User:Theleekycauldron/Essays/Assessing DYK hooks

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This page in a nutshell: The best hooks are the ones that leave the reader wanting to know more, leading them to click on the bolded article to learn more. Making your hooks concise and punchy is a fantastic aid in this. The DYK statistics pages can tell you what our readers like to see, though this ranges between a useful tool and something to be taken with a grain of salt. Reading through past reviews can help you understand DYK's attitudes towards certain hooks. The outcomes of some hooks are determined by their topic, rather than their substances – it is sometimes helpful to put that aside when reviewing and writing a hook. Avoid relying solely on an eye-catching topic to craft a hook.

Hi there, I'm theleekycauldron! I often frequent Did you know (DYK), the section of the Main Page that publishes "hooks" designed to reel readers into clicking on newly created and expanded content. I've worked with over 2,500 DYK nominations as builder of the sets of nominations for the Main Page, I maintain monthly statistics pages for DYK hooks, and I have some 50 hooks of my own. So, I thought I'd share some insight about how I approach writing hooks and assessing whether they're ripe for the Main Page; I hope it serves helpful in your own adventures of hook writing, reviewing, promoting, and – if you're an admin – promoting again.

DYK has always had a rather fraught and subjective relationship with how it accomplishes its goals: it wants its hooks to be interesting, and catchy, and likely to draw in readers, but it also wants to make space for editors who create content all of kinds (regardless of whether some part of it can be boiled down to 200 characters). Those tensions influence exactly where the project draws the line on what "interesting" means. Its current guideline is codified at part 3a of the main ruleset, which states that the hook should be "likely to be perceived as unusual or intriguing by readers with no special knowledge or interest". Despite a 2022 request for comment clarifying and strengthening the wording of this guideline, what actually counts as "interesting" remains a perennial flash point at DYK, with lots of people weighing in through different lenses.

In this essay, the top-level headings are sorted in descending order of importance, as are each of the sub-level headings within them. Also, this essay contains several examples of hooks to emulate (in green), hooks to avoid (in a pinkish red), and hooks to consider with caution (in yellow). To avoid embarrassment to our hardworking nominators, reviewers, promoters, and promoting admins, all of these hooks and their boldlinked articles are my own work.^[a] If you would like to submit a hook of yours that you believes makes for a better example, do leave it on the talk page! Bonus points and credit if you submit a hook of yours that you believe makes for a good example of a hook to avoid.
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