Template talk:DidYouKnow

Hey, I'm beat. Can someone else please update our Did You Know? trivia for this week? The instructions should be easy, or go with what you like. — User:BadCatMan


 * I can give it a whirl this week, but it will have to wait a few hours.&mdash;Moviesign (talk) 13:17, August 11, 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, if Moviesign can.. I can't either due to lack of time till Wednesday..but maybe I can prepare some at a file in my PC for another time we will be in need. Jandor  (talk ⋅ contribs ) 15:31, August 11, 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Movie! After working late, family dinner, and exhaustion, I couldn't go through the usual routine last night. Good job!
 * Jandor, there's nothing special to the Did You Know?, just a half-dozen lines describing some recent new articles. — BadCatMan (talk) 02:13, August 12, 2013 (UTC)

Can someone please take care of these again? Same reasons. Thanks. — BadCatMan (talk) 12:57, October 27, 2013 (UTC)


 * No worries mate.&mdash;Moviesign (talk) 13:53, October 27, 2013 (UTC)


 * Ah! Thanks! — BadCatMan (talk) 15:26, October 27, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Movie. I was busy last night, but was planning to tackle this this morning. No worries now. — BadCatMan (talk) 01:53, November 25, 2013 (UTC)


 * I've had a really awful day with an awful night ahead. Can someone please try this this week? Thanks. — BadCatMan (talk) 10:07, December 22, 2013 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can pull together. Hope things get better for you. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 14:54, December 22, 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Well, I guess things can only get better from here... — BadCatMan (talk) 11:15, December 23, 2013 (UTC)

I'll tackle these tomorrow unless someone wants to do it. — BadCatMan (talk) 12:10, January 19, 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I spent the time figuring out and adding the "From the archives" feature, which currently just pulls the trivia from the corresponding week in 2013. Let me know if it is not what you were imagining. Note that this will "break" and display nothing sometime in mid-December because we only have 50 batches of trivia in Template:DidYouKnow/archive/2013, but I promise to come up with a better solution before then. If I get more time later, I'll try to generate some new DYKs. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 18:38, January 19, 2014 (UTC)


 * Not all brand new, but there ya go. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 22:24, January 20, 2014 (UTC)

From the Archives
I'd like to start a discussion on how to organize the trivia so I can make a DPL statement that won't break eventually. Thoughts anyone? &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 15:29, April 6, 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you like the From the Archives (FtA) feature? If not, then the rest is moot.
 * Do you like the current presentation format? Any suggestions for improvement?
 * The archives are currently organized with one file per year and a date range for the section heading of each week's trivia. How important are these years/dates?
 * How often should the FtA change? Currently it changes every week.
 * How should the FtA trivia be selected? Should it be random? Currently it uses the number of the week (from 1 to 53) to select a section. (Since the 2013 archive currently has 50 sections, this will break sometime toward the end of December, unless we add 3 more sections.)


 * Here goes:
 * I've got nothing against it, it neatly recycles our old lore and keeps it fresh.
 * The presentation format seems fine.
 * While the lore is being recycled, it's probably not too important to preserve dating information. I can't think of a reason to need to know it a year or more later.
 * As I update the new DYK every week, I think the same rate would be appropriate for FtA, at least for this next year. In 2015, we'll get two-years-worth of DYKs to choose from. I wouldn't want to pack three sets of trivia on the main page, so a faster rate would be appropriate. Maybe twice-weekly, or a morning/evening split. The latter would be easier to code: there's a MediaWiki widget for picking the am or pm of the day. (Wookieepedia uses it for its many Featured Articles.)
 * We have 260 individual DYKs for 2013, in 50 blocks of about 4 to 6 or so. If we resection them into blocks of 4 or 5, we can make 53 blocks, enough for every week of the year. Like before, the date's don't matter. So breaking shouldn't be a problem. — BadCatMan (talk) 07:16, April 7, 2014 (UTC)

The way the random selection works, it would randomly select the archive file from those that match the pattern, so in 2015, we will have two archive files (2013 and 2014) and you would get the trivia for the corresponding week (1-53) from one of those two files. I could let it be random every time you visit the home page (you would get one of the two sets each time you reload the page, in later years 1 of 3, 1 of 4, etc.), or I can set it to use the same random number throughout the day (everyone would see the same set all day). I believe the only way to randomly select a block of trivia from all available archives would be to put them all in individual files like we have done for the calendar dates. I'm not yet sure how to use the AM/PM thing to make it choose a guaranteed different block. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 21:33, April 7, 2014 (UTC)

Automatic Did You Knows
Copying Moviesign's code for extracting last year's DYKs, I've hacked up a way of doing the same for the current year's DYKs. They can now be made in advance through the week, and outputted on the Main Page at the start of the next week. This year's DYKs are now stored at Template:DidYouKnow/current. This way, anyone can create DYKs through the week and append them to the bottom of the list.

That saves me from chores around dinner time. :) — BadCatMan (talk) 11:53, May 4, 2014 (UTC)

The 53rd week
Ok, I was under the wrong impression about how worked. If it is using ISO 8601, then Monday is the start of the week, and it considers the week containing the first Thursday of the year to be week #1, regardless if it contains days in December. (For some reason, I had it in my head that Jan 1 was the start of the first week.) This will usually mean that there will be 52 weeks in a year, but every 5 or 6 years there will be a "long year" that has 53 weeks, and therefore our DYK archives still need 53 entries if we don't want the template to break. According to ISO week date, 2015 will have 53 weeks in it. If anyone disagrees or wants to change the way the template works, let me know. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 16:19, December 29, 2014 (UTC)