User:Ottava Rima/Sandbox

Basis - The spirit of WP:SIZE determines that prose, by definition, is the body of text that forms what is "encyclopedic" about a page. The letter of the definition is to determine it by negation: "External links, Further reading, References, Footnotes, See also, and similar sections; Table of contents, tables, list-like sections, and similar content; and markup, interwiki links, URLs and similar formatting." These are either wikipedia mark ups, formatting, images, or sections that are associated with the encyclopedia but do not contain encyclopedic content.

Belief - WP:SIZE is used to put forth guidelines that define the proper way of verifying the encyclopedic size of a page in order to etermine if the page is of the appropriate length. As such, this guideline is important to items such as GA or FAC that rely on the MoS.

Currently, DYK has a size requirement that matches the features of WP:SIZE (i.e. definition by negation with similar criteria), but individuals who frequent the page as of late have determined to add a new feature: quotations cannot count, nor can any "old" material. This goes against the spirit of DYK, especially the 5 x expansion, which allows expansions over 5 times while including the "old" information among that count, which is contradictory to their premise if they exclude other non-"new" information.

Proposed - To make it clear that DYK's "prose" definition matches WP:SIZE and that there is a direct link between the two so there is only one Wikipedia definition of what constitutes as prose.

Further proposed - That a five times expansion is a five times expansion regardless of duplicate information unless whole pages are duplicated, if there is copyright violation problems, or if other similar concerns, such as notability of the topic is not sufficient enough to warrant a page of its own.

Purpose - DYK is supposed to showcase new articles on new topics, no matter if there is a similar topic or idea on Wikipedia. It is intended to attract a larger audience to work on new pages and to either familiarize people with a basis, or to encourage participation. No topic should be excluded, and DYK should be as expansion and as welcoming as possible. Currently, requirements tend to exclude too often, and there are arbitrary decisions among regulars that do not conform to other uses of similar terms.

Ottava Rima (talk) 03:26, 13 December 2008 (UTC)