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WT:TFA#Redundancy in TFA blurbs

Just a pointer. - Dank (push to talk) 03:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

'Turning Point'

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Entertainment twaddle on the Main Page. Sca (talk) 13:26, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

You mean "A featured article about professional wrestling on the Main Page" I assume? Or is Wikipedia (in your mind) precluded from including articles about sports and entertainment topics? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

How many times must the same editor raise the same WP:SNOW argument before it counts as either WP:POINT or flat-out trolling? Asking for a friend. 168.8.192.22 (talk) 13:51, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

This user is being stalked. Sca (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

That user is obviously unaware of "watchlists". The Rambling Man (talk) 16:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

That user can't be serious...

Pinging the professional wrestling wikiproject. - Dank (push to talk) 13:43, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sca: Since you reverted my close, I suggest you clarify what your question or suggestion is. As it is, this discussion is useless. I would also point you to the more appropriate venues for commenting on TFA or reporting errors on the main page, but I suspect you already know about them. Isa (talk) 15:36, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

• I'm frankly surprised a professional wrestling article made it to the main page, considering the shoddy condition of the majority of articles in that genre.--WaltCip (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

  But it's a featured article, so no problem, right? The Rambling Man (talk) 16:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

• twad·dle /ˈtwädl/

noun (informal)

1. Something that does not interest me, personally

"Entertainment articles are obvious twaddle. I want more dinosaurs!"

--Floquenbeam (talk) 16:05, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Stan Lee

If I am not mistaken, the Great Stan Lee recently passed away, yet is not featured in the recently deceased category.

Regards,

--D. Compton Ambrose (Abbazorkzog) 16:46, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Look just above where it says American comic book creator Stan Lee dies at the age of 95.; we're not disrespecting him by not including him in Recent Deaths, we're considering him so important that his death warrants the honor of being included in the main In The News section above the fold. ‑ Iridescent 16:56, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Wrong date at the Picture of ARA San Juan

The picture of ARA San Juan says it was taken in 2017 but it was actually took in 2007.--BugWarp (talk) 00:21, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

The notices at the top of this talk page and the edit window should have told you to report Main Page errors at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. Modulus12 (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks - Dumelow (talk) 00:40, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Content incomplete on mobile?

Is it just me, or does the content of the main page cut off at ITN (i.e. DYK, OTD and anything else below does not display) using a phone's native browser? Is this intentional? I run the latest Firefox on mobile and iOS on iPhone. MER-C 19:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:FAQ/Main_Page#Why_do_only_the_"Today's_featured_article"_and_"In_the_news"_sections_show_up_when_viewing_the_Main_Page_on_a_mobile_device?. It is apparently due to load times. There is a link at the bottom of the mobile version to switch to "desktop" which is the normal view (though not optimised for mobiles) - Dumelow (talk) 19:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Please remove poor photo

Please remove poor photo from header. --Bejnar (talk) 19:37, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Someone might want to remove Goatse, I think a Sysop's account got hacked^^ Seelentau (talk) 19:38, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

REMOVE THE ANAL PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA MAIN IMMEDIATELY....IT'S ATROCIOUS.

It's curious that the edit was made by an admin. Hakken (talk) 19:42, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

the featured article seems to have been deleted

is this a technical issue, a mistake, or vandalism? 🌸 WeegaweeK ^  🌸 19:42, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

It has now been re-added by User:Primefac 🌸 WeegaweeK ^  🌸 19:49, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

We got a new low here....

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Did you know...that the French submarine Amazone was named after a mythological tribe of women warriors?

...Amazon? Ya think?

Goatse there was a positive edit, compared to this. Qwirkle (talk) 03:29, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Think more global, because not everyone who reads the main page watched Wonder Woman or Xena when they were kids. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  13:59, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

And it's not remotely obvious that it was named after the tribe, even if one did spend one's childhood watching "Wonder Woman", given that the US Navy—the navy with which en-wiki readers are most likely to be familiar—has a convention that certain classes of ship are always named after rivers, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for readers to assume the French follow the same convention. ‑ Iridescent 14:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, so you are defending one piece of trivial fluff by pointing out that it could have been based on different trivial fluff. Kewl. Qwirkle (talk) 16:18, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Even if it were named after the river, said river is named after the tribe, so the submarine would still be indirectly named after the tribe. Anything named "Amazon" traces back to the mythological ladies. The original poster is correct, this is extreme "well, duh, no shit, Sherlock" territory. --Khajidha (talk) 17:41, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

For westerners who are familiar with the Amazons already. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:51, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Submarine... new low... haha, yes I geddit. Lolness. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, heck, dyk there was a whole bunch of stuff named after those mystical ladies, including a bunch of other boats! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  19:46, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

I thought they were all named after Jeff Bezos' company. 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Grrr ... everyone else has already cracked all the good jokes I thought of. Daniel Case (talk) 22:48, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Leaving aside the sideline tribute to Airplane...and face it, guys, you’ll never top User:Martinevans123’s impression of Johnny, it’s bred in the bone...there’s an ongoing problem with this secrion of the main page. If the best argument someone can make is that a dead obvious DYK might enlighten someone totally unfamiliar with Western society, just rename it NSS and have done with it...and get it off the main page, because it doesnt really belong any more. Qwirkle (talk) 04:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

So is it that we're not getting non-western readers, or is it that they don't count? Because I know the former is wrong and I'd rather say the latter is as well. Or if you're not operating from the imperialist assumption that western culture is the global standard and that anyone who doesn't know it as well as their own is some savage we can ignore, should we avoid any DYK that someone from any part of the planet might say "well no duh" to? Because on Nov 19, we had an entry that many Filipino readers would remember. Heck, even within western cultures, we have entries that specific cultures would say "well no duh" too -- on Nov 13, we had an entry a lot of people in Finland would remember. And where do we set the bar? On Nov 13, we said that Ptolemy founded the Ptolemaic dynasty, which I'd regard as pretty obvious history info. On Nov 1, we had an entry saying that Satyrs were spirits in Greek mythology, something equally as basic as the Amazons. That's just in this month.

Maybe, instead of just looking for something to pretend to complain about to feel smugly superior for knowing one's own culture, one could consider that that culture is not universal, that English is the most common second language on the planet, and this site is consistently within the top 10 most popular websites around the globe. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:41, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

If the best defense you can mount is a few adhominem strawmen, with a little PC flourishes thrown in, you should consider the possibility that your position is indefensible. Qwirkle (talk) 05:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

You have yet to present a valid reason for your complaints, just arguments that only work on the assumption that western culture is universal or that we don't get non-western readers or that non-western readers don't count -- none of which are true. I've taught plenty of university students overseas who would not have known who the original Amazons were, and they weren't stupid, they knew plenty about their culture that you wouldn't. To say that non-westerners wouldn't know some facet of western culture isn't some hypothetical for the sake of political correctness, it's a fact that anyone aware of the world beyond their own home town knows. It's a "no shit Sherlock" for anyone mature enough to acknowledge other cultures. If the best offense you can mount is dismissing huge swaths of the planet as "political correctness," you should consider the possibility that your attitude doesn't belong on the project. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:58, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Ahh, shifting to the CIR defense...you were intending cultural outreach, but this was the best you could manage...while still piling on the virtue-signalling. The laddie doth protest too much, methinks. Qwirkle (talk) 21:11, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Could you please set up a section for the donation to your site.....

I would like to make a donation to your site by cash in stead of using all the cards.

Also the detail of the donation to your site should be published and visible somewhere in your site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.26.30 (talk) 02:49, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Try this page. 2600:8800:1880:188:5604:A6FF:FE38:4B26 (talk) 04:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi 203.., thank you for your interest in donating! There should be a prominent link on the left sidebar of the page labeled "Donate to Wikipedia". Hope that helps! — xaosflux ^Talk 04:24, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

And this link on the bottom of that page shows how you could send a check or other donations. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:25, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your information about donation. I live in Australia and I couldn't find the bank detail for me to transfer money to your site from the above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.26.30 (talk) 01:13, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 24 October 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus. See no agreement below to move this out of templatespace, and there is some apprehension about possible technical issues. As is usual with a no-consensus outcome, editors may find rebuttals to those apprehensions and come back in a few weeks to try to garner consensus for the rename. Have a Great Day and Happy Publishing! (nac by page mover) Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  16:35, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

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• Template:Main Page/styles.css → Wikipedia:Main Page/styles.css

– Not a subtemplate of {{Main Page}} (a redirect to {{Main Page toolbox}}), but instead of the actual main page. Main-page-related cruft tends to get put in Wikipedia namespace, so the CSS page should go there too. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 01:18, 24 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Iffy★Chat -- 14:09, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

TemplateStyles CSS pages must have the sanitized-css content model to function, and only .css pages in the template namespace have that by default. I think it will keep the content model if moved outside of the template namespace, but if not, an admin can change it with Special:ChangeContentModel. (No opinion on which namespace is most appropriate, but when creating it, Template was the only option.) --Yair rand (talk) 02:55, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - did not understand Yair rand's comment, nor do I understand what this "template" does as it has no documentation, but if indeed it's not a subtemplate of {{Main Page}}, then this clearly needs to be moved to a different name. --Gonnym (talk) 09:18, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

  Gonnym, Wikipedia:TemplateStyles may help you understand the comment. In short, the template will store the CSS rules which will be used to style the main page using the TemplateStyles extension of MediaWiki. Personally I would prefer that the Main Page be replaced with {{Main Page}} and all the markup be moved to Template:Main Page which is what Wikidata and Commons do. However, I think that I am among a minority. — fr ⁺ 10:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• I have added this comment to the top of the CSS page to help clarify it (To any admin: feel free to improve my wording.) Remember, the Main Page is unique in that it is in the main article namespace, but is used like a portal, whose content is largely generated by templates. Unless there are modifications elsewhere (such as using Special:ChangeContentModel), my understanding is that a TemplateStyles CSS page must currently remain in the template namespace for it to function properly. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:12, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

  Counterexample: Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 02:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

• Comment the mainpage is a portal, so shouldn't it be Portal:Main Page/styles.css ? -- 65.94.42.18 (talk) 03:54, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

  No, because that would be inconsistent with Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, Wikipedia:Main Page/sandbox, etc. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 04:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Zero benefit. This is similar argument to mainpage being in article space and attempt to move it being consistently shot down. Wikipedia:Main Page/styles.css is also wrong, since mainpage is not in the project namespace, unless you can move it to Main Page/styles.css, then template namespace is the only and best place for it. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:43, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support better place to put it than the template space. Keeps everything as sub pages of one page. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:51, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Not only is there no benefit but it is supposed to be a template and not a page Abote2 (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
• Tentative support. As noted above, most of the non-mainspace pages related to the Main Page are in projectspace, and I don't see why this should be different; it helps to put everything together. "Tentative" because maybe moving this page across namespaces would cause technical problems (as it would if we moved the aforementioned module, for example), and of course it's more important to avoid breaking something than to have everything in the same general area. Nyttend (talk) 01:52, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
• Bumping thread to prevent archival. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:07, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I added {{Do not archive until}} to the top of this section to prevent archival. Remove the code when you'd like it archived. Modulus12 (talk) 18:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Donation header reappearing

I have already contributed money to Wikipedia, several days ago. Can you please take off the solicitation message that's plastered on my Wikipedia front page every day? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:152:4400:C2A9:1D1C:51E9:CFBB:F5AC (talk) 17:03, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe you could try an adblocker? The Royal C (talk) 17:40, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for donating! If you aren't signed in, there is no way for the software to know you have already done so. If you create an account you can hide the donation banner. Modest Genius ^talk 17:57, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think that needs clarification. AFAIK if you donate via the online donation page, a cookie is supposed to be set which will suppress the banner for I think 1 week, the same as if you click on the close/x to dismiss the banner. Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2017 December 15#Do the annoying pop-ups to donate go away if I make a donation? Visiting this page whether or not you donated should I think have the same effect https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Thank_You although as said you can also simply click the close/x to dismiss the banner.

In any case it definitely should be possible for the WMF to design the donation process to set such a cookie, and also to allow people to set such a cookie via some button when the banner is displayed. 1 week is also a fairly arbitrary time frame, I'm pretty sure there is nothing stopping a longer cookie being uses other than the WMF's internal policies and any interact with any local law the WMF is trying to comply with. (And I'm doubtful that local law will prevent a 3 month cookie being used provided there is adequately disclosure.) And it is of course possible for the WMF to do things different depending on whether the cookie is coming from the close button or after a possible donation so even if they want to make the close only 1 week, they don't have to make the 'donated' cookie only last 1 week.

However this is not the right place to discuss if you disagree with the length. Your best bet is probably simply to contact the WMF directly. While it's doubtful that a single message will make a difference, it's possible if enough people say it should be extended they will change their mind. You could also try a RFC somewhere suitable although I'm not sure if that will necessarily work better than individual contacts.

Now if you are seeing the banner every day and have donated or closed it then I think there's something wrong. If you've cleared your cookies or are using a browser which doesn't store them upon restarts or regular clears them or you keep using different browsers (whether on the same computer or different computers/devices) then that explain the problem, cookies need to be used to store such settings as with the rest of the web. However it will be no different with logins. You will need to login each time your cookies are cleared or you change browser and logging in will actually probably be more difficult than suppressing the banner. (Albeit potentially lasting up to 365 days instead of only 1 week if you don't lose your cookies.) If you're using the same browser (on the same device of course) and you're sure you haven't cleared your cookies and your browser isn't doing it for you and you're still regularly seeing them more than once a week after either donating or clicking the close, then I think the foundation may be interested in hearing from you to work out what is going wrong.

BTW, from what I can tell the big donation banner on mobile is only supposed to show once possibly for the whole campaign regardless of what you do. See Meta:Talk:Fundraising/2018-19 Fundraising ideas#Design. That is somewhat outdated so it's possible the precise timeframe has changed but definitely if you're seeing that banner very regularly and again assuming you aren't clearing your cookies or using a different browser, the WMF may want to hear from you.

