Talk:Main Page

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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 in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(October 18)

Monday's FL

(October 14, tomorrow)

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.

Main page general discussion

Battle??!!?

Many people mistakenly believe the ship shown exploding is USS Arizona, whose destruction during the attack accounted for over half of the men killed in action during the battle.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I was always under the impression that a battle was a fight between two sides.[1]

Whereas the event in Pearl Harbor is commonly referred to as the Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor. Why? Because Uncle Sam took it in the bum without response.

In fact, the clause "during the battle" strikes me as superfluous given that the reader is made aware that this was "during the attack" earlier in the sentence. So get it fixed. --220.86.152.103 03:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

You are mistaken:

• A battle, as you yourself described it is a fight between two sides, more or less. This was a fight, a fight which was one-sided due to the surprise achieved by the Japanese. Whether or not it was one-sided does not make it any less of a battle - you can call it an ambush, treachery etc but its still a battle.

• The United States managed to shoot 29 planes so it was not totally without loss for the Japanese. If you had read the article, you would know that it was one of the reasons why a third wave was avoided by the Imperial forces of Japan.

Next time please report possible errors at the top where it says "Errors in picture of the Day/Today's Featured Picture" Tourskin 05:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

So, if I walk up to a stranger on the street an beat him about the head, you call that a battle? I'd call that an attack. That's why it is called the Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor. --220.86.152.103 11:12, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Yet that's not what happened - taking on your poor analogy, the stranger retaliated and broke your arm --> battle. 172.202.161.119 11:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps before arguing over word choice, you should consider style. The word "attack" is used twice in the blurb, so using it a third time (and second in the last sentence) would sound redundant. Sasha Callahan 15:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Two people constitute a battle? Don't you need at least a small army or naval fleet for that? --199.71.174.100

Battle fits fine. They did shoot back at the attackers. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 15:22, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Funny you should give such a poor analogy because battle comes from the word batuere which means ‘to strike, beat’. So yes if you were to beat someone on the street, that would be a battle. Or more like a bateure. Tourskin 22:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

...ok buddy. Anyway, I agree with this post - Pearl Harbor isn't generally referred to as a battle. The stylistic complaints are valid too. -Elmer Clark 09:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

It may not be referred to as a battle but then again how many people call the 1st Iraq War Operation Desertstorm? Few if any, theyc all it the Gulf War. You see theres a difference between what something is (a battle) and what something is called. Any military or aggressive attack in war is a battle, no matter how small or how one-sided or how sneaky. Full-stop. Tourskin 20:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

87.244.73.107 21:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Citation? Oh You want citation? How bout every single recorded encounter in history? Thats called a battle? Hmm? Tourskin 06:52, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be taking this a little personally Fourskin. I suggest you chill out. And for what it's worth, it wasn't a battle. It was an attack. --JohnO 09:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

ITN Article Links

Sometimes there are no obvious (or even any) links in the summary to the actual article in Wikinews. There may be a number of links to Wikipedia articles about various topics but no hint as to which goes to the news article - it may take a lot of hovering to search this out and then find no link to the article. Would it be possible to put a specific link at an uniform spot, start or end? W#hile I have been able several times to simply go to Wikinews and see the story on other occassions, if it is an older story, I have not been able to quickly find it there. s-slater. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.75.95.127 (talk) 13:43, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Please note that Wikipedia and Wikinews are two separate online operations. Some people take part in both projects, but the two are independent. If you want to complain that Wikinews doesn't have the news or the hyperlinks you are looking for, you should go there to do so. --199.71.174.100 20:26, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Size of wikipedia

Has anybody ever stopped to think that this encyclopedia could be getting too big? Its mind numbing knowing how huge it is and how many articles it will have in the future. Is there any maximum limit it could have? The Wild West guy 16:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, owing to technical limitations, the title of each article has to be under 256 characters (though ones of a similar length to A Dissertation on the American Justice System by People Who Have Never Been Inside a Courtroom, Let Alone Know Anything About the Law, but Have Seen Way Too Many Legal Thrillers or Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" start to display uncomfortably), there is a practical upper limit to the number of potential article titles for the English Wikipedia. I suspect we may run out of topics to describe before we hit that limit, though :) GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 17:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

And of course, that limit could be removed with a bit of work in the future, if it became necessary. The next practical limit would be something akin to The Library of Babel, with the maximum article length set at ~300kb (The only article currently over that limit is the monstrous List of Unicode characters WARNING: Clicking that link may cause your browser to crash.). GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 17:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol thats at AFD. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:55, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I've come across larger stuff before especially unarchived talk pages. I think one was like 800k or something. It didn't cause any problems with my browsers altho on slow internet connections and mobile phones and the like I guess it may be problematic. Editing it was very annoying especially when you had an edit conflict or had to edit the whole page for some reason Nil Einne 17:32, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

