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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 86.138.233.25 (talk) at 23:13, 1 March 2006 (We're at a million!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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1,000,000th article

I think Wikipedia will reach ONE MILLION articles sometime on Wednesday 01st March 2006. Why not make the 1,000,000th article about Wikipedia's milestone of actually reaching 1,000,000 articles??  :) T. McLean - Australia.

Hopefully this breakthrough will get Wikipedia's name in the news and help publicise Wikipedia to make it even better!!!

Maybe some of you, could start emailing news companies and stuff or somthin, to tell them that this is going to happen, and compare wikipedia to the likes of how many articles encarta and britannica have. This will ensure the greatest news coverage!!!

I'm just a regular user, but I was wondering if there was anything going on for the 1,000,000th article. We're getting real close to it.

Richardkselby 01:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if anything special is planned for the MainPage, but you may be interested in a little fun at Wikipedia:Million pool and Wikipedia:Millionth topic pool. :-) -- PFHLai 16:52, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Something should definitely be planned!!! -- Adjam 08:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably we'll use Template:Main Page banner, as previously. — Dan | talk 08:59, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yo here's an idea. Lets add suggested spellings to the search if the search turns up no results. :)Sherwharr 12:50, 22 February 2006
Millionth article, sounds pretty cool :) --Andeee 14:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ONLY 10,000 more articles till a million. Yea!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.83.114.215 (talk • contribs) 08:01, 2006 February 24 (UTC).

We should plan something. Wasn't wikipedias original goal to make 10,000 articles or something like that? --Banana04131 23:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's origional goal was 100,000 of course they already had 400,000 some by the time I started editing... --T-rex 03:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At the time the 100K article promises were around, Wikipedia only had nine thousand articles, and it would be interesting to compare inclusion criteria before or since. Bobo. 15:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo should do a press release or something. --Banana04131 04:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone know of a free IRC client I could use? Everyone should go to the IRC node when the millionth article is made. Also, from the looks of it, the million will fall on either Fat Tuesday or Ash Wednesday.--Rayc 16:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 995,999 articles." Ashibaka tock 20:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Iv got an idea. lets invite some great personality for writing the millionth article. lets say UN secretary general or last peace novel prize winner. Leandro (argentina)

The millionth article could be self-referential: 'The Millionth Article in Wikipedia'. 20.138.246.89 11:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree Shanekorte 00:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • 998,298 articles 04:32 (UTC) Wednesday, March 1, 2006 -- A data point. It should be possible to correlate with the New Articles pages with several more points, especially when the page count is within 500 articles of one million. -- Ancheta Wis 04:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 999,659 articles 21:28 (UTC) Wednesday, March 1, 2006 --Ancheta Wis 21:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anyone tried contacting Google with a possible "Google tm" commerating the millionth article? -- ILOPEZ
    • That would have been an amazing coup. But surely it's a bit late now. The landmark will be reached very soon. If nothing special happens I will be very disappointed. This has been an inevitable landmark for ages now. I know there's the 'guess the date competitions, but they're of interest to longtime contributors. It would have been great to have seen a special front page or banner, maybe even an animation, though I think Wikipedians tend to be very sensitive about bandwidth (for both user and the sake of WP's servers). --bodnotbod 10:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Actually, it's because Wikipedia is a professional site and we don't want to do countdowns or things. I could put one up myself but it would get reverted. Once the millionth article goes up, there will be a special banner. Ashibaka tock 13:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

you cannot "plan" the millionth article. New articles are created by the minute. Patent nonsense is deleted by the minute. It may well be that the millionth article is created several times, because of nonsense deletions. After all is said and done, the millionth article will be a random stub, to be evaluated after recent nonsense articles pushing up the count have been deleted... dab (ᛏ) 11:18, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. And by the way, self-referential articles are highly discouraged at all times, as it simply makes us look narcisstic. -- user:zanimum
  • congratulations, i was saing. we,ve reached the million article. leeandro