Nil Einne (talk) 02:14, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I have been on Wikipedia for 14 years now, and I have always accepted the yearly fundraiser as part of what keeps the lights on. But at this point, I must say that Wikimedia seems to have become dominated by rent-seeking. I had to look for the financial report [1] in order to verify the claim that "CHF 4 is all it takes to keep Wikimedia thriving". Is this correct? It turns out that Wikimedia's assets have increased from USD 120M to USD 145M in the year 2017/8. So clearly the fundraising is going well. It has never been the project's purpose to keep nine figure stashes of cash around. Expenses are of the order of 81M per year, so Wikipedia could keep going for the next two years without raising another dollar. Out of 81M expenses, only 2.3M go towards hosting. The hosting and bandwidth cost used to be the main concern of the project in the early years. Today, this is just a financial detail, of the order of 3% of total expenses. 38 million dollars are wages and salaries. 9.7 million go towards fund-raising (i.e. 11% of the funds raised is consumed by the fund-raising itself). Fair enough.

But 61 million go towards "programs". Wikimedia lists three categories of these:

• (1) building the technological and operating platform that enables the Foundation to function sustainably as a top global internet organization
• (2) strengthening, growing, and increasing diversity of the Wikimedia communities
• (3) accelerating impact by investing in key geographic areas, mobile application development, and bottom-up innovation, all of which support Wikipedia and other wiki-based projects.

People imagine they contribute to (1), when an unknown fraction of their donation goes to (2) and (3). (2) and (3) is what I mean by rent-seeking, this is about activists spending the foundation's money in order to turn Wikipedia into what they think it should become rather than paying for the bill it accrues by being that it is.

The "activism" part of the foundation urgently needs to become operationally divided from the the technological part, or I will not be able in good conscience to recommend to anyone that they contribute money to the fundation. This also goes for "earmarked" contributions, as obviously such contributions will just lead to a different distribution of such funds as are not earmarked. I am a bit appalled to see what has become of the idealistic project I joined back in 2004. Looking at the USD 140M Wikimedia has on the side, I actually think it would be good for the project if money became so scarce that we run into the occasional server overload, as used to be the case i the early years, so that the money spent on activism will have to be seriously weighed against the necessity of spending money on the project of running an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. --dab (𒁳) 14:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Questions and answers

How to insert quetions in order to get answers right away. Edwin Rhyms (talk) 05:32, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Have a look at the Reference desk. —Bruce1ee^talk 06:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Mistar Onpoint

I have heard and read a lot of publishings on wikipedia and now decided to sign up and dive into this act of article writing and publishing but I felt like I am in the deepest strange environment where I can not even figure put my current position in on this whole thing. So I decided to write this and draw people's attendtion to my aid so that I can actually learn more on where and how to start making my time here more fruitful.🙂 Mistar Onpoint (talk) 17:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Please ask at Wikipedia:Teahouse. Art LaPella (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Start editing some articles.Pmohd (talk) 18:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

A Sister Project to collaborate on?

As I have written in my User Page, there is a genuine requirement for a Sister Project WikiDerivations on Ab Initio Derivations on Pure Sciences, particularly, physics. From the First principles.
Using Ockham's Razor as a strict guideline. Then, layer by layer, generalising and advancing further.
But simplest at the very beginning. Nothing more than what is absolutely necessary.
A sub-site, Wikipedia Derivations, or as an aside with an appropriate link, and then an ever-growing list of derivations contributed by community members. Posters themselves. Anyone competent to contribute. Edited. Simplified further. With minimum descriptive words on that particular derivation's page. To be used as an Online Learning Aid.
To effectively end the monopoly of organised educational institutions on the greatest achievements of the Human Minds. Let the society enjoy the beauty of the interweaving of logic, analysis and experimental data, without the threats of memorisation and faithful reproduction in exams. Freedom from the need to buy generally expensive textbooks.
I waited for a long time, hoping that eventually, Wikipedia would stumble on to this simple idea. 10 years have passed by, but Wikipedia did not. So the time is ripe for me to post this idea.
Subject to approval, I could begin posting derivations.
Bkpsusmitaa (talk) 02:35, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Bkpsusmitaa, this is an interesting idea. But this page isn't the best place for it—you probably want to take it to Meta:Proposals for new projects. Eman235/talk 03:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

@Eman235: Thank you very much for responding, Eman235. Could then a copy of this discussion be moved to my User_Page please?
Bkpsusmitaa (talk) 04:54, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Asteroid 101955 Bennu

The picture has been there for 'a few days' - is there anything it could be changed to? Jackiespeel (talk) 00:31, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

What do you suggest? Stephen 00:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps one of the football players, like Leonardo Ponzio, the captain of the winning team. Eman235/talk 01:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Good call, swapped. Stephen 04:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Probably 'three days' is a reasonable maximum - and even if there is a 'current, ongoing' situation there should be at least intermittent use of other images. And there may well be a run of eg space-related ITN images. Jackiespeel (talk) 14:45, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

See WP:LUGO. Modest Genius ^talk 17:21, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

More 'just commenting' and noting that the picture was changed to something equally newsworthy in the same category. Jackiespeel (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

We go for months without a space story and all of a sudden everything just happens at once. Funny about these things. Eman235/talk 05:18, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Indefinite page protection

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Please stop protecting pages indefinitely. The wiki must be kept clean from protection. Anthony E. Lahmann (talk) 03:41, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Anthony E. Lahmann: You can make edit requests on talk pages for articles that are protected. For example, this talk page is for discussing changes needed to the main page, not to the website in general. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

There is a strong consensus for protecting the Main Page indefinitely. Otherwise, our only defense against Main Page porn would be to revert it afterwards. Art LaPella (talk) 05:31, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Talking of porn, what the heck is that image with the Copa Libertadores ITN story on the mobile app? Almost had an embarrassing moment today using the app at work. 1.39.183.10 (talk) 16:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

It is probably the most viewed and important page in Wikipedia. ―Abelmoschus Esculentus ^{talk / contribs} 12:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Usage on Main page not reflecting usage in Featured article

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Why does the summary of the Apollo 8 article use that awkward and jarring word 'crewed', when the article itself currently uses 'manned'? Could this be changed to accurately reflect the article? Thanks./ 86.156.221.64 (talk) 15:43, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

It probably reflects editing done since the article was chosen to be on the main page, though you can never really tell. "Manned" is technically gender-biased, though there's no women to be excluded here, so... it's not clear. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs} 15:52, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

No, 'manned' is used in the article (incidentally, the issue is under discussion there), and contrary to popular belief, 'manned' is not gender-biased, technically or otherwise. It refers to man, the species. 86.156.221.64 (talk) 16:21, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

A man is an adult male of our species. Using a gendered word, such as man, as a universal term for our species is the antithesis of gender neutral language. Using a gendered term for an occupation (e.g., astronaut, crew member) is, likewise, the antithesis of gender neutral language. I also hate using crew as an ersatz verb. One need not butcher the English language to use gender neutral language. In editing articles in the field of space flight, I have used such terms as with a crew and robotic to distinguish the type of mission or spacecraft.—Finell 07:04, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bird, bird and yet another bird

Have to say for the first time I love the main page pictures, which is not one but three pics of birds. [Tfd, Dyk, Tfp]. and like Peter Griffin once said *A well a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word* --
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 07:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

A dove friend of mine was very fond of curry. His favourite was a vinda-COO. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 10:39, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I intended to swap today's first DYK hook with tomorrow's, but the latter is tagged as a "special occasion hook for January 3". —David Levy 11:14, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it's for her birthday, despite the fact that her birth date isn't sourced! Actually, I think the multiple bird images work quite well. Black Kite (talk) 11:33, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Ultima Thule image

Perhaps we can swap out the current ITN image with the newer File:Ultima thule color.png? Eman235/talk 20:31, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

That story has now moved further down the list. An image of Chang'e 4 would be good at this stage. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:31, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

As for Chang'e 4, doesn't the present "In the news" twofer image cover that as well? Randy Kryn (talk) 14:37, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

You've lost me. Current image is a darts player. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:27, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Let’s let darts guy have a day of fame and then switch the image to a lander photo. Jehochman ^Talk 15:30, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Got one? I don't think these look that good (for MP content that is). — xaosflux ^Talk 20:32, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Main page design

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Main Page/Errors

@Iridescent: I saw that you wrote: As I've said before my personal preference would be to abolish the main page in its current form, but assuming that's not going to happen this side of the year 2525.... When is the last time such a proposal was made? I think it would be much wiser to refer people to useful things like the "definitive" RS/N list of reliable sources (of the moment), the disclaimers, how to guides, etc. rather than to the newest blind amphibian that someone clever has decided to name after a president, or to the latest in the continuing saga of John Oliver's promotion of his jockstrap meme [2]. I would love to read what has been written about the subject of modernizing the mainpage. (I'm going to take this page off my watchlist soon though because it buries everything else, so if you do have some links to previous proposals if you would ping me I'd very much appreciate it. ) Cheers, & happy new year to all the spiel-checkers out there. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 13:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

@SashiRolls, I think the last time a total rebuild-from-scratch was seriously discussed, rather than just background kvetching about how the TFA/DYK/TFL/OTD/TFP alphabet soup is more trouble than it's worth, would have been in 2016 as part of the fallout from this fiasco (TL;DR summary; an admin created his own redesigned, even more cluttered, main page, and had an almighty meltdown when almost nobody else thought it was an improvement). As with all suggestions to redesign the main page, variants of "strip out the text and just make it a navigation portal" founder on arguments over what to include.

You can (very roughly) track the discussions of a minimalist redesign (as opposed to the more general proposals catalogued at Wikipedia:Main page design) by looking at Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Guy Macon/Simple Main Page, since Guy's mock-up of what a minimal main page would look like tends to be linked somewhere in every discussion. Guy's proposal is probably too minimalist to be accepted, but if you want an example of a text-light design that's been proven to function in a Wikipedia context, see the main page of eu-wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 16:20, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

(adding) Would Wikipedia:Community portal be what you have in mind? I'm amazed at how many people are unaware of it, despite it being linked from every page on the project; I think that because it's present everywhere, editors' minds tend to filter the link out as just another piece of clutter like the death star logo or the language interwiki links. ‑ Iridescent 16:26, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point. It, too, is /!* terribly *!/ cluttered. I really like de:Wikipedia:Autorenportal, you can find stuff there (if you speak the language). I'll check out all these links and find somewhere where it's perhaps less off-topic to comment one day once I've read it all. Thank you for the response! SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:23, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Re: "Guy's proposal [ at Wikipedia:2015 main page redesign proposal/draft/Guy Macon ] is probably too minimalist to be accepted", I would add "because we have all seen what a huge failure Google is with their simple main page..." I'm just saying. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 18:11, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, it's … it is … beautiful! Even Australians could access that. cygnis insignis 19:01, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd support the slash-and-burn, but you know as well as I do that whenever it's proposed consensus is against it. There's a valid argument that Google's front page and ours serve different purposes, and that at least part of the function of the main page is to serve as an indicator of the broad scope of Wikipedia (unimportant now that Wikipedia is so embedded in the culture, but a valid point back when we were trying to differentiate ourselves from Encarta), and as a visual identity for Wikipedia. The latter is arguably more significant; it may be ugly and cluttered but the ugly clutter has become visual shorthand for Wikipedia—one regularly sees "white screen with tall pastel green and blue rectangles" in TV and film as shorthand for "main character needs to find accurate information quickly", and that kind of pervasive subliminal PR can't be bought. Every Wikipedia has the freedom to choose their own main page design, and almost all have some variant of "two columns of rectangles or rows of pastel-shaded rectangles spanning the screen", and I've no read doubt that the visual identity thing is at least part of the reason. The sole exceptions among the 50 largest Wikipedias (yes, I just checked them all) are Cebuano (which is hideous and would have looked primitive on Geocities in 1996), Waray (which uses something similar to your design), and the aforementioned Basque; what all three of those have in common is that they're minority regional languages, and it's probably both useful to their readers and culturally important to their editors that there's an immediate visual "hey, we're independent of those other guys" cue. ‑ Iridescent 19:10, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Re "There's a valid argument that Google's front page and ours serve different purposes, and that at least part of the function of the main page is to serve as an indicator of the broad scope of Wikipedia", the scope of Google includes Google App Engine, Google Baraza, Google Blogger, Google Bookmarks, Google Books, Google Calendar, Google Chrome, Google Chromebook, Google Classroom, Google Cloud, Google Code, Google Compute Engine, Google Contacts, Google Catalogs, Google Docs, Google Drawings, Google Drive, Google Earth, Google FeedBurner, Google Finance, Google FireBase, Google Fonts, Google Forms, Google Groups, Google Helpouts, Google Images, Google Keep, Google LogIn, Google Play, Google Map Maker, Google Maps, Google Moderator, Google News, Google Ngram, Google Panoramio, Google Photos, Google Picasa, Google Patents, Google Scholar, Google Search, Google Sheets, Google Sites, Google Sitebuilder, Google Shopping, Google Slides, Google Translate, Google Trends, Google Voice, Google Web History, Google Zagat, Goo.gl.... OK, I am getting tired of typing them. We have a list at List of Google products.

Argument? Sure. Valid argument? Not so much. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:56, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

When I type "wikipedia" into Google, the first link is https://www.wiki.x.io/, which is exactly as simple as it can possibly be. The English Wikipedia main page is the third listing on Google. Furthermore, I assume the vast majority of our readers arrive here from a direct Google search of <desired topic> and never see our Main Page. So why should our Main Page duplicate efforts that Google and the standard Wikipedia search box at the top of every page already serve? Modulus12 (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

The second link is to [ https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Main_Page ] which is also the place you end up if you go to the www. page and make the rather obvious decision to click on "English" rather than "日本語" or "Deutsch". The en. page is also the only page that we here can decide to change; all decisions regarding the www. page are controlled by paid WMF staff.

1998 just called. They want their English Wikipedia main page design back. :) --Guy Macon (talk) 01:55, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Question: Has anyone noticed how the daily Featured Article attracts a storm of editors who determine to add even more information to an already bulky and adequate article? Obviously, this is because the daily Featured Article attracts a lot of attention due to it's front-page setting. It seems almost paradoxical that a Featured Article (which by definition is already a terrific and comprehensive article) would be displayed in such a way as to attract the unnecessary attention of editors who then further meddle in an already top rate article. This process contributes to the discrepancy where a small number of comprehensive articles get all the attention whilst the stubs stagnate.