As long a Wikimedia continues to be supported by public and private contributions, the only real limit to the quantity of articles will be proportinal to actual harddrive space on the servers. Rsrblm1 17:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's focus on quality, instead of quantity, shall we ? --74.13.131.37 05:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Improving existing articles generally involves making them longer, better reference, etc, which still takes up more hard drive space... -Elmer Clark 09:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but as noted above, there is no limit to hard drive space potentially available as long as the Foundation has enough funds. However, lovely Mr Anon above is correct - let the number of articles steadily increase, but at the same time let's focus on improving the current articles as much as we can, whether this involves cutting out the crap or adding in material. To a thousand more years! —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 16:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Vanderdecken, you are lovely, too. :-) --74.14.17.200 17:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

When improving Wikipedia's quality, don't forget to delete the junk. Anyways, size doesn't matter in this case. Quality is more important. --74.14.17.200 16:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol, a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages Shows that, apparently the page updated just as 2 pages were vandalized, showing them to be 800,000+ long. 76.84.12.144 23:34, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That's weird. Special:Longpages doesn't seem to work properly. APL 01:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is wrong with it? Dreamy ^\*/_!$! 01:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I missunderstand how its supposed to work, but why is it listing stubs and other short articles and listing numbers like [288,466 bytes] next to them? 24.2.176.64 01:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's gone now, but yesterday, someone vandalized a few pages (one was the E-mail pages. don't remember the others) and increased there size by a few hundred thousend bytes. Before they were reverted, about a minute later, the Long pages page updated itself, and so it read pages like the E-mail page as being really huge. Tesfan 17:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope, wasn't the E-mail page =/ 76.84.12.144 03:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it was E-mail_address. 69.95.50.15 19:44, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Hypothetical article

Let's say someone wants to make an article on something called Main Page. How can they make that article if there is already a page titled "Main Page" -- the main page. If this page is moved to the Wikipedia namespace, then somebody can create an article on Main Page if they want to. Someone the Person 16:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

What is this "main page?" Is it a band? A book? Something else? Then the page would be named Main_Page_(band) or Main_Page_(book) or the like. We'd probably need some sort of disamb at the top of this main page if such a thing happened, though... which might mar the way it looks... that is an excellent question, that I don't know the answer to. Gscshoyru 16:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I haven't heard of anything actually existing that is called "Main Page," but just in case... Someone the Person 16:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

We'd cross that bridge when we got to it. 17Drew 16:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

This has been discussed before quite a number of times. Many people agree that having Main Page in the article space is a bad idea for many reasons including the one you mention. Many people have pointed out that crossing the bridge when we come to it is a bad idea because amongst other things it means that we will have to carry out the change much faster then we would like and we may not be able to have a simple redirect which we could do at the moment. Unfortunately (IMHO anyway) many other people disagree for a variety of reasons so there is no consensus either way. It has been a while since we've had a serious discussion (it's brought up every so often but usually by people who aren't aware of the previous discussions so usually people just recommend they check the archives and it ends there) so you're welcome to try and resurrect the discussion but you should familiarise yourself with the previous discussions in the archives first. The last major discussion occured some time in December last year I believe (it we definitely either late last year or early this year anyway): Nil Einne 18:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Main Page FAQ#Why is Main Page in the main namespace? The latest proposal was in February 2007. - BanyanTree 07:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Simple. We just put a dablink at the top. "This article is not actually an article but is in article space for reasons too complex to explain here at the top of the Main Page. For other uses of Main Page, see Main Page (disambiguation)." :) --Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 01:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, and against what I intended to do, the link I just provided was deleted once before, in December, so Nil Einne is probably right with his dating of the last major discussion. --Dreaded Walrus ^{t c} 01:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If there are any namespace diehards out there, now's your opportunity to write the perhaps-not-bestselling-but-nonetheless-notable book Main Page: A novel receiving reviews in several major newspapers and force the issue.--Pharos 02:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

There probably is something out there called Main Page, but just you try searching for it on Google... Lots of chaff. Carcharoth 16:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

There are several encyclopedic meanings for "main page", actually; Homepage is thae sense that we use it in, and it can also be used as a synonym for the Front Page of a newspaper, or the main body of the page as opposed to the footnotes. But these uses are probably not specific enough.--Pharos 17:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Aren't we lucky the Main Page wasn't called Front Page... I see we have a hatnote there pointing at our Front Page. Silly. Carcharoth 17:21, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I have just noticed that on Wiktionary, the main page is titled Wiktionary:Main Page. This is probably because there would be a dictionary entry for "main page." Also, if we make the change, we could, instead of a redirect, make a page under the title "Main Page" that says, "The main page has been moved to the Wikipedia namespace," leave it there for long enough to get rid of most ot the confusion, and then delete it. I noticed that Wikipedia:Main Page redirects here. Someone the Person 22:32, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont think it redirects here, I think its a mirror of the page, because the URL remains on the Wikipedia name space. The problem with moving the page would be the many, many pages out there that link in, those would all have to be update, an article about mainpages would be one of the highest hitted ones on Wikipedia for no real reason, lol.
Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver, Reformatter And Vandal Watchman (Talk) 16:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Just as an aside, Wikipedia:Main Page does indeed redirect to Main Page. (Link with redirect suppressed.) The URL's staying the same is how all redirects work.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:31, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

All good, my main point was the external links bit, I had a quick look at your main page and I'm totally the same with Avatar btw :)
Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver, Reformatter And Vandal Watchman (Talk) 16:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Typo on main page

Normally I'd fix it myself, but it's protected, so ...

