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hebrew

hebrew עברית wikipedia just got 100,000 articles. if you go to wikipedia's main page where it shows you the wikipedia ball with other languages surrounding it such as english, polski, ect.. well if you scroll down it shows the languages and how much articles they have, hebrew is still on the 40,000 article selection. it should be moved to the 100,000 article selection. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.196.91.224 (talk) 03:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page#What about the first Main Page, at www.wikipedia.org? - BanyanTree 08:39, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I had planned to inform them but clicking on the Hebrew wikipedia comes up with "כעת יש בוויקיפדיה העברית 99,947 ערכים" which I presume means it only has 99947 articles so I guess some have been deleted. You may want to wait a few days until you're sure it's not going to fall below again Nil Einne (talk) 13:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually I remembered now you technically don't actually have to inform anyone. Just perform an edit on the test page, make sure it works and hopefully an admin will notice and if you didn't screw up they'll copy it to the main template Nil Einne (talk) 14:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

TFA image

How about this image of the band to illustrate One Hot Minute, Today's Featured Article on the main page? We don't use fair use images on the main page, but I think this is a good free alternative.--Chaser (talk) 02:26, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Added, but is it viewable at 100px? We may have to remove it again. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:07, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

France-Americas relations

This article is extremely biased, since it only documents the French presence and actions in the Americas while it does not speak about the American presence and actions in France. WWI and WWII are completely forgotten. This is not neutral at all. You should withdraw the entry from the Did you know? section as long as it remains as it is. Thierry Caro (talk) 12:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

This is my response to a similar statement you made on the talk page of said article, which applies here as well:

I must oppose the identification of this article as "extremely biased". I agree information on the role the Americas have played in France itself is warranted, but the absence of such information does not automatically mean bias. It could mean the author of this article just hasn't got around to including such information, or did not think to include it. Calling an article biased is an extremely big charge on both the article and its author, and I do not believe the evidence is there to do that. What is in the article is neutrally written. HonouraryMix (talk) 13:10, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Whatever you call it, there is a big problem. Who can believe the relations stopped after the American Civil War? This is not serious. Thierry Caro (talk) 13:18, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe relations stopped, and I have stated that more information should have been included. In fact, I recall a DYK rule: D6 of Wikipedia:Did you know/Additional rules says "There is a reasonable expectation that an article which is to appear on the front page, even a short one, should appear to be complete and not some sort of work in progress...Articles which fail to deal adequately with the topic are also likely to be rejected." Whilst your charge of bias is unwarranted, in my opinion, I will agree this article wasn't developed enough to be put up on DYK. HonouraryMix (talk) 13:27, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

The article stands well above DYK average in its development (note that most new DYK submissions are start articles with just above 1500 bytes of prose). The article indeed does not cover 20th century, which is by no means bias, but perhaps the article name or lead could address that. Materialscientist (talk) 13:47, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Some servers down?

Wikipedia seems to have a problem here (London, England). Everything else is fine and I work in a Uni (=stupidly fast connections). Just posting to notify it in case someone else is wondering if they are alone in finding wikipediavery slow...--Squidonius (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

People are working on it at irc://chat.freenode.net/wikimedia-tech. Something was messed up in the servers. Ucucha 14:59, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Church hit with nuclear explosion?

No, obviously not, but having the top bit of news be about a church being burnt right beside a nuclear mushroom cloud did give me a quick double-take. If we have no photos relevant to the church torching, maybe we could have a different picture altogether? I am not, by the way, complaining in any way; I'm just noting that it's an odd juxtaposition. Matt Deres (talk) 00:16, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a photo of the Togo national football team to go alongside the attack on their team bus today but it's just a matter of waiting for somebody to post that as the article appears to be ready. --candle•wicke 00:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Put an end to this, already. Just make a rule so that the illustrated story invariably goes at the top. 201.137.76.56 (talk) 17:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Not a good solution. The order of items represents a chronology. __meco (talk) 20:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Then rather than have the pictures at the top, have them aligned next to the relevant story. Better idea, why not use relevant icons for each kind of topic?

Football could have a vectorized football as its icon. This would also solve the fair-use problem for pictures appearing next to featured articles. Instead of Homer Simpson's face we could have one of those movie shutter things, and it wouldn't be unsightly or abnormal as it'd be the standard. Man I rule for thinking of this. 87.244.116.89 (talk) 08:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

This might be useful: Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page#Why are the images on "In the news" and "On this day" not aligned next to each relevant entry?. --PFHLai (talk) 06:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Haiti

Wikipedia should get the message out about whats happened in Haiti. 206.126.80.161 (talk) 00:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is just an encyclopedia. Please use twitter (or similar networking/blogging sites) to get messages out. --PFHLai (talk) 06:48, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Chinese map

Is this really appropriate to put up top in light of the Haiti earthquake. Also, as much as I love China and maps, how is this that newsworthy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metallurgist (talk • contribs) 04:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It is at the top because 1) It is the latest addition 2) It comes with a free image. The ITN section is not a list of news reports - We have Wikinews for that. The ITN features our encyclopedic articles that happen to be relevant to current events reported by the media outlets. The inclusion of the Impossible Black Tulip (map) item is well-supported by consensus on WP:ITN/C. --BorgQueen (talk) 05:01, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Nobody gives a hoot about the stupid map. --Nricardo (talk) 05:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I just moved the blurb about the quake in Haiti up, because [1] it happened in the afternoon, after the map exhibit opened (The exhibit is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m....), so the later event should be placed higher, [2] I'd rather have people be constructively working on encyclopedic articles, instead of complaining on Talk: Main Page, and [3] I'm hoping for free pics soon. --PFHLai (talk) 06:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

That seems better, but I still dont see why the map should be there. --Metallurgist (talk) 07:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree it's a weak candidate for ITN. No discovery. No destruction of historic / heritage materials. Just the opening of an exhibit. If you want this line off ITN, please start a discussion on WP:ITN/C. --PFHLai (talk) 20:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW, "newsworthy-ness" isn't the number one criteria. Wikipedia is just an encyclopedia, and ITN is not a news-ticker. We are just featuring well updated articles (or new ones) that are relevant to current events. --PFHLai (talk) 06:46, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

"largest moon"

Shouldn't it say largest known moon? Peter jackson (talk) 11:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. It's more or less impossible that there's anything bigger than Ganymede waiting to be discovered. In any case, the main page defers to articles, so Talk:Ganymede (moon) is the place to discuss this. Algebraist 11:57, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

If there were a larger, unknown moon, the gravitational effect would have been detected and we would know it was there, even if we hadn't ever actually seen it. 206.74.5.136 (talk) 16:24, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

That argument is absurd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.118.52 (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

