Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

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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 with "In the news"

Eclipse: Tense was changed from "is visible" to "was visible" by Clovermoss.[1] However, WP:ITNBLURB says it should be in present tense:

Blurbs should describe events in complete sentences in the present tense.

Perhaps using something like "appears" instead of "is visible" would make the present tense seem more reasonable for a temporary phenomena.—Bagumba (talk) 02:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done I've adopted your suggested wording. Makes sense to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear objections. Discussion is welcome! Schwede66 03:26, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think appears really fixes the problem with forcing events to be in the present tense for temporary phenomena. "Appears" and "visible" makes it sound like you can still see it. You can't. The article itself uses the past tense too. I wasn't intentionally trying to go against what ITNBLURB says but it seems somewhat nonsensical that there aren't given exemptions for this sort of thing. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Understood. But what would be a general guideline of when an exception makes sense? Most of ITN blurbs arguably already happened also e.g. the Taiwan earthquake is over. —Bagumba (talk) 04:39, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm just confused why that's the guidance in the first place if that's the case, then. Why are we intentionally misinforming readers on the main page? Then there's just the issue of consistency. I thought my change was fine at the time for that alone (the article for the eclipse consistently uses past tense). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The generally accepted format for news headlines is to use the historical present tense. If that counts as "intentionally misinforming readers", I think we may have to disallow the majority of the sources we call reliable. See e.g. AP, NYT, BBC News. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 05:18, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

The issue is that we keep old headlines for days, and using "is" makes it more obviously wrong for non-regulars than prehaps other present-tense verbs.—Bagumba (talk) 05:30, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Could I have more specific examples, @AirshipJungleman29? Because I've literally never seen this in practice when reading these sources. It's possible I'm just not noticing but I really cannot recall a single instance of events that have definitive ends being described as if they're still ongoing. I do genuinely believe this counts as intentionally misinforming readers because we're giving an inaccurate pretense about what is going on. Saying that the eclipse is visible in North America implies that somewhere in North America it is visible (which is untrue). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 06:13, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Again, I get where you are coming from, which is why I posted here instead of directly changing it myself. As for the article being in past tense, the same is true of Peter Higgs, but the blurb is "dies". Should that change also? —Bagumba (talk) 06:51, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs is employing an n-dash. It should be a hyphen: "Prize-winning". Any doubt please see MOS:HYPHEN point 3, and MOS:ENDASH. Thanks. Spicemix (talk) 08:33, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Was fixed earlier. See MOS:SUFFIXDASH]. Stephen 08:36, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

• ... that the first extant deer discovered in the 21st century is only 15 inches (38 cm) tall? Shouldn't cm come first because it's a Peruvian species? I have no idea if DYK follows the MOS, in particular ENGVAR, in addition to WP:DYKMOS, but if it does, this seems a minor error. If not, my bad, though I maintain putting cm first still makes sense. Sincerely, Dilettante 04:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Dilettante As a hook, this one happens to work better when you lead with a smaller number...! (Appears to be the MOS-compliant way within the article itself.) Cielquiparle (talk) 04:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "On this day"

Today's OTD

• Top item Day of Valor occurs on 9 April. Looks like it was held on 10th last year as a one-off - per article "...however, April 10, 2023 was declared a special non-working holiday instead of April 9..."

According to this (which doesn't mention Day of Valor) today is a holiday for Eid al-Fitr

(An update for OTD as a whole wasn't done but should be no problem, all other entries seem okay.) JennyOz (talk) 02:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for checking the rest of the entries, JennyOz. I've swapped the Day of Valor for Eid al-Fitr. In the latter's target article, it says the day varies from 10 to 12 April, hence I left it showing for the Philippines only as that's what we've got a reference for. Schwede66 03:23, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Schwede66 @JennyOz: Seems to apply to Islam generally. Updated as shown in 2022.—Bagumba (talk) 04:33, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Schwede66: Note also that Eid al-Fitr was listed at Wikipedia:Selected_anniversaries/April_10#Ineligible due to some citation needed tags. Perhaps you deemed it minor relative to the page size? I'm neutral on whether it's shown.—Bagumba (talk) 04:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Right. I didn't spot that ineligibility listing. It doesn't look too major but I'm easy about taking it out if that's the consensus. Schwede66 05:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I've sourced 3 of the cn tags, and removed the statements with the other three as they were mostly trivial. Black Kite (talk) 07:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(May 3)

Monday's FL

(May 6)

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.

Any other Main Page errors

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