I've been very critical recently of the quality of the typical "Did you know?" article featured on the main page; it seems to me that those approving them take little if any trouble to even glance at the articles being showcased.

Today, for instance, Frisian kingdom is on the main page. Perhaps understandable if you believe the miraculous story of the king who died twice:

Poppo
In 733 Charles Martel sent an army against the Frisians. The Frisian king Poppo was slain and his army pushed back back to Eastergoa. The next year the Battle of the Boarn took place. Charles ferried an army across the Aelmere with a fleet that enabled him to sail up to De Boarn. The Frisians were defeated in the ensuing battle, and their king Poppo was killed.

I have given up fighting against the daily stupidity on wikipedia. Nobody seems to care, and I doubt that anyone really cares here either. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

I do find it odd that such new, barely reviewed articles are permitted to be on the Main Page. I've nominated a fair few articles of my own to DYK, but I have no idea how well they were checked over. The system is better than it used to be. I don't recall articles actually being checked over for accuracy or basic grammar back in 2006, just that they met the DYK length and date criteria and that the hook part was sourced.

GAs deserve more prominence on the main page. Generally the reviews are better (though I have seen some appalling reviews).

The thing with GAs is that they're of variable quality, and almost always of lower quality than FAs (and I say this as somebody who's generally supportive of the GA process). What would you be looking to highlight by putting them on the mainpage? Their quality? If you want to put high quality articles up there, you might as well just throw a second FA up. At least with DYK you're not supposed to be highlighting quality, but rather their newness and interesting facts.

I'm not necessarily supportive of the whole DYK thing - I have limited experience with it - but it's at least intended to serve a purpose distinct from TFA. I don't think that having front page GAs would. It might be interesting to leave DYK in place, but replace the requirement for new articles with a requirement that they be GAs (though you'd probably also have to slow down the rotation in that case).

My 2c; when Raul654 (yes, him again) set it up it made sense, as there were new significant articles being added all the time, and there were genuinely interesting facts to put up there. Now that Wikipedia is in Somey's beloved Maintenance Phase*, most of the new articles are on marginal topics about which there's very little interesting to say. (I will occasionally nominate articles for DYK, but have only done so 6 times in 3 years, as I don't see the point unless it's a fact which might interest someone without an interest in the topic.)

*There are still large numbers of glaring redlinks, especially when you get out of the comfort zone of 20th century popular culture – I note that Walter Greaves (cyclist) has an article but Walter Greaves (extremely influential 19th century artist) is still shiny and red, for example.

I wrote a few DYKs. I could easily have scored twice as many, but the novelty of getting my work linked on the Main Page wore off after about five times. (This was especially so because after I successfully nominated Petroleum Road (T-H-L-K-D) some drive-by editor edited out my formulation that the Golan Heights was "in Israel", so I said to myself, "forget it, I'll just post my articles and not make them so well known.")

To me, at that time, DYK was an incentive to try for a slightly higher standard in writing new articles. Like any incentive, it can be abused, but it promotes the behavior that it intends to promote, viz. writing new articles. Overall, I think that's good.

There was a proposal a while back to reform DYK to allow major expansions to articles that already existed. I forget exactly what was proposed, but basically, if you took an article from an ordinary three-paragraph pile of word soup to a Good Article, as I did with endgame tablebase (T-H-L-K-D) the proposal would allow you to post that at DYK. It didn't happen, but I have seen 1345 (T-H-L-K-D) at DYK (very interesting, you really should take a look) and that obviously was more than five days old.

There was also a mini-scandal when some wise guy name Sherurcij (T-C-L-K-R-D) tried to game DYK by posting a hoax directly into the fifth-day list so that nobody would really have time to review it. It became a brouhaha at ANI; that's how I found out.

I found the five-day criterion cumbersome. I could have kept articles in userspace and posted them later, but working with dozens of new articles, I preferred to keep a task list on my userpage and have the partially finished articles in mainspace. I just wanted to spare myself the trouble of making all those page moves. I wish they would allow a more lenient criterion, so that if you're the sole author you could nominate an older article too. On the other hand, DYK has more than enough nominations anyway so they don't need to expand the criteria.

