Talk:Main Page

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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)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

• ... that Jumbo's became the first white-owned restaurant in Miami to serve and employ black people, beginning in the late 1960s?

That's a big and hard to prove claim. One reference says that most restaurants didn't employ blacks [1]. WLRN says that the ckaim is from the owners [2]. The New York Times also says "The owners say that Jumbo’s, in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood, was the first white-owned restaurant to employ and serve blacks.". We are saying this in wikivoice! Secretlondon (talk) 15:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Tails Wx, Another Believer, Prince of Erebor, AirshipJungleman29, and Crisco 1492:. Strikes me that the simplest solution is to attribute.--Launchballer 15:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Attributed, with these edits.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 15:26, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's enough, because not only does the article still say it in wikivoice, but the then-owners sold it to a developer in 2014.--Launchballer 15:36, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Article now says "Owners claimed". I didn't do that part as the article isn't protected. The sale to developer, I think, doesn't really change that the persons voicing the claim were the owners. Unless the developer took the name, too, they aren't the owners of Jumbo's... they're the owner of the site. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 16:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The NYT also has a quote "I can’t tell you for sure whether they were the first, second or third to integrate...", so yeah, saying this in wikivoice seems problematic. RoySmith (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, and we shouldn't be saying that anything was "claimed" per MOS:CLAIM. It casts doubt on the assertion but also gives it an air of legitimacy that is questionable. Suggest we pull, since there's no way to know whether it's true or not. And the owners claiming it without evidence isn't a DYK-worthy definite fact.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Can we simply change the hook? Eg DYK that when Jumbo's employed three black people, thirty white people quit? JennyOz (talk) 10:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• "... that American stage actress Verna Mersereau performed her traditional classical dances before royalty in Calcutta?"

The article only says that she performed the lead role in the play "Rain" before royalty in Calcutta, it says nothing about what she did in that play, what kind of dances she performed (she learned "various dance styles" and I have no idea what "traditional classical dances" are in the first place, are they different from other "classical dances" in some way?). The article doesn't even mention "traditional". I have the impression that the hook is a piece of WP:SYNTH, joining the claim that she performed in "Rain" in Calcutta[3] with the claim that she performed classical dances in "A romance of Old Egypt"[4]. Fram (talk) 10:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• I read "... that on the same day that the members of Heaven's Gate died in a mass suicide, five members of an unrelated group did likewise?" They did

likewise what? For my understanding: "die (in a suicide)". I don't believe that dying, even in a suicide, is something you "do". I my be the only one to have a problem, - ignore me if that is so. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:31, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(November 1)

Monday's FL

(October 28, today)

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

Featured article

Why is there no picture for this featured article? Surely there's has to be someone who took a picture of it freely and without copyright. DarkGhost89 (talk) 04:58, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Number of hooks in DYK

DYK formerly had 8 "hooks" in each set, and ran 3 or 4 sets a day. Due to a significant slowdown in production, we are now running just 6 hooks in a set, and 2 sets per day. Production is increasing, and it should be possible to increase to 7 hooks per set. Would that create any concerns for other Main Page projects? (I imagine that a slightly longer DYK section actually would make life easier for ITN and OTD.) --Orlady (talk) 14:49, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I can tell you why the production of DYK has slowed: the system is such a mess it's hard to nominate anything there. I can't imagine this is a problem, anyway. — Joseph Fox 05:51, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

^^I agree with that; I've written a few articles for DYK in the past year or so, but recently the process for nominating them has become so much more convoluted that's it's really not worth the hassle, and I've passed on the opportunity even when I do write something eligible. C628 (talk) 13:20, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The changes in the DYK procedures were made in reaction to vociferous criticism of DYK by a few users who have taken it upon themselves to find fault with this feature -- and to cast aspersions on the intelligence, education, and probably the morals of the regular participants there. That created a lot of turmoil and has discouraged participation. If you enjoyed contributing to DYK in the past, you can help to restore some sanity by returning there -- and weighing in on the project discussion page regarding your experiences with the new procedures. --Orlady (talk) 14:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

