs. Gatoclass (talk) 08:45, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Queue 7 (20 June 00:00)

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Animals in War (book)

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@Launchballer, Lajmmoore, and Sammi Brie: That's not a great image. How about we use File:Detail from Animals in War, Park Lane, London (3538574374).jpg instead? RoySmith (talk) 14:43, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair cop, fine by me.--Launchballer 14:46, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, now that I look closer, that picture is more closely associated with the Memorial, and thus only tangential to the book which is the subject of this hook. So maybe not use an image at all? And, I just realized this is another Jilly Cooper hook, to which there has been some pushback recently, so maybe not run this hook at all? RoySmith (talk) 14:50, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking along the same lines, I had previously removed the gratuitous link to Cooper. I didn't realise though that Animals in War Memorial is a standalone article, in which case it should be linked and, as you say, should not be placed in the image slot per WP:DYKIMG. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying these - I hadn't linked it as I thought the link would divert attention. I'm happy for the picture to go, as well as the author. I'd appreciate it if the hook could still run at some point - I nominated it way before the discussion above. I do appreciate the readers point of view, but equally, I disagree with it and don't think a run of hooks related to Cooper's books any different to any of the other runs of plants or network stations or 400m races we've had recently. What I do think I should do (bearing the above discussion in mind) is look at the ones reviewed and try and de-Cooper them a bit so the repetition is less obvious e.g. her name had been used in a few early ones. It's all a learning curve and I always appreciate advice! Lajmmoore (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the hook should run, there are no obvious issues with the article that require pulling/rejection, but it should probably be spread out. FWIW, this is probably not as problematic as the other hooks since at least Cooper isn't mentioned by name. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:13, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Had I realised that the award had an article, I wouldn't have put this in the image slot. I swapped it with Taraxacum britannicum, the only non-bio image I'm not involved in. Also, I see a consensus at the #Excessive thread that the Cooper hooks should be spread out rather than capped.--Launchballer 00:30, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all! Lajmmoore (talk) 11:23, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taraxacum britannicum

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@History6042, MallardTV, DaniloDaysOfOurLives, and Hilst: The "Iceland" part of the hook needs a source.--Launchballer 00:30, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It had one, there should be a link to the Kew specs in in the original submission. @Launchballer MallardTV Talk to me! 00:42, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see that, but it should be in the article.--Launchballer 00:44, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@History6042, MallardTV, DaniloDaysOfOurLives, Hilst, and Launchballer: I am concerned about the range map, which is not only in the article but also in the DYK set. It portrays the species as occurring in Corsica. The source cited for the range says "Western Europe and Fennoscandia"; the line of thinking seems to have been: Western Europe includes France → France includes Corsica → T. britannicum is found on Corsica. I do not think this is right. Surtsicna (talk) 08:07, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be worth to remove the map? DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would remove the map and edit the article so that it says what the cited source says, rather than "confirmed occurrences in countries including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden". Surtsicna (talk) 08:25, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about the map (I'm not the best at making range maps.) MallardTV Talk to me! 12:53, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see that a new map has been created for the article, but rather that swap that one in, I used File:Taraxacum britannicum.png which I think is a better image anyway. RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although, now that I've done that, it's unclear to me if that image is properly licensed. It's tagged as CC-BY, but I'm not convinced that's correct. Could somebody who knows more about image licensing than I do please take a look? RoySmith (talk) 14:29, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@MallardTV I see what's going on. Most of the other images you uploaded to Commons have links to their records.data.kew.org pages, where it says the image is CC-BY. But this one links to the raw file on images.data.kew.org. Could you fix up the commons entry to link to the right place? RoySmith (talk) 14:46, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’ll do that as soon as I can sit down at a computer! (Several hours) MallardTV Talk to me! 14:49, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anyós

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@SL93, Jon698, and BeanieFan11: The citations in this article are very confusing. Some just read "Property" and "Construction 2025". Also, some of the text is copy-pasted from Mapcarta. That site is CC-BY-SA, but the "BY" part of that requires that we provide proper attribution, which I'm not seeing. And, ugh, it looks like I can't even give you the full URL because it's blacklisted, but check the Earwig report. RoySmith (talk) 15:07, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention what started this: I can't verify the hook fact because I can't figure out what the citation ("Property") means. RoySmith (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RoySmith I misread the source which translated says, "Finally, in terms of customers, the Dutch account for 40% of the purchase of property in La Massana, Anyós and Escàs." So that would be 40% of them split between three villages which isn't interesting. The source is this. I wouldn't mind it being pulled for a new hook. SL93 (talk) 15:44, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pulled and replaced. RoySmith (talk) 17:10, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Charlie Suff