Solution: A daily stub article on the front page alongside (or perhaps replacing) the Featured Article. C. J. T. T. Wilson (talk) 19:53, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

A great idea. There was Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement but this is largely inactive these days. There was some talk about transcluding to the main page, but I can't remember if that ever happened. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:35, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it was briefly transcluded to the main page a few years ago, but the project wasn’t able to schedule the articles for display in a timely manner, and it was removed soon after. Stephen 06:12, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Some niche stub that's just cataloging butterfly species or voting districts of Norway or whatever isn't going to attract much editor attention, I think. Articles from something like the Vital articles lists (which typically aren't stubs, but could still use a lot of work) would be more accessible to a larger group of people. Modulus12 (talk) 03:22, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

The front page design is fine. It is along with the logo the most iconic part of Wikipedia and should never be redesigned unless WMF requests it Abote2 (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

It is not fine technically. Ignoring the visual look, it still uses a fixed grid, rather than something more responsive to the device it's being displayed on, and any accessibility requirements the reader may have. The admirable 2016 attempt at resolving this was finally shelved when some contributors were unable to separate this "invisible" aspect of design from everything else, finally shelving it in a mire of bureaucracy. Bazza (talk) 13:32, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

There was an attempt a few months ago at making the main page responsive. The main problem is that mediawiki itself isn't responsive. There are technical issues to solve before this can be done. Isa (talk) 13:45, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I am aware of a recent attempt to use mediawiki which was unsuccessful. There was no such technical problem two or so years ago. The framework was sufficiently advanced for it to have a settings option so users could have it as their main page prior to it replacing the current main page; some may remember it. As I said earlier, bureaucracy prevented that final step being made. Bazza (talk) 13:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I am fine with technical changes as long as it looks the same or very similar or at least a option existed to use the old one it would be fine Abote2 (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Any "redesign" of the Main Page needs to start from the very beginning. Forget everything you know about what is or has been on the Main Page. Ask what the purpose of the Main Page should be. Once that is decided, determine what to put on it to meet that purpose. EVERYTHING on it should be expressly decided on. NOTHING should be assumed to be part of this new design. --Khajidha (talk) 17:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I was just curious. But I am glad some good ideas were brought forward (the increased traffic to already pretty good articles does seem like an unproductive plan). Accessibility. I do agree that radically rethinking what goes on the front page could help en.wp's image / functioning.

What follows are a lot of lower-quality suggestions, some of which might be worth considering: there could be a permanently transparent link to the benefactors page. There could also be an official wiki-sausage on the page near The Daily Churn, which could replace DYK in a sudden blast of humility and health-satire. Last week's #250-#500-#750-#1000 most viewed pages, info on forbidden groupings like the trout-packing cabal, images of the wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost, links directing the good user to the WikiCourts, the info-bot of the week awards... the mind boggles at what such an overturning of the tables could unleash. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:37, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

150th Birth Anniversary of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo

Pres. Rodrigo Duterte signed a decleration to celebrate the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo. It will celebrating on March 22, 2019. Aguinaldo is the First President of the Republic of the Philippines. He founded the Armed Forces, declared the Independence of the Philippines, and formally declared the First Independent Republic of Asia. He was born on March 22, 1869 at Kawit, Cavite, Captaincy General of the Philippines. Goy30 (talk) 10:55, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

You can add an entry to Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 22. Read the guidelines to find the relevant critera. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:06, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Armenian Wikipedia

The Armenian Wikipedia (Հայերեն) now has over 250 000 articles; should we not list it as such? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:13, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

whats the stub-start articles percentage out of total 250k? --
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 21:26, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't the bot do that automatically? Daniel Case (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Requests for changes to the language list should be made at Template talk:Wikipedia languages. Modest Genius ^talk 12:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Misuse of wikipedia

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Wikipedia is widely read in India and is therefore becoming a battleground for the upcoming elections of May 2019. Just read the article “Amethi” (Rahul Gandhi’s constituency). It has North Korean style superlatives about Rahul and his family. Just like the Kim’s they make it sound much better than reality and paint a picture that the public should be grateful to them. Blackdog1304 (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

This talk page is for discussing the main page, it is not a general forum for content disputes. I see you've already started a discussion on the article's talk page, which is a good thing. You should wait for other editors to weigh in and see what they think. Cheers! Isa (talk) 04:34, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Dog photograph (DYK for 13 January)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I cropped this image shortly before its appearance on the main page. Another editor objected, so I've self-reverted and inserted the talk page exchange below to solicit additional comments (potentially applicable to other animal photographs in the future). Pinging its participants, Yoninah and EEng. —David Levy 02:44, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

Moved from User talk:David Levy

 – —David Levy 02:44, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, in photography class I learned that it's okay to show part of a human body (like a head-and-shoulders shot), but you always have to show the whole body of an animal, because otherwise it looks weird. Sorry to say, but this crop looks weird. Yoninah (talk) 00:01, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. EEng 00:08, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Yoninah: I took some photography courses and wasn't taught such a principle, so perhaps there are varying schools of thought.

Per your comment, I've self-reverted and initiated a thread on the main page's talk page.

—David Levy 02:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Personally I don't mind either but I do slightly prefer the original as it just seems more natural to show the whole animal. The Royal C (talk) 08:39, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

I would prefer the cropped picture, TBH. It's an individual animal in a personal and emotional context, so showing legs and the like seems like a waste of limited space to me. Kranix (talk | contribs) 19:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pushtu

We Afghan citizen need Afghanistan national language in Wikipedia maximum 70 million people speak Pushto in Afghanistan and inside Pakistan KhalidStanikzaii (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey @KhalidStanikzaii: Do you mean this? https://ps.wiki.x.io/wiki/%D9%84%D9%88%D9%85%DA%93%DB%8C_%D9%85%D8%AE MPS1992 (talk) 00:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

(e/c) Hi KhalidStanikzaii. The Pashto Wikipedia exists and can be accessed here. It is not among the small list of language wikipedia editions shown at the bottom of the main page, as that only shows those editions with more than a certain threshold number of mainspace articles, and the Pashto edition has less than 10,000. It is, however and of course, listed at the complete list of Wikipedia editions. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Make Wikipedia Pages for Youtubers with less subscribers as well!

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I think that all Youtubera with like 100K onwards should have their own Wikipedia pages. We could get many people to work on it. Adrian Malhiers (talk) 18:43, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Adrian. We don't normally have articles about people unless they meet Wikipedia's requirements for WP:NOTABILITY. For Youtubers this would be WP:CELEBRITY. It is more about how much reliable independent sources have covered the person, not about how many subscribers they have. Many Youtubers with a few hundred thousand subscribers are not extensively covered by reliable independent sources so would not meet the requirements. MPS1992 (talk) 18:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Adrian Malhiers: There is no minimum subscriber requirement for a YouTube personality to have a Wikipedia article. The number of subscribers has nothing to do with it. What matters, and the only thing that matters, is is there enough reliable, independent source material about the person that we could use to research and help us write a good article. That is, can you find outside writing (that was not created by the person themselves or anyone who works for or with that person) which is published in reliable sources, and where there is enough of that so we can write an interesting and sufficient encyclopedia article. If you can find the source material, write the article. Even people with zero YouTube subscribers can meet that standard. The number of subscribers has absolutely nothing to do with it. --Jayron32 18:48, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if someone has 10 subscribers, or 10,000, or a billion. There is no minimum number of subscribers to merit an article; what matters is coverage in independent sources, as Jayron32 states. 331dot (talk) 17:49, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

I would add that it would not be difficult, if such a minimum number criteria existed, to game such a requirement, as fake accounts can be registered to boost subscriber numbers. 331dot (talk) 17:51, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Isn't it time to improve the main page?

The design, layout and general style don't look modern. Seems like it stopped in time. I don't mean to brag, but we at the portuguese wikipedia have a much better looking main page. Do you think we should work on this idea? Bageense (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

A main page redesign has been proposed here at least once a month for the past 15 years. Isa (talk) 17:53, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

The Main Page is fine right now it is a icon of Wikipedia and should never change as it is a famous icon of Wikipedia just like Googles doodles is a icon of google except the Main Page design should never be changed unless a bug occurs and the fix should change the page back to what is was before the bug Abote2 (talk) 20:33, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

I suspect most people will say it is fine the way it is. If you want to temp us, make a draft in your user space of what you would like. Conceivably, different formats of the main page could be added to preferences so everyone could have the main page they want. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 21:45, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Please DON'T brag, because that Portuguese page is absolutely hideous. Whatever happens here, we should avoid that look like the plague. --Khajidha (talk) 12:38, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I like the Portuguese main page. This probably illustrates why a redesign of en-wp's main page is nearly futile. Eman235/talk 17:26, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Not that I like the English Main Page either. I hate the division into columns and the use of color. That's why I have this: Wikipedia:Main Page alternative (Khajidha) --Khajidha (talk) 18:12, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Having just one column actually looks a lot better. But it might look too much like an article rather than a special page. Bageense (talk) 14:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

On the other hand, it would allow the pictures to be displayed larger and avoid "balance" issues (where the sections in one column run longer than the sections in the other column. --Khajidha (talk) 14:59, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

It depends on the device you're viewing the page on, and its orientation. A good design (such as the abandoned 2016 effort) would adjust for that, regardless of colours, or fonts, or other eye candy. Bazza (talk) 17:13, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Why bother adjusting for it when you can just avoid it in the first place? We don't use columns on other pages, why use them here? --Khajidha (talk) 12:22, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

The main page's content is not the same as article pages: some "normal" prose at the top (maybe with a picture), then a series of short-item lists, then other stuff. Good design would ensure, for example, that the lists on a wide display area (such as a landscape high-spec monitor) are shown in two columns to make them more readable and reduce whitespace; a narrower display, such as a portrait tablet, or even landscape phone, would re-adjust to give a single column. Which is what was attempted earlier. Bazza (talk) 13:48, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

How is cluttering up a section by putting unrelared items next to each other supposed to make it more readable? Sorry, i just find columns to be a poor design. --Khajidha (talk) 14:13, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

• You could probably get consensus for the basic idea that the main page should be changed, but the consensus breaks down when specific changes are proposed, as everyone has their own ideas about what should be changed and how to change it. As noted, changes are proposed frequently. If you wish to invest the time and energy into attempting to persuade thousands of people into agreeing with you, you are free to try, but it is not likely to succeed. 331dot (talk) 12:46, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Sounds very much like brexit in a nutshell. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 09:42, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

And one more. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:47, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• I will note that the section header contains an error. It seems to presume that "improve" is a synonym for "change" which it is not. Perhaps, for reasons other than quality, we may want to change the design of the main page, but to claim that such a change would improve the main page is not a given. It may make it better, or maybe it's of sufficient quality the way it is now. If it ain't broke... --Jayron32 13:44, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  But it is broke(n) and has been for some time. The column layout is really a two-column table, which makes the page suboptimal for screen readers and the like to process, and disregards Wikipedia's accessibility policies. Ignoring colour, font, style, and every other subjective thing which people have differing opinions about, this scaffolding supporting them needs changing. Doing that whilst leaving the visual appearance unaltered can only be an improvement. Bazza (talk) 14:14, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  Then make a proposal about that. Specifically that. State up front that the current page has this problem with accessibility and needs to be changed to comply with our own policies. Make no suggestions about any changes that do not relate directly to this accessibility issue. Fix the actual broken thing. --Khajidha (talk) 15:04, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  There's no need to be quite so abrupt; nor to issue orders to talk page contributors. I was responding to the broad statement that Jayron32 made about "ain't broke". The problem I referred to was the one which eventually persuaded Edokter to retire after a good attempt at fixing the fault. Having seen the negativity which most constructive attempts at fixing the main page eventually get, I've no desire to be the next target. I've stated the problem, and referred to previous attempts to fix it. Bazza (talk) 15:18, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  If there is a problem that is broke, I'm all for fixing it. However, if you've been following these conversations for the past 15 years, 99% of them are some variation of "I just don't like the general layout and I wish it were different" or "It's been like this for a very long time. Can we just change it up because it bores me" If you've got an actual problem that needs actual fixing, then actually fix it by proposing an actual solution to fix the actual problem. Before your singular comment here, I saw no indication that this discussion was anything other than the general bitching that usually goes on here. Since it looks like you aren't doing that, but instead have a problem that needs fixing, go ahead and work something up. --Jayron32 15:25, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  Didn't mean it to come off quite the way you took it. I apologize. However, every attempt to change the Main Page that I've seen in the past has gotten bogged down in "well, while we're doing this, let's do this other thing, too". All the proposals about actual problems get bogged down in disputes over purely esthetic matters. Any future proposal needs to just say 1) this is the problem and 2) this is how we fix that specific thing without changing anything else. Otherwise, it's going to go nowhere. --Khajidha (talk) 15:29, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

This is a regular discussion - and the consensus is #always# to remain as is, because there is no consensus on how to make a better MP. If there was a Wikipedia Main Page Calendar, providing a different layout each day, the comments would be a mixture of 'don't like'/it doesn't work on my 'setup, device or computer'/total indifference, and what take up would there be for a 'redesign the MP to your personal taste' app? (I am not offering to design this - but it should include a 'restore original settings from garish/eyewarp colour clash panic button.') Jackiespeel (talk) 17:46, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, because most of these discussions keep getting lost in things that are purely esthetic. This discussion has mentioned an actual problem of function (ie: the sections do not work well with screen readers). This is an accessibility issue. I could even see it having legal ramifications, as Wikipedia is based in the US and US laws about accessibility might apply (not sure, though). As I mentioned before, the next proposal needs to fix THAT. Only that. Nothing else. I don't care how excited "Mr. Random Web-designer #487" might be about adding all sorts of colors and visual effects and geegaws and doodads and so forth, the general run of users either A) doesn't give 2 runny rat turds for all those esthetic issues or B) care in 4.89 million completely incompatible ways. --Khajidha (talk) 18:17, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

(reset) My impression is - there are far more 'please resolve this glitch/divergence between MP listing and article'/'why is X not on ITN' comments and similar than indications for a general desire for change: and most of the changes suggested appear to be little more than personal taste (I myself would prefer slightly stronger borders around the different sections) - and do not link to a wiki elsewhere in the wikiverse that use the said layout.

If there were a significant redesign of the MP 'within a matter of days' there would be new revisions suggested - and/or "several archives pages' worth" of 'why have you ruined WP' complaints.

The main issue is: the MP was 'cutting edge' and is now seen as 'dowdy/(negative) old fashioned' - and at some point in the future will become 'why do these (people) wish to wreck our well-loved, long-established MP?' Jackiespeel (talk) 12:11, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

• We are so good technically - can't we provide the data for the sections, and let user's preferences make it look like this or that? I remember 2012 efforts for change, and that we lost a good editor in frustration over no change from these coloured toy blocks for headers. We don't want to repeat that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:02, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Why does the mobile version leave out Picture of the Day?

