Is DYK a joke?, DYIK - a fast way to amass millions Options

[chrisoff]

"There is actually another problem there as well: DYK has become a factory for mainpage credits. There seems to be a large number of DYK junkies who mass-produce totally boring articles and put them through DYK. As a result, every single article currentrly gets only a few hours on DYK, and readers have been conditioned to ignore it entirely as it routinely breaks the promise of providing interesting information. Unfortunately, the lobby of DYK abusers has so far prevented reform. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=429004222



For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dr._Blofeld

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Sat 14th May 2011, 12:27am

[Kelly Martin]

The comment of Jimbo's quoted above isn't in disagreement with my comments. Nothing about what makes DYK potentially beneficial for Wikipedia would be significantly impaired by allowing DYKs to refer to articles that are not strictly "new".

What Wikipedia should do is decide how many DYKs per week they'll run, allocate them out in some way between the various topic areas, and allow each topic area's editorial board to select its DYK items. (Yes, I know, Wikipedia has no editorial boards. I'm talking about how they should do it.) What they'll actually do, of course, is create some "committee" that promotes items based on the political connectedness of proponents (the exact same trajectory we have already seen for both FA and GA). Another example of how Wikipedia's lack of functional leadership bites it in the ass.

[melloden]

What Wikipedia should do is decide how many DYKs per week they'll run, allocate them out in some way between the various topic areas, and allow each topic area's editorial board to select its DYK items. (Yes, I know, Wikipedia has no editorial boards. I'm talking about how they should do it.) What they'll actually do, of course, is create some "committee" that promotes items based on the political connectedness of proponents (the exact same trajectory we have already seen for both FA and GA). Another example of how Wikipedia's lack of functional leadership bites it in the ass.

It's not a leadership issue, Kelly. Your proposal is just too complicated for their peabrains to understand.

Another benefit is that the sourcing standards are higher for DYK articles than they are for regular articles - if for no other reasons then that there actually ARE sourcing standards and somebody (at least in theory) checks them. Of course it's not GA or FA but it is a fairly simple and straightforward way of making at least some new articles have sources in'em.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that a lot of these DYKs on "obscure" topics are hella better written and sourced then a lot of old articles on "major" topics.

Well, sourcing's improved recently, although I do remember a certain breaching experiment a while back...

A Wikipedia paradox, is the whole "obscure article quality" point. You'd think that Travel (T-H-L-K-D) would be better-referenced than, oh, I don't know ... Gropecunt Lane (T-H-L-K-D). But it's not.