IIRC, the changes at DYK were made in response to an RFC, and at least the amount of plagiarism appearing on the mainpage has declined as a result. (I personally disagreed with the convoluted checklist that was instituted, as I don't believe it will cause a change in the habits of less-than-thorough reviewers, but the institution of archives has helped increase accountability.) You, Orlady, have conducted many thorough reviews, finding issues after hooks were approved by other reviewers, but I don't believe the situation has improved enough to increase production-- more issues are being detected now as a result of the increased accountability (Wikipedia:Did you know/Removed), which has resulted in better detection of faulty reviews, but incomplete reviews and a push for sensationalist, catchy hooks are still resulting in inaccurate info and original research running on Wikipedia's mainpage (Wikipedia:Did you know/Mainpage disputed). I'm not sure, though, if defensive intransigence on the part of some other regulars at DYK should be classified as part of "intelligence", "education" or "morals".[5] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:23, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Well that seems to be a clear consensus that 7 or more is fine. Actually Orlady its you who is doing the work so it should be you and the remaining active project members who come to a conclusion at DYK talk. You can look at a list of bad articles found and argue that its so long because there is so much rogue behaviour or its so long because you are catching so many problems. Obviously problem articles should have fallen by at least 50% as we used to run 48 new articles a day. However its not clear to me whether you have lost poor articles or good contributors Victuallers (talk) 15:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Victuallers, I'm not seeing any clear consensus, here or at DYK talk. Here it's 2 for, 1 against; at DYK talk it's 2 for, 4 against. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

OTD wikilinking

Is there any particular reason why the years should be wikilinked in SA/OTD entries? I left this query at Wikipedia_talk:Selected_anniversaries last week and received no response. It seems like overlinking to me unless there's a good reason to do it. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Glad someone has brought this up, it's been bugging me for a while now. Not only is it overlinking, but most year articles are unreferenced and, to be honest, crap. Jenks24 (talk) 18:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Unless someone objects either here or on the OTD page, it is my intention to start removing year links when I perform other edits to OTD pages. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:12, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The OTD pages are designed to mirror the the style of days of the year lists (e.g. the January 1, January 2 ... December 31) pages. The days of the year pages link to the year articles (e.g. 2011, 2010 ... 900, etc.), and the year articles link back to the days of the years. This style is detailed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year#Style and Wikipedia:Days of the year, among others. If anything, you should propose such changes on those pages first.

Furthermore, as stated in many discussions here on this talk page, the Main page is treated more as a portal to let users (especially new users) explore the different articles around Wikipedia (including the days of the year, and year pages), and thus the guidelines on WP:OVERLINK tend to be more relaxed here than a regular article. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The latter of the style pages you link doesn't seem to mention it; am I missing something? I'm not particularly concerned by what WikiProject DotY decides for its pages, as the Main Page is a whole-community venture; just because the WikiProject prefers a certain style is no reason to impose it on the entire project. Also, we prefer to avoid drawing attention to poorly-developed pages via the Main Page where possible (thus OTD's non-bolding of problematic pages), and as Jenks24 points out above a number of the year pages have considerable issues. Furthermore, your reference to discussions here is outdated: all of the recent discussions on the topic here that I've seen have advocated less wikilinking on the MP, not more. Any other opinions? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

My mistake: it is only on the former guideline and not the latter. Secondly, the bolding or non-bolding of links on the Main page only pertains to whether the primary article on the said blurb is a good article or a problematic one; we still link to other articles on the Main page that help give context:[6][7] My understanding was the discussions of reducing the wikilinking only pertained to the prose on the TFA, TFL, and TFL sections, and some of prose on the individual blurbs on DYK, ITN, and OTD sections, because we linked to way too many articles that provided unnecessary or overly-detailed context -- not because these articles were problematic. To me, the links to the dates are more for navigation and give readers access to other events that happened on the specified year. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:12, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

"linked to way too many articles that provided unnecessary or overly-detailed context" - exactly. You don't need to see the page on the year to understand what happened on a particular day. Give the year, sure; link it, no. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. The year an event happened, and what was going on in the world during that time, provides sufficient context. What happened on a particular day may have been influenced by events that previously happened that year. Or the event in question could have affected later events. Or the year can provide a clue on what the culture, society, and technology was like during that time.