less than one hour and 999,950 article

Bank Robbery news headline

Can we say either "in British history" or "in the United Kingdom's history". It does not make sense to say "in United Kingdom history". After all, you would not say "in France history" or "in Russia" history; the use of "in United States history" is the only exception to the rule. Polocrunch 09:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changed to "in British history" as suggested. Thank you for pointing this out. -- PFHLai 18:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Is "British" not the term for the island of Britian? This does not include Northern Ireland. It should be either "in the history of the United Kingdom" or "in the history of the British Isles (including Ireland)". 20:29 UTC 23-02-06
Well, British means .... Never mind, it's now "one of the largest ever in Europe." -- PFHLai 01:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Two arrested" seems to be old news by now. Zocky | picture popups 17:21, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested addition to mainpage

I'm very new to this posting business and apologise if this has already been covered or is in the wrong place!

I've been searching wiki pages forever trying to find out if it's possible to add a Wiki search box to the toolbar in one's browser. IF this exists, perhaps it would be something to mention on the Main page so that people would know that this is possible and know where to look for the information. I'm sure it's probably mentioned in some obviuos place, but I've been frustrated in my attempts to find it and there are no links from the main page that seem like the obvious choice to click when looking for such information.

(If this isn't possible, perhaps someone clever might consider implementing it? I know I end up turning to Wiki more and more these days and often use my Google search box as a wiki search box by typing 'wiki xxxxx'.)

Thanks much--and again, sorry if I'm making noise in the wrong places! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.51.49 (talk • contribs)

If you download Mozilla Firefox you can have a wiki search (amongst many others). There's also one here by the look of things. Jellypuzzle | Talk 14:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

InterWiki

Hi!

Why are here no InterWiki-Links to other Mainpages? (Like de:Hauptseite)

--84.176.3.145 14:05, 23 February 2006 (UTC) (de:User:Athalis)[reply]

there are. sorted by number of articles. dab (ᛏ) 14:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is very nice to sort the Interwiki-links by number, but wy isnt there a normal interwikifield also . I wantet to copy the list into another main page in armenic. I found the Links after reading this discussion. Im not able to find the links in the view of page. Please add a normal Interwikifield immidiatly its been used hardly. yours ++Scooterman 15:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

aa: als: ar: bg: bs: ca: cs: da: de: el: en: eo: es: et: fa: fi: fr: fy: gl: he: hr: hu: id: io: it: ja: ko: ku: la: lb: li: lt: ms: nds: nl: nn: no: om: pl: pt: ro: ru: sh: sk: sl: so: sr: sv: sw: ti: tr: uk: zh:

South Dakoda Abortion news need correction

The information presented in the front page is incorrect. Exception is made in case where the mother's life is at risk [1]. FWBOarticle

Seems to be fixed already (not by me). -- PFHLai 18:15, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia speed

I don't get it, Wikipedia started working fast again last night, but now it's slow. It's really killing the incentive to edit when I have to wait so long for it to open. I don't think it's a problem with my local server, because every other website works fine. Please fix this really annoying speed problem. JackO'Lantern 17:39, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


It's still way too slow! Why won't anybody listen? Fix the server or whatever and get the regular Wikipedia speed working again. PLEASE!!! JackO'Lantern 18:13, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to try the Village Pump instead of Talk:Main Page. -- PFHLai 18:17, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia makes me mad! Why can't we edit or change featured articles!!! Ugh! So much for the website of the people BY THE PEOPLE and for the people! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mizuphd (talk • contribs) 21:18, 2006 February 23 (UTC).

