User:Materialscientist/DYK

A crash course on how to put DYKs on the main page :)
(here is a proper guide)
 * Select 8 candidate hooks at T:TDYK. Preferably long approved, from the bottom of the page. The guide is 4 US hooks and 4 others, non-repeating subjects. Negative and controversial hooks are always suspicious (one thing is to chat at t:tdyk and another is to put them on the main page - you'll literally sign on that). The top hook is the strongest one, with the picture, the bottom hook is traditionally "funny" one. Check the copyright status of the lead hook picture in advance. Why 8? - it is easier to move them as a group and see the combination. One-by-one selection is fine.
 * Move the hooks. My way is: edit in two windows, one T:TDYK, another T:DYK/P1 or T:DYK/P2; in TDYK I edit one hook at a time, in the preps I rather edit the whole page, once. Copy the approved hook text, paste into the "hooks" section of the prep window. If it is a non-lead hook, then remove stray "(pictured)". Go back to T:TDYK, copy credits (check them too, some tried to sneak into there to fetch extra stars) - they look like * or * . Paste into the "credit area" of the preps window. Go back to the T:TYK, empty the window and save with a summary "moved to ..". Proceed to other hooks. For the lead hook, also copy the image name and paste instead of the dummy Example.png above the hooks. Done.
 * Protect the lead image. If it is on en.wiki then protect it for 3 days, admin edit only. If it is on commons (I assume you're not an admin there), go there, download the picture, copy its entire page of description (the code). Upload the image at en.wiki as "your image" (or whatever), replace the summary with the info from commons, add to the bottom. Done.
 * Wait some time - maybe others will disagree with your selection.
 * Move preps to the next queue (easy part). The top of T:DYK/Q tells which is the next empty queue. Click on the appropriate prep area, copy the entire code text from that prep area, paste into the queue, and do not forget to add at the top (note 3 tildas!). Save the queue. Go back to the prep you used. Consult "To reset the contents of this page .." line and reset the prep.
 * The bot should do the rest. If he doesn't - consult another manual :). After the lead hooks go down from the main page, the duplicate image uploaded from commons is to be deleted (no big deal to forget - others like me will do that :).

Manual update (admins only)

 * Identify the next queue and edit it. Select the hooks only, that is the code starting after "Hooks"--> and ending at <!--HooksEnd, copy and paste it into the hooks section at the main page. Preview and save. Click "main page" at the left of the window and check how it looks at the real main page.
 * Increment the queue count.
 * Reset the timer, which means entering a digital string corresponding to the time of your update. The string is coded as YEARMMHHmmss where YEAR=year (say 2010), MM=month (say 02), HH=hour (say 00), mm=minute (say 00) and ss is seconds (never mind :).
 * Go back to the queue used for the update. Issue the credits. The credits section of the queue have tabs "give" and "tag".
 * Click give. In the window, copy the name of the nom from "Subject/headline" and paste into the "article=". Save.
 * Click tag. Copy the string at the top of the window which would look like (with different date) and paste into the edit window. If no time - save. If you wish to be accurate, copy the hook and paste as, e.g..
 * Reset the queue by either copying the content of an "empty queue" from the queue edit history, or by promoting a new set from prep1 to the queue.