Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

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Errors in the summary of today's or tomorrow's featured article

TFA today

• "The Cloisters is a museum in Washington Heights in New York City featuring four covered walkways pieced together from several abandoned European monasteries and rebuilt in the United States."

Very lengthy to be unbroken by commas. suggest "...New York City, which features..." and possibly omitting last 6 words which are so obvious as to not need saying (and is a logical conclusion from, but not specified in, the article). Kevin McE (talk) 08:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• "Designed by architect Charles Collens, the museum houses medieval gardens, several indoor chapels and thematic display spaces."

In the absence of an Oxford comma, this is unclear and appears incomplete. If chapels are being listed as distinct from display spaces, suggest 'medieval gardens, thematic display spaces and several indoor chapels.' If chapels and thematic spaces are deliberately grouped, then 'medieval gardens and several indoor chapels and thematic display spaces.'

Is 'indoor chapel' not tautologous? An exterior worship area is not usually referred to as a chapel.

I would seriously doubt that the phrase 'thematic display spaces' has ever been used outside of promotional literature for a museum: is there any reason to not use 'galleries'?

The word 'several' appears twice in the extract (here and the first sentence): it is redundant in both cases, and poor writing to repeat it in such close proximity. Kevin McE (talk) 08:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• "Two rooms are dedicated to the tapestry series Nine Heroes (c. 1385) and The Hunt of the Unicorn (c. 1495–1505). "