I think this is probably the oddest of the features of the current main page: Our mobile version leaves out significant parts of the content. Since mobile versions aren't just used on mobile (they're the default for tablets, for example) this seems, at best, weird, and, at worst, like a problem that's going to get far worse over time. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs} 12:53, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I would think it's because images take up a lot of data, which many people pay for on phones. 331dot (talk) 13:06, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, then, give a link on the mobile page to opt in, but leaving it out seems a poor choice. The mobile version, as I said, is not only for phones. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs} 13:08, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

If you choose desktop display on a tablet and remain logged in, it will stay on desktop display. I'm sure the people who pay for data feel the opposite as you do- which is essentially the way it is now. 331dot (talk) 13:28, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Any mobile user, (cell phone and tablet) can select to default to full Wikipedia. I use my phone all the time to edit Wikipedia, but I haven't used the mobile version for years. I just edit using the regular-old-Wikipedia, exactly as I see on a PC. --Jayron32 13:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I do the same thing. The mobile version is such a hassle to even read, let alone edit. I don't even get why we have the mobile version in the first place. People complaining about their phone not being able to handle the full version of Wikipedia seem to me to be the equivalent of someone being upset that their radio doesn't pick up television. --Khajidha (talk) 14:25, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

See the FAQ entry. If you want to see the whole Main Page on mobile, scroll down to the bottom and click 'Desktop'. This works on any page, regardless of whether you're logged in or not. Modest Genius ^talk 13:56, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Why so grim?

This may be just a problem of today's version, but I cannot help noticing that the Main Page is very grim. All In the news blurbs are about death: terrorist attacks and an accident. The featured article is war-related. 3 out of 8 hooks in DYK are about violence: the Holocaust, a war, and a drug cartel standoff. All On this day blurbs are about violence: an assassination, warfare, a serial killer, and a terrorist attack. And just when I was about to catch a breath looking at Today's featured picture, I read in the text next to it that this guy too was murdered. Surely violence is not all that has ever happened and not all that is happening now, right? Surtsicna (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Ah, thank heavens for Die Göttin der Vernunft in DYK. And, of course, for the thoroughly invigorating Brexit in Ongoing. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:11, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: You can nominate or discuss articles for ITN, DYK, TFA and OTD if you feel the current selection is inappropriate. Isa (talk) 03:36, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Isa. I wanted to discuss it at ITN but then I noticed the rest of the Main Page was not much better in this regard. Yesterday it was at the most extreme. Today the issue is mostly with ITN and OTD, so I guess would make sense to bring this up there. Surtsicna (talk) 14:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

• @Surtsicna: Please read the article titled Apophenia. Your brain creates patterns out of randomness, and causeless coincidences are not the fault of anyone. It's the fault of your mind seeking order out of chaos, but when the order wasn't there in the first place, there's no one to blame, and nothing that can be fixed. The fact that some pattern emerges with no forethought doesn't mean anything at all. There's no point in bringing it up for discussion here because there's no process, no person, no decision that created it, indeed, there's nothing at all here. No point at all in discussing figments of our imagination which no one could have stopped from happening in the first place. --Jayron32 16:18, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

To be fair, it's much easier to get consensus for deaths and disasters on ITN. Those also tend to attract more editors, which in turn creates DYKs and eventually TFAs. There may not be an organized process behind this, but it's certainly not a "figment of our imagination". Isa (talk) 17:14, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I would have accepted various explanations, but with this I have to disagree. The content of the Main Page is not randomized. We know exactly what we are putting up. Of course there are processes that bring articles to the Main Page and people who review the articles and maintain the Main Page. That 13 out of 18 articles linked on the Main Page in bold letters were about violence may have been a one-time coincidence, but it was not a figment of my imagination. It is odd to suggest so, and bizarre to ascribe it to the "beginning stages of schizophrenia". Surtsicna (talk) 17:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it was apophenia. It was grim. And I'm not even a Northerner. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:29, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Are you genuinely claiming that there was a deliberate and purposeful attempt to produce a "grim" main page? Also, I never ascribed anything to schizophrenia. Let me quote the important words for you, to save you the trouble of reading. "Apophenia has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information." A random, and unplanned series of events happened to produce a series of articles on the main page all dealing with death. There is no purposeful pattern, and yet you ran right here demanding justice and that we should somehow "do something" so that this stopped happening, and yet there is nothing to do, since no person or group of people decided to make the main page full of death articles. It was a bunch of unconnected decisions that produced this. There's nothing to avoid, since no greater purpose was intended, despite your insistence to the contrary. Try this on for size: If you insist that there was some grand plan to force the main page to feature so many death articles, produce the evidence. Show us the discussions that made the decision "In late January, lets all agree to post a bunch of articles about death". Do that and you have a starting point for a discussion about changing something, because then we have a clear thing to change. I'm just saying there was no such plan. There is just a bunch of unconnected actions that produced something your mind convinced you was a pattern in the randomness. And it isn't schizophrenia. It's a normal thing for every single normal human mind to do. The thing is to recognize that it happens in every normal human mind, and then not act on it because it's still not evidence of something wrong. It's just that on this day, a bunch of unconnected decisions produced a random array of articles that for a brief moment in time, looked kinda like a pattern. --Jayron32 02:11, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Talking past each other. There was no deliberate and purposeful attempt to produce a grim main page, but nobody said there was (although we could conceivably make a purposeful attempt to emphasize Pollyanna articles.) It isn't apophenia, but hopefully we can avoid that debate and move on. We do have an FAQ about how we can get the kind of articles we want: write them and/or nominate them for the Main Page. Art LaPella (talk) 06:57, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Jayron is right, of course that "no greater purpose was intended." After all, we are not a newspaper with some big boss man making high level editorial decisions to ensure "editorial balance", are we? As for grim news.... as they say at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, "shit happens". Martinevans123 (talk) 09:44, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

I was going to say something about this if no one else had, but I do think that we may, for the first time ever (or at least to my recollection) have an ITN that consists solely of mass-fatality events. The death toll for four items totals 210, for an average of 52.5 per entry, and several entries say that is likely to rise.

Couldn't we at least have found some dictator's sham re-election to break them up?

Maybe it's just the mid-Northern Hemisphere winter blahs manifesting themselves, though. Daniel Case (talk) 23:44, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

A week later and the main page (the news section at least) is still jammed full of death and disaster. Apophenia what? 107.77.237.181 (talk) 14:25, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

If you are aware of an article about a more 'positive' event that is significantly in the news, you are welcome to nominate it at WP:ITNC. We can only consider what is nominated. We also have no control over what occurs in the world; the beginning of the year is usually a slow period for events that are not sudden disasters. 331dot (talk) 14:28, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

The not-so-grim Super Bowl LIII will be so heavily opposed later the discussion has to be more exciting than the game per se. Howard the Duck (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Feb.8

off the main page --Jayron32 13:47, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
whether or not this the right section for general comments: shocked in a way, subject for Main Page - why publicity for a pathetic terrorist - & here not in passing, part of a historical item, but details of his life - frankly who cares, the less said the better, such people should be forgotten, erased from public consciousness; this article just adds to his notoriety. Thank you; God Bless America; JS Quebec Jasheco (talk) 13:47, 8 February 2019 (UTC) I thought it was a very well written article dealing comprehensively with the subject matter in a neutral and suitably referenced fashion. So I'm quite content that it's of interest to others and is quite rightly on the main page. Cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 13:50, 8 February 2019 (UTC) @Jasheco: Wikipedia is a project to document all human knowledge. The notoriety of an individual or how the presence of an article contributes to it is immaterial to our purpose. There is much information here that is undesirable for some reason by many groups or individuals; censoring it all would leave little behind; this is why(in part) Wikipedia is not censored. 331dot (talk) 13:51, 8 February 2019 (UTC) I also thought that making a terrorist the subject of a featured article was, at the least, in poor taste, and likely to offend those who suffered from his actions. But I also reflected that articles on Spartacus, or Guy Fawkes, would not have triggered any such reaction. In any case, I chose not to read the article. Clive. 213.218.195.130 (talk) 16:07, 8 February 2019 (UTC) Indeed, and when we featured Gropecunt Lane it also seemed "in poor taste" to some, but this is an educational resource and not constrained by the sensitivities of the odd few individuals who are seemingly upset by such thing. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2019 (UTC) This is not a debate about censoring, neither did anyone suggest there be no article of this man. Indeed, it is good that there exists a good, solid, neutral article on this and any other contentious, political and moral topic. This should be a debate about if this person needs to be featured on the front page of one of the world's top websites. Nobody is saying that is promotion. Merely, it may be misconstrued as a promotion, and, very easily, to be featured on the front page of Wikipedia may for some individual be seen as a goal in itself. Such policy is thus hazardous. Not submitting an article to the front page is really not censorship. Eykeklos Omnia (talk) 18:01, 8 February 2019 (UTC) Actually, this edition of Today's Featured Article should be a huge scandal. I don't know what is worse: the fact that Wikipedia's admins posted it, or that almost nobody seems opposed after-the-fact. But let's explore how this happened. In 2017, a discussion at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Khalid al-Mihdhar resulted in significant opposition because posting an article about a terrorist mass murderer would be in poor taste and could negatively affect some real-life people. So, even though the article has been a Featured Article for almost a decade, and was suggested for TFA before 2017, it was never displayed on the Main Page. Fast forward to January 26, 2019. User:Ealdgyth, a Wikipedia administrator who helps to arrange which page will be displayed as TFA, created Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 8, 2019. He did this as part of a series of new featured article listings for the entire month of February 2019. He notified User talk:Aude that the article would be listed on the Main Page 2 weeks in the future. [3] Ealdgyth and Aude made no attempt to gain consensus for this action. Perhaps they were not even aware that such action could be controversial. In any event, their action violates the central tenet of Wikipedia's operation that everything of consequential importance must be done after achieving consensus (or if people cannot agree, defer to the status quo or follow some kind of majority vote approximation). It is regrettable that a decision by one or two individual users has given publicity to a terrorist mass murderer on a high-profile website. This should not be allowed to happen again. The procedures for selection of Today's Featured Article must be updated to encourage (rather than tolerate) dissenting views. Wail of a tayle (talk) 18:13, 8 February 2019 (UTC)— Wail of a tayle (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Whether this gives publicity or not is not a concern of Wikipedia. We are here to collect and distribute knowledge. Maybe if more people read about what awful acts this person engaged in, they will learn from it. What specific proposal do you have for a procedural change that would prevent what you consider objectionable material from being posted? And how will that work as a practical matter since we all have different feelings about what should and should not be on the Main Page? 331dot (talk) 18:19, 8 February 2019 (UTC) (ec) Without offering an opinion on whether the article is appropriate for Today's Featured Artilce (TFA), I'd just point out that you're mistaken as to the "central tenet of Wikipedia's operation". Consensus only comes into play when there's disagreement; otherwise, editors are encouraged to just get on with it and "be bold". You're also mistaken in suggesting that the TFA coordinators require a consensus for scheduling TFAs. They're elected to do it, and it's an unwritten rule that (almost) every featured article will one day be on the main page, so if anything somebody wanting to exclude a given article from consideration for TFA would require consenus because their porposal would deviate from the standard practice. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:26, 8 February 2019 (UTC) (edit conflict)I will note that the specific opposition was towards running it on his birthdate, not against running it at all. There was no consensus to avoid running it on the main page for all eternity, just to avoid scheduling it on his birthdate, and to avoid using his picture. Otherwise, however, Wikipedia does not make editorial decisions based on who may or may not be offended by true information. True information will still continue to be reported dispassionately and objectively even if people are upset that the events described happened. Otherwise, there is no consensus needed to run the TFA system. Consensus came into play when the TFA coordinators were approved by the community to make good judgement in scheduling the TFAs. They don't need your permission. --Jayron32 18:28, 8 February 2019 (UTC) The objections on the old request were for running it on the birthday. I very carefully did NOT choose a date at all connected in the article, given the objections at the request - which I did read carefully. We've run other of the hijackers in the past, I'll note, on the front page. I'll ALSO note, I'm female. Says so right on my user page. The articles to run in a given month are ALL scheduled at least a week in advance - on the month pages such as Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 2019 - which are available to anyone, so the "no notice" is not correct. In the dim past, TFAs were scheduled with no warning, yes - when Raul was doing the scheduling, they scheduled at most two or three days in advance. There were objections raised to this so the current system was implemented, with rotating TFA coordinators who endeavour to schedule a month at a time and with at least a week's advance notice. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:28, 8 February 2019 (UTC) It's true this is a featured article. Here's the thing - I don't see at all how Wikipedia is improved by having this article featured on the front page. It gives the appearance of glorification. That's not what this encyclopedia needs. The benefit to posting this is outweighed by the negative of the perception this creates. Comrade Comrade (talk) 19:08, 8 February 2019 (UTC) — Comrade Comrade (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Every subject gives a negative perception to someone. How would you determine what goes on the Main Page and what does not in a way that satisfies everyone? 331dot (talk) 19:10, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Please include banner in EU locales

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Regarding [4] please display https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/ prominently as a noticebox warning as above for readers in Europe. Thank you. EllenCT (talk) 04:24, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

A story somewhere on the BBC News website in the last week said that online encyclopaedias were specifically exempted from Article 13. Is that not correct? - Sitush (talk) 04:35, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

See here. - Sitush (talk) 04:36, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I am aware of the allowance for "nonprofit online encyclopedias" but the proposed legislation breaks our reusable licenses, so the request stands. EllenCT (talk) 04:53, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I see no consensus for a banner and the correct venue for discussing this would be WP:VPR, where you've also started a thread linking here. This talk page is for discussing the main page, not banners and soap boxes. Isa (talk) 04:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

The proposal is in response to an existential threat to the promises we have made to our users that our content be reusable. I would prefer to address concerns on the the WP:VPR thread and I am happy to do both. EllenCT (talk) 05:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Proposals belong on the proposals section of the VP, regardless of your preferences, and you'll need an RFC and a long discussion before something like this is done. It has nothing to do with the main page. I'd urge you to redirect the links you're adding all over the place to the VP discussion. Isa (talk) 05:06, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Please direct further discussion to the WP:VPR thread. EllenCT (talk) 05:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Main page news does not change

I have noticed the same news article for about 3 days now with no changes. Is there a glitch? https://imgur.com/a/KklqWg4 --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 10:49, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