[edit]

@SL93, DaniloDaysOfOurLives, and Boneless Pizza!: This needs an in-line citation for the hook fact. RoySmith (talk) 15:30, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I am confused – it has one? "Suff also praised Bright for looking out for him and supporting him when he joined the soap, adding, "I quickly felt comfortable on the show and a massive part of that is from her. There's that motherly aspect, but day-to-day we're just friends and we giggle all the time!"[21]" Sorry my mistake, I got confused on the hook promoted, but the fact does have an inline citation.DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I promoted that one. SL93 (talk) 15:38, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it was. "The role had previously been portrayed by Sam Strike from 2013 to 2014, followed by Ted Reilly from 2016 to 2018.[14][15] EastEnders executive producer Chris Clenshaw said that he was "delighted" to welcome Suff in the role of Johnny, saying how he believed that Johnny was still linked to the soap and the "iconic" Queen Victoria pub despite not having appeared since 2018.[12]" SL93 (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, OK. I found Suff was cast as Johnny Carter on the BBC soap opera EastEnders, becoming the third actor to play the character. which is uncited. RoySmith (talk) 15:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: Do you mean the sentence in the lead? It is uncited as it is already sourced in the article body. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 15:43, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the one in the lead. You are correct that it is cited in the body, but I was just trying to explain why I didn't find it originally. Some hooks are easy to verify, some, like this one, turn into scavenger hunts. RoySmith (talk) 15:49, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will also add that I didn't promote that hook and I don't know who changed it to ALT0. SL93 (talk) 15:37, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like it was @Gatoclass in Special:Diff/1295876897 RoySmith (talk) 15:44, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Jim Lankas

[edit]

@Launchballer, BeanieFan11, and WikiOriginal-9: as an opinion, the hook fact should probably be attributed ("According to ...") RoySmith (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • ... that according to The Citizen-Patriot, when tackling, "Jarring Jim" was "mean, very mean, very mean"? That's much weaker of a hook in my opinion. I've had hooks of this type before; given that its already in quotes (meaning it was someone's opinion) I don't see why its a necessity to specify who said it: that's a reason people would want to learn more and click. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:40, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we even allow hooks like this? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:32, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's interesting, with or without the attribution. SL93 (talk) 16:36, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would imagine any tackle by a pro football player would be "very mean". It's not like they come up to you and say, "Excuse me sir, might I interest you in laying down on the grass? Here, let me help" RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm putting the obligation to do just that straight into #1 on my list of suggested American football rules. But yeah, the only interesting thing about the hook is the writer's rhetorical device, in which case one should definitely attribute. Otherwise it's just "... that someone, whose name I will not reveal, said something literarily pleasing?" ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:45, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the hook is amusing and eyecatching, and agree it doesn't need the attribution. I'd be willing to bet it gets a stack of pageviews. Gatoclass (talk) 16:47, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this hook fails to convey a meaningfully encyclopedic fact, so I don't think it should be run, with or without the attribution. (second time I've said I thought something wasn't interesting when I actually meant to say this! keep doing that...) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:07, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How does one determine if the hook is a "meaningfully encyclopedic fact"? BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:33, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with the above concerns about interest and think it's an interesting and catchy hook. However, with this opinion clearly being in the minority at this point (only one other non-nominator support versus five opposes), there is consensus against running it. I've gone ahead and pulled the hook; a new hook can be proposed on the nomination page. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:27, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Prep 4 (22 June 00:00)

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David Viaene

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@SL93, BeanieFan11, and Miraclepine: The source says "bench pressing 500 pounds", not "over 500 pounds". I'd also specify "bench press" in the hook rather than the generic "lift". Which type of lift is important. Benching 500 is impressive. Deadlifting 500 not so much. Maybe also specify "American football"? RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: How about this?
ALT2C: ... that in college, American football player David Viaene was able to bench press 500 pounds (230 kg)? In the weight room, he has bench pressed 505 pounds
ミラP@Miraclepine 17:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Done. RoySmith (talk) 21:01, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Technically 505 pounds is "over 500", FWIW. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I know. If somebody wants to change it to 505, have at it. RoySmith (talk) 02:40, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Set builders still needed

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I am currently trying to help reduce the backlog but can't do anything if there are no sets to verify, so if anybody can help with set building, that would be much appreciated. Gatoclass (talk) 08:47, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gatoclass: I finished off prep 2 and plan on finishing prep 3 and prep 4, but should point out that square brackets in captions cause PSHAW to break, so I suggest leaving the ticks out of those.--Launchballer 11:35, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Gatoclass: I finally finished this.--Launchballer 19:44, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two tasks in one script!