So are both tapestries in both rooms, or should it say, "The tapestry series Nine Heroes (c. 1385) and The Hunt of the Unicorn (c. 1495–1505) each occupy a room"? Kevin McE (talk) 08:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Still recusing. - Dank (push to talk) 13:04, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts on that. Having looked at the blurb, I think it is adequate for our purposes, and in the absence of any errors of fact, I'm inclined to let it stand.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Dank and Wehwalt: this TFA coordinator discussion, is it something mere mortals others can participate in? It seems like it's happening offline. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:51, 30 November 2018 (UTC) We can discuss it offline with you if you like. Does a coordinator have your email? If not, use the send email function and we'll include you in the discussion. And my mortality is very much with me.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I should add that I replied above to Kevin without prior consultation with my colleagues. December is my responsibility and with Dank, who normally handles WP:ERRORS, recused, it's my call.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC) There's nothing sinister about off-line discussion, it obviously makes sense for us to agree amongst ourselves before discussing policy elsewhere. I agree with Wehwalt that with Dank recused it up to the coordinator scheduling the month to make the call. I hope the situation has changed by January, but if not, I'll follow the same practice Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC) It's just a question; I'm not accusing anyone of anything sinister, and I'm not asking to join the offline discussion among TFA coordinators. Dank (the only one of you I recall interacting with on this page) knows that I respect the work you guys do, and am usually willing to defer a lot to your (collective) judgement. But I'd prefer that any decision on how to handle ERRORS requests about TFA blurbs be made on-wiki, with the opportunity for feedback from people who make a lot of error reports, and non-error improvement suggestions, and from admins who patrol ERRORS, and any other interested parties. If you guys are discussing offline to bounce ideas and opinions off each other, that's obviously fine. I just hope it's not where a final decision is going to be made, and then everyone else is just informed of it. There are a lot of complicated, conflicting things to balance, and a lot of stakeholders. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:20, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Thank you Floquenbeam: it is not a very welcoming experience when I'm trying to help improve the Main Page to be told "it has been discussed behind your back, and we're not doing anything about it. Kevin McE (talk) 16:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I'm too angry to reply right now. When I said I'm recusing to give the coords time to discuss, that's exactly what I meant ... I haven't been participating in any discussions about blurb text with the coords, and I won't for as long as I'm recusing (and from the look of things, that may be a while). I'm not in the habit of lying about my own actions as a Wikipedian, nor have I been lying about how we've generally been handling things for the past 4+ years at ERRORS/TFA. One of the coords hasn't had a chance to reply at all yet ... and I have no problem with that, I think we've got at least 3 or 4 complicated things going on at the same time here, and there's a lot to unpack. The trend toward populism, both in world politics and on Wikipedia, sickens me. No one who has the slightest familiarity with my 11+ years of work on Wikipedia would assume that I'm angling for more power here ... I'm angling for less. - Dank (push to talk) 16:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I'm... completely at a loss about how I've made you angry. That was not my intention at all. I'm looking at my comments here again, and I don't understand what I've done wrong. But I'm sorry, Dank, for whatever poor wording I've used. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Don't worry about it, sorry to burden you with this. I'm confident that everything will get sorted out eventually, but man, it's painful operating within the constraints that Wikipedia imposes. - Dank (push to talk) 17:10, 30 November 2018 (UTC) There's been no change in policy. The coordinators set the article and the blurb. But there's been differences both in quantity and in the pickiness recently. So the "no's" are becoming more prominent when you have 30 blurbs being challenged in month instead of the normal 3 or 4.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:21, 30 November 2018 (UTC) What meeting or discussion off-line is being referred to, and why? Nothing above the "mere mortals" comment mentioned a discussion or meeting off-line or on, and apparently none was happening. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Alan, I don't really want to continue this discussion, and attempt to explain my apparently comments any further. I'm a little stung too, to be honest. So I withdrawn my entire comment, withdraw whatever accusations people think I'm making, and will go lick my wounds somewhere and attempt to be less Trumplike. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I was with you most of the way there.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:27, 30 November 2018 (UTC) That's fine, I just think this page/discussion should be clear about some unknown meeting/discussion, elsewhere, that apparently was not happening. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I personally think it's not correct for the TFA coords to be discussing things like this off wiki. This isn't arbcom, and as far as I can see there is no legitimate reason for such secrecy. Ultimately we're all one community here.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:30, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Sorry to continue the conversation, I do apologize for causing Floq some stress ... but I have to ask, discussing things like what? if you're not clear, people will make assumptions what you mean, and that's not what we want to happen here. - Dank (push to talk) 17:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC) As part of the policy WP:CONSENSUS off-wiki dicussions are irrelevant to forming on-wiki consensus and may be safely ignored. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:34, 30 November 2018 (UTC) What off-wiki discussion is being talked about, here? Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:38, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I'm assuming whatever Jimfbleak is referring to above. However my link was primarily for informative purposes for future reference for people who may not have actually read and understood the consensus policy. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC) I agree with Kevin McE's comments at the head of this thread about the wording. DuncanHill (talk) 17:51, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Please hold your horses, everyone. I just said above that one of the coords hasn't had a chance to weigh in yet, and all of us are trying to tackle some difficult issues of figuring out how prose requests at TFA have been handled over the years, and whether what people are asking for currently is in line with how we've done things before or whether it's something new. As soon as all of us have a chance to figure out what our joint position is, we'll be happy to share it. Personally, I want to ask everyone to please separate me in your head from the other coords ... my job is different than theirs, and my job only has a chance to work if all of the participants trust me. There's some danger here of that trust eroding. I have no magic at all that can stop people from fighting if what they want to do is fight. The only things I have to offer to this process are the relationships I've built up over the past 11 years, and a set of prose choices that I use to minimize the chances that anyone will want to fight over the result. (And of course, the number one prose choice is: I don't change the prose if there's a good chance that it will work, because we're trying to highlight the work of the article editors, not my own work.) But those are the only two tools I have here ... and whenever those fail, it becomes the job of other people (people commenting here, other coords, editors of the FAs, etc.) to deal with the mess as best they can. I've been reporting to the other coords that what I've been doing hasn't been working lately, and they're trying to understand past consensus and figure out how to deal with that, individually and as a group. We'll try to be crystal clear about all of this as soon as we have a chance to discuss everything. There's nothing secretive or nefarious going on here. - Dank (push to talk) 17:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC) FWIW, I've asked the other 3 TFA coords to move things along so that I can divorce myself from their discussions as soon as they've got all the information from me that they want. Then I need to figure out what to do about the recusing ... obviously, I have to be available to answer questions about any text I wrote, but I need to find a way to do that while avoiding the war zone. - Dank (push to talk) 19:56, 30 November 2018 (UTC) It seems to me to be obvious: the other three coordinators and myself have been entrusted with a responsibility not shared by the rest of the community, in fact delegated from the community. How else do you expect us to run drafts of the monthly schedule by each other for each other to check? (which is mostly what we talk about to be honest) Is the community willing to assume the good faith among those it has entrusted, by consensus, to do this job? And, God knows, benefit not in the least from having it?--Wehwalt (talk) 22:29, 30 November 2018 (UTC) Why is it that email discussions are viewed as if we are a cabal plotting the downfall of democracy? As Wehwalt said, most of our discussions are about the next month's TFA list. Amakuru and Only in death does duty end says such off-line consensus is wrong and should be ignored, so are they suggesting that for January's list, instead of getting on with scheduling from today, I just invite scheduling by committee here? That should be fun. We are not perfect, but we have been asked to do a job without others trying to do it for us. If you don't trust us, or don't like what we do, there is an obvious solution. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:43, 1 December 2018 (UTC) No one has any issue with scheduling TFAs. There were legitimate issues raised with the current summary on the main page that seem to have been discussed offline, with the view that nothing needs changing. Stephen 08:48, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Errors in the current or next Did you know...

DYK next

• Psychopathic could be improved with a link to Psychopathy. Modulus12 (talk) 19:59, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the last or next featured list

FL next

Please report any such problems or suggestions for improvement at the General discussion section of Talk:Main Page.