A moon doesn't need to be in our solar system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.51.19.249 (talk) 21:11, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it does. Otherwise it's not a moon. --Tone 22:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The article Natural satellite doesn't mention such a limitation. If what you say is true, it would be a great addition to that article. What source do you have that says that if (when) scientists find a celestial body orbiting an extrasolar planet it would not be classified as a "moon"? (That said, I think requiring the addition of "known" here is probably pointless pedantry - most statements of fact come with an implicit "... to the limits of our knowledge" qualification.) -- 70.90.187.65 (talk) 23:43, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It's helpful to remember what we're discussing Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 13, 2010 (permanent link). The specific wording is "Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter and the largest moon in the Solar System" therefore moons outside out solar system are indeed irrelevant even though it's probably correct they would likely be considered moons. Nil Einne (talk) 02:02, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Satellites of extrasolar planets certainly are considered moons, and are discussed in the astronomical literature under that name (though of course none have been detected yet). There is no requirement for something to be in the solar system to be called a moon; there is also no problem with the phrasing used. Modest Genius ^talk 13:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki list

This says that the Main Page interwiki list includes Wikipedias that have more than 40,000 articles and a minimum depth of 5. However, Wikipedias in Volapük (118,786 articles; depth 9), Nepal Bhasa (60,207 articles; depth 5), Hindi (52,952 articles; depth 18), and Telugu (44,269 articles; depth 6) are not included in the list. Why? --62.204.152.181 (talk) 17:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Some others are excluded from the list as most of their articles are created by bots or are very short - Dumelow (talk) 19:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I think this explanation should be added in the FAQ page. After all, the title of the section contains a potential question by a reader: "Where's my language?" A speaker of one of those languages should be explained that the Wikipedia in their tongue has been considered not worth including. --62.204.152.181 (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I was bold and added the explanation myself. If you feel it should not be there, please remove it. Also, note that I'm not a native speaker of English. Please correct the statement if it isn't worded in the best way. --62.204.152.181 (talk) 11:49, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to switch position of Did you know and In the news

There is a proposal to switch position on the main page of the "Did you know" and "In the news" sections at Wikipedia:A proposal to swap the Main Page positions of WP:ITN and WP:DYK. I did not start it, just requesting input from here. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Will there be a Wikipedia:2010 main page redesign proposal, after Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal failed to reach consensus? --PFHLai (talk) 11:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I bloody hope not.  GARDEN  11:01, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid Wikipedia has become too stale to do any kind of major redesign. The current design doesn't feel old to me though, but it might be because I am used to it. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Stale?  GARDEN  16:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I mean slow moving or conservative (in a non-political sense). Afraid of change. --Apoc2400 (talk) 20:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Haiiti earthquake

How come the Haiiti earthquake does not appear in wikinews? Dan Gluck (talk) 12:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It does. It's their top story right now. If you have any further questions about Wikinews you'd better ask them over there, it is a separate project and we have no control over them - Dumelow (talk) 13:28, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

PUT THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of deaths on the Haiti news item

I don't have time to see the 'proper' place to ask this, but please, I had no idea this news item was important until i heard my local news calling for at least 10,000 DEATHS. --Leladax (talk) 19:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It will be added as soon as some number has been confirmed. We cant add a random guesstimate like that -- Ashish-g55 20:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) It says on ITN "widespread destruction in Port-au-Prince" so a high death toll should be expected. Let's not post the number on ITN till the number gets stable. BTW, the proper place is WP:ITN/C, if you want to propose new headlines on ITN. --PFHLai (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Secondary note: 10,000 isn't "Hundreds of thousands". -Cam^T|C 03:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Just as a note, despite the conflicting info in Leladax's post, there are estimates in the hundreds of thousands. But the conflicting info that Leladax him/herself had and the fact such 'estimates' are still extremely preliminary however do illustrate the point that we should wait Nil Einne (talk) 06:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I know wikipedia is just an encyclopedia, but considering that is one of the most popular pages on the web, I think there should be links to organizations where people can make donations to help Haiti in the main page. It may not be very encyclopedic, but neither was the pledge for money for wikipedia itself that was present until a few days ago, and I think that this time the situation is much more important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.177.153 (talk) 05:19, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

i know what you mean but nobody here can either make that decision or put it on as there will be too many opposes and no consensus. only way to get such a link on would be same way wikipedia donations did... from higher up. possibly jimbo himself would need to make another appeal for donation. it will neven happen through Talk:Main Page. 99.238.91.199 (talk) 14:04, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

A google search for Haiti donations will get people to where they need to go, the main page of Wikipedia is no the place to fund raise for disasters. The WP donation "ad" was appropriate because without donations to WP there will be no WP. Darrenhusted (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

people who want to donate will find a way. I think topic here is how can Wikipedia help. Wikipedia can clearly reach out to help those in haiti by simply putting a donation link on top. Wikipedia does not need to raise funds... the link can be to red cross or whatever. its about creating awareness. I will add that its a little selfish to ask for donations when its needed for yourself but when its to help in exceptional disasters like this then we just sit back and watch. just by putting a link to another donation site wikipedia can help in a big way. but thats just my POV and i doubt it will happen either way -- Ashish-g55 14:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually all major sites including Google has a link right on front page linking to donation site... i dont see why wikipedia cant do the same. -- Ashish-g55 15:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Because its an encyclopaedia, and shouldn't become involved with such matters. Parrot of Doom 16:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Its content is encyclopedic but its still a site. one that is viewed by millions. and hence in position of helping. i dont see how a link can hurt... this isnt just "such" matter. its not political or whatever agenda just a simple way of trying to help millions. -- Ashish-g55 16:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

This is not the place for this discussion, and Wikipedia is not the place to go trawling for donations for anything other than Wikipedia. Go to Jimbo as any decision on the matter would rest with him. Darrenhusted (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Well some major sites may have added a link but Google does not have one on its front page.

More significantly, if we added a link for every thing that caused as much death as this then the entire front page would be full of links. For example, malaria kills a million people every year, which puts the current problems in Haiti (terrible as they are) in context. FerdinandFrog (talk) 16:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Google.com has a link, reading "Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake." I think it's important for Wikipedia to remain impartial though, and the story topping In The News will promote it just fine. — Pretzels ^Hii! 17:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Google.com may well have a link. However I was responding the comment that "all major sites including Google has a link right on front page" (emphasis added), making it clear that the statement was not true. FerdinandFrog (talk) 19:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like the beginnings of scope creep. Wikipedia will by being an encyclopadeia, not a jack of all trades or a generic web-portal. (save Ferris) 121.44.190.99 (talk) 09:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

TFA vandalism

If this were not on the front page, it would have been protected long ago. Why is it then, that this degree of vandalism is apparently acceptable? Parrot of Doom 16:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

yes that is quite a bit. generally TFA would not be protected unless a lot of vandalism is going on. in this case i think its needed. -- Ashish-g55 16:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

166 people are watching it. I would guess they will catch anything. Darrenhusted (talk) 17:26, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

They're not catching the revisions that IPs have been making to release dates, etc. Presumably because of those 166 watchers only a tiny minority have access to the sources used. Parrot of Doom 18:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done Semi-protected. No anonymous user is going to show up and make some crucial, time-sensitive edit to that article that will make all the other damage worth it. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 18:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank-you Kafziel. Parrot of Doom 18:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we re-protect it? It was unprotected after it was taken off the main page, but the vandalism keeps on coming along. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Pls go to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. --70.50.203.31 (talk) 04:00, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

A regional tv presenter is notable???