Don't be mad. Only the lead paragraph of a featured article is protected from editing because it's on the Main Page. This protection is meant to prevent vandalism. You can still edit the feature article itself. You just can't change what's on the MainPage by yourself unless you are an administrator. -- PFHLai 01:43, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Al Askari Mosque bombing

Reference to bomb

Perhaps you could change the phrase bomb attack to link to Al Askari Mosque bombing instead of bomb and move the bolding from Al Askari Mosque to bomb attack? Thanks in advance. joturner 00:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re-wikified as suggested. Thanks. -- PFHLai 01:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading headline

The Headline "Over 100 bullet-riddled bodies, including 3 journalists, are found by the Iraqi Police the morning following the bomb attack in Samarra, Iraq that badly damaged the Al Askari Mosque (pictured), one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam." is tremendously misleading. It implies that 100+ bodies were found in one place, when in fact it was several separate incidents, which are suspected reprisals for the bombing. How about this:

"Over 100 civilians are killed in Iraq in several incidents suspected to be reprisals for yesterday's bomb attack in Samarra, Iraq, that badly damaged the Al Askari Mosque (pictured), one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam."

Also, the link should go to the page about the bombing, not the mosque.-Matthew Cieplak (talk) (edits) 01:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was indeed misleading. I've re-written that headline on ITN into two simple sentences. I hope it's okay now. -- PFHLai 01:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mexican flag

Why about the Mexican flag? Gdatta 01:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem ? -- PFHLai 04:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Featured articles for an explanation on why the articles are chosen, Gdatta. κаллэмакс 12:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"The preceding unsigned comment was added by..."

Is some sort of robot adding this signature to unsigned comments? Or is it a person with too much time on their hands? I have an account at Wikipedia and I sign 99% of my comments. But when I choose not to, I don't want to find my comment altered with this blurb. Thank you.

Whether you sign your comments or not, your user information is logged in the history, thus not signing comments doesn't serve any purpose other than to be slightly annoying to other users who want to know who they're talking to and when the comment was entered. freshgavinΓΛĿЌ 05:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
The majority of people who don't sign comments are newbies who don't know that they should or don't know how to, and occasionally an experienced contributor forgets. Adding {{unsigned}} lets them know how to sign if they return to see any answers, and makes it much easier for everyone to communicate. It doesn't compromise anyone's privacy because the author of the original comment can be found in the page history, although on busy pages that may take some searching.-gadfium 06:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
"This page is for discussion of the Main Page only."—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greasysteve13 (talk • contribs).
  1. While this is not a comment about the Main Page, it is about the Main Page's talk page. Where else would I ask about it?!
  2. "The majority of people who don't sign..." I really don't care about that. Fact is, if I don't wish to sign something, that is my right to do so. On the Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages page is clearly states "Although it may be advisable to follow it, it is not however policy."
The help desk would be a good place to put these sorts of questions. Many things we do are not policy, but just common practices. We aren't blocking you for not signing, so clearly it isn't mandated or required, but then again we don't have a rule against adding "The proceeding comment was added by..." so people may add that to your messages. You could explicitly add "please don't add {{unsigned}} to my message.", but people don't have to listen (they probably would). I'd ask why you care? but this isn't the place to discuss it. BrokenSegue 03:03, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There may be no policy dictating that you must sign your comments and you may be within your rights not to, but if you're following that line of argument then there's no policy dictating that other people must not slap {{unsigned}} templates on them and they are within there rights to do so. You still lose.--Cherry blossom tree 10:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You may not sign deliberately, but most people fail to sign accidentally. How can we tell the difference between you and everyone else, if you don't sign?-gadfium 03:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really not getting into a big argument here, but I simply wish to make the point that signing comments is sometimes unnecessary. For example, Person A might say
  • "Damnable! Today's featured picture is the same as last week's featured picture."
To which Person B replies
  • "I agree. Terribly poor form."
No need for sigs. --JohnO 03:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Signatures are a surefire way of determining where one person's comment ends and another person's begins. Even indenting doesn't do this 100%, becuase sometimes I'll write a message , and within that message feel the need to indent a paragraph for organizational purposes. I'll also often post multiparagraph posts, which means you can't just assume one paragraph, one poster. And then there are the times that even if using indents and such would be clear, the next person that posts might be a newbie or not understand the concept and either not indent, or indent to the same depth you did, which would add confusion. Sometimes you can tell anyway, but it takes concentration to read, and the added effort can be very annoying, esspecially if the conversation goes on for a while.
Also, I find not signing comments on talk pages rude. We cite sources in the article space, we should cite comments on the talk space... by citing, I mean signing. This is esspecially important in longer conversations, so that you can determine how many different people are in the conversation, which aids understanding concensus. Not signing deliberately could almost be considered the same as using sock puppets, in this regard. Aren't you anonymous enough with a username? I mean, I can understand wanting to hide your IP, but that's why you can log in. I don't see any reason not to sign. Even the short comments in the example above should be signed, just to distinguish them from all the other people making short comments. And it's not as if plopping down 4 tildas is hard or anything. The difficulty in reading an unsigned thread FAR surpasses the effort it takes to sign. Fieari 17:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the preceeding two paragraphs I wrote would be an example of my point. The second paragraph begins with the word "Also"... which could be the lead in for a second person's comment, which happens a lot. Because I signed though, it should be pretty clear that I wrote both paragraphs. Fieari 17:10, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, unsigned posts can make it very difficult to follow a conversation thread. I can't count how many times I've had to read and reread a conversation to try to make sense of where one person's comment ends and another's begins. Sometimes it may seem as if a person is switching their viewpoint in the middle of their post, until you realize it is two or more people, without signatures. I believe everyone should always sign their posts, as a courtesy to everyone else. Oh, and Fieari, they're tildes. Dansiman 22:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Today's (Sat. Feb 25) featured picture is showing up wrong--it's last Saturday's featured picture. Osgoodelawyer 00:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good its not jsut me 160.5.247.213 01:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
nor me!!
I fixed it. —David Levy 03:07, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just as i was about to link to the second feature page and ask any passing admins to do it! Out of curiosity does the new main page template link directly to the POTD or does it go via the second feature concept? I only ask since most of the updates on saturdays have apparently been done by one individual, and it may prudent to get more people involved when a picture is displayed everyday. Anyway thanks for the update :)
The proposed new main page would eliminate the rotating "second feature" concept (including the template). I agree that Solipsist probably could use some assistance, and I'm more than willing to provide it. —David Levy 03:24, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering how we can have 3 pictures of the day on one day?? --T-rex 03:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Feature Article

