Talk:Main Page

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"

Amending the number killed to 10 to coincide with news sources and a longstanding policy of not including the perpetrator among those killed. 75.140.13.103 (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Suggest, "An attacker kills 10 people, with dozens injured, in a truck-ramming and shooting in the US city of New Orleans (street pictured)." Wehwalt (talk) 21:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Frankly, I'd prefer something more like "An attacker rams his truck into a crowd and opens fire, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens, in the US city of New Orleans".--Wehwalt (talk) 21:12, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Do we need to say "in the US city of"...? New Orleans i'd think is one of those cities that the average reader is going to know where it is. If anything this could be reduced to say "New Orleans, Louisiana". --Masem (t) 22:02, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I've made the change along the line I suggested in my latter post above, and at Masem's suggestion, have deleted "in the US city of".--Wehwalt (talk) 22:12, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I've also updated the number of killed, respecting the OP's comments. Wehwalt (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

US: But we often have blurbs with like "Paris, France".[1] New Orleans is not an obvious world capital. Maybe it is well known outside of US, but could start a slippery slope on debating "well-known" cities (like we use to have with whether or not to link a country in a blurb)—Bagumba (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

What does policy dictate? Wehwalt (talk) 01:54, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't believe there is anything formally written, it's more de facto. —Bagumba (talk) 01:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

What do you think, "In the U.S. city of New Orleans," to start unless we are running up against length limits, or do you have a better way? Wehwalt (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I never liked <city>, <country>, but it seems to have been the de facto practice (brevity?), and some might take exception with a new practice on a US topic. But as long as we're consistent going forward. —Bagumba (talk) 02:18, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

MOS:OL says that we don't need to link to municipalities as long as its obvious from context. For Paris, there does need to be a secondary name since there's places like Paris, Texas. That's why at least identifying the state helps to provide context. Masem (t) 02:00, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not saying France was necessarily needed there. But I don't think it was consciously included because of ambiguity with Paris, Texas, either. —Bagumba (talk) 02:13, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm good with any short addition, as long as no length limits are violated. Further expanding the place name doesn't seem to me to be worth sacrificing what's already there. Wehwalt (talk) 02:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

We've also had "Minneapolis, United States",[2], even though there is Minneapolis, Kansas and Minneapolis, North Carolina, both in the US. —Bagumba (talk) 02:30, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Should say "rams a truck" not "rams his truck"; the Ford involved was rented from a Houston man. WikiContributor0830 (talk) 23:07, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. Done. Wehwalt (talk) 23:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Should we add that the truck had an Islamic State flag, now that media coverage is heavily implying that as the motive? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:39, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

• The image captioned "Location of truck-ramming attack" does not show the location of the truck-ramming attack and should be removed. Abductive (reasoning) 02:41, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

  It does, though. Canal Street at the intersection with Bourbon Street, where the ramming began, pictured in 2022 Aaron Liu (talk) 03:12, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

  No, the terrorist went down Bourbon by turning off of Canal; no ramming occurred on Canal. The photo is a disgrace. Abductive (reasoning) 03:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(January 3, tomorrow)

Monday's FL

(January 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.

Today's POTD

I would strongly urge that the bit "Often mischaracterized as propaganda ..." be revised to "Often characterized as propaganda ..." (i.e. without the "mis") ASAP. The current wording is a clear violation of WP:NPOV. References in the article Duck and Cover (film) do indeed establish that the film has been characterized as propaganda. Nothing that I see in the article or its references establish that this characterization is erroneous, and we should not be calling the characterization erroneous in wikivoice on the main page. At best, whether or not the film should be considered as propaganda is disputed, and it isn't clear that either position would be dismissed out of hand as WP:FRINGE. Arguments that the film's advice would indeed be efficacious don't mean that the film wasn't propaganda, as it was clearly an attempt to influence public behavior (even if the influence was positive and intent benevolent) and thus definitionally propaganda. CAVincent (talk) 01:33, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I concur, it is the word "propaganda" that has been mischaracterized as always meaning negative or misleading. Abductive (reasoning) 03:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

General discussion

Featured sounds on the main page

Signature to disable archiving: ffm 15:15, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe it's time to move forwards with adding featured sounds to the main page. There are 98 featured sound files, representing 65 distinct compositions (symphonies and such can contain multiple files because of the various movements) Our statistics are reasonably good, with about a dozen per month in the last three months, and October looking good for a strong increase on that.

And, of course, the greater visibility can reasonably be presumed to attract more people to Featured sounds, increasing these numbers.