Surely a regional tv presenter is a billion miles short of being notable enough to be put on the front page of an international publication. However much did he pay you? 78.147.233.120 (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Any article about any subject may appear at the Main Page... except perhaps for WP:ITN where the article's subject must have sufficient "international" importance or interest. –Howard the Duck 16:50, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

If Peter Levy paid me any money to schedule the pic for POTD, I've yet to see it. Curse you, IRS! howcheng {chat} 16:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, DYK requires recently highly updated stubs or recently updated articles so automatically precludes a large number of articles that are already decent; OTD/SA is limited in the number events we can list and while we do vary them a bit (and of course require decent article), we also do consider importance AFAIK. If there are several important events on one day, and we have decent article for all of them, we're unlikely to mention some relatively obscure event. Even with TFA, while nearly every FA can be on the main page, Raul654 does AFAIK aim for variety and likely considers some aspect of importance, for example we only have an average of 1-2 computer game TFAs a month and although some may consider this too many, I'm pretty sure the percentage means they should be higher. Only TFP which primarily in the order of promotion has no real concern of such things some minimal short term variety by holding items when a similar one has just occured(which based on the number of fly complaints we get, isn't enough for some), and perhaps you can only consider the scheduling for appropriate days. As for the OP, I guess you should be glad we never had File:Michele Merkin 1.jpg on the main page. Or don't you care about commercilisition with such images? Nil Einne (talk) 10:29, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

May also be worth noting that we're not an "international publication". ;)  GARDEN  09:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

What's the problem? That guy is as notable as the bugs and fruits on display at the same spot on the front page in the past. --74.14.22.244 (talk) 19:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Featured article picture

Come on Wikipedia, the featured article is Dark Side of the Moon and you don't even have the iconic refracting prism picture? I know the rule is that the image has to be free-use, but this is absolutely absurd! Wikipedia needs to change its policies. 75.69.179.131 (talk) 21:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

While the rules regarding non-free images on the main page are unequivocal, I do think it's a shame that somebody couldn't mock up a quick image of a refraction for today. Bradley0110 (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

We have free prism images, but suspect there would be some kind of objection to using one. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:53, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

• 
• 
• 
• 

Those images are substantially different from the album cover. Recognisably so. This is an article about an album, not a prism. Parrot of Doom 23:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I realize this is irrelevant now, but how are those prism pictures radically different from the album cover? File:Dark_Side_of_the_Moon.png

I realize this is irrelevant now, but how are those prism pictures radically different from the album cover? It's far more recognizable than a picture of the band. 75.69.179.131 (talk) 22:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Where did I say they were radically different? I didn't. Parrot of Doom 10:54, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Problem with "Black background and green text" on Main page

I was interested to see what the Main page looked like under a black background with green text but the colour of the boxes were way too bright to support the Gadget I'm testing. Is there a possibility that we can make a new link to the Glow in the dark version (With the boxes a much darker colour) on Wikipedia or do I have to make one myself? Minimac94 (talk) 22:16, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you have to do everything yourself around here. :-) --candle•wicke 03:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I did it. The New Glow in the Dark version of the Wikipedia Main page is here! I inverted some colours for the boxes and changed the black text to green. Thanks for your help Candlewicke. Minimac94 (talk) 06:09, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

main page tab

Can anyone tell me where the code is that changes the 'article' tab into 'main page'? 71.81.58.174 (talk) 04:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Go to MediaWiki:Common.js and search for the section that says "Main Page layout fixes". Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

No, that just adds an extra link at the end of the languages list. 71.81.58.174 (talk) 07:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

No, it does both. However, if the main page is in the project namespace instead of the main namespace, you need to switch ca-nstab-main to ca-nstab-project for it to work. --Yair rand (talk) 07:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I got it. 71.81.58.174 (talk) 07:54, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

TFA pic

I suggest we use File:Meerkat feb 09.jpg for the TFA. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 05:01, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Cuuuuuuuutttteeeeee!!!! BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 06:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Added, thanks for the suggestion —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 06:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Nominate

How do I nominate a page for "Today's featured Article"? Us441 (talk) 23:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

See WP:TFA. Algebraist 23:53, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

On this day

Oh please, four out of six events in all of history on this day happen to be concerned with America, which has a mere 500-odd year history? I have been noticing the US bias of OTD for a long time (seems almost every day we have an American state joining the union or a report of a battle in the civil war or such like, along with other US-related entries). Please can the people who put up the suggestions do something about the appalling US bias on this - it really does make Wikipedia a laughing stock. I'm putting this abck in the main discussion area to generate the most disucssion. 86.133.241.140 (talk) 08:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Of the hundred OTD items so far this year, I count 21 that are USA-related, compared to (for example) 18 which are UK-related. Where is the evidence for the overwhelming bias you claim? Algebraist 12:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Events that happened in the distant past (think BCE) may not have their exact dates known, so we are actually limited to more current events in which we know exactly what date it happened. So much of events that happened in Ancient Egypt, Ancient China and many other "ancients" may not be seen in OTD. –Howard the Duck 16:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

There is also a change in the calender which makes pre-1582 events slightly problmatical since you have to decide what "on this day" actualy means.©Geni 22:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

See confirmation bias. howcheng {chat} 07:08, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting point, Geni. You could take it further. How about anniversaries in the Jewish, Muslim &c calendars? Peter jackson (talk) 11:17, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Well the standards for converting those to the gregorian calendar are pretty much accepted. Working out what is meant by 21 july 1289 is more complex.©Geni 10:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I obviously didn't make myself clear. What I meant was that on, say, the 3rd of Muharram, whenever that might be, you might mention events on the 3rd of Muharram in other years.