Most English speakers know this organization as Doctors Without Borders. Would it be a good idea to put this in parentheses after the French name? Thanks. --Nelson Ricardo 00:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, the adverts for this organisation in the UK use "Médecins Sans Frontières" rather than "Doctors without Borders", and I vaguely recall an ad in Australia using the same name — though most of the charity ads kind of blur together after a while. I assume by "Most English speakers" you refer solely to the U.S.? If so, the difference is already noted in the lead paragraph of the article. GeeJo (t) (c) • 05:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, being American I am pretty much US-centric. C'est la vie. --Nelson Ricardo 18:16, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Confirm in UK its known as "Médecins Sans Frontières" or occasionally MSF only very rarely "Doctors Without Borders" Pickle 23:22, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Médecins Sans Frontières picture

The picture going along with todays featured article seems to be... lacking. Its just a few people standing around. A more appropriate picture may be the orginizations logo, or a more obvious and interesting picture of a member of the group actually doing something.

Yeah, why not use the logo? And on another point, I think it should be mentioned somewhere in the lead that it's also known in english as "Doctors without borders". I didn't know they were the same organization untill I read the article. Borisblue 12:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yea they should have mentioned that --T-rex 06:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

extinct giant beaver

Greetings, I live in north eastern Ohio and we have peat bogs around here. In one of the excivations there was found an 1l1ven or twelve thousand year old dam and lodge that was built by our furry little friend. No one was interested enough to examine the find and it was ultimately destroyed. that is where to look for this stuff because of the preservation of the material that is burried beneath the peat. Thought you would like to know. GuyPer out

If Wikipedia were a paper encyclopedia

How many volumes would you think it would have? - The preceding unsigned comment was irrelevant to the Main page. I couldn't give a... Castlemaine XXXX who wrote it.