Errors of the type Malleus points out will slip through any review process. If I were reviewing that article for a GA nomination I would probably catch it, but not for sure. The article is otherwise DYK worthy.

Bolloxs.

I found that error in a ten-second glance at the article, and I could give you plenty more similar examples. DYKs are generally pretty short; doesn't take long to actually, you know, read them.


There may well have been a time for it, but that time has long passed. I'm continually gobsmacked by being asked if I know that, for instance, "the site of the Zagreb synagogue ... has been used as a volleyball court and a parking lot?" No, I didn't know that, but I've got only a vague idea of where Zagreb is anyway, and frankly I couldn't give a flying fuck. I doubt many others would either.


That would at least be a step in the right direction. Less pointless busy work as well.

(I'll concede the other point.)

For a few weeks, I set an internet filter on my home laptop that allowed me to view only the Main Page but no other Wikipedia page. The results of that experiment were interesting, in retrospect. I would read the entire Main Page, not just a portion of it, and I would not immediately jump to the drama boards. In particular, since DYK was updated four times a day instead of just once a day for everything else, I could check back six hours later and would see new content. Changing that aspect of frequent updates would disappoint users, however few they might be, who come to the Main Page looking for something they have not seen before.

Let me if I'm understanding. You're suggesting that if the main page isn't updated every six hours then there will be a significant numbers of users upset? Why discriminate against those users who're already upset because it isn't updated every three hours?

Heck, if they all get together with the ones who're disappointed that it isn't updated every two hours they might even be able to fill a phone box. Are you certain you aren't confusing DYK with "In the news"? I can certainly see a case for that being updated more frequently.

† This tag provided for the Benefit of BayesBots who are Busily Busting their BayesBrains to recognize fancruft when they see it in future.‡

‡ Cuz, y'know, we've just about given up on human beings exhibiting any signs of good taste.

Okay, you win. Probably most of the folks who I describe are the type of folks who would not visit the site more than once a day anyway. Still, there's less of a distinction between six hours and three hours, than six hours and a full 24 hours. At least, I think so.

All that is missing on the DYK page is Jack Palance hissing "Believe it...or not!"

(You have to be an American of a certain age to understand that remark.)

Now, if WP had any BALLS, they'd just directly connect DYK up to special:random, so that every few minutes, some totally random WP article came up on the main page in DYK, with the LEAD all in place. Even if it was a stub. Even if it was porn, or something just vandalized, or something like List of Chinese people. The last being still my favorite example of an utterly barkingly-mad, but serious, WP article.

That would be working without the censor button, live, on the highwire without the net. Now you're living, Jimbo! See what thou hast wrought!

hmmmm.. this thread is amusingly timed from my perspective, given that just the other day I thought I'd check out how the 'did you know' thing works, and shaw 'nuff a few days later this little gem has appeared on the main page.

I think it's intended to be a very low bar, to get people engaged in what's perceived as useful work creating new articles and expanding existing ones. It's absolutely tied into the idea of wiki as game, because a 'DYK' point is probably the equivalent of 10 gold pieces, or 50 Manna ( does anyone else remember the game 'magic carpet'? ) or something in the wiki-economoy.

Having seen the criticism of the process here, I had a sense of why you could see 'DYK's not just as pretty bloomin' useless (not properly checked, thin / shallow etc. etc.) but a bit parasitic - it's an area where you can feel that you're working on an encyclopedia, when the consequences are actually a net negative, given the damage a million amateurs could do to the professionalism of knowledge dissemination (the bitter irony being that I learn something from Chambers', share it with the world, and put Chambers out of business......)

I see it as part of a production line from stub --> DYK --> GA --> FA. It is pretty easy to knock up one in an hour or so and you've de-stubbed a stub, or created a new article.