This will need some set-up time, of course, so I'd suggest that we start by putting in featured sounds in place of the weekend featured pictures in, say, November or December (I have discussed such a move with Howcheng) and plan on starting a daily run of featured sounds in the new year. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:40, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

What about "featured media" - which would basically be featured sound or video, rather than a picture? Garden. 16:26, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Garden. That sounds a great idea. J Milburn (talk) 16:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above editors—given the relative scarcity of featured sounds (which is not a comment on the quality of the selections, of course) and the scarcity of space on the Main Page, folding featured sounds into the current "featured image" selection and calling it "featured media" is probably the way to go. If this is done, the first sound selection needs to be chosen very carefully as a useful introduction to the concept, so I'd advise not going forward until you have a specific selection in mind for it. Of course, that's true even if it's not folded into the featured images, too. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:07, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

This seems rather appropriate to kick it off with - an extremely good quality recording of a song everyone already knows. Raul654 (talk) 17:22, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe, though, that Featured Pictures is already quite a bit behind. I wouldnt mind blending sounds with video, to take some of the load off FPs, but to add sounds permanently to FPs is just going to push things further and further behind. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll support a rename of "Featured Picture" to "Featured Media" and the inclusion of sounds, but only if one sound is chosen per composition (such as the first movement of la primavera) for now. ffm 23:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking that, as sounds don't take a lot of space, we could probably fit three or four in without too much trouble. That's enough for all but one multi-part sound, and, frankly, we could just take some samples from that one without much problem. In any case, the multi-part sounds are a distinct minority. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:13, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that's a great idea. ffm 22:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

One problem with swapping a Featured Picture out with a Featured Sound is that the FPs currently have about a six-month backlog before appearing on the Main Page. Adding Sounds only increases that backlog. Additionally, there's a lot of technical template work to incorporate sounds, which may or may not be feasibly done. howcheng {chat} 17:03, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

A six-month backlog is a good problem to have, no? Has any thought been given to having two Featured Pictures each day? I wonder if the current stockpile would accommodate that. Then maybe, some days the second Featured Picture space could go to a Featured Sound, and we'd take out two birds with one stone.--Pharos (talk) 20:01, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

A bust of Ludwig van Beethoven taken from his death mask.

Template:Multi-listen start

Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101: manuscript sketch for movement IV.

I like the idea, if it could be implemented, and suggest it begin by pairing this featured sound with either of these featured pictures. (Note that Wikipedia has already done this once on 9/11/2008 when it ran George W. Bush's 9/11/2001 speech (a featured sound) in tandem with a featured picture of the World Trade Center wreckage). Howcheng, you are welcome to push back my featured pictures in the queue in order to mix in featured sounds. That would reduce about 1/3 of the backlog? Durova^Charge! 17:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I think sound-picture paring would work nicely, as right now a bit of space is wasted on the main page for one item. ffm 22:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course, we wouldn't always have such a neat pairing available. =) But yes, whenever possible. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:52, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

As I see it, there's a few ways to do this:

1. 1 Featured media, either FP or FS - this is probably impractical. Too big of an FP queue.
2. Two featured media every day: I'm a little uncomfortable with this, because it wouldn't really advertise the featured sound project very effectively (since the words "featured sound" would not appear, and it gives no firm schedule for featured sounds.
3. Featured picture + second FP Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday-Sunday / FS Monday Wednesday Friday - I kind of like this idea better, simply because, with a simple bit of extra code, featured sounds could be named in the title and links on the designated days. Three Featured sounds a week seems quite possible.
4. 1 or 2 Featured pictures + Featured sound every day: Perhaps in the future!

I would suggest that, whatever we do, that the new inclusion of featured sounds is worth a Wikimedia foundation press release, explicitly encouraging people to submit their sounds. Wikipedia can do sounds very well, which print encyclopedias can't, but we do need to make it known that Wikipedia welcomes and encourages such submissions, or we won't get 'em. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support this excellent idea by Shoemaker's Holiday (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 11:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.241.102 (talk) 06:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

The four-month FP promotion rate is around 10.4/week, slightly less than as proposed above. I don't know how things are going over at FS, but what concerns me is that sometimes we have a lull where the rate drops below 7/week for a few consecutive weeks. Maybe a 10/4 partition?

And how would the main page look like when we have a panorama, especially at lower resolutions (800 x 600 in particular)? If I did POTD, I would run only one item those days. This would scuttle more than a few designs in the 2008 main page redesign proposal. MER-C 12:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Featured sounds could probably manage 4/week. Also, figure that some FPs (e.g. that collection of fractals) and multi-part FSes might reasonably take both partitions, and we should be fine, particularly if we set up the code to allow things like panoramas to take up both slots. We'll need to do the extra coding, of course, but if we have the will to move forwards, I don't think that's a huge problem. I'll start setting up a test system, based on the current featured pictures code, using default values to make it backwards compatible. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:34, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

That's a very optimistic number on Shoemaker's part. I suppose this deserves background: for nearly three years featured sounds languished with an average of fewer than one promotion every two months. A small core of people brought the process to life this summer and fall, but it really needs broader exposure to become sustainable. I would gladly sacrifice any and all of my FP work if that's what it takes to get a stable featured sound process. That would be in the best interests of the encyclopedia. Durova^Charge! 22:37, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

We've managed about 3/week for three months running. Presuming a bit more participation, 4 should be possible, particularly given the 60-odd sound backlog that will help fill in the gaps while we build things up. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any hope for the idea that WP shouldn't try to cram something into every last square inch of its mainpage? The Mozart example above reminds me of this.

