Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

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Administrators: Clear all reports

Errors in In the news

"making them the oldest known fossils of life on Earth"? Not according to the paper’s abstract (emphasis added):

Although it is not known when or where life on Earth began, some of the earliest habitable environments may have been submarine-hydrothermal vents. Here we describe putative fossilized microorganisms that are at least 3,770 million and possibly 4,280 million years old in ferruginous sedimentary rocks, interpreted as seafloor-hydrothermal vent-related precipitates, from the Nuvvuagittuq belt in Quebec, Canada. These structures occur as micrometre-scale haematite tubes and filaments with morphologies and mineral assemblages similar to those of filamentous microorganisms from modern hydrothermal vent precipitates and analogous microfossils in younger rocks. The Nuvvuagittuq rocks contain isotopically light carbon in carbonate and carbonaceous material, which occurs as graphitic inclusions in diagenetic carbonate rosettes, apatite blades intergrown among carbonate rosettes and magnetite–haematite granules, and is associated with carbonate in direct contact with the putative microfossils. Collectively, these observations are consistent with an oxidized biomass and provide evidence for biological activity in submarine-hydrothermal environments more than 3,770 million years ago.

Or the BBC: "Scientists have discovered what they say could be fossils of some of the earliest living organisms on Earth". Most of the coverage I’ve seen is the same. Certainly all the reliable coverage.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:22, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I was just going to note this. The original descriptive article is not definite about these being microfossils. Other researchers are already questioning them, we should not be so confident in how we phrase the ITK blurb.--Kevmin § 01:27, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

This should be pulled entirely for these reasons and those given at the bottom of my own user talk page. Terrible decision to post. --Mkativerata (talk) 06:42, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

It’s been partly fixed, but the "discovery of microfossils" also needs clarifying. The researchers call them "putative fossilized microorganisms" but putative is a bit technical. Suggest

• Scientists discover possible microfossils within rocks...

to stop it getting any bigger, and anyway the news is the discovery not the announcement.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 06:50, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the new caveat goes no way near enough to addressing the problems. As you say, you have to caveat the first part of the sentence too, giving us a doubly-caveated ITN blurb. Great. And that doesn't even account for the fact that a number of distinguished academics have already attacked the underlying methodology of the research. This was all known at the time of posting, done prematurely and on the basis of an ill-informed consensus formed by a bunch of 13-year-olds who thought this sounded like a cool story. The only credible thing to do is pull the item and learn from the mistake. --Mkativerata (talk) 07:05, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

• I agree that it would be best to pull this item and re-open discussion. The Guardian's follow-up coverage indicates that there is still no consensus about such findings. "Does everyone agree? No. ... others are not convinced. ... hot debate, with many experts unconvinced ... experts were split ...". The linked article is abiogenesis where the news item has been shoehorned into the article in a simple way. There's a mass of other detail in that article and so the reader will not get a clear understanding of the issue from it. The newspaper reports do a better job of presenting the tentative nature of the finding and the opposing views. Even the Daily Mail's coverage is better-balanced, saying that the discovery requires confirmation and presenting opposing views from other experts. Andrew D. (talk) 08:41, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Errors in today's or tomorrow's On this day

Today

• St Piran's Day - section mainly unreferenced, tagged as such. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:18, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Personally, I'm OK with the level of sourcing in that section. Maybe another admin disagrees... --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:35, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Well that's insane. There are fourteen claims in that section without a citation (about 78% of the total in that section), including a direct quote. Poor response. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:39, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Oh well. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Not really. Remove it please. If you're not interested in fixing this sort of thing, why not go and do something else rather than add useless comments? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Fuck you. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:44, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Yet another magnificent admin contribution from someone who pretends to be interested. I'll add it to the list! The Rambling Man (talk) 23:46, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  14 out of 22 is 64% not 78%. Anyway, I've removed the unreffed items, so everyone can stop squabbling now. DuncanHill (talk) 03:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

• File:Boston Massacre.jpg doesn't appear in the target article. Seems a bit odd, especially since DYK don't even do that.... The Rambling Man (talk) 23:27, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  @The Rambling Man: Moved from DYK to OTD, but... I guess I still don't understand. It's a version of the image in the infobox, isn't it? --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

  Sure, so use the same one. Thanks! The Rambling Man (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Tomorrow

• Casimir Pulaski Day - mainly unreferenced. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
• Svetlana Alliluyeva - the target article and our own article on Stalin himself uses the name "Joseph", not "Josef". The Rambling Man (talk) 07:35, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

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

Current

...that Judge William Henry Daniels committed suicide... "Judge" should either be lower case or replaced with "Justice". Primergrey (talk) 06:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

• Done. Stephen 08:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Next

• "... all-star team in 1989 included a vote for Gerald Alphin, but he did not make the all-star team ... " can we please avoid the repeat of "all-star team" here?? The Rambling Man (talk) 07:18, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

• Changed to squad. Stephen 07:41, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Errors in today's or tomorrow's featured picture

The hemicycle should be decapitalized, I doubt it's a proper noun. Brandmeister^talk 08:34, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Done. Stephen 08:46, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the last or next featured list

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