Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines

Here are the previously unwritten rules of Did You Know, that is, unwritten at Wikipedia:Did you know#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 G3 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 (in addition to categories listed in the rules) block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, and edit buttons, but includes reference link numbers like [6], although I think the character-counter prosesize.js excludes such reference link numbers.
• 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.
• A4: If some of the text was copied from another Wikipedia article, then it must be expanded fivefold as if the copied text had been a separate 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: Don't falsely assume that everyone worldwide knows what country or sport you're talking about.
• C3: 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)'' . 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.)
• C4: No space before the question mark.
• C5: No external links in the hook.
• C6: A hook introducing more than one article is an exception to the hook length rule.

Other unwritten rules for the article

• D1: No items that have been rejected for In The News (?) or that have already been on DYK once before (pre-expansion, for example).
• 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/Archive 29#Reference section.
• 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: There is a reasonable expectation that an article which is to appear on the front page, even a short one, should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress. Therefore, articles which include unexpanded headers are likely to be rejected. Articles which fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected. For example, an article about a book that fails to summarize the book's contents, but contains only a bio of the author and some critics' views, is likely to be rejected as insufficiently comprehensive.
• D7: "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. But if you merge the edit history when you move, we might not believe you moved it.
• D8: "Five days old" really means about eight days in Swahili :) . That is, if your article was created or expanded after the last day listed in Template talk:Did you know#Expiring noms, it is likely to be approved.
• D9: 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.
• D10: 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.

"Rules" sometimes invoked but lacking a consensus

• E1: Does the first word always have to be "that"?
• E2: Can there be multiple sentences in a hook?
• E3: Is one source for an article enough?
• E4: Is IMDb a Wikipedia:Reliable source? Previous discussion here.
• E5: Occasionally someone objects to linking an unfamiliar word to Wiktionary on the front page, but such objections have always been overruled.

Written but often overlooked

• F1: Space after the ellipsis.
• F2: The link to your article should be in bold type.
• F3: The first sentence should end with a question mark.
• F4: For the first hook, the string (pictured) is all in italics, including the brackets.
• F5: WP:DASH.
• F6: MOS:NUM#Numbers as figures or words.
• F7: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)
• F8: "a 'new' article is no more than five days old. This does not include articles split from older articles", although an article sufficiently expanded from a section of an older article can be a fivefold expansion. The word "fork" is sometimes used to mean Wikipedia:Splitting.
• F9: The piped redirect guideline WP:R2D, as clarified by Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Link here (which may be archived by the time you read this). This guideline and its applicability to the Main Page are controversial, but if you disagree, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Redirect so those who wrote the guideline can have their say.
• F10: WP:ADVERTISING

Other recurring issues

• G1: 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 for rejection or other negative comments. Hooks for the next update are usually chosen from near the bottom, even though they are marked as "Expiring hooks".
• G2: 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.

• G3: 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 Template talk:Did you know#Instructions, which are linked from Wikipedia:Did you know#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/Archive 29#5x expansion.
• G4: These "unwritten" rules are intended to describe the consensus, not to prescribe it.

Unwritten rules for evaluating other people's hooks and articles

• H1: 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.
• H2: You are not allowed to approve your own hook or article.

Unwritten rules of thumb for preparing updates

Users are encouraged to help out by preparing updates on the Next update page. Note that promoting your own articles is generally discouraged, and promoting your own articles before they have been independently verified is disallowed.

Here are a few rules of thumb to bear in mind when preparing updates:

J1: Currently the accepted length of an update is eight hooks. This is not an absolute rule but it is the currently accepted standard length for an update.

J2: Make sure to choose a varied selection - don't choose half a dozen people hooks, for example, or a bunch of hooks about one particular country or topic. Variety is the spice of life. (However, see the following clause for an important qualification).

J3: Because of the preponderance of submissions on US topics and biography hooks, it is usually appropriate to have roughly 50% of hooks in a given update on both US and biography topics. That is to say, in an eight-hook update you should have roughly four hooks per update on US topics, and four on biography. These are not mutually exclusive, for example if you have two US bio hooks that would count as both two US hooks and two bio hooks. Note that "roughly 50%" means just that - this is not an absolute, you can have less of either if there are not many currently available such hooks to choose from on the Suggestions page. Note however that as a general rule you should never have more than 50% of hooks on US, biography or any other topic, except when doing so is unavoidable.

J4: Also, mix your hooks up. Try to avoid having two hooks of the same general type next to one another in the update (for example, two US hooks or two bio hooks together). Putting several US hooks next to one another in an update makes the update look US-centric, the impact is greatly reduced if you interleave the US hooks with hooks about different countries. In the same spirit, try to avoid putting two bio hooks together, or two hooks on any other subject.

J5: Try to avoid putting inappropriate hooks next to one another. For example, don't put a sad hook next to a funny one, it looks incongruous and jerks the reader uncomfortably from one emotion to another.

J6: Consider picking at least one funny or quirky hook if there is one available and putting it in the last (bottom) slot of the update. Just as serious news programs end on an upbeat note to bring viewers back next time, ending on an upbeat or quirky note rounds an update off nicely and encourages readers to come back next time for more.

J7: Don't be afraid to ruthlessly trim hooks of extraneous information and clauses. A lot of people who submit hooks tend to overestimate the amount of information that is required, but the end result is a hook that has too much information and is difficult to process. We don't want our readers to work hard, we want to make reading the DYK section as accessible and enjoyable an experience as possible! In general, the shorter and punchier the hook, the more impact it has. As it says on the Suggestions page, the 200 character limit is an outside limit not a recommended length—the ideal length is probably no more than about 150-160 chars. Note however that some hooks cannot be reduced in length without rendering them meaningless, so don't assume that every hook that is 200 characters long requires trimming.