I wish folks would explore more preexisting stubs for material, as there are plenty of more 'core' things to expand.
Cas

See, here is a capital city of a sovreign state:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroni,_Comoros

which could be a straightforward 5x expansion for DYK.

In Joseph Smith's time that island was called Camora on maps. And in the first edition of the Book of Mormon, the hill where the treasure is buried, is spelled Camorah. One letter difference. And by gosh, there's an angel Moroni who guarded that treasure, and enough tales of buried treasure and gold in early Mormonism for Robert Louis Stevenson.

http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon330.htm

It's all probably worth fleshing out just to bedevil the Mormons.

So how many dyks turn into GAs let alone FAs?

From my personal experience, around a half to three-quarters of the articles I write to get put on DYK end up being Good or Featured, mainly because I see FA as the target, not DYK.

That said, I don't do the production line Cas highlights. Most of the time, I go stub -> DYK -> FA or stub -> DYK -> GA, but very uncommonly both of them.

Every DYK I wrote was intended to stop at DYK and not try for GA or FA.

Whoa, I thought for sure that would be too short to qualify. Arguably not a true "stub" if it can't be expanded further (I have a few I've given up on), but it does have the same size and shape.

The current DYK had a listing that sounded interesting for a change: "... that in 1895, the husband of English actress Amy Roselle shot her dead and then killed himself, leaving behind a suicide note censuring the acting profession?"

So I went to the Amy Roselle (T-H-L-K-D) article for a look. There's no mention of a suicide note, and the article says it was a joint suicide, while the DYK notice implies (to me, anyway) that it was a murder/suicide.

DYK is a great way to perform mediocre work but get the kinds of kudos that lead the pathway to adminship. It's also a great way to troll WP. I successfully got the Essjay article on the main page through a DYK submission and it was approved and on the main page for about half a day before some savvy admins noticed it. Got a stern warning. LOL.

You think Rachel Marsden would be noticed before it went up? Never underestimate the cluelessness of the newb.

See here.

If I remember correctly, only one of my DYKs made it to FA, though nearly all of them end up at GA.

Who maintains that list? Or rather, who doesn't maintain it?

Ah, I see, it's just another award scheme for those who care about award schemes.

Because Master Awbrey neglected to point it out again.......................

In a depraved wargaming society like Wikipedia, getting something onto the
front page becomes a status symbol and a brownie point, and says nothing
about the actual value or accuracy of the damned article.

To point this out for the nth time: this is NOT A GOOD POLICY.

Why isn't there a subject-based directory or menu on the front page?
Why is there only a tiny link to the categorical index up in the left-hand corner, but
most of the front page is taken up with FA, DYK, news items (show me an "encyclopedia"
that also publishes a newspaper...) and a massive, ugly load of site bureaucracy
cruft at the bottom? If you were trying to use Wikipedia to LOOK SOMETHING UP
for the first time, how would you start? How can you find what you need, in this
ugly pile of tiny text that has nothing to do with finding a subject?

Plus a long, long list of links to WP in other languages. Why? Are they bragging about all the
languages they serve (some very badly)? How many people need to see the link to the
Breton Wikipedia?? It's up near the top of the language list....

This thing is not an "encyclopedia". It's a deeply nerdy popularity contest.

Look at britannica.com.
What do you see? A subject menu, and very little else.
Click on a subject, you get a few chosen articles, some featuring past events that happened
on this date, some being chosen by the editors. You have to scroll down to see the "Spotlights".
And looky, there's almost no bureaucracy cruft visible. In fact, the text search box is right at the
top of the page, where nobody can miss it.

Look at Encarta. Very similar, simplified layout with dropdown menus for encyclopedia,
atlas, etc. plus a search box at top and center.
Look at encyclopedia.com, very similar.
Look at the wikified 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Nice, clean subject index, and very little cruft.
Look at answers.com. More of the same simplified format.

Something that calls itself an "encyclopedia" would worry more about what its users need,
and not about what its wargaming nerdy editors want to see.....

Quite.