It is due to lack of nominations that attract sufficient support for posting. (You can make a nomination at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates.) In my opinion the recent deaths section is working well and is frequently refreshed. But it is still very difficult to get ITN regulars to agree on new itsm with blurbs, and it perhaps for that reason we get very few nominations (it's not worth putting the effort in if the item is unlikely to get posted to the main page). Perhaps the bar is set too high, which results in a rather stale section of the main page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:11, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Tyw7 MSGJ This is a typical complaint for this time of year, as the beginning of the year is typically a slow period for ITN. There are not many recurring events for posting, so we have to wait for things to happen. ITN is not intended to be a continuously updated news feed, but a way to highlight topical, updated articles about subjects that happen to be in the news. If you want to see more postings or do not like what is posted, I invite you to participate at WP:ITNC, in discussions or making nominations. We can only consider what is nominated. 331dot (talk) 15:34, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

331dot, I was under the impression of it being the top news story for the day. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 17:03, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

No, it is not meant to be a top story of the day or any sort of news feed. It is updated when there is consensus to post something, not on a regular basis. ITN is intended to promote the development of articles about events in the news, and feature them for the benefit of readers. Please see WP:ITN for more information. 331dot (talk) 17:07, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Nope. ITN is not "the best news story today". It is "a collection of random recent events that we happen to have decent articles about". Most of the discussions we have at ITNC are around "is the article good enough to feature on the main page". We aren't concerned with informing people about what is going on in the world, the main purpose is letting people know that the stories they already heard about in the news elsewhere may have good articles to read at Wikipedia so they can get a more in-depth background on the event than the News would give. Very little concern is given to what are the "top stories of the day" If there's a popular story and we don't have a decent article to highlight about it, we won't post it. Also, if no one bothers to nominate an article for us to highlight, we won't post it. If you don't see a story on ITN, and you think the Wikipedia article discussing the event is high quality, please nominate it at WP:ITNC so it can be posted. --Jayron32 17:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

How to submit a news story

Please I want to know how to add a news story and article on Wikipedia news blog Edyreuben (talk) 08:46, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a blog. Stories must already exist as an article. doktorb _words^deeds 08:51, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

After that, nominate the article at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. Art LaPella (talk) 14:50, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Hachimoji DNA image

Is there a reason why we use the non animated image on the Main Page rather then the animated one shown on the article? I am not complaining just interested in why it is not animated on the Main Page. Abote2 (talk) 16:07, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Probably the GIF slows down the main page too much (especially since ITN is on the mobile site as well) Eman235/talk 21:38, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Template:*mp

There is a discussion about whether {{*mp}}, a now-deprecated template that used to be used in ITN/DYK/OTD and which was deleted once and then undeleted (by me), should be deleted again. Your input at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 February 26#Template:*mp is requested. —howcheng {chat} 01:12, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Brie Larson

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Is about to be the main page article next month. There is a huge internet controversy regarding her and Rotten Tomatoes happing now which is not covered in the article. So, it shouldn't but put up as is. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Feel free to edit the Brie Larson and include anything relevant that you think is missing. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:31, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

"huge internet controversy"? Where are the sources that call it such? Rotten Tomatoes is just preventing review bombing. This is such a non-issue. Krimuk2.0 (talk) 07:35, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Preventing review-bombing from groups with an agenda being rallied on social media is pretty common practice. All major sites that allow user reviews have mechanisms in place for this.

It's only "controversial" among those people who are trying to abuse the review system in the first place. ApLundell (talk) 04:14, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Regardless, that has nothing to do with Brie Larson in particular. The places where it would belong might be Captain Marvel (2019 film) or perhaps Rotten Tomatoes. —howcheng {chat} 05:03, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

The "huge internet controversy" is nothing more than yet another case of "MRAs and other alt-rights are mad about a strong woman or women in movies". Not something that should derail her being a featured article. Acalamari 07:13, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Portal Links Removal

Yes I know they have been there forever but I propose we remove the 8+1 Portal links from the top corner. A failed experiment automated creation and updating has gone quite off the rails. Simply put the quality if Portals which use content oulled automatically from elsewhere is not giving a very high quality of experience.

Currently 2 of the 8 Master portals are broken (Portal:History and Portal:Geography, returning Red Error messages. Some awesome editors put sserious effort into hunting and fixing even the slightest error on articles linked from the mainpage but here the most prominate link spots are to busted automated portals. We have no way of knowing when or if these errors will crop up and evidently no one is watching them. I only stumbled on them when I noticed Portal:English language was busted and User:Moxy suggested we check the top 8 portals. Legacypac (talk) 03:22, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I have corrected ...restored. ...the 2 broken portals as they were both former FA portals. I believe the discussion here should go on...but I also believe we should not have broken portals in the meantime.--Moxy (talk) 03:25, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose The portals are a integral part of the encyclopaedia. They provide added insight on particular topics. The experiment in automation isn't a failure and works better than the original ones some of which where a sea of outdated content, POV and redlinks (Portal:India for example). We should not be trying to hide information from the public eye throwing away millions of editors hard work, rather we should be improving whatever we have. Additionally, from a design perspective the page would look unbalanced once the portal links are removed. << FR ^(mobileUndo) 03:44, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

There is almost universal agreement that the new automated portals are a total failure. Even some of the people who helped create them are agreeing. There will soon be a mass portal deletion, with over 100 going down at MfD right now.

The sea of outdated content on the old school portals is why a lot of people wanted to deleted those. We were promised that the new automated portals would fix that, which they dis, but they created other problems. Millions of editors have not worked on Portals, ever, in all time. This is not about deleting portals (that is a discussion for elsewhere) it is about curating what content readers are presented with on the main page. Readership numbers show that these 8 Portals attact far fewer readers then pretty much anything else linked from the mainpage. Heck no one even noticed that two of them were busted until we were MfDing Portal:English language and and User:Moxy said we better check the top 8 portals for the same errors. Readers rejected Wikipedia portals years ago and continue to reject them. Why push links into the face of readers they don't want? Legacypac (talk) 17:13, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

We should retain one link to all Portals, rather than featuring a small group of them. Then add in links to other "who's who" of Wikipedia -- the Reference Desk, the Community Portal and subcats (the Help Desk, Teahouse, Wikiprojects, Village Pump, Signpost), perhaps even buff up some obscure bits that could use a shot in the arm of technical help (WT:Lua). I'm sure I'm leaving some ideas out and that other might have to give way to make room, but the shortlist of Portals definitely should give way to make room. Wnt (talk) 11:43, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

A single link seems a good solution to me, but a) readers won't know what 'portal' means without the examples, so maybe make the link subject index and b) I don't think adding all those other items helps much. The important ones are already in the sidebar; the unimportant ones aren't necessary. Modest Genius ^talk 13:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

How close in time will be 'the end of everything' and 'everybody being completely satisfied with the Wikipedia Main Page'? Jackiespeel (talk) 18:19, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Are there any stats on whether or not anybody actually uses those links? ApLundell (talk) 23:47, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

There are stats on how many pageviews a portal gets (go to any portal or article, near the top click "View History", then click "Pageviews".) That isn't the same as counting link usage, but portal pageviews are low compared to other Main Page features, so portal link usage must be even lower. Art LaPella (talk) 03:19, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Amina Gerba

Doesn't the Amina Gerba DYK seem overtly promotional? "that Amina Gerba's (pictured) beauty-care companies hire and give a portion of profits to the 2,000 women of the Songtaaba Cooperative in Burkina Faso?" It's literally saying "this woman's company donates profits to charity." I... don't see how it teaches people any useful and just seems to give her free PR. Isn't promoting (or at least giving high visibility) to a for-profit company's charitable efforts essentially promoting the for-profit aspect of the company? WP is based upon neutrality and not promoting business. I really do not like this, honestly. Does anyone else see what I'm seeing? ‡ Єl Cid of ᐺalencia ^ᐐT₳LKᐬ 13:50, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Changing the main font color from black to #222

I noticed the main font color on the main page is black, whereas the standard article text color is #222 (very dark gray). For consistency and ease of reading (eye strain, contrast, etc) we should change the main font color to #222 as well. Thoughts? Enterprisey (talk!) 22:27, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

What's wrong with black? It was good enough for Gutenberg. The more contrast, the better. Sca (talk) 01:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

If it isn't broken, don't fix it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, leave as it is. David J Johnson (talk) 09:11, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Enterprisey. For consistency if nothing else, but it's long been known that straight-up black-on-white is not good design. — 🦊 02:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Given the Blue, Green and Purple backgrounds, I think Black is working well. Agree, if it's not broke... - FlightTime (open channel) 02:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Also, I think this is skin specific I see (0,0,0) font on articles with monobook. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:10, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

What can seem more aesthetically pleasing to a committee of design academics is often not as accessible to the visually impaired or to ordinary people trying to read in bright sunlight. As a reference work, we should be committed to function over form, substance over style, and utility over appearance. Low contrast text is a terrible trend. Are the sources suggesting that high contrast causes eyestrain WP:MEDRS? I read that eyestrain is best prevented by focusing on something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds every 20 minutes, and has little to do with the attributes of text unless they cause squinting. EllenCT (talk) 17:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Known by whom? Because my personal experience and preference is completely contrary to that. I LOVE straight up black on white, it is much easier for me to read. --Khajidha (talk) 02:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Fully-protected edit request on 23 March 2019

This is really a bit of a trifle, but the OTD section headers in both of the above pages contain ellipses that should be removed, to match a similar edit on the actual Main Page. Also, the Yesterday page's OTD header could be changed to "On the previous day", to better correspond with the Tomorrow page's header. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 11:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done for the first part. Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

​ Could you also address the second part of my edit request, to change "Yesterday" in the the OTD header to "On the previous day"? It looks a bit odd as it stands. Thanks. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 14:55, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? It seems a little stilted to refer to "on the previous day" rather than just "yesterday". Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

The Tomorrow page reads "On the next day", which, IMO, sounds better than simply "Tomorrow". The same should go for the Yesterday page. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 15:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done for the second part. I'm still not convinced that it's better, though this page is largely irrelevant. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:07, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I think it is worse now. To be consistent with the TFA title, it should be "Yesterday's anniversaries" and "Tomorrow's anniversaries". Jmar67 (talk) 16:57, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I would generally be fine with this proposal, as long as it is consistent across the pages (even though I would still prefer the current wording, as it more directly resembles the OTD header on the actual Main Page). RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 17:04, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I like this better too. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

On this day

Any reason why the Annunciation isn't mentioned alongside Bengali Genocide Remembrance Day? The Annunciation is an important date in the Catholic calendar that's been celebrated for centuries and occurs on 25 March. Just askin'. Bermicourt (talk) 07:55, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

The article is not of sufficient quality to be featured on the main page. It is tagged as requiring more references. Stephen 08:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Oh I see - that makes sense. Bermicourt (talk) 07:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

shiraz,iran flood

many car's down in flood Mamad-Baloch97 (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I searched Wikipedia for an article on the flood, and finding none, I started a basic stub at 2019 Shiraz flood. Any editor can feel free to improve it. It's not main-page ready yet, but when it is (after it has been expanded and better written!), someone may nominate it at WP:ITNC for discussion for adding to the "In The News" section. --Jayron32 15:15, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

A disgusting punctuation error in a giant banner

Look! A giant banner with a ridiculously disgusting punctuation error! Screenshot. "Hi reader in Ukraine," - the vocative case is only marked with one comma!
If I understand it correctly, Wikipedia can't do anything about this banner, but it still exists right at the top of the Main Page! This shame should be corrected asap. Because this is worse than any ad.--Adûnâi (talk) 17:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Adûnâi: while we do not manage this directly here, there are a few ways for us to get it fixed. Can you reply with the exact change you would like to see in that banner? (e.g. Change "a a a" to "a b a"). Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 17:33, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: A comma after Hi should be added - "Hi, reader in Ukraine,".--Adûnâi (talk) 17:46, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Adûnâi: thanks for the note, I'm going to copy this to meta:User talk:TSkaff (WMF) - who it appears is the WMF resource that manages that specific campaign banner. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux:This has been updated - meta:User talk:TSkaff (WMF) 22:24, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

In The News

Four gloomy entries - I know it is in the nature of ITN, but ... Jackiespeel (talk) 20:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Jackiespeel The beginning of the year is a slow period as we don't yet have a lot of recurring events(that are usually more positive) for posting; we can only wait for events to happen that merit posting. We can also only consider what is nominated, if you know of articles about more positive events that may merit posting and are covered in the news, feel free to nominate them at WP:ITNC. 331dot (talk) 20:40, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

M<ore an observation, as there has not been 'a grouping' for a while, and sometimes it is possible to reorganise what appears.

When was the last time there was a 'too many X (over the last few days) across the MP' comment on this talk page? Jackiespeel (talk) 15:06, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Here. Art LaPella (talk) 16:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

And the more general 'Woe is Wikipedia -the MP is not 'hot drinks and crumbs near the keyboard and/or the children and/or worksafe'?

Perhaps, as a reasonable compromise - when 'four gloomy ITN entries have been there for several days' something neutral is rotated in - eg [5] (which is on the List of meteor air bursts). Jackiespeel (talk) 19:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I think you want birds, but I don't get the relevance. Art LaPella (talk) 19:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

There are two points - when to rotate the material at ITN (there are still 'four gloomy stories') and those MPs which contain 'topics which disconcert or cause much discussion' (including 'why have we had X references to (topic) in the last (y) days)? Jackiespeel (talk) 11:40, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I generally avoid ITN beyond proofreading. Past Main Page discussions of every description can be found in the archives. Anyone else? Art LaPella (talk) 13:44, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Alas, much of the world in which we live is often a grim place, and unpleasant events tend to be newsworthy. We're not here to whitewash reality. – Sca (talk) 20:51, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

And when a good news story comes along and is nominated for ITN, people oppose its appearance there (see current discussions). Mjroots (talk) 07:35, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Usually because most good news stories aren't even encyclopedic, like the one in question. A boat stopped working and nobody died. That's not something we would expect an encyclopedia to feature, is it? The Rambling Man (talk) 17:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

A boat the size of the Titanic. – Sca (talk) 15:03, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

'Most of the time' ITN consists of a mixture of positive, neutral and negative/gloomy stories - I was just noting 'an occasional statistical anomaly which will resolve itself in a few days' (but may justify swapping entries).