It seems we just disagree on what constitutes as "overly-detailed" content, much like there was disagreement on whether to remove the wikilinks to every single country mentioned on the Main page. But unlike those prior debates, just only three people contributing on this particular discussion is insufficient to overturn long-standing, more than eight-year old, prior consensus on all 366 OTD templates (including the rarely seen one for February 29). I'd rather not have this discussion end up with just you and me arguing for days. So again, are there any other opinions out there? Zzyzx11 (talk) 02:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

As the section dealing with dates, I do feel all dates in this section should be linked. 124.82.4.23 (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Irony in "In the News" section

Does anyone find the following "In the News" item sad/ironic/amusing: "After five years in captivity, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit (pictured) is freed in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners."

If I were in charge of the page, I would take a picture of the 1,027 Palestinians and replace the item with "1,027 Palestinian prisoners (pictured) are freed in exchange for 1 Israeli prisoner."

And no, I'm not anti-Israel or anti-Palestine, I'm just a neutral party who can't understand how that can be considered fair. Gilad was nothing more than a soldier--and he is worth over 1,000 Palestinians?

Allow me to elaborate. Linguistically, if a headline were to read "X is exchanged for Y," I'd figure that X is the more important of the set {X,Y}, since it is the subject of the sentence. So I feel that this item implicitly assigns more importance to, and hence values more, the captivity of 1 Israeli soldier than the captivity of 1,027 Palestinians.

I acknowledge that getting a single picture of 1,027 Palestinians is more challenging than getting a picture of Gilad Shalit, but the inclusion of his picture over the captives' picture is also an implicit indication of bias. Inasilentway (talk) 02:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd actually like to see some more "in the News" on the english wikipedia that actually reflect english language news. I understand the impetus to avoid bias but this story wasn't even close to a top ten in my country today. This counts below a bunch of exotic animals set free by a suicidal owner and killed, sarkozy's wife giving birth, lindsay lohan getting probation revoked, and a new camera with unlimitied field of focus that we've already heard about, ten times at least. Yes I am trying to be ironical, but consider for a moment that the ONLY exposure many people are going to have of Shalit is on wikipedia's front page - let's entice them to read more instead of turning them off to learning.97.87.1.230 (talk) 08:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, tt's a difficult event to cover with total balance, but removing the image would be a start. HiLo48 (talk) 03:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, HiLo48. I do believe the image should be removed, first and foremost. Afterwords, we should rewrite the "In the news" item. Inasilentway (talk) 03:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The news item is well writen and picture should stay, saying we should picture the 1,027 is just plain nonsense, The fact that 1 is less than 1000 doesn't mean it should be mentioned second as becouse many news websites and newspaper mentioned his name and the number he was exchange with. See BBC - Gilad Shalit freed in Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap, The Guardian - Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal reached, and many more websites, both western and arabs, the second fact is that if Hamas didn't hold Shalit the exchange would have not be taken place.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 04:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That's either a very biased or very silly comment. There are two sides here and we must not take either of them. Of course we won't have a picture of the 1,027. Therefore, to be neutral, we shouldn't have a picture of the 1. HiLo48 (talk) 06:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Gilad is nothing more than a soldier, but he is also the entire reason why this story is notable, as borne out by the RSes. Given that, mentioning him first is NPOV. We aren't picking a side, just reflecting what our sources say. Resolute 05:04, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Gilad is notable because of the story; the story is not notable because of Gilad. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 01:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The neutrality issue was precisely why I proposed the two-flags image for ITN in Candidates. Given the broad references and availabilities, it was entirely reasonable that the article maintain a heavy Shalit picture tilt -- but on ITN, that tilt should be avoided if possible. - Tenebris 06:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.29.190 (talk)

