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:Because Google spiders the Main Page a lot more often than any other page. {{User:Rdsmith4/Sig}} 20:01, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
:Because Google spiders the Main Page a lot more often than any other page. {{User:Rdsmith4/Sig}} 20:01, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

So why do we want Google to spider the orphaned articles more often than other articles? What makes the orphaned articles so deserving? [[User:Gdr|Gdr]] 20:25, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)


==Links to international Wikipedias==
==Links to international Wikipedias==

Revision as of 20:25, 7 June 2005

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Main Page and beyond

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Anti-Religious Dogma

Hm. Well, if you take one look at the talk topics involving religion/creationism/evolution, it's obvious that Wikipedia users have taken to openly assaulting believers in religious ideals, notably those calling for equal representation on the evolution/creation debate.

This has to stop. As much as I'd like to have such equality (as the modern, scientific society is plagued by intolerance and prejudice towards religion, I realize that it's not attainable without great strife (there's enough as it is).

However, I think that there should be serious consideration towards fighting against slander such as that presented in these talk topics. It's clear that not only will Wikipedia users refuse to accomadate these opinions (which is actually a very understandable point), they will then take pains to demean the deeply-held faith of the person who brought them up. This needs to be prevented. This qualifies as discrimination and it's plain cruelty, whether concealed thinly by sarcasm or thrown out in the open.

This HAS TO stop. Keep the articles any way you want, but stop this flagrant personal assault on other users and readers.

Thank you for coming back User:70.93.214.48. As I said before please make specific comments of this sort on the article's discussion page. Otherwise this request is unactionable and we can't quickly correct these biases. If a specfic user is being rude mention it at WP:AN/I or WP:VP to bring this conflict to a larger audience. We want to create a welcoming enviroment for all users. In the future, this page is really meant for the discussion of the front page not wikipedia in general. Also, when you submit comments please add "~~~~" to sign your comments. This link is Broken 01:08, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You seem to be of the peculiar belief that creationism is equal in merit to Evolution, and thus merits equal consideration and discussion. Rest assured, this is not the case. *ALL* the evidence - geological, paleontological, chemical, and physical - supports evolution, and *none* of it supports creationism. Creationism is a myth based on faith, and evolution is a scientific, disprovable theory based on observable fact. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia of christian theology; we do not report facts as fundementalist christians interpret them. We *do* report on what the scientific community believes, and every respectable scientist believes in evolution. They may quibble about the details (puncuated equilibrium, peripatric speciation, et al) but all of them accept the general idea. Or, to put it another way, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Theodosius Dobzhansky). →Raul654 03:40, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Whether or not it is more accurate is irrelevant. We must represent all reasonable views to be NPOV and people shouldn't assault or insult people of faith. This link is Broken 04:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Except that what our anonymous contributor friend here calls insults are nothing more than simple criticisms of creationism as the pseudoscientific dogma that it is. Anything less than full equal merit with evolution is "Evolutionary chauvinism". Now don't get me wrong, I'm fine with having an article on creationism, provided it "tells it like it is" -- that is, is says that Creationism is a religious doctrine, and not a real, viable, or scientific explination for how the world came to exist. And, for the record, a person who comes to the talk page(s) and demands that we rewrite our articles to conform to his particular extremist-POV is obviously flamebaiting. And, to the credit of the people writing here, I don't really see anything on this page that could be construed as a personal attack. Criticisms of someone's belief is not an attack against the person. →Raul654 05:04, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Being factually accurate overrules NPOV. Certainly, it's bad to use either as a voicebox to mouth off about one side or another. But the fact of the matter is that creationism is simply not credible in the scientific community.--Fangz 11:29, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It is important to remember always that being NPOV is not the same thing as including every possible POV on an equal-merit basis. Does Earth give equal coverage to flat-earth views? Filiocht | Blarneyman 11:34, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
What Raul said. --mav 01:15, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is as ridiculous as the Flat Earth Society (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/).

How about a "most viewed" box on the Main Page?

How about a "most viewed" box on the Main Page?