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I've finished working on a script that should be able to effectively replace what WugBot has been doing with moving nominations between WP:DYKN and WP:DYKNA, but it has a couple of added functionalities! First, it takes unapproved nominations from DYKNA and moves them back to DYKN; second, it finds lost nominations and retranscludes them to DYKN/DYKNA. A couple of design choices I'm curious to hear feedback on, as well as any general thoughts:

  • Should a tick in good faith () count as an approval, or a mistake that should keep the nomination at DYKN if that's the nom status?
  • Should the bot avoiding transcluding very new nominations that aren't on DYKN or DYKNA? BlueMoonset raised the point before that nominators might want to keep their nominations off those pages to work on them before submitting them via transclusion.

Pinging Wugapodes as the maintainer of WugBot, since we'll need to do a handoff somehow if this goes to BRFA and a test is authorized – I'd be happy to add you as a maintainer if you'd like, Wug, although I am absolutely crap at enterprise coding so I'd need a bit to figure out how to do that :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 09:01, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Our discussion of identified certain aspects that should not be taken on faith, but did not (my reading) find consensus to bar all cases where hooks could not be independently checked. I feel there would be disadvantages to depreciation given this. CMD (talk) 09:07, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the second thing should be an issue because I don't remember that ever actually happening in practice.
This is unrelated, of course, but a script that would automate the pulling process (i.e. pulling a hook/reopening a nom/putting it back in the usual place) with a single click would really help prep builders. I know this script is intended to help with the "putting untranscluded noms in the correct date section" process, but it still has enough of a delay that a proper pulling script might still be worthwhile. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 09:24, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that sweep being done once every five or ten minutes is fast enough, and given that scripts and bots are in different languages, i'd really rather maintain one tool rather than two. Once this gets online, though, I can turn on the hook-pulling script as well :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 09:26, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know I've asked this before, but I'll ask again. Could you please put all this code into github? Not having it available in a public source control system is a barrier to entry for anybody else who wants to work on this. RoySmith (talk) 10:02, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
working on it! right now it's here, but it seems like my local repo and the gitlab repo disagreed and i'm trying to figure out how to move stuff. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 12:10, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. RoySmith (talk) 12:15, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
theleekycauldron, an AGF tick counts as a tick—approval—in every other aspect, so I don't understand why it might not here. I know that Shubinator's DYKHousekeepingBot counts them as approved in the tables that are generated for the various DYK pages, so a change in AGF is a change that would need to propagate to many places. WugBot also does other functionality: it removes closed nominations (promoted or rejected) from both the Nominations and Approved pages, and emptied dates from the "Approved nominations" section of the Approved page. I was just thinking it would be nice to add functionality to remove emptied dates from the "Older nominations" section of the regular Nominations page (but not the "Current nominations" section, since nominators are actively adding nominations for seven or eight days); at the moment, I take care of "Older nominations" manually, and I'm not always around to do so in a timely fashion. If the new bot is moving nominations back and forth, it's going to need to create and remove date-based sections regularly. Just a few things to consider. Thanks for taking this on! BlueMoonset (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@BlueMoonset:The new script also removes closed nominations and empty date headers, and it'll add new date headers where needed – wouldn't be too hard to preserve empty date headers in the last week, good call! As for the AGF tick, I can't find a link offhand but there was a recent consensus to deprecate it. But I'm happy to count it as either approved or not, depending on how we want to handle that. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:37, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WT:Did you know/Archive 206#Let's deprecate DYKtickAGF RoySmith (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, based on what was said above, there was consensus to deprecate straight AGF approvals (i.e. just blindly trusting offline or non-English sources), but there was no consensus to deprecate the DYKtickAGF icon as there may still be cases when it can still be used. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 17:43, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Theleekycauldron This looks like a very comprehensive script! All I have is some suggested improvements for whilst you have the opportunity to replace wugbot:
  • The exception function is very basic (which is very reasonable assuming nothing goes wrong) – but mayyybe consider using traceback.
  • Sound the type alarm 🚨! I think isinstance would be better
if type(template) is list:

if isinstance(template, list):
And on a third, somewhat disconnected note: "transfem" – woah that's a cool name! DimensionalFusion (talk · she/her) 21:01, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copyvios in hooks

