Talk:Main Page

    [ Asad Ali Palijo.]                                                    Name {Asad Ali Palijo}

Date of birth (02/10/2001) About by <youtube Twitter Facebook>/(Asad Ali Palijo)

Main Page error reports

To report an error in content currently or imminently on the Main Page, use the appropriate section below.

• Where is the error? An exact quotation of the text in question helps.
• Offer a correction if possible.
• References are helpful, especially when reporting an obscure factual or grammatical error.
• Time zones. The Main Page runs on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, currently 17:45 on 13 August 2024) and is not adjusted to your local time zone.
• Can you resolve the problem yourself? If the error lies primarily in the content of an article linked from the Main Page, fix the problem there before reporting it here. Text on the Main Page generally defers to the articles with bolded links. Upcoming content on the Main Page is usually only protected from editing beginning 24 hours before its scheduled appearance. Before that period, you can be bold and fix any issues yourself.
• Do not use {{edit fully-protected}} on this page, which will not get a faster response. It is unnecessary, because this page is not protected, and causes display problems. (See the bottom of this revision for an example.)
• No chit-chat. Lengthy discussions should be moved to a suitable location elsewhere, such as the talk page of the relevant article or project.
• Respect other editors. Another user wrote the text you want changed, or reported an issue they see in something you wrote. Everyone's goal should be producing the best Main Page possible. The compressed time frame of the Main Page means sometimes action must be taken before there has been time for everyone to comment. Be civil to fellow users.
• Reports are removed when resolved. Once an error has been addressed or determined not to be an error, or the item has been rotated off the Main Page, the report will be removed from this page. Check the revision history for a record of any discussion or action taken; no archives are kept.

Administrators: Clear all reports

Errors in the summary of the featured article

Please do not remove this invisible timestamp. See WT:ERRORS and WP:SUBSCRIBE. - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Today's FA

• ” The flag is not frequently displayed due to its association with extreme nationalism. For nations occupied by Japan, the flag is considered to be a symbol of aggression and imperialism. Despite negative connotations, Western and Japanese sources claim that the flag is an enduring symbol to the Japanese.”

This all may be true, but I’m not seeing it cited in the article. In particular: neither “extreme,” “nationalism” nor “aggression” appears in the article, and “Western” seems very poorly cited if a 1940 article is the only source. Am I missing something paraphrased from? Otherwise please trim the blurb to avoid OR. Thanks. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 17:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

• Reading through the article, I think Hameltion is basically right, the blurb doesn't reflect the current contents of the article. Things like this can happen, it's understandable; a writer might have in mind an earlier version of the article, or things they read in sources, and it's hard to keep checking to make sure everything's in sync. But everything isn't in sync; comparing it against the current article, the blurb comes off as OR. - Dank (push to talk) 17:34, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

Possible T. rex coprolite

Poozeum

• ... that the Poozeum holds fossilized dinosaur feces (pictured) which may have come from a T. rex?

There are multiple issues:

• The copyright status of the image is not quite clear and is currently being challenged.
• WP:DYKHOOK specifies that hooks should be a "definite fact". Words like "may have" and "possible" are not definite.
• The sources in the article for the Tyrannosaurus rex connection are not respectable or reliable, being ClickOrlando and Thrillist. For example, Thrillist says that this is the "largest discovered coprolite" but it isn't because it forgot the word "carnivore". That site feels quite unsafe and so we shouldn't be using using it when there are more respectable sources like the BBC. Notice that the BBC also reports the "largest coprolite found that belongs to a carnivore" too but is more careful to not add the T. Rex hype.
• The coprolite is named Barnum. P. T. Barnum didn't actually say "there's a sucker born every minute" but instead that you should "Preserve your integrity".

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: pinging. BorgQueen (talk) 08:46, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Gobonobo: pinging. BorgQueen (talk) 08:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I trust that the image was uploaded by the copyright owner mostly based on this exchange. The crux of the deletion argument is that it is not similarly marked as CC-BY-SA on the website. To the guideline requiring a definite fact that is unlikely to change, we could say it definitely could be a T. rex coprolite, and that uncertainty is unlikely to change. Truth is, it is notoriously difficult to ascertain the creator of a coprolite. We know it was from a carnivore and that T. rex were found in the same area. I know of no larger coprolites. gobonobo ^{+ c} 10:41, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Guinness World Records accepts that this is the largest known carnivore coprolite so why don't we just give that well-supported fact? The T. Rex maybe is not needed. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:33, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Fridge smuggling

• ... that a £142 wine fridge was smuggled into Downing Street on 11 December 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom?