  • Nah, these primadonnas already get too much attention. How about a least-viewed; in fact, how about a never-viewed? :)--Pharos 07:25, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Interesting point. — mark ✎ 07:56, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • "never viewed" would be an excellent feature. It's sometimes sad (or absurd) to see how the prominent articles are fought over, down to punctuation and layout, while the minor articles, just a single click away, waste away without attention in a miserably dilapidated state... dab (ᛏ) 08:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I should mention before this gets too much commentary that this idea is not now (and probably will never be) technically feasable. The monthy statistics compilation was discontinued because it is so server intensive that it was causing a noticble lag when it was running (and this was back in October when our traffic was half or a third of what it is now). →Raul654 08:03, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I also feel compelled to clarify that a list of most-viewed pages would most likely be full of pages like penis and masturbation. Even if we were to introduce a feature like this, it would be more significant showing "bullet performers" whereby an article suddenly gets a lot more page views. - Mark 08:06, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

What I'd like is for each page to display an Edits per View ratio. The theory being that the more often a page is viewed without someone deciding to edit it, the more accurate it probably is. Seabhcán 13:06, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
probably views per edit would be more appropriate - but of course - it's basically the same - just the other way round... - Blueshade 14:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Really? I think high edits-per-view is more likely to mean a page is the site of major edit wars, because the really popular pages (penis, George W. Bush) will have large numbers of both editors and viewers. Nickptar 23:54, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thats true, Edit-war pages are a special case. But even here, the ratio would show high edits per view (or low views per edit, if you prefer) and the ratio would show these pages to be unreliable. Pages with a very high number of views for each edit must be more reliable. The measure would also deal well with pages that are on off beat topics and recieve low traffic. Such pages have both low views and low edits, so the edits/views ratio would still give a rough indication of reliability. It shouldn't put much strain on the servers (speaking as a programmer who hasn't looked at the wikimedia code) each page could be given a simple view counter (this info is probably available as the servers must render wiki-code to html each time a page is requested). The number of edits is readily available. The ratio could be calculated based on "number of edits over the last 20 views/20). It would be a bit like Google's pagerank. Seabhcán 11:30, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Problem: the servers don't render HTML every time a page is viewed; something like 90% of hits are served by a Squid HTTP proxy. Though it would probably be trivial to patch this to count views. Nickptar 13:26, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thamks a lot for the feedback guys. I posted this same question a few months ago and never got a response. And you certainly made valid points.

"The Free Encyclopedia" is inaccurate and undersells Wikipedia

I think it should be changed to something like "The Free Reference Library". Wikipedia has sections that parallel pretty much all the reference books on my shelves except the atlases. By the end of the decade it is likely to have a billion words or more, and the connection to the idea of a mere encyclopedia will be remote. It is much more than that. Osomec 14:50, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Maybe that will seem a little grandiose if it makes people think of the British Library or their local equivalent, which isn't what I meant. How about "The Free Home Reference Library"? Though that has the drawback that Wikipedia isn't just for home use. Osomec 14:59, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One step at a time, eh? The encylopedia wording represents the aims of the current project.--Fangz 18:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Only those of academic snobs who are uneasy about it expanding beyond subjects like physics and philosophy. But it has already expanded beyond those academic aims on a massive scale. Osomec 20:34, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
From Encyclopedia: "An encyclopedia (alternatively encyclopaedia/encyclopædia) is a written compendium of knowledge."
    • I don't see anything wrong with calling this project an encyclopedia. It represents our aims. Really, what makes an encyclopedia different from a reference library? Basically it all boils down to the same thing. So why bother changing something that's working? Mgm|(talk) 20:48, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Osomec - Wikipedia is not a dictionary, a general knowledge base, a periodical, a geneiological listing, a travel guide, or a compendium of original research. You would expect to find any and all of these in a library, and Wikipedia should not contain any of it. Therefore, Wikipedia is not a library. →Raul654 20:53, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistency in Vandalism anniversary

June 2, 455 anniversary date is contradictory on today's main page, as the article vandalism states the term vandalism "refers to the Germanic Vandals, who since the 17th century were incorrectly thought to have ruthlessly sacked the city of Rome in 455."