The unsigned comment on the unsigned comment was by --JohnO 19:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
According to History_of_Wikipedia#Viability, the German version is intended to be printed in 100 volumes of 800 pages each. The English versions is very roughly three times as large. I think the printed version is probably not all of every article.
The current printed edition of Britannica is 32 articlesvolumes containing 65,000 articles (see Encyclopædia_Britannica#Current_version). Assuming that their average article length is the same as ours, which is probably not a very safe assumption, we would need 480 volumes as we have 15 times as many articles.
While neither of these calculations are likely to be very accurate or authoritative, they give you a ballpark estimate of the size of a printed version of the English Wikipedia.-gadfium 01:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inthe News

I'm not sure how it should go because I didn't read up on the story or anything but the wording about the Irish Republicans is wrong. schyler 01:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

nevermind schyler 01:11, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why this complaint was retracted but the idea that this riot was "staged" is not borne out by the facts: a demonstration was staged, and the riot happened because of a variety of factors, including police reaction and large numbers of people spontaneously joining the demonstration.XmarkX 12:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Selected anniversaries

Shouldn't World Trade Center bombing be bolded and not Ramzi Yousef? --Bryan Nguyen | Talk 05:49, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Either way, it's okay. Neither page is a stub, and both contain the date. It depends on which page the wikieditor-in-charge wants to feature. The former link was bolded, i.e. the page was featured, in 2004, the latter in 2005 and this year. Perhaps the former will be bolded again in 2007.... -- PFHLai 09:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Underline?

I happened to notice that all links are now underlined. I personally find this very annoying and it makes pages with a lot of links hard to read. Think maybe we could reverse it? Jezpuh 12:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can set links to be either underlined or not in your preferences. --Cherry blossom tree 12:53, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mine Disaster Headline

The trapped miners in the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in Mexico are presumed dead after rescuers encounter toxic levels of natural gas that halt search efforts. joturner 04:56, 26 February 2006 (UTC) The current news item for the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster fails to mention the most important part of the story - that the miners are presumed dead. How about something like...[reply]

The trapped miners in the Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in Mexico are presumed dead after rescuers encounter toxic levels of natural gas that halt search efforts.

-- joturner 13:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It says so now. (I didn't fix it.) -- PFHLai 06:07, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Today's feature article description for February 26, 2006

Today's feature article description for February 26, 2006 says "This would be one of the causes for the declaration of Brazilian independence by Peter I of Brazil in 1823". The declaration of independence happened in 1822, not 1823. The article was already fixed by the time I got there, but the front page still has this.

-- MauricioC 13:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. —David Levy 15:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Major" Riot

I'd hardly call the Dublin riots 'major', in any case, it's a subjective word and I don't think it should be included on the main news page. - User:Dalta

Indeed. Fourteen people were hospitalized and none were killed. If the riots hadn't happened in an English-speaking country, I doubt they would be on the main page at all. Pissant 23:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've changed it, I hope this suffices. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 23:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know it's just gone now so it doesn't really matter, but 'Irish Republicans' is a bit too broad a term, many Irish Republican groups were not invloved and I'm sure there were a few there who weren't ative in any republican movement. Also, no riot was 'staged', a protest was staged by Republican Sinn Féin which escalated/descended into a riot. How about 'There was a riot in Dublin causing the 'Love Ulster and FAIR' march to be cancelled.' with links to the various articles to explain everything. - User:Dalta

Selected anniversaries: Napoleon

It's not correct to use the name Bonaparte for Napoleon with reference to 1814. He was just Napoleon at that point; the Powers had even let him keep the title of Emperor after his abdication. A better link would be Napoleon I. --Cam 19:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ITN: Jamaican PM

Some people, such as I, are annoyed by reference to a country as a nation. "Nation" is a politically-charged term outside of the United States, and we should be wary of that. The word "country" is perfectly neutral. --Zhengfu 21:01, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You should notify the United Nations. — ceejayoz talk 23:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's different: a nation is a people united by common language, culture or ethnicity. The UN really can be a union of nations.