Per smuggling, this is illegal transportation. But the delivery of a refrigerator by an ordinary supplier seems to have been quite open, normal and legal. The word "smuggled" comes from a headline in a British red-top tabloid and this is not an acceptable source for an accusation of crime. See WP:TABLOID, WP:HEADLINES, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

• ALT3 ("Wine Time Fridays") is now fine as an alternative, as I've added an extra cite so that it's not just the Mirror. (However said red-top tabloid was the one that broke the Partygate story and I don't believe any of its reporting has been challenged, so it's probably OK anyway). Black Kite (talk) 10:05, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

• The nomination had a fraught history and was previously pulled by AirshipJungleman29 for violating WP:DYKHOOKBLP. I agree that there are significant WP:BLP issues here. And the page is poor quality as it's not a properly balanced article; just a WP:PROSELINE collection of newspaper headlines. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:26, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
  • That is the typical format of a Wikipedia:Timeline. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:31, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

"Smuggled" does not have to mean "illegal", just "illicit". ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:30, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

"Illicit" means much the same thing. The point is that having a refrigerator delivered is not and was not any kind of crime or immorality. The tabloid was just trying to milk the story because it had a photo of the delivery. The photo shows that it was quite open and not clandestine in any way. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Illicit does not mean the same thing, because WP:BLPCRIME is not then involved. At the height of the pandemic, when indoor gatherings were banned, the delivery of a wine fridge for use in indoor gatherings was very much immoral, although not in itself illegal. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

But who's to say it's immoral? The Paymaster General defended the Downing Street fridges in a formal statement,

Downing Street is a working building, including catering facilities and offices for staff; as is common in workplaces including the House of Commons, refrigerators are provided for general staff use. One refrigerator was purchased in the financial year for a Downing Street meeting room, and one to replace an existing refrigerator that had reached the end of its working operation. Notwithstanding, I can confirm that no such public expenditure was accrued in relation to the matters considered in the investigations by the Second Permanent Secretary or connected with associated media reports on this matter.

So, where's the reliable source establishing that this was illicit or immoral smuggling? All we seem to have is a tabloid headline. 14:35, 13 August 2024 (UTC) Andrew🐉(talk) 14:35, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Isn't the paymaster just saying there are fridges that they pay for, but the wine fridge was not paid for with public funds? Which means this was an off-book fridge. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:54, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Environmental impacts of artificial intelligence

• ... that researchers estimated that training the model for ChatGPT used the equivalent energy footprint of "driving 123 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles for a year"?

The word "estimated" immediately tells us that this is not a definite fact, as required by WP:DYKHOOK. So I checked on its origin. This turns out to be a paper in arXiv: Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training.

So far as I can tell, this has not been peer-reviewed, validated or confirmed. arXiv papers are considered unreliable here per WP:RSPS. But, in this case, the paper's estimate was picked up for an essay in The Conversation and that was then reprinted by Scientific American.

And when you look at the detail, you find that, while the original paper presented the estimated energy cost as equivalent to 3 round-trip jet plane flights from NYC to San Francisco, the essay writer chose to present this as 123 "gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year". Such conversions depend on your choice of jet plane and passenger vehicle, of course. And, literally YMMV!

So, we see that there has been a chain of estimates and conversions which make the computation fuzzier at each stage. And now this fuzzy data is in Wikipedia where it will be used to train the AI models! Is this science or is it churnalism?

Andrew🐉(talk) 14:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Next-but-one DYK

In the fourth hook, "The American Pigeon Museum & Library", The being uppercase appears in only one of the refs, most don't include the word at all let alone capitalise it. Primergrey (talk) 08:40, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@TCMemoire: pinging. BorgQueen (talk) 08:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

This was something I struggled to figure out. But per the website's copyright notice and their official Facebook page, "The" is included in the official name, although the branding omits it. – TCMemoire 08:51, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Per MOS:THEINST, "the word the at the start of a name is uncapitalized in running text, regardless of the institution's own usage". TSventon (talk) 09:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(August 16)

Monday's FL

(August 19)

Errors in the summary of the featured picture

Notice to administrators: When fixing POTD errors, please update the corresponding regular version (i.e. without "protected" in the page title) in addition to the Main Page version linked below.

General discussion

Welcome WP:LISTGAP correction

Requesting to copy from this version in my sandbox to Main Page (diff). This is part of the change in my previous message. Should I also sync this to Wikipedia:Main Page/sandbox?

Changes: This edit closes the WP:LISTGAP in the top "Welcome" box. Also switches to tableless layout, for more flexibility with TemplateStyles (soon!), maybe even a mobile version. CSS3 properties like columns would be more elegant, but I stuck to old techniques like position:absolute to avoid breaking old IE.