A well-known example of the phenomenon you mention is that Shakespeare & Cervantes both died on the 23rd of April, 1616, but they didn't die on the same day. Peter jackson (talk) 11:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, therefore anyone editing on it must have internet access and should be a speaker of English. A quick look at the article List of countries by number of internet users gives approximately 228 million users in the United States and approximately 239 million users in all other countries where English is an official language COMBINED. Given this, approximately 50% of all articles with a regional bias would be US-centric. While that may not be "fair", it is a simple and expected result of the composition of the user base. Admittedly there is a wide range of error here, as even in the US and UK not all internet users are actually using English and still smaller percentages in many of the former African colonies. Also, many people in countries that do not have English as an official language still edit here. However, the general implication that the US will be the single most represented region is hard to ignore.Khajidha (talk) 18:45, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Just because approx 50% of readers might be from the US does not mean that 50% of On This Day content should be US related. That is clearly a ridiculous stance for an international encyclopaedia giving information on the world's history. And if anything, given the insularity of a lot of Americans and disinterest in any country other than their own, surely we should be encouraging them to read about other cultures? Howard the Duck's point about written history is fair enough, but that still ignores the fact that America has a few hundred years' worth, whereas other countries with a long-developed written history rarely get a mention. When was the last time you saw Iceland mentioned in On This Day, or China, or Sri Lanka? All these countries have had internal events, similar in import to their countries histories as the US Civil War or development of the Union is to the US, but how often do you see them? The aim of Wikipedia is not to reflect its readers: it is an unfortunate side effect of the systemic bias of its contributors that it does. The aim of an international encyclopedia should be too seem completely impartial, so that a reader can't tell that a majority of editors come from a particular country. And just because we write in English does not mean we should confine ourselves to Anglophone world topics. 86.133.246.81 (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Ancient China may have had a long written history (it's not really history if it's not written), but we can't assign accurate for dates such as the birth of Confucius, or when was the Great Wall built, etc. –Howard the Duck 14:16, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The issue about verifying the accuracy of dates is probably the reason why a significant majority of the events posted are from the 19th Century and later. You rarely see one from BC. Zzyzx11 (talk) 14:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

But Howard we have many, many Chinese events such as battles, rebellions, emperors' successions etc that can be assigned a specific date - that was my point (and we know the exact date of Supernova 1054 thanks to Chinese astronomers [1]). And going off the point slightly - try telling Neil MacGregor of the British Museum that history has to be written! And Zzyzx11: I agree about the BC/AD thing, but dates don't have to be C19 to be verified. It just seems On This Day suffers both from recentism and US/UK bias, and we should be doing something to counter that. 81.147.148.17 (talk) 16:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

"The aim of Wikipedia is not to reflect its readers: it is an unfortunate side effect of the systemic bias of its contributors that it does." That was exactly my point. I wasn't defending the bias, merely pointing out that it is expected.

If you want more international scope, either recruit more international editors or work on more international articles. If ~50% of people coming here are from one region, it is simply to be expected that articles related to that region would be worked on more. If articles not related to that region are not of high enough quality, they shouldn't be featured on the main page. Regardless of how much people might benefit from knowing about a subject, if there is no good article about it reading a bad one won't help. Khajidha (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

wow

after several days you have the same 1 sentence 'who givesadam' without numbers or anything to caught the eye about the tremendous disaster in haiti. you guys are something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.70.113.34 (talk) 15:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, seeing as we don't have a confirmed death count yet, I find that understandable. Until it is known, we can't post a guess; we are a verifiable encyclopedia. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 18:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

What part of "causing widespread destruction in Port-au-Prince" do you not understand? Why do you need a number to catch eyes? --74.14.22.244 (talk) 19:07, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Do I have to hand-hold you to see this sounds like buildings-only brought down? --94.69.87.174 (talk) 22:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please use some common sense. --70.50.203.31 (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you understand the concept of verifiable data? This is an encyclopedia, not the news and not a Haiti benefit concert. Khajidha (talk) 03:44, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

What does the concept of verifiable data has anything to do with anything here? --70.50.203.31 (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The death tolls are far from verifiable, just look at the variation being given. Witn no clear number killed, there can be no numbers added to "catch the eye". Khajidha (talk) 23:15, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

"widespread destruction". that could just as well be sardines being poisoned in the pacific. --94.69.87.174 (talk) 22:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen the BBC quote as high as 200,000, and others go as low as 50,000. Given that George Clooney is holding a telethon I think most users will know it is nothing to do with sardines. Darrenhusted (talk) 22:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. --70.50.203.31 (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The UN Secretary-General said it was the worst disaster the organization had faced. Logically, that might seem to imply more deaths than the tsunami some years back, whose total was approaching 300,000 when the news media lost interest. Peter jackson (talk) 11:18, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It is the worst disaster the UN has ever faced because of the loss of local government infrastructure, at least according to reports I've read (see here for example http://www.theborneopost.com/?p=5166 ), not total number of lives lost. Khajidha (talk) 17:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

In "To this day" , the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles

choosen by Bismark to be the spot where the Foundation of the German Empire had to take place should , I think, have been mentionned. Like the selecting of the train-wagon of Rethondes, this humiliation was to leave its trail in the relations between France and Germany (3 wars in less than a century) for a long time. T.y. , Arapaima (talk) 07:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Since nobody seems to object, I add those 2 links. Thanks a lot anyway to the head editors for their work ! T.y. , Arapaima (talk) 07:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Lithuanian wiki

Lithuanian (Lietuvių) wiki have reached over 100 000 articles, Why at the end of the main page it is still next to 'More than 40,000' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.58.205.106 (talk) 14:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Because no-one asked for it to be moved. Try doing so at Template talk:Wikipedialang. Modest Genius ^talk 17:00, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations! Демоны Врубеля/Vrubel's Demons (talk) 18:40, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Raptor Red picture!

Hey, gang! I found a relatively good CC-by licensed picture of Raptor Red's author, Dr. Bob Bakker. Here it is, for your consideration (ie, for the Main Page). The original, uncropped version is here. BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 04:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Fix ITN

There is now literally nothing[2] in the article explaining the diamond blurb. Can someone please remove this from the mainpage already? Peter ^Isotalo 09:20, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought the hook is off the ITN, but it is shifted from the top. There are two straightforward solutions, either revert my above edit commenting the relevant part in diamond article or indeed remove the hook from ITN. This addition is overly technical and speculative to stay in an FA article for long, but I personally have no problem to keep it to "save" ITN. Materialscientist (talk) 09:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The addition wasn't so technical as to not appear in ITN, and is hardly speculative (reported in Nature). I've reverted the commenting. Physchim62 (talk) 10:02, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to read WP:ERRORS and the original article to see more. Main objection is the whole story has little to do with diamond and is based not really on the Nature article, but on Discovery News (i.e. turning WP into news speculations). The original article and its popular summary do not support anything in the ITN hook. Materialscientist (talk) 10:08, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the original paper doesn't support the hook, we should pull the hook, not leave it up there with nothing to link to in the article. Physchim62 (talk) 10:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The only reason why I am hesitant to do that is breaking some ITN process (such as mainpage appearance). Materialscientist (talk) 10:19, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I pulled it. If it is really so bad as you stated (and you're the material scientist here), any minute it remains on the Main Page is a disgrace. The layout of the Main Page looks pretty bad now, but I'm not confident enough at WP:ITN/C to introduce a new hook. Ucucha 10:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

