The glossary is a source very interesting trivia, which is really what a Did You Know is all about. For instance, in the A section today I stumbled across the term "Ahnenpaß." Since I was aware of Ahnentafels, I was interested to know what this unfamiliar term was and how it related. I learned it was "A type of record kept by many Germans during the Nazi era, starting in about 1937. It documents four generations of a person's family. The information was usually verified from civil registration records and parish registers. The English term for this type of record is ancestor passport." This was so interesting that I found myself wanting to read other glossary definitions. I wanted to read a dictionary for fun.
Scary, huh? But this is exactly what we want from a Did You Know section -- we want readers drawn in to interesting facts about genealogy -- stuff that will make them think of genealogy as interesting rather than just a chore for geeks.
Now, would I put this particular term in the "Did You Know" section? Probably not because it's politically controversial. Wikipedia has policies guiding folks to avoid controversial titles and articles, and we should follow their learnings. But the Glossary is chock-full of interesting terms we could use in Did You Know. I think it would be wise for us to use one each day or two until the community hits critical mass and they start submitting enough Did You Know items.
I think, too, that as we add glossary terms to the Did You Know section, it'll spark us to do something even better. Many of our glossary terms could ideally link to deeper informational articles about each term, whether on our site or on others. So a glossary definition on Ahnenpaß could lead to an article on the Web which gives the history, use, analysis, repositories, and provenance of these records. Powerful stuff.
So how do you feel about this?