The Main Page will normally consist of 'a random collection of entries', but with occasional groupings of material on one or over several days (possibly because 'somebody or several' have been developing a particular field) - and next Monday is a WP tradition. Jackiespeel (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Purge after update

Does anyone have an idea of how often the Main Page fails to display the results of a component change if the admin fails to purge, or why it would fail? (Is it perhaps related to the job queue?) I don't too often modify components and have never thought to look at the Main Page to see the results of making an edit without purging, except after purging. Nyttend (talk) 11:39, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

@Nyttend: I don't recall needing to manually purge for the last couple of years, as updates to all boxes are now immediately displayed on the main page. I assume updates to the underlying software (or maybe there's more hardware) means that there is less caching of templated content, or that the caches are more quickly or more optimally refreshed automatically when their contents change. Stephen 22:15, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Of course it only takes one click, so I would do it anyway. I usually check by looking at it in a logged out session. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Editable entries

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219848

It looks like I could edit the TFA, POTD, and FL entries (blurbs) at the moment. Shouldn't these be protected? Jmar67 (talk) 20:11, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

The main page is cascade-protected, and to such a degree it's almost impossible to remove; you certainly shouldn't be able to edit anything appearing on it regardless of whether the individual items are protected or not. Have you tried? ‑ Iridescent 20:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

When I logged out it let me click "edit" but wouldn't let me edit. Did someone fix it? Art LaPella (talk) 20:27, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I have not attempted to edit, but I get the normal editing window. Just asking. Jmar67 (talk) 20:33, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I can't replicate this; I've tried editing the TFA blurb logged out, from an autoconfirmed account and from an admin account; the first two correctly bring up the View Source window as when one attempts to edit anything for which one doesn't have permissions, with the This page is transcluded in multiple cascade-protected pages, therefore only administrators can edit it. warning at the top, and the third correctly brings up the edit window with the editnotice and the eleven-way cascade protection correctly shown. ‑ Iridescent 20:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

All is well. I attempted an edit to today's POTD, but the "Publish" action was rejected, as if there were an edit conflict. I am using the mobile version. Jmar67 (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

This looks to be a bug on the mobile site (not the mobile app) - will look in to a bit. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:38, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I've opened phab:T219848 to track this issue. It is not a security issue, but is a UI/workflow problem. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Page Preview

How do I PERMANENTLY disable your extremely annoying pop-up page preview? I am sick and tired of blocking it. Why cant there be a simple way to PERMANENTLY remove this annoying "feature"? 90.29.109.229 (talk) 19:26, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

This doesn't really concern the Main Page, but I think you have to register an account to be able to turn off features like that. Many users find page preview helpful to check for mistakes before posting something. 331dot (talk) 19:28, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I assume the IP is talking about Page Previews... something that logged in users may not be even aware about! Turning it off should be just a matter of clicking the cog at the bottom of the preview and disabling though... so I'm not sure why it would be coming back on again, unless cookies were cleared.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Wow. I just logged out, and that is incredibly annoying.

(I'll bet it's no coincidence that it's disabled by default for logged-in users, the users most likely to complain about it.) ApLundell (talk) 21:56, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I disagree that it is annoying. I find it a useful feature. 86.191.155.17 (talk) 14:00, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

The layout of the Yesterday and Tomorrow pages

I brought up something else related to these pages some time ago, but I've also realised that their layout and syntax differ quite significantly from the Main Page: for example, they make much use of tables, whereas the Main Page uses HTML code to achieve the same outcome. Perhaps they haven't been updated to match occasional changes to the Main Page. I have created test pages in my own userspace here (yesterday) and here (tomorrow), which are based on the current Main Page's syntax and can be copied over to the respective pages in project space above by a willing admin. Thanks. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 01:33, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:00, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I think your edit has effectively modified the cascading protection to extend an extra day into the future. If you edit (or view source) Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow you can see it transcludes the TFA, OTD, POTD, etc. for the day after tomorrow (two days from now) in addition to tomorrow. Whereas previously it only transcluded tomorrow's items. I don't really understand all the code, but I think it might have to do with the change in the very last line in the diff. It makes sense for the actual Main Page to transclude two sets to always ensure tomorrow is protected, but is that something we really need to replicate on Tomorrow's Main Page? Modulus12 (talk) 00:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

That alteration also broke Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection, the code for which was removed. Separately, the current DYK set replaced the next one in the queue. (I've reverted both changes.) —David Levy 01:00, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I presume that's why the DYK image didn't get protected and the update failed (it's fixed now). Black Kite (talk) 01:05, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. In hindsight, an edit notice explaining the page's importance would be helpful. I'll create one. —David Levy 01:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Ravenpuff: Thanks for updating the syntax, but please note that Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow is vital to the main page's operation (both technically and in day-to-day use by editors preparing the next day's content).

If you explain what you intended to accomplish via the aforementioned modifications, I'll do my best to advise you on their feasibility (and nondestructive implementations, if applicable). —David Levy 01:00, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

My intention was just to improve the syntax of the page (as explained above). In doing so, I must have accidentally overwritten the interwiki strapline at the bottom of the page, which caused some protection difficulties. I think the page should be fine now; I apologise for the inconvenience. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 03:44, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Note that the other relevant change was the replacement of the DYK queue with the current DYK set. In that instance, it appears that you accidentally duplicated code intended for use at Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday. —David Levy 03:58, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

By the way, I also added {{#if:{{:Main Page}}||}} to the bottom of Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday. While I don't think this caused breaking changes, someone could remove it and restore the interwiki strapline to the original version if need be. Thanks. RAVENPVFF | talk ~ 03:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

That addition shouldn't cause any problems. —David Levy 03:58, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Today's FL: List of Indian Nobel laureates

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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That blurb of today's FL is so dull. In first sentence it talks about how 12 people got it; Tagore was first, Teresa was only woman. Then in 2 long sentences it talking about generic what Nobel Prize is. Then 2 more sentences on who did not win the prize. Does this not seem like the subject "Indian laureates" is sidelined? I don't really blame the admins who selected it for display today; but more who promoted it as the original article is equally drifting away and not talking of the subject. But in such case it should have simply been skipped and not displayed on Main Page. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 07:50, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Feel free to help suggest improvements, or even get involved at WP:TFL where blurbs are usually selected weeks in advance just so that editors with concerns like you can actually do something about it. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah! I will start discussion on article's talk page soon to add more info to the article. I am seeing that with such less info present, the FLC nom had also discussed why the article is needed in first place. But if at all the article has been eventually created, it should at least have information in brief about the recipients or more about their work. (just initial thoughts on what is missing). I also see that a talk page post of years ago also questions why Rajendra K. Pachauri is not mentioned. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 08:27, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Sure, at which point, unless you want to discuss the current blurb on the main page (whereupon ERRORS would be the best place), this discussion no longer relates to the main page so I suggest we close it. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Available languages

Why i can't found urdu language on one of the worlds most famous site? Asim 5026 (talk) 07:23, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

It's not complete enough to be on the short list, but it definetly exists.

https://ur.wiki.x.io/

Hope this helps. ApLundell (talk) 07:46, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

taking Wikipedia to the next level

Creating games Orji liberty (talk) 11:38, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Orji liberty This page is for discussing the content of the Main Page and is not for general discussion, new ideas can be proposed at the Village Pump; that said, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a gaming or social media platform. 331dot (talk) 11:41, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

That being said, there is a game of sorts designed to help people learn to edit Wikipedia in a fun format. See WP:ADVENTURE. --Jayron32 12:42, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

No Wikipedia in India language

Why is there no Wikipedia in a. Indian language like Tamil Bengali or Hindi and how to get wiki in the India language

This is not the place for this question; please see the notice at the top of this page, and consider posting at the Help Desk. Also, please see List of Wikipedias, which includes a Bengali edition, a Punjabi edition, a Malayalam edition, a Tamil edition and others. General Ization ^Talk 18:50, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Also, please note you are currently asking this only to the maintainers of the English Wikipedia. To see all the other projects you may also want to try www.wiki.x.io. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:27, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Time to Remove the UnBalanced Tag: Vote

I see no reason for there to be an "unbalanced" tag on this article, and there seems to have been no suggestions for content to "fix" this on this talk page from those who supported it. Furthermore, as an outsider reading it, I see little evidence of bias one way or the other. From reading the talk page, the issue of the tag has been raging for over 2 months. I propose a vote, and possible topic bans for those who keep attempting to add the tag for political purposes, to dissuade the average user from the contents of the page. If that is not their intention, then it is certainly the result. Therefore, I Strong Support removal of the tag. 103.78.141.27 (talk) 19:42, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Hello there 103.., you are currently asking a question on page about the main landing page, not a specific article. We can move this discussion for you, but I'm not sure what article you are referring to - can you be more specific? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:45, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Clearly someone is a philosopher!

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The Futsches Reich stamp we have up on the Main Page is a work of genius. Wikipedia can't match that, but we tried our best ... the file documentation at File:FutschesReich-Vergleich.png bears prominent templates saying that it is and is not and is in the public domain and can't be hosted on Commons where it is hosted.

Hint: apparently there was a deletion proposal in 2013 that was rejected, so I think the PD rules the day. Still, I have to wonder how we have a template about stuff being copyrighted and no way to notice when the stuff is also labeled public domain and/or displayed on the Main Page. (The obvious fix is to do away with the peculiar institution of copyright permanently; everything else is just a kludge) Wnt (talk) 12:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Those tags are a commons issue. You need to take this up at commons, and not here. We have no control over such matters, and it one or several of the tags is wrong, you need to raise the issue at commons and not here. Simply put: even if every word you said is scrupulously correct, it means nothing here because there's not much we can do about it. Commons problems need to be handled by commons editors. I don't know that there's anything for en.wikipedia to do about this. --Jayron32 12:52, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I went over to Commons and deleted the claim it had been published in Germany, as well as the URAA thing, since the stamps were clearly *not* printed up first behind German lines (the article featured today gives the impression they may never even have been passed in to Germany during the war). Note however that to our shock and regret the URAA was not deemed unconstitutional, and that it could therefore invite legal troubles if content tagged with URAA copyright notices were published on the Main Page -- and that is the decision of en.wikipedia only. Wnt (talk) 14:07, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, the point is that it ended up on the Main page because the copyright tags indicating it was fine to use were there on Commons. en.Wikipedia operates under the good faith that Commons gets it right, and if there are mistakes, that happens sometimes. Mistakes made in good faith need to be fixed, and then we move on, and we do both without casting aspersions. Regardless, this is no longer on the main page, so is not an issue for discussion here anymore. Also also, in the future, for dealing with ephemeral main page issues, such as ANY of the rotating sections like TFA, TFP, OTD, ITN, etc., always use WP:ERRORS instead of this section. This section is more for discussing the more permanent aspects of the main page. --Jayron32 13:46, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

On this day 14th April

It talks of New Year festivals in Asia highlighting in particular the Vaisakhi and Tamil New Year but not Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year). This does not make sense, especially since there are 261 million Bengalis in the world, making it the third largest ethnic group in the world after Han Chinese and Arabs. Compare this to the mere populations of Punjabis (120 million) and Tamils (76 million), it can easily be inferred that Bengali New Year is the most significant and worthy of being in the Main Page. Punjabi and Tamil New Years are only official holidays in one country, while Bengali New Year is official in more than one. UserNumber (talk) 17:43, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

The article Pahela Baishakh has a clean up tag and some issues highlighted, which usually disqualifies an article from being featured (bolded) on the main page until these issues are fixed. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page for more clarification. As it says there "It is important to remember that the selected articles (bold items) on the Main Page are chosen based more on their quality, not on how much their subjects are important or significant." Improving the article is the best way to have it included on the main page. Spokoyni (talk) 18:06, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for providing a valid reason @User:Spokoyni UserNumber (talk) 19:17, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Native spelling of Pali

Someone is claiming at WP:THQ#Language name misspelled that the native spelling of Pali on the main page is incorrect. Could someone take a look at this and fix the error if there's one? Thanks. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:25, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for starting this section. I will just add that the native name for the Pali language can be spelled पालि (more common) or पाळि (less common) but the current spelling listed on the main page is पाऴि (with a dot below ळ) and that is simply wrong. Foreverknowledge (talk) 01:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

The language is not on Main Page. Your post was not about the English main page but https://www.wiki.x.io/ as you correctly said at the Teahouse. meta:Talk:www.wiki.x.io template says "Changes are now managed via Phabricator and gerrit." I don't know Pali but {{#language:pi}} produces पालि, the first version you suggested. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:15, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for catching my mistake PrimeHunter. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:42, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Reported on Phabricator: T220998 rchard2scout (talk) 15:15, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that rchard2scout. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:08, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Main apge listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Main apge. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Goveganfortheanimals (talk) 03:05, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Copyright discussion re File:Tottenham hotspur 1901 team.jpg

• (Tottenham) The photo is PD in the US but not the UK. Why is it eligible for the Main Page? Just curious. 72.94.18.179 (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

   Fixed. It's a good point. I've replaced the image with an older team photo that has been signed off as good for Commons.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:15, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

  Amakuru: Can you clarify the issue?
  Fair-use media aren't permitted on the main page, but I'm not aware of any policy (or informal convention) extending this restriction to material in the public domain in the United States, where the Wikimedia Foundation is based. The image in question is ineligible for transfer to the Wikimedia Commons, but that doesn't affect its usage at Wikipedia (beyond necessitating that it be hosted here).
  Any concerns related to downstream reuse are of far greater relevance to the actual article (where the image appears on a public-domain basis, without any reliance on – or even mention of – a fair use claim), which is vastly more likely to be republished than a TFA blurb is. —David Levy 18:57, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

  This must be a fairly rare occurrence, because the period of discrepancy between US and other copyright laws is small. The rules governing what can and can't go on the main page seem to be murky and not well codified, or if they are I haven't found where. But the fact that the image can't be uploaded to commons should be enough of a red flag that we use other options as we did here. Much as the servers are hosted in the US, the editing community are based all over the world and an image which is copyrighted in its own country poses a legal risk that is simply unnecessary in a case like this.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:44, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Amakuru: Wikipedia is subject to U.S. copyright law. If an image is in the public domain in the U.S., no such legal risk exists. Otherwise, its transclusion in the article would be equally problematic. (It's important to avoid confusing this with fair use, wherein legality is contingent upon suitable context. That's why fair-use images aren't permitted on the main page, where the absence of the article's full prose greatly weakens this justification.)

