Wikipedia:Did you know/Glossary

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WP:DYKTN

5x

See fivefold.

AGF

See Wikipedia:Assume good faith. At Did you know, AGF means to assume that a referenced fact is actually in the reference, even though you haven't read the reference. This is acceptable if the reference is offline, or if the reference is in a foreign language, or if you have to pay for a subscription before you can read it.

ALT, ALT1, ALT2 etc.

means an alternate hook for the same article. It could be a slight rewording of the same idea, or a completely different hook. ALTs are suggested at the suggestion page after the original hook. Often an ALT is selected instead of the original version.

approval

A nomination needs approval, with a or before it can proceed to a preparation area. See WP:Did you know/Approval.

April Fools' Day

is observed at Did you know. See Wikipedia:April Fool's Main Page/Did you know, and if you aren't familiar with Western culture see April Fools' Day.

article

At Did you know, "article" means the article being introduced on the Main Page by a hook. For instance, if the hook is "... that Jon Olav Alstad was elected to the Norwegian Parliament at the age of 25?", then it introduces the article Jon Olav Alstad (not Norwegian Parliament, which isn't in bold print). Rules for the article are here.

bare URL

is like http://example.com with the URL visible to Wikipedia's readers.

credits

at Did you know means bot-generated messages on nominators' user talk pages, thanking them for contributing after the nominations have made it to the Main Page.

Did you know

See the Did you know section of the Main Page for the visible, short explanation. The system that produces that section is also called Did you know, and the writeup this glossary belongs to explains it in detail.

DYKproblem

is a template used to tell a nominator that he needs to deal with a problem or question on his nomination. See Template:DYKproblem.

DYKUpdateBot

(needs link)

expansion

at Did you know means to expand an existing article, that is, to add text and make it longer, hopefully expanding it enough to make it qualify as a new article.

fair use

See Wikipedia:Fair use

fivefold

means five times. For instance, if an article has 1000 bytes of prose (not the whole article, see the "prose" entry), it must be expanded to 5000 bytes of prose (not the whole article) to be considered new, and thus eligible for Did you know.

hook

An example of a hook is "... that Jon Olav Alstad was elected to the Norwegian Parliament at the age of 25?" The Did you know section on the Main Page contains about eight hooks, usually starting with "... that" and ending with "?". They are called "hooks" because they are intended to hook the reader into reading the associated article. Rules for the hook are here.

IGF

In Good Faith. See AGF.

negative

At Did you know, "negative" means criticism in a hook, as in the Wikipedia:Biography of living persons policy.

NewDYKnom

is a template used to format a nomination. See {{NewDYKnom}}.

nominate

To suggest or propose. At Did you know, "nominate" means to suggest a hook and its associated article. "Nomination" can mean the hook, the article, or both.

preparation areas

are Template:Did you know/Preparation area 1, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 2, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 3, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 4, Template:Did you know/Preparation area 5, and Template:Did you know/Preparation area 6. Approved hooks are moved from T:TDYK to a preparation area and organized into a group of usually about eight. From there, an administrator will eventually move each preparation area page into one of the queues, after which DYKADMINBOT will move it to the Main Page. See "update".

prose

At Did you know, only characters of "prose" are counted when measuring the length of an article, whether it's to meet the 1,500 character minimum, or to calculate whether an article has been expanded fivefold. Characters of prose are counted by the User:Shubinator/DYKcheck script, which excludes infoboxes, categories, references, lists, tables, block quotes, headers, images and captions, the "See also" section if any, Table of Contents, edit buttons, "citation needed" and similar superscripted text, and reference link numbers like [6].

Prosesizebytes.js

is a script that measures the characters in the prose portion of the article. See User talk:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js. DYKcheck is now preferred to prosesizebytes.

Prosesize.js

is an older form of #Prosesizebytes.js. DYKcheck is now preferred to prosesize.js and to prosesizebytes.js.

queue

is what Americans call a "line", as in "line up and wait your turn". At Did you know, it means Template:Did you know/Queue, where Did you know pages wait for their twenty-four-hour turn to go onto the Main Page. There is room for six updates in the queue.

self-nom

is a nomination of a hook and an article you wrote yourself. This is permitted and encouraged.

T:TDYK

is both the shortcut to Template talk:Did you know (the DYK suggestions page) and a shorthand way of referring to it.

text

See prose.

twofer

Two articles introduced in the same hook.

update

A single set of approximately eight hooks to be displayed on the Main Page for about twenty-four hours. Each update is individually prepared in a preparation area and moved into the queues by an administrator, then onto the Main Page by DYKUpdateBot.

x

as in 5x or 1.3x, is a way of expressing how nearly an article has reached fivefold expansion. From 2000 bytes of prose to 3000 bytes is a 1.5x expansion. It would have to be expanded to 10,000 bytes of prose (not the whole article, just prose) to be 5x and qualify as new.