We can always restore an old hook for a while to fix the layout. There've been two ITN updates in the last twelve hours, so the old stuff shouldn't be too stale. The current proposals at ITN/C all have one problem or another. Physchim62 (talk) 10:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Please note that the ITN hook was up for over 20 hours without any type of explanation of this phenomenon appearing in the article. The update was limited to one sentence until I got fed up with the lack of interest in a prominently featured article and expanded the article beyond a mere repetition of the mainpage blurb. I tried to point this problem out several times[3][4][5] in the last 24 hours without any kind of response from ITN regulars or admins.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:00, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's be happy it's resolved now. There aren't a lot of ITN admins, I am afraid. I restored the Guatemala hook that went off the Main Page a few hours ago. Ucucha 11:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

"Saving" ITN? What...? We're talking about a mainpage receiving a few million hits a day. It's our face to the outside world. Putting up facts on it that we don't even deem worthy enough to mention in article space is completely unacceptable. Someone remove this blurb immediately or explain to me why ITN is exempt from minimal standards of quality and overall common sense.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:47, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hooray for finally dumbing down wikipedia!! I never want to hear the words "overly technical" again! Antimatter--talk-- 04:50, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Huh? Did you notice that the complaint was a lack of an expansion (as well as an explanation) beyond what was actually said in the blurb? Or are you suggesting that anyone should be able grasp the significance of this new discovery on their own?

Peter ^Isotalo 09:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Pound Only?

Where cadbury is purchased by Kraft can we have The dollar also, so every American knows how much it exactly is? I would also put the Euro total in too. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Repiceman89 (talk • contribs) 19:18, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree. We use the international Standard for the world- which is right now the dollar. Perhaps have the Pound, the Euro and the Dollar all together would work perfectly. --Rockstonetalk to me! 01:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Since the news article involves both an American and British company, I feel it would be appropriate to have both. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The bid made was in pounds and not dollars. so it would not be accurate to put dollars unless you say "about $ 19 billion" or something similar. putting both would be ok i suppose although it would look awkward. -- Ashish-g55 02:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It was an error when I wrote the blurb, we should convert currencies at current exchange rates. As the deal is in pounds sterling, the value in pounds should have preference, but we can always add conversions in parentheses, as ($18.8bn, €13.2bn), it doesn't take up much space. I've taken today's European Central Bank reference rates to calculate those figures, so they can go up as soon as someone has checked my arithmetic! Physchim62 (talk) 02:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Math is fine, parentheses work for me. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 02:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Yup, looks good to me so I've added it in. Hopefully it's okay! Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 02:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If you convert at current figures you should say so. The payment presumably isn't to be made yet, & the rate may be different by the time it comes due. Peter jackson (talk) 11:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Scott Brown

Scott Brown just won the Senate election in Massachusetts. This needs to be on the front page. --William S. Saturn (talk) 06:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:ITN/C to participate in the relevant discussion. --BorgQueen (talk) 06:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's up now, but because of that, the discussion has denigrated into name-calling. Tsk tsk. –Howard the Duck 15:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: And it's not the Democrats vs. Republicans name-calling. :P –Howard the Duck 16:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, kinda. The headline is, "The Democratic Party caucus loses its supermajority in the United States Senate after a special election in Massachusetts." No real mention of Senator-Elect Brown, and it makes the Democratic Party the subject of the sentence. (?!) Kingsfold (talk) 16:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You should probably post this notice at WP:ERROR as the discussion at WP:ITN/C is a war zone it'll quickly get lost in the debates. –Howard the Duck 16:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Diamond news

Ok, so the WP main page says that the melting point for diamond has been experimentally determined. The diamond article simply says 'pressure dependent', which seems to me to be a bit of a cop-out and particularly uninformative. Could we have a citation for this please? I wouldn't mind knowing what the m.p. is. Brammers (talk) 10:06, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Try clicking that "pressure dependent" link. Diamond doesn't melt, but sublimates (or turns into graphite) at ambient pressure; it melts under high pressure with melting point being pressure dependent. Materialscientist (talk) 10:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree... I specifically clicked on the four links: "experimental", "melting point", "Diamond", and "floats" hoping to find specific information about the melting point of the diamond. I shouldn't have to further click within an article. Generally on items in the "In the News" column, you can get to the Newsy part directly by clicking on the link. Thomas Dzubin (talk) 15:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Blurb altered so that the bolded link directs you directly to the newsy part. --Tone 15:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

thanks - much appreciated. Thomas Dzubin (talk) 16:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Ditto, thanks! Brammers (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Aren't all melting points pressure-dependent? Peter jackson (talk) 10:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but for most materials it is taken at ambient pressure, and in case of diamond, it has to be relatively high pressure (many tens or hundreds gigapascals). Because it is hard to achieve, the pressure is uncertain, again to many GPa's. This alone makes melting temperature uncertain. Extra complication comes from reliable measurement of high temperatures (emissivity of a solid is not known accurately) and from the transient character of experiment. To be more specific, in the recent ITN case, the pressure was 1000 GPa, time 1 nanosecond (no equilibrium) and temperatures about 50,000 K - those are extremes and those P-T parameters are really hard to measure. This is why such experiments are treated as exotics and not included into material properties. Materialscientist (talk) 11:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Tell that to compilers of reference texts. I remember once, many years ago, going to the local central library to try to find out what happens to carbon at high temperatures (melting/sublimation, at what temperature?). I looked it up in 17 books & found 18 different answers. No more than 2 gave any 1 answer. Several gave more than 1 answer in different places. I concluded that the answer was unknown but that reference texts abhor a vacuum of facts. Peter jackson (talk) 18:38, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Donate link for haiti

As per above discussion i would like to make a request to add a link on top of main page linking to a donation site or ways people can donate like most major sites have for example google. This link obviously would not go in any section but like the wikipedia donation banners would be on top. it does not need to be as massive but a simple line would really be useful in diverting some attention towards the topic. Just because wiki is encyclopedia does not mean it shouldnt atleast try and help. If this proves to be too controversial for whatever reason then ignore this request since discussing this for a week first will do no good anyways. -- Ashish-g55 16:03, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

There are hundreds of natural disasters each year, and just because WP has high visibility then it does not mean it should add a donation link for each one. Google.co.uk does not have a link on its front page. If you want to push this further up then go to Jimbo. Darrenhusted (talk) 16:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a difference between disasters that happen all the time vs. this one. I just find it odd that while most of world is trying to find ways to help wikipedia would have a stance where it must not help in anything because its encyclopedia. But i guess i will have to go upto jimbo to get actual answer -- Ashish-g55 16:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

So what is this difference?