I don't think the fact that media references include pictures of Gilad rather than any of the 1,027 Palestinians is reason why Wikipedia should do it. Wikipedia is not meant to reflect its sources in that particular way, particularly when the sources are media corporations rather than scholarly publications. Was Anthony Weiner's infamous photo included on ITN even though it was all over every piece of news media for several weeks? Inasilentway (talk) 21:11, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Hollywood babies make front pages of even quite good sources. Wikipedia must never succumb to treating such pap as quality content here. HiLo48 (talk) 21:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I was actually going to make a comment pretty much along the lines of Inasilentway's but of course he got here first. Like many others, I have my own opinions and sympathies when it comes to that place :). In my case those sympathies are firmly on the hebraic side of the fence.

With that said, and while I understand and respect the arguments made as to how this is covered in the media elsewhere, I personally feel that this headline is a bit insensitive towards those other 1027 people involved, at least some of which did nothing more or less than Mr. Shalit to find themselves in that situation. I would like to propose something along the lines of "A prisoner exchange took place between Israel and Hamas, in which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and 1027 prisoners held by Israel were freed". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.151.147.103 (talk) 19:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Question about page view statistics

Clicking on "History" and then "Page View Statistics" reveals this is the SECOND most viewed page in Wikipedia, so what is the first? Thank you in advance for any feedback, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 09:26, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

According to this, the most viewed page is "Special:Export/SynchronizationStartTime:", which was apparently viewed over a billion times last December. I think that we can safely say that is because of some technical thing and that the MP is our most viewed page. Jenks24 (talk) 09:37, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks for getting back to me so quickly on this. Forgive me, but I am not even sure what "Special:Export/SynchronizationStartTime:" means. Can you explain please what it means? Thank you in advance for you co-operation. I wonder whether it just means that people from different parts of the world have (and therefore different time zones) have to be logged in what, in Wikipedia technicalities, is counted as equivalent time. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, no one has got back to me to explain what that means - I take it does mean the times that one gets logged onto Wikipedia. I agree, it appears to be something technical - having clicked on the hypertext above, it does not take one to an article that any one would wish to read! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:38, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You can also ask on WP:VPT if you want. Or ask someone like User talk:PrimeHunter or User talk:Edokter; I think they know about that script. Regards.--♫GoP♫_T^C_{N 13:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)}

Last time I checked (december of last year, I think), it was Special:Search, which makes a lot more sense. Something is wrong with the pageview counter, FYI. Buggie111 (talk) 00:53, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm quite curious, I'm stunned that the Gaddafi article [8] got fewer hits today than it did in previous days. With all the attention about his death (I heard a couple of guys talking about it at McDonald's), I thought it would get a million hits at least. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I would expect the stats to be considerably higher today. — Joseph Fox 03:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what Special:Export/SynchronizationStartTime: is supposed to be other than an attempt to use Special:Export on the non-existing page name SynchronizationStartTime:. Other non-existing page names like Special:Export/NonexistingPage display exactly the same, while an existing page like Special:Export/Disambiguation_(disambiguation) adds content from the marvelously named Disambiguation (disambiguation) to the end. I suspect the page view stats is either an error or an indication of a one-time server incidence of some kind. The most viewed list at http://stats.grok.se/en/top is based on December 2010. http://stats.grok.se/en/201012/Special:Export/SynchronizationStartTime: looks odd. It says all views were on December 12, but it also says "None" on top of the column (perhaps something fails after 1000M). I don't know whether something at http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Server_admin_log/Archive_17#December_12 could have triggered the extreme page view stats. In the months since then it usually shows around 10 views per day. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

That tool is a bit odd. It lists Communist Russia as ranking higher than Soviet Union when the former is a redirect for the latter, and has been for years, and even though the hits are higher for Soviet Union.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)