- For the area for making new suggestions of articles for DYK, see Template talk:Did you know
Wikipedia:Did you know (DYK) is the project page for coordinating the content of the "Did you know" section on the Main Page. The DYK section gives publicity to newly created or expanded Wikipedia articles, as a way of thanking the editors who create new content and to encourage other editors to contribute to and improve those articles and the encyclopedia.
The other sections of changeable content on the Main Page are coordinated at In the news, Picture of the day, Selected anniversaries, and Today's featured article. More general discussion of the main page takes place at Talk:Main Page, and errors are reported at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors.
DYK is run by volunteers who work together to process DYK suggestions so that they appear on the Main Page, as guided by rules and regulations which are decided by the DYK participants through consensus. Most tasks relating to DYK can be undertaken by any interested editor, but some require an administrator.
DYK made its first Main Page appearance on February 22, 2004. The article, pencil sharpener, was developed by Raul654 and an April 2004 screen shot shows DYK located in the space now occupied by In the News. Credit recognition for article creators started on November 24, 2004, DYK began placing DYK notifications on article talk pages on January 13, 2006, and nominators started receiving credit on May 13, 2006.
The DYK process is divided over several pages:
- Did you know... template (T:DYK) – the template that appears on the Main Page to show the hooks
- Nominations (T:TDYK) – where new DYK suggestions/nominations are proposed and discussed
- Queues (T:DYK/Q and subpages) – prepared DYK hook sets are placed in these queues by an administrator and moved from the queues to the live template by a bot
- Prep areas/sandboxes (T:DYK/P1 and T:DYK/P2) – where suitable DYK candidates are prepared before being added to the DYK queues
- Rules (WP:DYK and WP:DYKAR) – pages with rules and instructions about how DYK works
- DYK talk (WT:DYK) – where general discussion about the project takes place
- Errors (WP:ERRORS) – to report DYK errors on the Main Page
[edit] DYK admin participants
Any editor may volunteer to assist with DYK simply by contributing to the department operations. There is no formal hierarchy, and no particular editor or administrator has authority over others, although some tasks can only be undertaken by administrators. The following administrators have significant DYK experience and currently are active in contributing to DYK's operations:
(Edit this list)
[edit] Actively involved
The following admins are (or would like to be) actively involved in the DYK process.
[edit] Willing to help
The following admins are not actively involved but are willing to lend a hand if needed.
[edit] DYK non-admin participants
The following users who are not administrators are actively involved in one or more aspects of DYK, including reviewing and vetting nominations, updating the template, and discussing DYK issues. (Edit this list)
The following users are frequent nominators and contributors to DYK.
[edit] How a DYK suggestion makes its way to the Main Page
A DYK suggestion goes through five steps from nomination through appearing in the Did you know section on the Main Page to removal from the Main Page.
- First, an editor posts the suggested text for a DYK entry on the DYK template talk page. Discussions about individual suggestions also appear on the DYK template talk page, such as suggested improvements of the proposed DYK text, or comments about the eligibility of the article under the requirements listed on this page.
- If the suggested DYK meets the requirements, any editor may add the suggestion to the DYK template preparation area and then delete the suggestion from the DYK template talk page. In practice, to ensure that all suggestions are given fair consideration, the oldest suggestions listed on the suggestions page are selected first, to ensure that they don't go stale before they are chosen. DYK entries listed on the prep area are not final, and may be amended, edited, or rejected by any other editor. If they are rejected, they should be returned to the place on the suggestions page where they were originally listed, with their original comments (consultation of the history of the DYK template talk page may be beneficial to restore the original text).
- When it is time for the live Main Page DYK template to be updated, suggestions are moved from the prep area to the live template, which is transcluded automatically into the Main Page at the same time. The live DYK template is protected, so this move task can only be undertaken by an administrator. The administrator moving the suggestions to the live template may amend, edit, or reject any DYK entries at their discretion.