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It was pointed out to me that the hook for New Star GP (which was in a set I promoted) was a copyvio. My usual review workflow is two passes: first check that the hook is supported by the article, and then run Earwig on the article text looking for copyvios. Which means I never directly compare the hook text to the Earwig report, and this slipped through. Noting this here as a general heads up for what we need to be looking for. RoySmith (talk) 10:15, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Older nominations needing DYK reviewers

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The previous list was archived a couple of hours ago, so I've created a new list of all 22 nominations that need reviewing in the Older nominations section of the Nominations page, covering everything through June 9. We have a total of 316 nominations, of which 217 have been approved, a gap of 99 nominations that has increased by 10 over the past 6 days. Thanks to everyone who reviews these and any other nominations!

More than one month old

Other nominations

Please remember to cross off entries, including the date, as you finish reviewing them (unless you're asking for further review), even if the review was not an approval. Please do not remove them entirely. Many thanks! BlueMoonset (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam

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Launchballer said that a new hook is needed because it isn't interesting. I feel like that's unacceptable to just go by their thoughts, so I am opening it up for discussion here. Launchballer said that it isn't interesting because something would be Bill Nelson's highest charting album in his native UK. I don't understand the complaint. To me, it's interesting that an artist's album from 44 years ago is still the highest charting when the artist is famous and still active. Also, I feel like it being from any year would still make it snag interest. SL93 (talk) 21:36, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's good that Launchballer said that, because I was going to leave a note to that effect on the nomination. Any British artist is going to have a highest charting album in the UK; this hook would only be interesting if the artist was famous and the album not. In my case, despite having lived in the UK all my life, I have never heard of Bill Nelson. I would thus seriously question how a worldwide audience is supposed to know, not only who he is, but that he is "famous and still active". ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:26, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will just withdraw this, while we still pass uninteresting after uninteresting hooks about sports - and music when Gerda is involved. That isn't meant to be mean because I just find her hooks to be boring even after substantial workshopping. SL93 (talk) 22:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, many here would probably not hesitate to reject Gerda noms either if it wasn't for the fact that she gets very upset about her hooks/nominations being questioned. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:39, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could have sworn Gerda had decided to stop doing DYK. And people should just let her get upset and deny her hooks. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:20, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will start mentioning uninteresting hooks and I didn't because interestingness is usually subjective. Such as Launchballer's April Fool's Day nomination at Template:Did you know nominations/Michelle Pfeiffer (Ethel Cain song). Who is supposed to be fooled by such a hook and how? SL93 (talk) 22:37, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please do. I find that hook even more uninteresting. Unlike the Bill Nelson hook, it isn't even comprehensible by your average English speaker. Though if it's intended for April Fool's, in which case it's marginally more acceptable. Still, it's not so striking that I'd hold it for ten whole months. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:42, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Other stuff exists, although to be fair there is a lot of it. I've promoted about 20 hooks in the last couple of days; the last one came from the post-PEIS part of Approved because so little of it caught my eye. To defend my hook; as Pfeiffer's article averages 5000+ views per day, I'd say she's clearly familiar to a broad audience and thus (for the purposes of that day) almost any hook would meet the 'intriguing' part of WP:DYKINT.--Launchballer 23:17, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still think it should be interesting to those who don’t know of her or much about her. We also don’t know where those viewers are located. I do wonder why you didn’t say anything about those other nominations that didn’t catch your eye. Skipping over them without saying anything doesn’t help matters. SL93 (talk) 23:24, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree here. I get it's an April Fool's hook, but even to me the hook is incomprehensible, and if you don't know who Michelle is, the hook makes little sense. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:41, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SL93: I've definitely noticed that it's not a tool you take out of your toolbox very often, so I for one would love it if you started mentioning which hooks you don't think are interesting. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 01:04, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In general, I feel like we don't spend a lot of time dissecting why a given hook is intriguing. What are the reasons this hook giving readers to click on the article? What would they be looking for? I think those are basic questions we should be asking when we talk about how intriguingness that we skip over – I honestly don't think this is as subjective as everyone says it is. We have an audience, we have data, we should make hypotheses and test them and learn from our mistakes. (None of this is specifically about your hook, SL, I just think that part of what makes the interestingness debate so hard sometimes is our refusal to actually have the debate.) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 01:12, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SL93: If there's a way to turn Total's comments about it taking "a great deal of time to get familiar" with the music (on the album?) that would be great. This kind of habituation or acclimatization to new forms of art like music is a real phenomenon but hasn't received as much attention as it should. I'm not sure how you would put this together as a hook, but it is something that appeals to me as I've been following this for a long time. One of my early memories is hearing my father play a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos while we were driving in the car and my mind being unable to place it in any kind of category until I could acclimate to it. Viriditas (talk) 23:10, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that the fact it was originally recorded while he was part of Red Noise before being released two years later as a solo album to be more interesting than any of these suggestions. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:50, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Prep 5

