Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines

Here are the previously unwritten rules of Did You Know, that is, unwritten at Wikipedia:Did you know#The DYK Rules and Template talk:Did you know#Instructions. These "unwritten" rules are technically part of the rules, because the former of those two links references the latter, and the latter references this page (see H3 below). The question marks show where even I'm not sure if that's what the real unwritten rule is. A1, A2 etc. are names for rules, to make them easier to cite.

Unwritten article length rules

• A1: 1500 characters means including spaces. (That's arguably in the rules, but surely not made clear.)
• A2: The prose portion of the article, which must be 1500 characters, excludes block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, and edit buttons, but includes reference link numbers like [6].
• A3: Fivefold expansion is calculated from the previously existing article, no matter how bad it was, no matter whether you kept any of it and (?) no matter if it was up for deletion. This may be a bad surprise, but we don't have enough time and volunteers to reach consensus on the quality of each previous article.

Unwritten article link rules

• B1: The hook must link to a qualifying article. "Qualifying" refers to the many written and "Unwritten" rules regulating the quality of that article.
• B2: Don't capitalize your article as it appears in the hook, just because that's how it appears in the article. Capitalize it only if the word would normally be capitalized, even if you weren't linking it.
• B3: Piping the article link is sometimes discouraged, but many hooks are better when the link is piped, and show on the Main Page that way. Disambiguated article titles like Gene Green (baseball) are always piped like this: '''[[Gene Green (baseball)|Gene Green]]'''.
• B4: All things being equal, we prefer the article link near the beginning of the hook. But that isn't a rigid rule either; many hooks are better with the article link in the middle or at the end, and appear on the Main Page that way.

Other unwritten rules for the hook

• C1: No redlinks in the hook.
• C2: No ads.
• C3: Don't falsely assume that everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about.
• C4: If your hook includes an image, some add the word (pictured) at Template talk:Did you know, and some don't. But if the image is used at Template:Did you know/Next update, then the word (pictured) should be added if necessary. This may also appear as (object pictured), where "object" is the name of what is pictured. But if you do say (pictured), it should be italicized. This is coded on the edit page as ''(pictured)'' or ''(object pictured)'' (those are pairs of single quotes, not double quotes). The name of the object, if any, should be italicized along with the word "pictured", and so should the parentheses. (I think italicized parentheses look more like boomerangs, but that is the consensus.)
• C5: No space before the question mark.
• C6: No external links in the hook.

Other unwritten rules for the article

• D1: No items that have already appeared on the Main Page or been rejected for In The News (?).
• D2: Wikipedia, including Wikipedia in other languages, is not considered a Wikipedia:Reliable source.
• D3: References in the article must not be bare URL's such as http://example.com – according to Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Reference section (or if archived, see summer of 2008).
• D4: Articles nominated for deletion won't be used unless/until they survive the deletion process.
• D5: The article is likely to be rejected for having dispute tags. (Removing the tags without consensus doesn't count.)
• D6: "Five days old" means five days old in article space. You may write your article on a user subpage and perfect it for months. The five days start when you move it into article space. Such moves are often overlooked when enforcing the five day rule, so we may need a reminder.
• D7: If your article contradicts an existing article, the contradiction should be resolved one way or the other before your article is approved. Don't expect Did You Know regulars to resolve the contradiction for you.
• D8: I have tried to document often-used rules that aren't written elsewhere. But to some (small) extent, Did You Know approval is a subjective process. No amount of studying rules, almost-rules and precedents will guarantee approval, nor will violating any rule guarantee disapproval. Just because an unfamiliar criterion isn't listed, doesn't mean you can't be disqualified. The subjective decision might depend on an attempt to circumvent the details of the rules, especially if the attempt doesn't address the underlying purpose of improving the hook and article.

Unwritten rules for evaluating other people's hooks and articles

• E1: You don't have to be an administrator or a Did You Know regular to comment on a hook, to use a symbol such as or , or even to edit Template:Did you know/Next update. Of course the judgments of regulars are less likely to be challenged.

"Rules" sometimes invoked but lacking a consensus

• F1: Does the first word always have to be "that"?
• F2: Can there be multiple sentences in a hook?
• F3: Is one source for an article enough?
• F4: Is IMDb a Wikipedia:Reliable source? Previous discussion here.

Written but often overlooked

• G1: Space after the ellipsis.
• G2: The link to your article should be in bold type.
• G3: The first sentence should end with a question mark.
• G4: WP:DASH.
• G5: MOS:NUM#Numbers as figures or words.
• G6: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)

Other recurring issues

• H1: Authors often complain that requests for changes don't come until the hook is about to expire. However, most reviewers prefer to review the end of the list, because expiring hooks are the first priority, and they can't keep up with the volume of submissions. That isn't the ideal situation, but it explains what happens. Similarly, authors wonder if their submissions are rejected or forgotten, but you don't know as long as the submission is still on the page, unless there is an X for rejection or other negative comments. Hooks for the main page are usually chosen from near the bottom, even though they are marked as "Expiring hooks".
• H2: To calculate fivefold expansion since a specific day, which I will call July 18, 2008 for definiteness: 1. Count the characters in the prose-only portion of the current version. 2. On the history screen, click the latest time stamp before July 18, not the first time stamp for July 18. 3. Divide by the prose-only characters on that screen.

To explain the counter-intuitive step 2, I emphasize the difference between an edit's change, which you see by clicking "last" on the history page, and an edit's result, which you see by clicking the time stamp on the history page. Although an edit's change and an edit's result are listed on the same line, the edit's change really comes between that edit's result and the previous edit's result. Similarly, an edit's result really comes between that edit's change and the next edit's change, even though an edit's change and an edit's result are shown on the same line.

Example. On January 1, 2006 a 100 character stub is created. At 1:00 on July 18, 2008, the 100 characters are expanded to 1000 characters. An hour later at 2:00 July 18, 2008, the article is further expanded to 2000 characters. When I say it that way, the expansion is clearly 20x and qualifies for Did You Know. But to count the 100 characters, they wouldn't be listed as 1:00 July 18. The 100 characters existed on July 18 before 1:00, but the 100 characters were the result of the previous edit. So you would have to click the 2006 edit to count the 100 characters, even though 2006 is much too old for Did You Know. If you made the mistake of clicking the first edit for July 18, you would get the result of that first edit and therefore miss the change of that edit, and count 1000 characters, resulting in 2x expansion and an unjust disqualification.

• H3: So why don't the "unwritten" rules become written rules? Two answers: #1 is that they are written rules, in the sense that the Unwritten Rules are linked from near the end of Template talk:Did you know#Instructions, which are linked from Wikipedia:Did you know#The DYK Rules. So they are real rules, sort of, but hard to find. #2 is that we don't have a consensus on what to put into the integrated rules, in part because no one has proposed such an integration in a complete form. See Wikipedia talk:Did you know#5x expansion or if it becomes archived, find July 2008.