Testing: In Chrome, Firefox, and IE8+, a few pixels shifted here and there, browser dependent. Bullets disappear in IE7 for some reason, but there's enough spacing that it still looks OK. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 20:34, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Very few admins are willing to mess with Main Page coding; it's too complicated for most of us, and too likely to end in being yelled at if things go even the tiniest bit wrong. Pinging @TheDJ: and @David Levy:, who seem to have some experience editing the main page without breaking everything. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:46, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Changes of this magnitude require considerably more testing than any one person (no matter how knowledgeable) can perform. Otherwise, unforeseen use cases can (and usually do) slip through the cracks.

Coding expertise is helpful, of course. I possess none, but I know a talented front-end Web developer (part of a team that recently won a Webby Award for their work), whom I've asked to evaluate our main page when he's a bit less busy. I could have him look over Matt's version instead. —David Levy 23:38, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Lol, he will have quite the laugh. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:15, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

He's well aware that Wikipedia's main page is more than a little outdated. He's also a sysop at an independent wiki (to which he's contributed custom design elements), so he's familiar with MediaWiki and its underpinnings. I'm hoping that he can provide some realistically actionable suggestions. —David Levy 12:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Nested tables three deep just for picture of the day? Do let us know his reaction to that! My earlier proposal tore up the layout tables more aggressively (diff), but I scaled back; baby steps. Looking forward, though, the page can be done with no more than 1 layout table. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 19:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• I did load this to Wikipedia:Main_Page/sandbox; and am inclined to honor this request. My initial reviews are not showing any specific problems - it is not an "evaluate for all possible improvements" type of change, just minor coding. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

While far short of an outward redesign, this is not what I consider a minor coding change. The output is intended to remain essentially the same, but the underlying method is largely replaced. In the past, editors with impressive coding knowledge have proposed similar modifications and promised that they'd been thoroughly tested, only to be informed by fellow editors that some aspect was fundamentally broken under certain conditions.

Even the current design – created through a massive WikiProject Accessibility collaboration and tested mercilessly by countless users – initially broke the section headings' recognition by screen-reading software used by people with visual impairments, thereby reducing accessibility (irony that didn't go unnoticed). We learned of this when the code went live and a blind person kindly reported the problem.

With a page of this prominence, the need to minimize mistakes mustn't be underestimated or given short shrift for the sake of expedience. "Ready, fire, aim" is often the wiki way, but "ready, aim, aim, aim, fire" is the approach needed here. —David Levy 01:00, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@David Levy: We make changes to LUA modules and Templates that impact huge number of pages regularly as well, and yes sometimes they need to be reverted, that have huge impacts to readers. Overall, this proposal isn't "that big" - not "slam it in there" small, more of a "If someone doesn't complain about a specific problem with it in a reasonable time" sized. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:03, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Xaosflux: In that case, I don't think that we're actually in disagreement. I took your statement that you were "inclined to honor this request" to mean that you intended to "slam it in there" at any moment. Inviting feedback and allowing a reasonable amount of time to receive it is appropriately cautious (and realistically, I don't know what more we could do if we wanted to). —David Levy 03:31, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Which reminds me, I forgot to mention, no audible changes in JAWS 15 over Firefox except the list gaps are closed. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 03:10, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for confirming this. —David Levy 03:31, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I did some automated scans, including with WAVE, even busted out a copy of Lynx to test keyboard navigation only; both look OK. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:03, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

• Hmm, im not really a fan of those min-widths. They are very 'unresponsive' changes. I think it would be better to just have that list as a block under the "welcome to wikipedia" block, and then enhance the view with flex box classes to the current layout. Safe but less pretty for the 3% of older browsers and forward looking for decent browsers. But i won't block the change. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:24, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

  If you think this change is superior to the current version, then maybe support it and then propose further changes in a separate request? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

  I'm not a fan of the min-widths either, to tell the truth. But the current design is functionally similar, due to its using <table> for layout and white-space:nowrap. Shrink the viewport and you'll get horizontal scrollbar at 780 to 900px or so in Vector (font/browser dependent). My version wants a bit more width, especially on the low end; scrollbars show up at 880 to 920 or so. I was going to wait until TemplateStyles to work on a fully mobile friendly design, but if you've got something — flexbox with a fallback sounds awesome! — I'd be okay with that. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 02:50, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

 Administrator note If there are no more comments or potential problems I will make the change in 24 hours — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Request on hold — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

al-Nuri Mosque (Mosul)

An historic mosque in Mosul was destroyed on 21 June. It was a very important historical monument (12th century CE). It should be in the "In the news" section.--الدبوني (talk) 00:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That will be discussed and decided here. Art LaPella (talk) 03:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)