While you may have a point about not trying to cram in too much (media overload), it's worth remembering that Google is a search engine and their main page is intended to be a way to access that search engine. Yahoo clearly consider their main page as a portal and similarly our main page is primarily intended to promote our content not to function as a search engine or be a way for people to access our articles (that is part of the purpose but not the primary purpose). You may want to go to Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal where generally too much whitespace is frowned upon and voice your views Nil Einne (talk) 08:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Um, where does anyone mention Mozart? Durova^Charge! 22:31, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I meant Beethoven, of course. APL (talk) 01:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually we've been working on Mozart too... ;) Durova^Charge! 05:15, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

We're not cramming things into every square inch on the MP - we're just adding something else next to the FP, that won't take up any more space than a panorama. This would be a welcome addition to the project. Dendodge|Talk^Contribs 08:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

how much did it cost?

How much did the furries pay to get ottersex on the front page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.207.43.214 (talk) 06:06, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

GreenReaper promised me his first born. Raul654 (talk) 06:16, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

What he didn't know is that all furries are gay. GreenReaper (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Add the current UTC time to the Main Page

I don't currently see the current time placed anywhere on the Main Page. I was wondering if that problem could be fixed. The time related templates are listed below.

{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}-{{CURRENTMONTH}}-{{CURRENTDAY2}} {{CURRENTTIME}} UTC
makes
Thursday, 2025-01-02 04:39 UTC Spitfire19 14:33, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

It's already there, at the bottom of On This Day. J Milburn (talk) 14:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Pending minor Main Page update

Barring objections, I intend to update the Main Page with some slightly cleaner code. It's almost entirely removing spaces in strange places or changing things like 0px to 0. Mostly pedantic stuff. A diff of the changes is available here for those interested. There should be no change whatsoever to the visible output of the page. Please let me know if you have any concerns / comments / questions. Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 02:27, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Definitely looks more professional and clean. Nice job. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 04:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I dislike <!--SHOUTING COMMENTS-->, but other than that it's fine. ffm 15:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, the whole point of those things is to be a minor irritant so you'll be distracted into reading it. If you think they're slightly irritating, they're working. Personally, if I think something is worth inserting a comment, I always capitalize it for exactly this reason. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:05, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Hurricanes, hurricanes, hurricanes

Are hurricanes really the most interesting topics in the sum of human knowledge? According to Wikipedia, apparently. Kaldari (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kaldari.

When most people write for the fun of it, they will write about topics that interest them. One of our most prolific featured article writers happens to like studying hurricanes. In addition, Wikiproject Tropical cyclones is very close to (if it isn't...) our most active Wikiproject. Thus, we have a lot of featured articles about hurricanes.

If you would like to see articles about other topics featured on our Main Page, no one is stopping you from writing your own featured articles. Instead of complaining about things, why not take action to rectify the issue? J.delanoy^gabs_adds 20:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Could we at least have a different picture in the 'In the News' section? 2 hurricane pictures on the top row of the main page is a wee bit biased (systematic or not). DendodgeTalk^Contribs 20:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. And for the record, I've helped write 2 featured articles. I just can't keep up with the hurricane and TV show writers :( Kaldari (talk) 23:41, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Jdelanoy, I think the most active would be WP:MIL. ffm 23:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

We've decided that the next month is going to be devoted to covering hurricanes. In the News, Featured Articles and Featured Pictures will all be related to tropical cyclones. Have fun, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 00:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

"Giant Otter Panic of 1907"?

It's about time that got some coverage! Oh. Never mind. - Richfife (talk) 20:20, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The name of the page

Why is the name of this page "Main Page" instead of "Main page". General article naming rule says that only the first letter of articles must be capital letter. Bekiroflaz (talk) 00:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

This is the Main Page. It's a proper noun, and proper nouns are capitalized. Grandmasterka 00:41, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

If we find main page proper, then "Village pump", "Recent changes" etc. are proper. Because they are not encyclopedia articles, they are special pages of Wikipedia, like "Main Page". Bekiroflaz (talk) 02:31, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect. It's called "Main Page" for the same reason that it's in the article namespace: because it was created in MediaWiki's default location before our naming conventions existed (and all attempts to establish consensus for a new title have failed). —David Levy 05:39, 27 October 2008 (UTC)