User:Theleekycauldron/Essays/DYK and attribution

DYK often finds itself in the curious position of attempting to apply policies and guidelines to a section of the encyclopedia with unique formatting and customs. This sometimes results in DYK de facto ignoring policies and guidelines that absolutely should apply to it, but the guidelines on in-text attribution shouldn't be overlooked. Even for quirky hooks, DYK should take caution when dealing with quotes and avoid the appearance of endorsing subjective viewpoints. This essay discusses how DYK can best apply attribution guidelines in hooks.

Policy bases
Multiple areas of policy and guideline in Wikipedia give guidance as to how text should be attributed inline – in fact, for articles themselves, this is a settled question of policy. The two most relevant guidelines come from WP:INTEXT and WP:WEASEL. The former reads:"In-text attribution should be used with direct speech (a source's words between quotation marks or as a block quotation)... it should always be used for biased statements of opinion." And the latter reads:"[Weasel words, such as 'said to be', 'regarded as', and 'reportedly'] may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph, and the article body or the rest of the paragraph can supply attribution. Likewise, views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if those expressions accurately represent the opinions of the source."

Application at DYK
The interplay of these two guidelines creates a curious problem for DYK. For best practice, WP:INTEXT requires the inclusion of some attribution, but WP:WEASEL clarifies that it need not be a full breakdown of the source in every circumstance. The more reliable the source of a quote, the less attribution is needed – but any time you are using a quote, you should at the very least be including some kind of weasel word (such as "reportedly", "said to be", or "thought to be") to signal that the quote is not from Wikipedia. It is almost always inappropriate to simply include a quote without attribution of any kind.