CobaltBlueTony 21:16, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

...that the Terik language of Kenya is classified as endangered by UNESCO because the Terik people have increasingly become assimilated to the Nandi people in recent decades?

The Nandi should point to Nandi_(ethnic_group) and not to the latter, which is a disambig page. pamri 05:26, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
Fixed it. Nandi_(ethnic_group) is a redirect, so I linked it to Nandi people instead. -- Sundar (talk · contribs) 05:35, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling Bee?

I've seen much more important issues get knocked back for inclusion in ITN, so what makes this event "relevant/important international news?" - 203.132.90.8

Luckily it was taken off. - Quirk 08:20, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Right. I'd rather see Miss Universe up there on ITN ..... And she is prettier. :-) -- 13:59, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Some c**t has put it back. How is this remotely relevant to anything? And what is an "eighth-grader"?

someone in eighth grade? This link is Broken

So i guessed, but what does that mean? And why is this making the international headlines (on wikipedia only, remember)

Clumsy 'Featured Article' opening paragraphs

The first thing I read when I visit Wikipedia is the lead paragraph of the featured article. Sometimes, although the article itself is fine, the lead paragraph is clumsily-written; most often, it starts up with a long, confusing sentence which tries to encapsulate the subject's attributes as quickly as possible. I usually find that the article has been speedily changed by other, quicker Wikipedia editors. However, the text on the main page remains as it was, a blot.

The example right now is Steve Dalkowski, a baseball bowler. The opening paragraph on the front page reads "Steve Dalkowski is a former minor league left-handed baseball pitcher, sometimes called the fastest pitcher in baseball history – earning him the nickname "White Lightning"". This is a clumsy sentence. "A former minor league left-handed baseball pitcher" is unwieldy, and the second half of the phrase doesn't match the fact of him earning his nickname with an action he performed.

Is it a cache issue, does it take time to filter through - presumably to stop vandalism appearing on the main page - or do administrators have to manually update the text, assuming they can? Could people double-check the opening paragraphs of things they feature? Apart from this issue, please carry on, you're doing a good job - and you, yes you, you're beautiful.-Ashley Pomeroy 16:26, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I think that the admins have to manaully edit it. This is because of that the main page suffered heavily from vandalism before it was protected. Jeltz talk 16:43, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Right, the actual text is at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 3, 2005 and is protected from editing. This link is Broken 16:52, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • In thie case, if you look at the page history, it's clearly a case of too many chefs spoiling the broth. I did a quick rewrite as soon as I saw this comment here and the writeup seems good now. →Raul654 16:59, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

The opening paragraph is often a victim of the "too many cooks" phenomenon. Everyone wants to get their favourite fact into the opening paragraph, or preferably the opening sentence, resulting in the mess you see at the top of so many articles. If you have a good idea how to improve matters, we'd love to hear your suggestion. Gdr 11:13, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Brazilian Clave'

The statement concerning Brazilian Clave' is not correct. In the composition of Samba enredo (carnival Samba) The direction of the Brazilian Clave' is the key to what is played by the rest of the bataria and on the melody of the song. Just like in Afro-Cuban music the Brazilian clave must be respected. Whoever wrote this article has not been to Brasil and is guessing at their assertion. In Brasil they don't refer the this pattern as the Clave' I've often heard it referred to as the Sincopia. Thank you Kurt Rasmussen

Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. You can edit almost any article on Wikipedia by just following the Edit link at the top of the page. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse.

A spelling bee, a global event?

Hum, excuseme, but is the spelling bee contest important enough for the news on the main page?

Didn't you hear? Wikipedia is for USA parochial bullshit! Word of your "important global events" has not reached their shores.