The only significant difference I can see is that deaths from diseases (such as malaria) could be prevented if the appropriate action was taken whereas many (most?) deaths from an earthquake cannot. That is an argument for advertising malaria research and not earthquake relief. FerdinandFrog (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

difference is long vs. short term. practically you cant always ask for donations so you have to judge the situations and diseases are not going to just go away whereas this needs help right away. -- Ashish-g55 16:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

So why does a short term problem warrant an ad whereas a long term one, that kills many times as many people every year, doesn't?

"practically you cant always ask for donations so you have to judge the situations" - So who decides? The only sensible option is a simple prohibition.

"diseases are not going to just go away" No of course not but they can be reduced or even eradicated but only if enough work is done and that work needs money. FerdinandFrog (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

This would violate NPOV anyway. Wikipedia would be coming down pretty heavily on the side of rescue efforts. Just think what kind of taint that would put on our coverage. We don't need such editorializing here. Just the facts. 206.74.5.136 (talk) 03:26, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

There a many other places for people to make donations to Haiti relief, Malaria research or anything else you care to name. I sincerely doubt that anyone would come here looking for such things. As much as Ashish may not like it, an encyclopedia is not the proper place for this. Khajidha (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Maybe Wikipedia could have a general relief fund to go to any given disaster and, The money we collect could go to the red cross to give to victims. But its just a suggestion. Parker1297 ( Talk to me please! · Sign my autograph page.) 21:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

These people apparently thought that the disaster was great enough to warrant a link. 158.158.240.230 (talk) 02:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia is not an encyclopedia, what they do or not do is totally irrelevant to what wikipedia does. Khajidha (talk) 04:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I must echo the dissenting opinion toward the establishment of a "Haiti Relief" link anywhere on Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is meant to preserve and share the combined collection of human knowledge and should remain completely neutral in all matters by taking no stances and certainly by not marketing any agendas, no matter how noble they may be. At best, it may be prudent to add a piece of information to the articles concerning Haiti and this particular natural disaster to inform readers that there exist agencies who have been collecting money for relief efforts, and this information could even include the names of a few prominent ones, but any efforts to further any agenda should be left out. Believeitornot05 (talk) 19:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Where this should go: Jimbo  Aar  ►  05:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I merely meant to say that if they thought it was important enough, how sad it is that Wikipedia, one of the most popular and viewed websites on the Internet, views itself as too important to be bothered. 158.158.240.230 (talk) 17:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

unfortunately i did contact Jimbo after posting here but never got a reply back. i guess my mail just got filtered out in some junk mail filter or he chose not to care. most likely the former. either way as i said earlier this was only needed short term when it happened to spread the word across. no point anymore. -- Ashish-g55 02:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I change my mind I do not think we should have a link because remember the tsunami on Dec 26 '04 ? That was way worse and not many funds were all over the place and on tv. Parker1297 ( Talk to me please! · Sign my autograph page.) 01:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Aseroe rubra POTD 19 January 2010

I pointed out that this species is not endemic to Australia as is implied in the text. An admin suggested that the article page needed correction and references included - this was done. The text of the POTD was not altered and the incorrect information persists. Perhaps the procedure for pointing out and correcting errors could be streamlined, so that WP is not seen to be guilty of poorly-researched write-ups. Androstachys (talk) 08:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You make good points, but you have to remember that we are all volunteers here, so the rule of thumb is if you want something done, you need to do it yourself, or at least alert someone so that they know what to do. In this case, I wrote the POTD blurb based on the article. A different admin pointed out to you that the article needed to be changed if the information was in error, which you did. But did you then notify anyone to change the POTD blurb? If not, nobody would have known. Sorry, but that's just how it is and it's unlikely to change considering we have a revolving cast of characters with no defined areas of responsibility. howcheng {chat} 17:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest the creation of a high-priority scratchlist which wpould enable any admin coming online to see stuff that needs to be done urgently, particularly in regard to one-day items like DYK's or POTD's. That way any admin could carry out the necessary corrections. "Reporters: please first correct today's or tomorrow's regular version." Carrying out corrections to the regular template obviously does not catch anyone's attention. A good idea would also be to print the author of the blurb under it, making it easier to locate the correct editor. cheers Androstachys (talk) 07:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I write 99% of the POTD blurbs, but in any case the contributors will be found in the template history. I don't know why I didn't see your edit in my watchlist, but likely I was just busy. The point is, you can't rely on people to notice changes; they need to pointed out. howcheng {chat} 07:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I would note that the wording seems clear to me "Reporters: please first correct" in other words, it's saying please correct the regular version first, then bring it here, not correct the regular version then you don't have to worry about it. I would also note that we already have a scratchlist of sorts, i.e. the error report section above. It's perhaps true we could automatically list changes to the regular POTD templates that main page versions are protected but that's an exception so of limited use and it's easy enough for people correcting the regular version to make a report. As Howcheng mentioned, it is necessary for people to make reports after the error has been corrected in the respective article (and regular section for POTD). Note that the error report section makes clear, in multiple places, that you need to fix articles first and I would think it's easy to see that since the main page lacks refs and is just intended to reflect what articles say it will always defer to article and articles should be fixed before the problem is brought here even more so since if a problem is fixed solely on the main page, no one may even notice the change and the more substanial problem in the article may remain for a long time. In other words, the system is responsibly streamlined as is provided the relatively simple procedure is followed. Correct article, wait for consensus if you feel it's necessary, if it's POTD correct the regular version first, bring the error and correction to admin intention in the error report section, admin corrects error. Of course error reports are sometimes missed and there's a lack of attention at certain times, there's unfortunately no simple way to avoid that. More admin attention for the error report section would help, but some admins are disinterested in that not helped by the sometimes confusing rules and traditions of each section, occasional ownership issues regulars of the section seem to have (DYK and ITN obviously the main ones for that) and the sometimes long winded arguments that occur then as well as the error reports that either aren't errors or may be but aren't corrected in the article first. It perhaps worth remembering that while admins can and do do the work of normal editors, it's unnecessary to specifically ask them to, in other words any task which doesn't require admin attention should either be done by the person who notices it needs to be done or mentioned in a place not intended for admin attention Nil Einne (talk) 13:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If ordinary contributors were able to correct the main page template, the problem would go away. I notice that recently they have been limited to editing the regular template, which obviously doesn't get the attention it deserves. The protected version still shows the errors here. In any event, someone who notices an error is not going to spend an inordinate amount of time jumping between various pages to correct it - the solution should be a one-page fix. Androstachys (talk) 14:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Silly question-mark formatting