- An update to the DYK template typically adds about five to eight new suggestions (the number depends on the length and the need for spacing balance on the main page; checking how things will look using the links given in DYK template prep area page for versions of the main page is very beneficial). DYK entries appear on the Main Page for at least 6 hours, with up to 4 updates per day. The timing of this 6 hour change over is coordinated through manual modifications to ParserFunctions arguments in a {{DYK-Refresh}} template located on the DYK template talk page. DYK entries listed on the Main Page are not final. Non-admins may report errors to the Main Page errors page so they can be dealt with. Admins can amend, edit, replace, and remove entries in the DYK template while it appears on the Main Page. Wheel warring prohibits one admin from undoing one another's administrative actions. In particular, wheel warring prohibits one admin from reinserting a DYK hook onto the Main Page that was removed by another admin. In one example, aggressive wheel warring over a Main Page DYK hook led to desysopping by Jimbo Wales.
- Old DYK entries that are removed from the Main Page are archived, although in practice this can be a bit backlogged – volunteers welcomed!
[edit] How the participants communicate
The DYK project talk page is the main location for discussing issues that affect DYK, including changes to DYK's rules and regulations, questions about the rules and regulations, and other issues that arise.
Discussion about particular DYK suggestions generally appears on the DYK template talk page, although wider issues raised by particular suggestions are also discussed on the DYK project talk page.
There is also a dedicated IRC channel, #wikipedia-en-dyk.
[edit] Sources for DYK nominations
Any editor may submit DYK nominations from any source. Some DYK nominations may be found at
[edit] DYK rules
DYK is not a general trivia section. DYK is only for articles that have been created, or expanded fivefold or more, within the last 5 days. Ideally, they should have been listed on "New Pages" during that time, but former redirects, stubs, or other short articles that have been greatly expanded are also encouraged (as a guideline, an expansion of fivefold or more is acceptable; the decision on whether an expanded article is appropriate for the template will depend on the updating administrator's judgment). For those workpages first developed in user space, the date the workpage is posted to article namespace may be counted as the first day towards the DYK 5 day rule. You may wish to consider adding {{workpage}} to the top of the workpage.
Any user may nominate a DYK suggestion; self-nominations are permitted and encouraged.
[edit] Selection criteria
Four basic criteria are used to determine whether a nomination is eligible for DYK. Other criteria may arise as a result of community discussion or policy (more details appear at Wikipedia:Did you know/Additional rules), but the following four criteria account for most cases.
- New – A nominated article must be new.
- For purposes of DYK, a "new" article is no more than five days old, and may not consist of text spun off from a pre-existing article.
- Former redirects, stubs, or other short articles in which the prose portion has been expanded fivefold or more within the last five days are also acceptable as "new" articles. The content with which the article has been expanded must be new content, not text copied from other articles.
- Articles that have been worked on exclusively in a user or user talk subpage and then moved (or in some cases pasted) to the article mainspace are considered new as of the date they reach the mainspace.
- Try to pick articles that are original to Wikipedia (not inclusions of free data sources) and interesting to a wide audience.
- Articles that have appeared on the main page's In the News section are not eligible.
- Long enough – The article must be of sufficient length.
- Articles must have a minimum of 1,500 characters of prose (ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables etc.) The number of characters may be measured using this script or this tool.
- Lists: Proposed lists need 1,500+ characters of prose. The listed items themselves are not counted as part of the 1,500 DYK qualifying characters.
- In practice, articles longer than 1,500 characters may still be rejected as too short, at the discretion of the selecting reviewers and administrators.
- Cited hook – The nomination's hook must contain a fact cited in the article. (See more information under The hook, below.) The fact should have an inline citation, and the article in general should use inline, cited sources.
- The hook should include a definite fact that must be mentioned in the article.
- The hook fact must be cited in the article with an inline citation, since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. The hook fact must have an inline citation right after it since the fact is an extraordinary claim; citing the hook fact at the end of the paragraph is not acceptable.
- Neutral – Articles on living individuals are carefully checked to ensure that no unsourced or poorly sourced negative material is included. Articles and hooks which focus unduly on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided.
Many submissions are made which fail to satisfy one or more of these points. Nominators should ensure that their submissions meet all these criteria or their submissions will fail DYK eligibility. Articles with good references and citations are preferred. These sources should be properly labeled; that is, not under an "External links" header. Uncited articles are not likely to be chosen.
[edit] The hook
- Format
- The title of the new article must be in bold and linked to the new article.