May someone remove that story? :-) (left by User:Equinoxe

Look at the edit summary: [1]. This admin openly admits he was trolling. Unfortunately when someone responsible cleared up his little joke someone else added it back in again. (81.153.154.71)

He was joking. It was added because people have been complaining that ITN hasn't been updated enough. Many of the candidates on the candidates page are invalid so us admins don't have as many choices as we would like. Other suggestions are put on the wrong page (like the ones on the bottom of this page) and don't get used. It's hard to be really dynamic without adding less important content. This link is Broken 19:39, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Massacre photo

The Serbeninca Massacre Photo has a mouseover the EU Flag.

ALT attribute for Srebrenica Massacre image incorrect

Unless somebody is making a dig about the pre-NATO European peacekeeping effort in the Balkans, I'm pretty sure the image of thousands of corpses should not be labeled "Flag of the European Union".

Fixed but please discuss the template on its talk page. This link is Broken 20:44, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian Wikipedia: 10,000 articles reached, requested move

Its link should be moved to the third from the second group of "Wikipedia in other languages". Adam78 00:29, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not to be picky but isn't it actually at 9967? This link is Broken 00:40, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Somehow the Main Page is sometimes late as compared to the Recent changes. I also noticed the difference last night when I wrote this suggestion. But now the Main Page seems to be up to date, too. Adam78 10:26, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hun Wikipedia

No, it's actually 10042 now. --194.143.247.99 07:46, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)==Hungarian wiki==

now 10000 articles

Srebrenica Massacre

Srebrenica Massacre has been transferred to Srebrenica massacre. In the news should be corrected. --Eleassar777 my talk 21:32, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fixed, in the future make these requests at Template talk:In the news. This link is Broken 00:32, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Typo on Windows XP

It reads "It also contains work-arounds for to avoid the "DLL hell" that plagued older consumer versions of Windows, which stemmed from inefficient software management."

which should read "It also contains work-arounds to avoid the "DLL hell" that plagued older consumer versions of Windows, which stemmed from inefficient software management."

There's an un-needed for in there.

Fixed, thanks. --cesarb 00:55, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why Windows XP?

I don't understand why this is a featured article.

To be quite blunt, it's a bit like a cold call.

I know it's not, but today's featured article has the appearance of an advertisement for an MS product on Wikipedia's Front Page. -- 64.229.4.103 03:25, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Feature articles for the Main Page are proposed and discussed at Wikipedia talk:Tomorrow's featured article. If you think articles about commercial products are inappropriate for the Main Page, you need to make your case there. Gdr 11:13, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)


Yes, I agree with these observations advertising Windows XP hardly seems appropriate. Steven Zenith 23:09, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

So edit the article to make it sound less like advertising. This is a wiki, you know. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 23:10, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

The link to kernel in the featured article box needs to be piped. it currently goes to a disambig page. Bonus Onus 03:24, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism on wikibooks

hey i know this is for wikipedia but if anyone is online with admin priveliges for Wikibooks someone has put up obscene pics all over the front page.

Time to cut {{newpagelinksmain}}?

At the bottom of the Main Page is the template {{newpagelinksmain}}, which expands to

Template:Newpagelinksmain

Does the utility of this section really justify its inclusion on the Main Page? I can't see the casual visitor being interested in any of these links. So I propose that we cut this template and make the Main Page a little shorter and tidier. Gdr 11:18, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Agreed, it belongs on the community portal. --W(t) 11:19, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
I seem to rememver having heard that its purpose was to improve Wikipedia's Google ranking, but I don't know anything about how that might work. I'll inquire among the developers whether it's still necessary. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 14:16, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
It's there so that google picks up on new pages more quickly. Google tends to spider our main page a lot, but not necessarily deeper links that would lead it to new pages. That's why we link to them from the main page. →Raul654 14:20, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

That explains the "New encyclopedia articles" links. What about the other links? Gdr 16:33, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