In the In The News section, right at the top, some people participate in some protests "lead" by some group. I'm pretty sure this should be past-tense, so "led" with no "a"... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.14.134.27 (talk • contribs) 12:01, 24 September 2007

See WP:ERRORS. --74.14.17.200 16:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Czech Airlines Logo

Someone put this photo on czech airlines please. CSA airplane in new livery! http://www.flightsim.cz/forum_prispevek.php?id=184264&lan=0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.71.211.66 (talk) 18:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You should go ask this at the discussion page in the Czech Airlines page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tourskin (talk • contribs) 18:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You need to stop this. This is at least the third time you've posted this here. You've been told it's not appropriate, and where you should bring it up. Harassing people on the main page won't get things done faster. -Elmer Clark 02:57, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking to me? It wasn't me who posted this, only the response the first time. Just to clarify. Tourskin 06:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

By indenting at the same level as you, Elmer Clark was too responding to the original poster. If Elmer had indented further, as I have with this post, he'd have been talking to you. Have a read of Wikipedia:Guide to good indentation. Hammer Raccoon 09:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

1. The new logo was already added on 19 Sep[2]. You did post on the talk page, so why post it here? And stop posting here. AxG ^{@ ►talk} 19:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I dont mean th logo. I mean th photo of a real aircraft in the new livery

Talk:Main Page is still the wrong place to ask. Try Talk:Czech Airlines. --Howard the Duck 14:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Main page default cursor position

I think that the main page should load in your browser with the cursor default position in the search box. 142.59.85.208 21:38, 25 September 2007 (UTC)mdm

That's been discussed previously discussed. I think the consensus is not to do that. --Agüeybaná 21:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Main Page FAQ#Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google? - BanyanTree 23:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

shambolic

In today's TFA, it has a transwiki link to "shambolic". Besides the fact that there is probably a better word (or at least one that sounds better) than shambolic, is it standard form to have transwiki links in main page content? Mbisanz 03:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen it before, but it can't hurt to give wiktionary a bit of prime-time advertising. —METS501 (talk) 04:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Or to provide a definition for a word most users are unlikely to know. Atropos 05:04, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Why should Wikipedia even use words that the average reader is unlikely to know when an alternative is available, especially in such a high-profile location? Why not just change it to "chaotic?" This does seem silly. -Elmer Clark 06:52, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Why dumb down Wikipedia? When you read an article are you just supposed to be learning about the subject alone? Or is it possible to learn a new word at the same time? Dismas|^(talk) 06:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Good point - you beat me to it at an edit conflict. As an encyclopedia it does its job by teaching others "words that the average reader is unlikely to know", quoting from you. Besides, my arguments with the word Plurality, a word never used in the British or the American media taught me that you can't say things like "the average reader" - because you do not and will not ever know what the average read knows. So you can't argue that shambolic is unknown, only to yourself and others who post a response.Tourskin 06:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Since the OED says its been in use since 1958, I don't have a problem using difficult words, it just seemed awkward in the article and the link to wikitionary threw me. Mbisanz 07:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

We might not be able to argue that shambolic is unknown, but we can argue that it's less known than chaotic or disorderly—words that almost any English speaker will understand. There's no good reason to use British slang introduced in 1958 when plainer, more widely known alternatives are available. Teaching words is not the job of the encyclopedia. Punctured Bicycle 14:54, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I like the word and would've thought it fairly well-known, but it's probably not as internationally known as it is in the UK. If there is a direct replacement that is more readily understood we should always look at using that instead, but we should also be wary of repetitive wording (which is not a problem in this case, I don't think). violet/riga (t) 11:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a simple matter. It's true that as an encylopaedia we should aim to make our content accessible. However most people would probably agree we shouldn't aim to be the simple English wikipedia. While we probably would lose content if we go that far there are a lot of words which are perhaps less known then some alternatives but in many cases IMHO they should not be replaced even if it doesn't lead to repetition. While it's not an encylopaedia's job to teach words it's also not an encylopaedia's to assume all readers are stupid and incapable of looking up a word they don't know. Where to draw the line between being unnecessarily inaccesible and allowing less known but valid words ultimately comes down to personal opinions IMHO and I'm not convinced either way. Also, if the article has a clear WP:ENGVAR preference (as in this case), and one word is equally understood in this ENGVAR (not sure if this is the case here) then IMHO there is definitely no justification for changing it even if an alternative word is understood much better in other areas. In more neutral articles where we're going by first author's preference that's a different matter Nil Einne 15:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

good point —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.148.122.100 (talk) 19:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Vietnam bridge collapse

Collapse kill 56 and 132 missing. Should be in main news http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20986875/ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298068,00.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7013711.stm