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I promoted Template:Did you know nominations/Technical geography to prep 5, but I'm now not so sure about it. People would need to know what GIS, remote sensing, and Ptolemaic means. Pinging nominator GeogSage. SL93 (talk) 00:07, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GeogSage tends to be pretty busy and hard to get a hold of here. I know, because I just spent a month working with him on that nom. Hopefully, others will chime in. I think the terms are easily recognizable and make sense in the context of the hook, and have links for people who don't recognize them. Viriditas (talk) 00:17, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really wish that just clicking on the links were enough, but recent thoughts by others have been that the hook needs to be broadly interesting without readers having to click on the links. I personally think that is bs, but I also don't want any issues to come up towards me. I personally didn't know that GIS stood for geographic information system until I clicked on it. I don't mind, but the mileage may vary with others. SL93 (talk) 00:22, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any issues that would reflect on you. If any issues do come up, you have my authorization to blame me for any and all problems. I hereby award you this unlimited, gold-plated, blame Viriditas card, which may be redeemed at any time. Bonus: it will get you 50% off any inter-dimensional breakfast at Shoney's. Viriditas (talk) 00:27, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I shouldn't worry so much. The Wikipedia drama can really get to me at times. SL93 (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, if I knew how to build sets, I would worry too! I have PSHAW installed, but never got farther than that. Viriditas (talk) 00:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the terms should be understood enough, but even to people who don't know exactly what they mean "GIS" and "remote sensing" just kinda sound modern and techy, and "Ptolemaic" sounds ancient. Words have vibes, so I think it works regardless of precise knowledge for the purposes of the hook. Kingsif (talk) 01:57, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve been using GIS and Ptolemaic for a very long time (30 years), but remote sensing kind of snuck up on me about ten or 15 years ago. Any idea when it became popular with the general public? It seemed to come out of nowhere, in my mind. Viriditas (talk) 02:01, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Remote sensing was a core class when I was going through undergrad 15 years ago. The term itself originates from the military, I'm not sure where exactly, but I believe some time in the 1960s (it's in my lecture notes somewhere). One of my favorite quotes:

"There is no longer any need to preach for aerial photography-not in the United States- for so widespread has become its use and so great its value that even the farmer who plants his fields in a remote corner of the country knows its value."