The same logic applies to "orphaned" articles (articles which are not linked to by any other article). Let's say you right an article on some obscure topic which is not linked to from any article. The Google spider would not normally pick it up, so google would not notice. However, linking to it from the main page ensures that, even if no article on wikipedia links to it, someone searching google could still find it. →Raul654 16:38, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
Also, isn't there some way we could hide the links to the new pages while still having them spidered? I know google generally tries to ignore hidden text and links, but perhaps either something with a link rel in the header or with a display: none would be doable? --W(t) 16:36, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

The same logic does not apply to orphaned articles. The point of putting links on the Main Page is so that the Google spider picks them up more quickly. I see why this applied to new pages. But I don't see why it applied to orphan pages. Yes, we want Google to pick them up. But for that any old link will do. So why is it necessary for Google to pick up orphaned articles more often, or sooner than, ordinary articles? Gdr 17:09, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Because if they weren't linked from our main page, google would never find any of our orphaned articles at all. It's not so much of a get-them-on-google-faster thing as it is a if-we-don't-put-them-here-they-will-never-be-seen thing. →Raul654 17:56, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't Google find them if they were linked from some other page? Gdr 18:32, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

"Orphaned" means they aren't linked from some other page. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:39, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let me explain this as simply as I can. We want orphaned pages to be spidered by Google. So a set of special reports are made linking to them, and then these reports are linked from elsewhere in the encyclopedia. My point is that there is no need for the reports to be linked from the Main Page. As long as the reports are linked from somewhere (accessible via some chain of links from the Main Page) then Google will find them. So why does that somewhere have to be the Main Page? Gdr 19:56, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

Because Google spiders the Main Page a lot more often than any other page. User:Rdsmith4/Sig 20:01, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

So why do we want Google to spider the orphaned articles more often than other articles? What makes the orphaned articles so deserving? Gdr 20:25, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

I miss links to all the international Wikipedias on the Mainpage. All over the world it is common use to give a hint to Wikipedias worldwide in a list below toolbox. On the english site it's missing. What's the reason? Greetings and best wishes Paul 17:49, Jun 5, 2005 (CET)

There is a great big section on the main page with links to all Wikipedias with over 1000 articles. — Trilobite (Talk) 20:10, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"In the news" allegations of Qur'an desecration redirects

Someone please fix the link (well, it's not broken, but direct links rather than redirects are definitely preferred). This is our front page.

The front page, as it is, seems to accept the Pentagon's contention ("confirms") that Qur'ans were "accidentally" mistreated fairly uncritically. Saying that it "claims" such might be better. When was the last time you accidentally urinated on a piece of scripture? — Vivacissamamente 08:23, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Great Lakes of Michigan

Does anyone know the name of the first ship to have sunk in the Great Lakes of Michigan? And the captians name?

Vandalism

Main page (wikipedia.org) has a rather disturbing photo if you scroll down. Got quite a nasty shock when I saw it, it should be protected from future such vandalism, and that should be corrected ASAP, as it gives a bad image of the site

In an article about Wikipedia:Gaza Strip several editors object having any links to external photos. The photos in question http://www.pbase.com/yalop/gaza http://www.pbase.com/yalop/mawassi http://www.pbase.com/yalop/gaza_surfers

Show visually the life in Gaza, both for the Palestinians and for the Israeli settlers who are facing an evacuation as part of Israel pullout plan from Gaza.

So the question is:

Should links to external photo sites be allowed from Wikipedia or the only use of photos on Wikipedia should be for photos that are loaded into Wikipedia. Maybe all external links should be disallowed? Not just photos .

What do you think ?

The main issue here (though there are several) is that the anonymous editor keeps linking to his own photo sites; other editors view this as self-promotion. Jayjg (talk) 18:19, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This isn't the place for policy discussions. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:41, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Sandbox problem

Dear admins! I tried accessing the Wikipedia Sandbox, but I was redirected to the Naruto characters article. Is it me or is it vandalism? KNewman 12:31, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

Not you, someone was testing redirects (which they shouldn't do in the sandbox). Fixed. (For future reference, this kind of stuff goes on Wikipedia:Help desk). --W(t) 12:35, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it vandalism, it could just be improper testing of redirects done in good faith. Jeltz talk 13:11, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
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