A great deal of media appearing on our main page may be non-free to many of the site's readers. Per Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights:

While Wikipedia prefers content that is free anywhere in the world, it accepts content that is free in the United States even if it may be under copyright in some other countries. For example works of the U.S. federal government are in the public domain in the United States and widely used on Wikipedia, but they may not be in the public domain outside the United States.

This includes Commons-hosted media, which need only be free in the U.S. and the country of origin – and might be non-free elsewhere. This is not a rare occurrence; it's merely one that doesn't specifically preclude Commons hosting (without impacting Wikipedia hosting) unless one particular country (the country of origin) is affected.

In other words, a file bearing the template advising against a Commons transfer is not necessarily free in fewer countries than a Commons-hosted image is. Such tagging merely indicates that the material is free in the United States (and therefore free for the purposes of Wikipedia) but not free in its single country of origin. It's possible for such a file to be free everywhere else on the planet. Likewise, it's possible for a Commons-hosted file to be free in only one or two countries and non-free throughout much or all of the rest of the world. Again quoting Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights:

"it is the responsibility of contributors to determine that content they wish to contribute is free of copyright constraints in the United States and to supply as much copyright information as possible so that users can judge for themselves whether they can reuse our material outside the United States. It is the responsibility of reusers to ensure that their use of Wikipedia material is legal in the country in which they use it.

The intent behind the TFA image's replacement was laudable (and I want to stress that point, lest I come across as someone who doesn't take the site's free-content mission seriously), but the premise that it solved a problem was rooted in a misunderstanding of copyright and conflation with the concept of fair use. —David Levy 06:54, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@David Levy: as a Commons admin, perhaps you can tell me the background for the rule banning works that are copyrighted in their country of origin, as well as those that are non-free in the US? I am not entirely sure why a rule that would apply there should not apply here, since both are hosted on the same servers and Wikimedia and individual editors are subject to the same risk of litigation in either case. THanks  — Amakuru (talk) 07:59, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Files uploaded to English Wikipedia are "local files" which means that they can only be used on English Wikipedia pages, whereas files uploaded to Commons are "global files" which means they can be used on any Wikimedia Foundation project page. Since copyright law can vary quite a bit from country to country, some language Wikipedias have different policies and guidelines when it comes to image use and licensing; for example, Commons doesn't accept any fair use content, but some local Wikipedias like English Wikipedia do (per WP:NFC) and others like Norwegian Wikipedia don't at all. My guess is that local Wikipedias are primarily only concerned about whether the content is being used appropriately per their respective country's copyright laws when determining how the file should be licensed on its pages. Another example of this on English Wikipedia, {{PD-ineligible-USonly}} is sometimes used for files which are WP:PD in the US, but not it their countries of origin; these files are still local files, but they licensed as PD based upon US copyright law. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:15, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

This explanation is helpful. The relevant distinction is that Wikipedia is primarily an encyclopedia, not a free media repository.

(As a minor point, the relevant definition of "free" encompasses works free of copyright and copyrighted works released under free licenses.) —David Levy 09:23, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

(reset) Have there been any cases where this 'multiple copyright expiration dates' has proved an actual issue (rather than 'this is slightly early in the context' and an alternative is found)? Jackiespeel (talk) 13:27, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Online Wiki name search?

Why isn't my wiki profile and bio not appearing online when I do a name search? Byron J. Walker (talk) 15:08, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Because, by default, Wikipedia uses the "noindex" function on most pages outside of the article space, that is user pages and user talk pages get "noindexed" by default. This tells search engines like Google to not use those pages in search results. See WP:NOINDEX for more information. This is because, as an online encyclopedia, only the actual, encyclopedic content (i.e. the articles themselves) are the "front facing" part of Wikipedia. The rest of Wikipedia (policy pages, discussions, user pages, etc.) aren't meant for that purpose. --Jayron32 16:51, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Byron J. Walker: But see also WP:NOTWEBHOST. Isa (talk) 18:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Depending on what you mean by "name search" you may have confused user pages for part of the encyclopedia. User pages are not part of the encyclopedia, but just a courtesy to facilitate communication and understanding between Wikipedia's editors.

There is no legitimate way to get yourself "listed" in the main encyclopedia, except to live a remarkable and encyclopedic life. ApLundell (talk) 19:09, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

How to create the page for popular people

I don't know how to the page, kindly share the how to page Shivasubramaniyan (talk) 07:26, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Your first article. —Bruce1ee^talk 07:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Historic Foreign relations in Cylon /Sri Lanks

I have a limited knowledge on the subject studied in school several decades ago. Today as aLawyer I would like make some contribution to Law of the sea on our relations with outside world and international law. This is important to use of the sea by a ll cencerned for development and trade and peace in the region andthe world at large . Titus Padmasiri (talk) 18:00, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

That is fine, I will leave some links about how to contribute to Wikipedia on your talk page. MPS1992 (talk) 18:03, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Question

How exactly do I RfA? ThePRoGaMErGD (talk) 19:12, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Start here. A better place for such questions is Wikipedia:Help desk. Art LaPella (talk) 19:20, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Its time to change the news pic

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Zelensky pic is now more than a week in the news section [Fernando Lugo ITN take 2], time to frash it with something new. even with a pic of a recent dead person. --
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 02:14, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Fernando Lugo, President of Paraguay 2008–12

You rang? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 10:54, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

He even has a microphone!--WaltCip (talk) 12:13, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

• You can fix this problem yourself. Here's how:

1) Find a subject which is interesting that happened recently

2) Improve a Wikipedia article about that thing. Either create a new article, OR add a substantial amount of good, well-referenced text to an existing article.

3) Nominate that article to appear in the ITN section at WP:ITNC.

• Then Bob's your uncle, the picture will be changed! --Jayron32 12:20, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the grammatical heresy that is "Bob is you are uncle" (or "you are uncle belonging to Bob"?), whether or not an article is approved on ITNC for posting, the inclusion of an image still seems to be at the discretion of the posting admin.--WaltCip (talk) 12:43, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Every admin will always, 100% of the time, include an allowable image from the topmost blurb. If there isn't an image posted from the topmost blurb, that means there isn't a qualified image to include. I say 100% of the time, because I've never seen it not happen. Yes, it is their discretion, one they have used every time, all the time, since ITN became a thing. --Jayron32 16:06, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Font sizes on mobile

Not an issue for Main Page. Referred elsewhere.

On my iPhone 8 (iOS, Safari) in the desktop view, the first column of the MP (with TFA and DYK) has a larger font than the second column (with ITN and OTD) and is also wider. This often results in an imbalance between the two columns. I am told that a PC user sees the same font size in both columns. Why do the sizes differ in my case? Jmar67 (talk) 16:43, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

You're more likely to get answer to this question at WP:VPT, a forum for technical questions of this sort. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:12, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

?

Why did you put Esperanto for one of the Privacy languages? It's a dead language, and it never became official. ThePRoGaMErGD (talk) 18:28, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "Privacy languages" but it's beyond dispute that there's an Esperanto Wikipedia, and it's beyond dispute that it has more than 250,000 articles. So what's your point again? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:33, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

It's also far from being dead ("estimates range from 63 000 to two million" speakers). Eman235/talk 19:56, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Why so much griefing?

Why does the page get completely griefed so often? I thought only Admins can edit the page. ARZ100 (talk) 22:51, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Mostly Wikipedia:Compromised accounts. Stephen 23:26, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

International Workers' Day

I am rather surprised that this day is not mentioned among the celebrations on May 1, while a Gaelic celebration in the Isles and one in India both are. Is there any particular reason for that?--R8R (talk) 13:44, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

The standard rationale for these is that the relevant article is not up to scratch. A cursory scan of the article shows quite a few citation needed tags. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 13:53, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

I see. Thank you very muchÄâ for your response.--R8R (talk) 14:02, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Couldn't the increased traffic spur improvements? Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. —  AjaxSmack  02:12, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

There is no evidence that readers of the main page click through and significantly improve articles. Stephen 03:11, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Although it's easy to use grok.se to prove that articles get more edits (and presumably more improvements) while on the Main Page, that doesn't make much of a dent in 6,932,140 articles. We choose to give prominence to relatively good articles. Art LaPella (talk) 06:26, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

The motive behind "giv[ing] prominence to relatively good articles" is sound, but what we've ended up with is a daily list of minor or fancruft "holidays" from Ronald Reagan Day to Star Wars Day while major world holidays like Chinese/Lunar New Year and May Day are shunted aside. This hardly inspires an attitude of seriousness by readers toward the project, and could be more counterproductive than linking readers to articles in need of improvement. —  AjaxSmack  21:55, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Yep, I agree, but good luck getting it changed as long as Wikipedia operates on "consensus", which means any handful of people can join up to veto any change, making the project hyper-conservative. (This excludes things the community doesn't have control over like the MediaWiki software.) For consolation, the Main Page isn't very important anyway, as little of the general public ever sees it. Most Wikipedia traffic comes from Wikipedia articles showing up in Google search results. The Main Page in practice serves as a trophy case for project insiders. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:03, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

The main page gets between 15 to 20 million hits per day. Stephen 00:10, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

That's just hits, correct? Do we have any idea of unique visitors, or how much of that is automated (search engine scrapers, etc.)? And how much is people clicking on the logo link while trying to figure out how to search or get around the site? Are there figures on how long people spend viewing the main page? Honest questions. The articles that get the most daily hits are almost never things on the Main Page, which leads me to believe relatively few people do more than glance at it even if they arrive there for whatever reason. For example, right now the only article in the traffic top 20 according to Wikitrends that's on the Main Page is Ramadan, and I'm pretty sure most traffic for holiday articles is from Google. What's the Main Page traffic as a percentage of total English Wikipedia traffic? I searched around a bit for total en page views, but Google just gives me articles saying "about 18 billion views per month" for all Wikipedias combined. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 01:21, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

AFAIK, the increase in traffic for a FA when it's TFA is generally quite substantial, and this includes when the TFA has no real connection to the date. It's still possible these are coming from other sources e.g. someone reads it and then shares it and it's read by 20 other people or something, but it still reflects that the Main Page can have an effect. Note the fact that the most visited articles tend not to be on the Main Page suggests there are many people coming here via other means. This may mean that many or even most visitors to highly topical especially holiday related pages come from somewhere other than the main page so the exclusion of holidays or events doesn't matter that much. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the main page isn't highly viewed, since we're talking all relative here. I mean if we assume the page view stats means at least 3 million unique visitors, even if only 1% of them actually look at the Main Page a bit rather than just glance or even simply enter something into the search bar and ignore it, that's still 30k viewing it. For many articles, getting 30k people would be a substantial achievement. As I said before, many may not click through from the main page to any article, but the point is it's different from them not actually looking at the main page. (I think the stats on how non topical article views changes also suggests 30k is a little low although as before, it's hard to prove this is directly from people seeing it on the main page given the possibility of sharing etc.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:32, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

While researching the below, I came across [6] which is interesting because it suggests quite a lot of WMF traffic (all major projects not just en.wikipedia) is coming from internal links. Obviously many of these would be internal article links etc, the Main Page would be extremely tiny by way of comparison, still it suggests while external search engines are important, they aren't the end all. One thing I'm confused about is none/direct, does this mean our internal search engine or what? In particular, AFAIK there is no way to know if I type in en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Meow into my address bar or use a bookmark that I did this as opposed to coming from a website that tells the browser not to include any referer info or using a browser that doesn't which I assume is what is classified as unknown. (No referer info so source of traffic is unknown.) If traffic with no referer is classified as none/direct, the name seems misleading and I'm also unsure what unknown means. I'm also assuming that files etc on commons won't count as visits and so internal links unless the person actually clicks on them. Or maybe even goes past the Media Viewer. But I'm not certain. Nil Einne (talk) 14:57, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Or maybe if the people who believe that these major world holidays deserve to be on the Main Page would simply look over them and fix the issues instead of assuming that these days will get a pass then they would be in good enough shape to qualify. It's not our fault that people care enough to make sure that Star Wars Day is up to snuff, but just ignore May Day. --Khajidha (talk) 03:39, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. If you see a problem, fix it. —howcheng {chat} 07:47, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't see much of a problem with e.g. May Day. It is lightly sourced but certainly far from an embarrassment. Ditto with International Workers' Day. Neither seem particularly different from Ramadan. —  AjaxSmack  17:02, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Did you check what the pages looked like on 30 April? --Khajidha (talk) 17:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Even now, the "By country" section of the IWD article is woefully referenced. Fully deserving of a tag really. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Would every country in the 'by country' section need a source that the IWD is indeed celebrated or just sources for the other random cultural tidbits surrounding the occasion in the different countries? 91.97.253.196 (talk) 19:08, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

A source is needed, yep, for each one. Could be "one source fits all", but unverifiable claims have no place in an encyclopedia, let alone bold linked from the main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Yeah of course, not complaining. Just thinking of how much work that would be. Not sure how one would source IWD in Somalia, for example, unless there is something reliable that actually does list all countries that celebrate IWD. And then there is probably lots of content that would be somewhat easy to source, if one spoke the different languages... 91.97.253.196 (talk) 19:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

For sure, it's difficult to source some of these things, but it really doesn't mean we should even really allow such unverifiable claims to be within the articles, let alone linked from OTD. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:30, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I did not mean to say it should be linked, i was more thinking about how to fix it. And that the task at hand is quite daunting. Anyway, cheers for making clear what is needed to get the article up to scratch for next year (not that i actually believe it will be fixed lol)91.97.253.196 (talk) 19:40, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

No worries. Cheers for now. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:ERRORS and Commons

Finding nothing comparable to WP:ERRORS over at Commons, I've proposed that one be created. If you're familiar with the workings of ERRORS (in particular, anything technical that's not immediately obvious), please visit C:Talk:Main Page#COM:ERRORS. Thank you. Nyttend (talk) 04:47, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

You'd have better luck trying to bite an air biscuit than getting anything worthwhile proposed and established at Commons. WaltCip (talk) 21:42, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Commons is known for its resistance to changes in its policy's in fact you likely have a better chance at becoming a admin there then changing its policies Cvxs (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Cvxs, I've been an admin at Commons for four years now. Nyttend (talk) 02:09, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

What WaltCip said. Commons makes en-wiki look a model of efficiency, and their institutional culture is so obsessively "not invented here" they'll reject any proposal on principle. (Also, errors on their main page are less of an issue; errors on the main pages of the large Wikipedias are a problem because they're de facto portals to the internet for the general public, but nobody except insiders ever looks at Commons.) ‑ Iridescent 02:46, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

No comment on Commons culture problems. But the last sentence seems questionable. According to these stats, Commons:Main Page receives about 98k page views a day [7]. How many unique visitors this means I don't know, but I find it extremely hard to believe even 10% of these page views represents Commons "insiders". If it is, the commons community is a heck of a lot larger than I realised or are doing something weird to trigger so many page views, or a definition of "insiders" is being used that I find weird.