Template:MainPageIntro

In Template:MainPageIntro the link to Wikipedia:FAQ was removed, and Wikipedia:FAQ was merged into Wikipedia:Questions. This is not good - it's too hard to find the FAQ's and Wikipedia:Questions is hard to navigate. So I'm going to re-instate Wikipedia:FAQ and change Template:MainPageIntro.--Commander Keane 21:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I'll wait a bit for comments.--Commander Keane 21:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The merger occurred at the end of January, and Wikipedia:FAQ has been a redirect to Wikipedia:Questions ever since. The only new difference is that the redundancy in Template:MainPageIntro has been eliminated.
I see that you've restructured the page, but you still believe that the merger was a bad idea. I disagree, and I don't recall reading any complaints until now. I believe that the former setup was needlessly complicated (because the two pages covered very similar ground). A unified page is quite logical, and it simplifies navigation. —David Levy 22:02, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would have complained earlier but didn't realise the main page redesign was going to start being implemented like this. Is this the right place to talk about getting the FAQ back on it's own page?--Commander Keane 22:48, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
1. This is not part of the main page redesign. The creation process (along with that of Template:browsebar) inspired the idea, but the actual merger can only be regarded as a separate matter; the two decisions are not interdependent.
2. Wikipedia talk:Questions seems like the most logical discussion venue. —David Levy 00:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know?

The sails of the Sydney Opera House are spherical surfaces, not hyperboloid. The roof of the Sydney Myer Music Bowl (located in Melbourne, not Sydney)has a hyperboloid roof.Norm Tered

This old DYK item is no longer on the MainPage. Please see Talk:Hyperboloid structure#The Sydney Opera House does not look hyperboloid at all in this picture. -- PFHLai 07:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Riot Picture?

Should we make it bigger? You can't tell too well what it's showing, and it looks sloppy, I think. Clarkefreak ∞ 02:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The image in question is no longer on the MainPage. Anyway, we usally display images at about 100px wide. We don't have that much space available on ITN. One can always click on the "thumbnail" to bring out the actual image file for a better look. -- PFHLai 07:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In cases like this, it may be advantageous to make an agressively cropped copy of the picture so that the main motive remains large enough in the thumbnail. Zocky | picture popups 11:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mis-spelling of "Defenseman"

On the main page, in the olympic article reference, the word "Defenseman" is mis-spelled as "Defenceman".

Yeap, that's correct. Please see Defenceman (ice hockey). --PFHLai 07:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"Defensemen" yields 613,000 google results and "Defencemen" yields 129,000. Why is wikipedia biased towards the least popular version? Anti north-americanism against words now? That's silly. That's like saying "Theatre" just to spite people. And I don't think that using a wikipedia article as a reference is valid in this case. I'll take up my spelling crusade in the article itself, since it won't be on the main page for long. --Jeff 14:15, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have outlined my reasoning for this change at Talk:Defenceman_(ice_hockey). --Jeff 14:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Jeff, you may want to check out Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). 'Defenceman' with a 'C' is perfectly fine in Canada, the other North American country, just north of the United States. It's not out of spite, btw. It's just the way things are. -- PFHLai 15:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Deep in the Heart of Texas" italics in DYK

Under DYK, "Deep in the Heart of Texas" should be surrounded by quotations and not italicized per Manual of Style for titles. I would appreciate an admin making quick work of this problem. Thanks so much! — Scm83x talk 07:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changed as requested. Thank you for pointing this out. -- PFHLai 07:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Current Jamaica Portia article reads erroneously

She wont 'definatly' become the next Prime Minister as currently cited on the main page. She's very *likely* to be after P.J. Patterson steps down.