Your complaints seem to be mainly about the default skin. Use a different one if you don't like it.

And where on the main page is the link to instructions on how to accomplish this?........

Why are you asking me? Why do you imagine that I care what's on the main page or what isn't?

Sadly, not for much longer.

Encarta was such an amazing product back in the heyday of CD-ROMs; it's disappointing to see it go.

I'm not sure whether "sad" is the right word, but there's a difficult economic in the world of software nevertheless. Compare Oracle and MySQL for instance.

Why are you sad, Krimpet? Your volunteerism helped put Encarta in the grave. Did you not realize this (we were trying to tell you this for about the past 3 years), or are you justifying this loss in that Encarta's successor is "better"?

That's not fair. I've done some volunteerism for WP, but Encarta never exactly showed up on my doorstep with a glass slipper and a better offer.

If you're a natural writer and teacher there's nothing more seductive than an automatic HUGE audience and instant publication. Especially when you have no other paying offers even vaguely comparable (yes, I've written in many paying media-- and I feel like Keats' gravestone for doing it; it's far worse than WP).

Sorry, but guaranteed readership, screw the payment, is how we writers sell our souls to the Devil. And you KNOW who that is.

It did? How many articles did Krimpet contribute to anyway? A handful of road GAs that nobody apart from people who care about roads will care about.

Really? Krimpet was a roadster?

So... what do you drive on?

Actually I find roads quite interesting myself, but then again, I am a nerd. It's only a limited fan base. Most people's eyes will simply glaze over when reading about them. Even I have trouble sometimes.

"An hook at DYK should be short, punchy, catchy, and likely to draw the readers in to wanting to read the article." Er, quite.

Oh my god, really? I did NOT know that.

It's fun to learn new facts.

Did we delete an article about Letterman's mostly-bogus trivia segment or was it something else...

If a high quality free-content, community-contributed encyclopedia existed that beat the pants off Encarta existed, I wouldn't mourn its passing. But this point I consider Wikipedia a failed experiment. It has no quality control, and a complete lack of the competent management and discipline required to produce a large, authoritative reference work.

I don't blame Wikipedia's contributors for the demise of Encarta - there's some great writers who dedicate their time there, and they can't be faulted for wanting to help out. (I'm not including myself in this group, mind you; functionaries in the bloated bureaucracy, as I was, are a different kettle of fish that isn't really related to this topic.) Rather, I think Wikipedia has triumphed more due to your average Joe being readily willing to accept Wikipedia's mediocrity, being free-as-in-beer and readily available, over scholarship and rigor. It's just the way people are.

Another case of "worse-is-better."

Something else. It was some sort of nonsense article. Five senseless sentences. It's possibly available on Deletionpedia or something.

Likely not as the advent of Deletionpedia was circa Feb. 2008 (which was about seven years late as far as I'm concerned). I don't watch enough TV to tell you when "Fun Facts" began.

I think we need some joined up thinking here. Sure, there's lots of stuff on wikipedia that if I ruled the world I'd delete in a heart beat; almost every BLP and almost every one of Blofeld's stubs spring to mind. But there's also an awful lot of good stuff there, and that needs to be recognised as well.

Thats true. But it makes things worse. Firstly it makes the other articles more respectable. Secondly the average punter cant know which are the good ones and which just look good. Thirdly an article can be good at one time then messed up by wikidiots a week later and the average mug doesnt know that.

That's certainly a serious problem, I agree.

The wikipedia default assumption of "good faith" flies in the face of all logic.

And all experience.

Other notable WP policy perversions not discussed: WP:POINT and WP:OTHERSTUFF. Which are deliberate attempts to avoid logically and ethically sound arguments based on equal protection, due process, and basic fairness in application of rules.

Razzberries to you, Wikipedia.

You missed out WP:PERENNIAL, which is as blatant an attempt to stifle criticism as I think I've ever seen anywhere.

You're right, of course. It's just that I've complained about WP:PERENNIAL so often that nobody listens any more, so I've quit.