Whilst strictly correct, those question marks after each item in the Did you know... section are visually ugly and structurally clumsy. It's not as though it's a quiz, where some of the items may be correct, others incorrect. Since the DYK is a rhetoric device (obviously not awaiting an answer), a better format would be to include the question mark in the header, thus Did you know...? and dispense with them in the body. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.147.140.113 (talk) 11:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. --Dweller (talk) 11:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Various ideas of regarding the formating of the questions have been brought up from time to time and currently conscious lays with this format; however, exceptions have been made in the past. I would kindly direct you to Wikipedia talk:Did you know where centralized discussions regarding the project Did You Know ... are routinely discussed. Kindly Calmer Waters 11:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

An award involving the Main Page

User:Noraft has an award proposal involving the Main Page called The Golden W Award. Here is where you can vote. GamerPro64 (talk) 18:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Verified references are being removed from Tali-Ihantala

I have a question for the Wikipedia administrators. Is it possible to stop someone from reverting verified sources in an article? Recently I've posted several new references and a quotation on Tali-Ihantala article, but these have been reverted by an anonymous IP (62.216.127.93). The anonymous person claims the sources are false, and doesn't discuss on the article's discussion page. Koskenkorva (talk) 15:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A little follow-up. The anonymous IP has actually replied to me on Tali-Ihantala discussion. Still, the person claims that the sources provided by me are my own personal opinions. Anyone who reads the article can see that the sources provided there are not my personal opinions, it is something that was decided in Stavka and later published in Aleksandr Vasilevsky's memoirs. Koskenkorva (talk) 15:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You are in the wrong location for this. Please bring this up at WP:AN. howcheng {chat} 16:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Or, even better, at WikiProject Military History. Physchim62 (talk) 17:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your advices. I am new here and can't find the "right places". Koskenkorva (talk) 17:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem; it's a learning curve it is. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Picasso

This item - from todays news Jan. 25, 2010 should be mentioned in the news: Picasso Rose period painting The Actor 1904 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was damaged when a woman fell into it after losing her balance. The painting had a 6 inch gash that the museum said can be fixed. [6] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Modernist (talk • contribs)

Here please, not here.  GARDEN  21:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I've copied the nomination over. Physchim62 (talk) 22:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Problem with Featured Article Link

I'm not sure if this is really a problem, but on the link for today's featured article, the link "more...." leads to the article, but as a redirect (so instead of linking to "City and South London Railway", it links to "City & South London Railway"). I'm not sure if this is a problem, because it leads to the same page, but just as a redirect instead. If this is something that needs to be fixed, please fix it. Thank you. --Hadger 01:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. — RockMFR 02:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Hadger 03:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that this is not generally a problem, see WP:R2D for a discussion. Modest Genius ^talk 22:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

In practice, the main page usually is is treated as an exception (and probably should be listed as such). —David Levy 22:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

In practice, WP:R2D is often overlooked on the Main Page despite Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 4#Link here, although I wouldn't object if someone changed it. I used to tell people who were unaware of that rule, but that got some amazingly hostile responses. Art LaPella (talk) 22:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I see no such consensus in that discussion. I see only the actual practice.

I certainly haven't "overlooked" the guideline (and I've even informed editors of it upon noticing them bypassing redirects en masse), but I agree that redirects on the main page come across as sloppy. This might not be the case if they were as common as they are in the encyclopedia proper, but they appear infrequently enough to be perceived as erroneous oversights (and at the same time, their replacement is discreet enough to not even be noticed by most users, let alone interpreted as advice applicable to the rest of the site). —David Levy 23:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how you missed the consensus. Did you scroll up from where it says "Link here"? There was disagreement, but I asked for objections and I didn't get any further objection. To me, that is a consensus at the WP:Redirect page until somebody changes it.

The editors I was talking to had indeed all overlooked the guideline (obviously not you, since you were discussing it). You can call that overlooking a "practice" if you want to.

I have no opinion on whether WP:R2D, with or without the Main Page clarification, is "sloppy". I do have an opinion on respecting the guideline and its clarification, or else changing it. For more about that philosophy please see User:Art LaPella/Because the guideline says so. Art LaPella (talk) 23:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I scrolled up. I'm sorry, Art, but a small meta-discussion that goes largely unnoticed doesn't override actual practice. Our policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive, and our usual practice is to bypass redirects on the main page. The guideline should be revised to reflect reality, not the reverse.

I don't even see what led you to believe that such consensus existed within that discussion, and the lack of objections to your assessment more likely was indicative of non-participation than of tacit agreement. —David Levy 00:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

We could argue about the consensus and how universal the actual practice is, but my main point is: if the guideline should be revised, then by all means revise it! Maybe they'll talk you out of it. Maybe they will agree. I don't know. We shouldn't have one rule here and another rule there. Art LaPella (talk) 00:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, my personal, typically very long view is there are different classes of redirects and they need to be treated differently.

For example, links to equally valid and accepted alternative spellings (i.e. WP:Engvar applies) or names e.g. Myanmar, Timor–Leste, petrol, colour, Coco Pops, Franklin Roosevelt, BBC, Wan Tan Mee are clearly not broken and should not be changed unless there is consensus either in the article or on policy to use the alternative for whatever reason. E.g. if US spelling is used in the article obviously they should be color and gasoline.

Then there are links to redirects that may or may not one day be created as articles of their own and also where they redirect to could move to other locations but are likely (or hopefully) going to remain the best article. E.g. meowing, Eloise Hawking & plane crash (probably better examples but couldn't think of any).

The final case is when one is seen as the preferred, correct or proper title or name. E.g. as with here City and South London Railway (at least I thought so but noticed editors can't seem to make up their mind since both are used for different articles) and again better examples I'm sure, I just couldn't think of any. But to use more blatant examples Dr Who or Lee Kwan-Yew. In this case, these should be fixed since they are broken IMHO.

There is of course a grey area where both are correct and it's not that clear which one to choose (the article obviously somehow settled on one) and no one really cases that much either way which is perhaps where it's most unclear what to do. Perhaps Franklin D. Roosevelt falls into this (I'm not sure).

When it comes to piped links, don't pipe if there isn't a good reason to. E.g. there's no need to do Franklin Roosevelt, British Broadcasting Corporation, petrol or meowing. It come across as unprofessional and unnecessary and could even seem offensive or be seen as biased in cases where engvar applies. I.E. why do you do Myanmar but not Burma or colour but color?

In cases when one specific meaning is meant but it's possible the target may change it may be preferable to pipe. E.g. a case which I got from the archives, livable is probably a good idea if quality of life is definitely meant since it's quite conceivable livable may one day direct to something else or be a disambig page.