P.J.steps down (since she becomes the new leader of her party), fresh general-government elections will have to be called, and thats---- where she could lose becoming Prime Minister if her party does not win the *most* constituencies/seats in Parliament. In order for a new carbinet to be selected in Jamaica fresh general elections will have to be called. See Westminster System. CaribDigita 12:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Except that a fresh general election is not expected to be called, and instead the Governor General is expected to name her the next PM. Anyway, I've changed "will become" to "set to become" to make things sound like 'definat'. (This is a *cute* spelling, btw. ;-) ) -- PFHLai 15:33, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Its a toss up. She has remained quiet on whether or not she is going to hold snap elections. As seen in the caption on the Gleaner [2], and as far as the Governor-general, the G.G. can only do what P.J. or she says. The Governors-general is purely a ceremonial role in the Caribbean these days. They- just like the Queen of England wield no power in the Caribbean states these days. I don't know what I was thinking writing "definite" that way. hehe There's one for the books. I was in a rush heading to work that's all I can say. CaribDigita 19:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The vote

You know, Gore actually won for popular vote, but Bush for the electorial vote. Now that we have ways to judge the popular vote, I think it should go by that. What do you think? Dragon Expert 19:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1,000,000th user

Everyone's been so caught up in the frenzy about the millionth article that they forgot how close we were to one million users. Well, today (February 28, 2006) at 2:02 UTC, we passed the mark with the creation of User:Romulus32. [[3]] the creation log with this user. Jfingers88 03:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Articles are more interesting than user accounts, especially as half of Wikipedia's accounts are just Willy on Wheels suck puppets ;) Zerak-Tul 08:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly so, but I value people more than just pure quantity of information. If we have over a million users, no matter if half are sockpuppets, we are still reaching many thousands of people. Jfingers88 14:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
According to the page history of Wikipedia:Wikipedians, there were only 350,000 accounts as recently as August 1st, 2005. Thus in the past six months, 650,000 accounts have been added to the rolls. --Ancheta Wis 11:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting to see how many are post the imposition of the "account to start a new page" and sprotection, if those figures are available... --Kiand 18:41, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make this clear to all people outside Wikipedia's community who are reading, this is not a stat endorsed as fact by the Wikimedia Foundation itself. -- user:zanimum

wikipedia.org Portal

for multilingual Users or because of domains with the same language it should be possible to seek topics domain-independant, i.e. there should be also the possibility to seek all subdomains for a topic, in case, its a rare topic not everywhere available. so please add 'seek in all countries' to the menu or make it the standard setting

Wikipedia is segregated by language, not country. Not too many people know more than three of four languages. --Nelson Ricardo 17:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean linking to other language versions of the same article? We have that already in the form of interwiki links. For example on Neil Armstrong check out the "In other languages" section of the left-hand menu bar. Evil Monkey - Hello 19:14, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not a bad idea: Why don't you bring it up at the Village pump?  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  02:53, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think you mean is it possible to search ALL language domains for a topic. I don't think this is possible with the Wikipedia search and I agree that this would be nice to see on the multilingual portal www.wikipedia.org, but I know that it is possible to do this kind of search when you do a Google search restricted to the domain "wikipedia.org". That works for me. I also saw discussion of something that might also be of interest (an interwiki checker tool) here and here. Hope that helps. Carcharoth 11:37, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contamination

Surely "contaminations" would be correct? (H-Bomb)

Who selects anniversaries?

Why Mărţişor in Romania and Martenitsa in Bulgaria are mentioned among selected anniversaries, while Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian Maslenitsa (which is the same) is not? Why Russian anniversaries are always ignored? --Ghirla -трёп- 16:11, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I posted a question on Talk:Maslenitsa weeks ago asking for the 2006 date. [4] No one replied. We are not ignoring Russian anniversaries, but people familiar with Russian anniversaries ignore me. Please, someone, add the dates to the article. Is it the same as Mărţişor and Martenitsa ? -- PFHLai 21:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC) If there are anymore Upcoming holidays and observances that should be on the MainPage, please add them to the list on the Current events page. (on the right side. Actually, it a template on that page.) Thanks. -- PFHLai 22:18, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We're at a million!

w00t!

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