Interesting these page views puts Commons just above the Portuguese 93k [8] Wikipedia and just below the Polish 106k [9] and well below the Chinese 192k [10]. In order, next are Japanese 408k [11], Spanish 438k [12], Russian 478k [13] French 526k [14] and Italian 544k [15]. And topping out the list, German over an order of magnitude more than Commons at 1213k [16] and of course our own English with well over 2 orders of magnitude more than Commons at 15493k [17].

I didn't filter this data or analyse for any weirdness and of course the page view stats aren't perfect, still I didn't see anything untoward. If anything some of the wikipedias have some weird peaks e.g. the Polish which may be affecting results. I can't of course rule out some supporter of Commons automating page views because they predicted this question would happen a year ago (or something) but still, I'm not convinced of the last sentence.

And for clarity, I took this list of wikipedias from www.wiki.x.io since I assume they're still using page views for the wikipedia to determine what the top ten are Meta:Top Ten Wikipedias although I didn't check the Phabricator or gerrit. (Page views for the wikipedia may not be entirely reflective on their Main Page, still it seems unlikely it's that extremely different so at most maybe some other wikipedias belong somewhere at the low end.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:21, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

I think you are misinterpreting what was said. The comment didn't specify "Commons insiders". I took it to mean that Commons is only accessed by dedicated wiki-editors, while the English Main Page is accessed by many people who will never edit, only read. Given that files from Commons are used on basically all Wikipedias, I can believe the page view numbers. --Khajidha (talk) 13:38, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

The specific comment was "errors on the main pages of the large Wikipedias are a problem because they're de facto portals to the internet for the general public, but nobody except insiders ever looks at Commons". But I see no real evidence this is the case. Nor for that matter what you said "Commons is only accessed by dedicated wiki-editors, while the English Main Page is accessed by many people who will never edit, only read" (well with the reasonable replacement of read with view considering the focus of commons). I should have avoided the word Commons when I said insiders but the fact remains there is zero evidence even 10% of these views is coming from insiders whether or not you want to call people from other WMF wikis (really only the English wikipedia matters, we can see from these stats the other wikipedias probably don't even double the community size, and the other projects are even less used).

Remember these are only main page views nothing else. By comparison Commons:Special:Upload Wizard gets about 12k views [18] and Commons:Upload gets about and Commons 580 (no k) [19]. How many of these need to come from the main page? (Remembering links from other wikipedias, bookmarks, multiple uploads without revisiting the Main Page etc.) I tried to find uploads per day stats, the closest I found was WLM stats [20] and these seem to be nearly 10k even before the peak and are I think only WLM stats. But in any case, there's the obvious question of how likely it is that uploads coming via other means will need to visit the main page to get there. We can see from the early stats that the WLM peak doesn't seem to have affected the Main Page view count.

Insiders may also come to do other stuff like discuss deletions, look for other contributors, try to find files for their articles etc, but how many of these are going to be coming to the main page to do so as opposed to e.g. following links to files pages and from file pages? Probably the main one that I can think of would be finding images, does anyone know if there are any stats of how many files are added to English wikipedia articles per day? (Including "changes" of existing files.) Per my earlier reasoning, I don't think what's going on outside en matters that much if it's claimed that most of these views are from "insiders" only we're getting to the border line.

Even if we give that maybe it's above 10% page views from "insiders" how high do we go? I mean maybe we push it below Portuguese but even if we drop the number by 50% this still suggests quite a substantial number of people coming for some reason other than being an "insider", about half of our 10th largest wikipedia.

P.S. Just confirmed [21] the above stats exclude redirect views. So if there's some page that gets a lot of redirected views for some reason it will be skewed. You can see the redirects for the upload wizard [22] and [23] and the Portuguese Main Page [24]. It pushes Commons:Upload up to 644 but otherwise not much.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:35, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

P.S. A few probably final additional points. I screwed up and missed Special:Upload earlier [25], this adds about 3k page views.

Also I'm not saying many of those page views are actually viewing the Commons Main Page. This gets into the complexity of the above discussion namely how many are there to do something else. But the point remains, if these people are visiting to find stuff for their non WMF project I find it questionable if they can be called insiders. Or at least if they really are all "insiders", at least they aren't really visiting for "insider" reasons. Note also the en.wikipedia itself only gets under 160k edits a day if I understand these stats correctly [26].

I admit, the number of edits for all projects was way higher than I expected compared to en [27], although page views does tally with my expectation (a bit over double en). There are a lot of wikidata edits [28] as you may expect, and I presume many of these don't end up at commons (the reason I excluded it before), still this doesn't doesn't completely explain the number of edits, you still have way more than double en. I presume this is in part because some others are perhaps developing more rapidly, maybe some other wikis are also conducive for more edits. I wonder if bots also play a part, since we know from our decision to use depth and then whoops that didn't work so well, that some smaller wikipedias seem to be playing with edit counts or at least were.

The Commons unique devices stats are interesting, I'm assuming but I'm not certain, these require a click through at least to the Media Viewer to register and don't just common from images on articles [29].

The number of views for Special:CreateAccount is very high [30] both compared to the Main Page and compared to wikipedias or at least English, Portuguese, Chinese and German. This is the first data I've seen suggesting that it could be true such a substantial proportion of the traffic to the Main Page is from insiders that non insiders are basically irrelevant although I'm not completely convinced. While looking into that data, it occurred to me that login was missing. Outside en, login seems to show up Especial:Entrar, Special:用户登录, Spezial:Anmelden and is is higher than create account Especial:Criar_conta, Special:创建账户, Spezial:Benutzerkonto_anlegen which I would sort of expect although not sure if the difference is what I would expect. Looking here at page views [31] [32] and RedirectViews [33] [34] seems to confirm it's not being recorded barring some weirdness with en. It is with the others for RedirectViews [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]. I did wonder but neglected to mention before whether these special pages were having their page views properly recorded. It still looks like it might be for the others but not UserLogin. Not sure why but wonder if it's purposely excluded for privacy reasons or something to do with the way it's processed but mistakes or differences means this doesn't happen with the others.

Anyway although these show far lower CreateAccount compared to their Main Page, I'm still surprised by the number of views, I mean as said, we only get 160k edits a day yet nearly that many hits to the create account page and we get a similar number of new registered editors a month. Are people clicking on CreateAccount by accident or considering it, seeing it and then abandoning it? Is there some problem with the data? Or there a massive amplification of page hits by people creating accounts e.g. invalid password, invalid username? Incidentally, how does unified login affect the stats?

When it comes to commons, seems to me the questions are even stronger. In particular, if people are already insiders, why are they visiting the create account page and making so many hits? Even if every new unified account that hasn't been created results in 3 page hits, I'm not sure if the new user numbers add up noting that it's only about 370k a month for all wikis per earlier stats. Is it because a whole lot of people are visiting Commons without being logged in elsewhere and are trying to either login in and getting confused or probably more likely are unaware of unified login so trying to create an account perhaps with the same user name and having errors and trying multiple times? (If they are logged in at their home or some other wiki, they should be automatically be logged in so the link won't be visible on the Commons UI so it seems less likely to come from those.) Are people aware of unified login but not wishing to use the same account for whatever reason creating new accounts and hitting the same problems on other wikipedias which result in the massive hit rate?

Remembering back to my earlier point, even if these people have decided to contribute to commons, if they aren't already contributors elsewhere it's questionable if they are insiders at the time of the account creation. After they've created them sure. So we then get to the question of how many of these are there and did they visit the Main Page before account creation? Some many disagree on the insider point, but I consider it at a minimum imprecise language which I'm never a fan of. And we also have no way of knowing if they visited Commons Main Page with the intention of signing up and contributing, or for some other reason if they weren't already "insiders" which gets to the heart of the suggestion the Main Page doesn't matter. (Although as mentioned earlier in this PS, even insiders may also visit for reasons other than contributing so for me may still matter in terms of considering whether the Main Page matters.)

If someone could convince the WMF to release data on the source of page views for the Commons Main Page, this would probably be a key data point. Barring that, info on visits to pages on the Commons Main Page would also be of interest. I had a quick look, and these didn't look very high, and also seems to affirm that images coming from the page won't count as page views without at least some click. But I've also read stats that outside certain articles like the TFA, a lot of view counts aren't very high even on our main page. I.E. We have no way to know for sure how much people get out of these, is the stuff they see interesting but enough, or just something they don't care about or do they not see it at all (which again relates to the above thread)? Also I wonder if there is data on non unified account creations in commons or that originate in commons these may help analysis of the other data. And I'm sure a whole lot of other things I can't think of either at the moment or without more research or at all. I really need to sleep and have spend way too much time on this already so will end with this data.

But IMO while I think it's easy to accept the Commons Main Page gets a lot less people viewing it than at least ~7 wikipedias and maybe even the top 10 or more, whether it's true no reasonable number of people in the general public rely on it as a portal to see content is far less clear especially if we aren't also going to say the Main Pages of the those wikipedias outside the top 10-15 are pointless except to insiders. This doesn't mean anyone here has to care about it, I mean I myself have basically no real involvement in commons and rarely see their main page. But we shouldn't denigrate it as only of interest to insiders without IMO far harder data than I've seen presented thus far. As with IMO a lot of things, like our main page, we actually have only limited data on why people visit, what if anything they get out of it, etc. (Incidentally, I also still haven't found file creation stats for commons.)

BTW the search numbers may seem high but they don't look that different from the main page for some of the other wikipedias even if not so much en, and as I pointed out, we don't know from this whether these are insiders looking for something for WMF projects or to contribute to commons, or people looking for stuff for other reasons. (Note Especial:Pesquisar, Special:搜索 and Spezial:Suche are the equivalent of search although interesting the German wikipedia also has a fair few from Special:Search. Portuguese and Chinese has that too, but to a lesser extent.) Nil Einne (talk) 17:23, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Nil Einne: you just wrote 11k bytes in a single post! I don't think anyone is going to have the time to read all that. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Recent Deaths Error

Why isn't Tim Conway on the Recent Death List??--XTMontana (talk) 17:10, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Two reasons.

1. It's been seven days since he died, and recent deaths are usually only up for 1 week after the person dies.
2. Per [43], it never gained a consensus that the article was in good enough shape to show up on the main page.

--Floquenbeam (talk) 17:18, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

I guess I understand, although he is such a big name. --XTMontana (talk) 14:28, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@XTMontana: If you want to see certain articles posted on the Main Page, it is up to you to do the work needed to get them there; don't rely on others to do it. 331dot (talk) 14:30, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

What do you mean 311dot --XTMontana (talk) 14:36, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Just what I said. You wanted to know why Conway was not on Recent Deaths; this suggests you wanted to see him there. If you want to see any particular posting or edit on Wikipedia, you need to perform the work needed for it to happen. Your participation at the candidates page would be welcome, and I invite you to if you wish. 331dot (talk) 14:40, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Okay thanks. I'm very sorry I hope you are not mad at me I am so dumb I am sorry forgive me please--XTMontana (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@XTMontana: I am not mad, nor do I think you are dumb, I was simply responding to your comment, no more, no less. I apologize. 331dot (talk) 14:43, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Do you think you could Invite me to the thing you were talking about?— Preceding unsigned comment added by XTMontana (talk • contribs)

There is no formal invitation, exactly. If you wish to participate, simply visit WP:ITNC. You may find it helpful to review the available information on what exactly occurs there, which you can read at WP:ITN. 331dot (talk) 14:52, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Wallpaper or background.

It would be better if Wikipedia added a feature on which you can change the background feature or like the background color, and if anyone wants to get specific background wallpaper, they can pay a small price to do just that. Chunkyfungus123 (talk) 00:56, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Chunkyfungus123, I'm pretty sure you can do this for free with Help:User styles. Maybe ask at WP:VP/T for help. Eman235/talk 03:08, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 May 2019

Please add the RfD template to this page, ensuing that the date is 23 May, as I have already completed the nomination, located at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 May 23. Thanks! UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:06, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Done. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:45, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Where is Niki Lauda?

To my view he was notable enough that his death should be listed in the Main Page, 'Recent Deaths' or even get a post in the 'In the news' section. Why not?

Go-in (talk) 23:31, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

See here. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 23:56, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

As with the death mentioned a few sections above 'and many others which appear in the archives for this page' - there is only a certain amount of space on the Main Page, so value judgements (as to both the notability of the person and also the quality of the person's WP article) have to be made.

Even if the Main Page were the size of 'the largest TV to date' and all biographies were well written there would still be comments as to why wasn't a particular death/anniversary/ITN entry included. (When will the resignation be included on ITN?) Jackiespeel (talk) 10:32, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

See here.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:31, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

I seriously think the WP purists must come to their senses here! If a perceived lack of quality of an article prevents its inclusion, the Main Page will run the risk of being skewed. After all, isn't the WP Main Page for the public, not for the cognoscenti to get their quality requirements enforced? Notability must be the firat and only criterion! (Lauda is unimportant to me, it's the principle.) Go-in (talk) 09:19, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

No, article quality is the primary consideration. The main page shows the best of Wiki, not the most notable. Often the two are one and the same but not always. If there's a difference between the two - you could always fix it yourself. Chaheel Riens (talk) 10:00, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Serving the public is exactly why there are quality standards. It does not help the reader if we direct them to an article about something or someone significant but the article is unreferenced, woefully incomplete, or erroneous. --Khajidha (talk) 14:20, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 27 May 2019

The five copies of the Main Page above seem to use old syntax and should be synced with the current source of the Main Page. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 02:02, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 16:27, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Minor correction

Prem Tinsulanonda, Regent of Thailand died on May 26. Can't you add him on the recently dead list? Raisul-wiki (talk) 03:34, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

See WP:ITNC. The Rambling Man (talk) 03:43, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Apollo 11 anniversary and the Main Page

Please comment on the discussion at WT:TFA about the Main Page for 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coffeeandcrumbs (talk • contribs) 13:50, 9 June 2019 (UTC)