— James Bagley, 1941
. As Remote sensing is an umbrella term that holds air photo interpretation today, the concept has been with the general public for a while, if not the words themselves. Remote sensing probably got popular as the internet made these images available to the general population. It likely was thrown around a lot during the Gulf Wars on the evening news as well, as satellite images were a big part of that discourse. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 17:31, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I first heard remote sensing used by NASA and JPL to describe aspects of the Mars exploration program. I don’t think I had ever heard it used before that time and I’m pretty well read. Viriditas (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A search on Google scholar for remote sensing, specifying ranges of 1970 to 1980 and 1980 to 1990 shows quite a few hits in the academic literature, and it appears to cross several disciplines. The Google Ngram viewer [13] shows that the term peaked between 1985 and 1989, and has been trending downwards since, with some recent resurgence. I'm not 100% sure how this is calculated because that dip doesn't make much sense to me, but it does show the term isn't super recent. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 20:00, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for being hard to reach @Viriditas, I've found myself busy writing other things (outside Wikipedia), and often needed to think about replies regarding this proposal. The combination of interesting, simple, and few citations was a bit of a riddle. Geographic Information Systems might not be the most familiar term to average readers, although I think it is starting to become more of a recognizable term (I know that it is taught about in high-school AP Geography, for example). While not a synonym for GIS, the term Computer cartography could likely be swapped for it, however that might necessitate another source, as the ones we list don't specifically mention "computer cartography", but instead go into detail about using computers to do cartography under the general umbrella of GIS. Stand alone computer cartography has more or less been subsumed by GIS today, so that isn't surprising. Failing that, we could just use the term cartography, which I'd hope is something we can assume is easily recognizable, however that is less "techy", to borrow at term from @Kingsif, as cartography is among the most ancient of documented the things humans have used writing for. Ptolemaic is Definity a harder term, and if we can't rely on the link that wouldn't be fair for the average advance GIS user to know, much less average Wikipedia enjoyer. I'd suggest swapping that term for Greco-Roman, while keeping the link to Ptolemy's biography.
If someone doesn't know what remote sensing is though, they can click the link. . . I honestly think remote sensing has become a standard concept for 21st century internet users, air photos have been widespread for well over a century, and most people have interacted with a mobile web map that offers satellite images as a base map.
A revised option could be something like:
"... . that while technical geography studies the application of GIS and remote sensing today, it has origins in Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic cartography?"
or
"... . that while technical geography studies the application of Computer cartography and remote sensing today, it has origins in Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic cartography?"
GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 02:48, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That still sounds too complicated and specialist. Why not just trim it to: that technical geography, which deals with spatial information, has origins in Greco-Roman and medieval Islamic cartography? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 06:32, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The "computer cartography" hook reads fine to me. The issue with the "spacial information" hook is firstly that the term is vague and jargonistic, and secondly, that it's kind of obvious anyway that any kind of geography deals with "spacial information". So I think the more precise terms are necessary. Unless you want to dump the middle clause altogether, which I guess would be another possible solution. Gatoclass (talk) 11:23, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the second revision as well. People get what "computer" and "remote" imply, and they'll get what "Greco-Roman" and "medieval" imply too and see that contrast. CMD (talk) 14:36, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The second revision sounds good to me too. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:40, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the second revision also. SL93 (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
 Done, thanks - Gatoclass (talk) 06:20, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are two things to fix on my 2nd version above. The word computer should be made lower cases, and technical geography should be linked. I'm fine with any of those two GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 16:38, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested trim for the above:

Or perhaps:

WP:ERRORS

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There's a report at WP:ERRORS regarding the current hook for Wang Yungui, which was de-WP:PRODed and then tagged with {{unreliable sources}}.—Bagumba (talk) 06:48, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Preparation area 5

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@Launchballer: you trimmed the hook about Thomas Kerr (Scottish politician) quite a lot, making it not as interesting (in my opinion). Can you replace it with one of the other hooks, thanks. Sahaib (talk) 18:51, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The 2.5 hooks I rejected require knowledge of what the Scottish Conservatives and Reform are.--Launchballer 19:06, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would you reject a hook that talked about Democrats and Republicans? ALT2 was the most interesting, though - four of the five main UK parties. Black Kite (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think that people would have a general understanding of the words conservatives and reform if anything. I think that is good enough if that hook is what the nominator prefers. SL93 (talk) 20:02, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Black Kite here. Even without knowing anything about the parties or their positions, having been associated with so many different parties is interesting. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:30, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the interest is less the parties themselves and more the number of them. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:21, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I put it back.--Launchballer 21:32, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Did you know nominations/Chelsea Wolfe (BMX)

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Noting for any interested this rather intriguing discussion between Fram and myself on my talk page, as it relates to reviewing and prep-building procedures, as well as subsequent discussion at the nomination. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing good ever comes of a "first" hook. CMD (talk) 12:49, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Did you know nominations/2025 New York corrections officers' strike

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I'm suspicious that the reviewer just drive-by approved this one without actually checking anything. Just a , no comments, and no preference between the two hooks. Apocheir (talk) 17:37, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DYK hasn't updated

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Pinging @DYK admins: and Shubinator. SL93 (talk) 00:28, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I see that. I don't know enough about the inner workings to try and fix anything, though. Having the old hooks still on the main page isn't fatal, so I'd rather wait for somebody who knows what they're doing to take a look. RoySmith (talk) 01:00, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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