- Entries should start with an ellipsis of three full stops (not the ellipsis character …) and a space, and the first sentence should end with a question mark.
- Use {{*mp}} to get bullet points on the Main Page.
- The hook itself should be concise (fewer than about 200 characters, including spaces). While 200 is an outside limit, hooks slightly under 200 characters may still be rejected at the discretion of the selecting reviewers and administrators.
- Please note that hooks are subject without notice to copyediting as they move to the main page. The nature of the DYK process makes it impractical to consult users over every such edit. Also, watch the suggestions page to ensure that no issues have been raised about your hook, because if you do not respond to issues raised your hook may not be featured at all.
- About eight items (or "hooks") are usually selected at once, depending on page balance, so the items selected fit with whatever else is on the Main Page at that time. Check by using the links on T:DYK/P1: "See how this template appears on both today's Main Page and tomorrow's Main Page." to see if the DYK template balances the rest of the main page layout.
- Content
- The hook should refer to established facts that are not likely to change, and should be relevant for more than just novelty or newness.
- The hook should be neutral.
- The "Did you know?" fact must be mentioned in the article and cited with an inline citation since inline citations are used to support specific statements in an article. A lot of submissions are made which fail to meet one or both of these criteria. Nominators should ensure that their submissions meet both of these criteria or their submissions will fail DYK eligibility.
- Articles and hooks which focus on negative aspects of living individuals should be avoided.
- When you write the DYK item (or "hook") please make it "hooky", that is, short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article. An interesting hook is more likely to draw in a variety of readers. Shorter hooks are preferred to longer ones, as long as they don't misstate the article content.
- Other editors may propose changes to the suggested hook as follow-ups.
- Selecting nominated hooks
- A suggestion rather than a rule: try to avoid picking your own suggestions. Use common sense here, and please avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. DYK is meant to be something that is motivating to editors creating new content.
- Please keep suggestions NPOV and attempt to have items from different fields of interest in an update.
- Try to avoid country-centrism and topic-centrism. Wikipedia is a general-interest encyclopedia with a global audience. No DYK installment should have more than two entries relating to one country, topic, or issue, and no more than one is even better.
- While we strive for accuracy and neutrality in all articles, articles dealing with living persons are especially sensitive. Please keep the Biography of Living Persons policy in mind.
- Select articles which cite their sources. Uncited articles are unlikely to be chosen.
[edit] Images
- Pictures accompanying the DYK hook should be:
- freely (PD, GFDL, CC etc) licensed (NOT fair use) because the main page can only have freely licensed pictures;
- suitable, attractive, and interesting at a 100x100px resolution;
- already in the article; and
- relevant to the article.
- The first item in the list must have an associated image.
- The standard image code is <div style="float:right;margin-left:0.5em;"> [[Image:filename.jpg|100x100px|ALT TAG]]</div>.
- If there are no suggestions with appropriate images, you can usually use a flag for a topic with a national connection.
- Fair use images are not permitted. Please find a related free image (PD, GFDL, CC etc.) as an alternative.
- The first item "hook" should be modified to include (pictured) (or perhaps (pictured, flag of Zdxyrastan) or whatever) in the appropriate place to make the connection to the image.
- Administrators: when you add an image to DYK, it is automatically protected, so simply add an {{mprotected}} notice to the image description page (or {{C-uploaded}} plus a copy of the author attribution and the licence tag if you have uploaded a temporary copy from Commons).
- Sounds: Sounds accompanying the DYK hook should have similar qualities to pictures, and should be formatted using {{DYK Listen|filename.ogg|Brief description}}
- Videos: Videos with a DYK hook should be formatted with {{DYK Watch|filename.ogg|Brief description}}
[edit] Preparing sets and updating the template
See Wikipedia:Did you know/Guide.
[edit] Errors
Notification of DYK errors regarding what is currently on the main page may be posted at Errors in Did you know.... DYK errors on the main page may be addressed by an admin through changes to the DYK template.
- Admins
- If a factual error is reported when the hooks are on the front page, try to replace the hook with another fact from the article, rather than just removing it.
- In the case it has to be removed, try to replace it with another hook from the suggestions page.
- If it is the first hook and hence has an associated picture, you must replace it with another hook with a picture.
[edit] See also