Also when you do decide to or have to pipe, don't pipe to a redirect unless there's a good reason you would have done so if you weren't piping. In other words cereal, country, noise are all fine but not Concordia or railway.

Note that this also means when you hit the grey area, if you do decide one is better, the solution would usually be to change to the term and avoid the redirect altogether rather then pipe unnecessarily (unless you pipe because you have to). Only e.g. I could think of, don't do Franklin Roosevelt but changing Franklin Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt may be acceptable if you feel it best.

I don't personally see the need to treat the main page differently. It's true one thing the applies to main page but not elsewhere is that it's only there for a short time so you don't have the advantage you have in other pages where meowing may change to somewhere else or we may one day move to Timor-Leste and therefore have the occurance of the Timor-Leste when Timor-Leste is the article but don't consider this means practice should be much different. You could argue it means livable is preferred but I'm not so sure about that. Ultimately our primary concern should be what seems best and most professional be it in articles or the main page so if it's a bad idea on the main page, it's likely a bad idea in articles. We should discourage people from going around 'fixing' links to 'save server resources' or because they're broken when they aren't but equally there's no reason not to actually fix links if they are broken.

I do agree clarificiation of the policy will help although I don't consider it intrinsicly against what I'm saying. It says not to fix redirects that aren't broken, but doesn't really define what's an unbroken redirect that well and I would consider most of what I said to fall within the policy as is.

Nil Einne (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe the two exceptions noted at WP:R2D are much more limited than the above, so that isn't what they had in mind at all. I believe your reason to pipe Dr. Who, for instance, is that the show's logo spells out the words "DOCTOR WHO", so Dr. Who is technically wrong. But how does piping solve it? Shouldn't he just be called Doctor Who without a pipe? So once again, I think you should argue at Wikipedia talk:Redirect, not here, so the people who wrote the guideline can have their say. Art LaPella (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

After looking at Dr. Who again, I think you meant "unprintworthy redirects", but those are already excluded by the guideline . Art LaPella (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I appreciate parts may be confusing, particularly since you need to see the code or hover over the links to get an idea of what I meant in some instances. Note that I was only referring to piped links in the second part, in the first part I was referring to unpiped links. Anyway what I meant is there should never be links to [[Dr. Who]], be it in articles or on the main page. Except for quotes although we generally avoid linking quotes anyway. So if you see [[Dr. Who]] it should be fixed to [[Doctor Who]] not [[Doctor Who|Dr. Who]] nor left as is because WP:R2D. Ditto if it's [[Doctor Who|Dr. Who]] of course. I don't think these are or have to be exceptions, since IMHO by definition, these redirects are broken. And that's part of a problem, the guideline doesn't really define what's a broken redirect, and it is a difficult thing to do in some instances. But if you try to argue WP:R2D a valid argument is that the redirect is broken even if is isn't an exception, therefore the argument becomes 'is it broken?' and as this isn't generally defined it's not something easily settled by the guidelines.

I've never been good at brevity as I guess most regulars know. Perhaps a briefer way to explain it is if it's a valid or even preferred usage in the article and the redirect links to the right place and is unlikely to change to an unsuitable article then it should usually stay and not be piped unnecessarily be it in the article or main page. When the redirect may change to an unsuitable place, then it's probably a good idea to pipe. When it's an incorrect or non preferred usage, then you should fix the entire thing, and not pipe. When you are piping, usually link to the actual page not a redirect unless there's a good reason to use a redirect which leads us back to the earlier considerations.

P.S. A somewhat associated issue is a lot of people seem to think that a decision in one article must be followed in other articles which is clearly against policy. When we hit simple examples like colour, people quickly learn this isn't the case but I've seen evidence myself people ignore or are confused by this for more complicated examples, e.g. Myanmar or e-mail. And we also get cases when people think any reference to a US city should follow the article naming, so if it includes the state, even if the state isn't necessary it should say city, state, country rather then the simpler city, country even though the relevant guideline is clearly referring to article naming only. I'm obviously not just referring to redirects here

Nil Einne (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

After I left the house I had an awful feeling that your post matches the guideline a lot better than my first impression told me it did, and now my feeling is awfuller. Sorry. I'm pretty sure WP:R2D doesn't tell you to leave [[Dr. Who]] as is; it actually says "It is likewise unhelpful to edit visible links for no reason other than to avoid redirects. ... This rule does not apply to cases where there are other reasons to make the change, such as linking to an unprintworthy redirect." But that's a technical issue. The philosophical issue is that you're trying to cooperate with your understanding of the guideline, and that's the only part I can get excited about. So mumble mumble mumble ... Art LaPella (talk) 06:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Just some facts about DW, if you're going to discuss it.

1. the programme's onscreen title has always been DOCTOR WHO (in block caps)
2. the programme was regularly headed Dr(.) Who in Radio Times in the 60s & 70s, Doctor Who from the 80s on
3. the character appears in the cast lists usually in the following forms:
   1. Dr Who for the 1st 2 Doctors
   2. Doctor Who for the 3rd, 4th & 9th
   3. The Doctor for the 5th to 8th & 10th

Peter jackson (talk) 10:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Guess Dr Who wasn't as simple as I thought then, oops :-P P.S. I admit I rarely fix redirects of any kind, except when I end up in a disambiguation page so my comment was more philisophical then practice. Well except I do get annoyed when people go around changing names in other articles because of a decision in one article and often revert it when I see it Nil Einne (talk) 14:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm surprised...

...that there haven't been any complaints about Avatar being mentioned on the ITN section. ;) --Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 17:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The story was discussed long in advance, both on WT:ITN and on WP:ITN/C. There's a clear consensus that it should appear. Given that the WP article had more than 100,000 hits/day every day for over a month before being posted on the Main Page, there's a good audience reason as well to give people the quickest link! Physchim62 (talk) 17:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I was just saying I was suprised about the lack of complaints, I don't have a problem with it myself. --Yowuza yadderhouse | meh 17:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I was surprised by the easy consensus on most points! The story was predictable, even if the date wasn't, so there was time to discuss beforehand. There has been a complaint at WP:ITN/C about the effects of inflation, so it's not true to say that there are "no complaints". Physchim62 (talk) 18:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Disparity between "In the news" and linked article

I've noticed that the bit about Ali Hassan al-Majid says that he got four death sentences, when the article says he got twice as many. This confuses me: are we only counting the ones he got before his execution, or after as well? --Zero ^Talk_Contribs 18:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Ali Hassan al-Majid got death sentences on four different occasions, and that is the source of the "four death sentences" in the ITN article. It turns out that he got five death sentences on the first trial, which is the source for the number "eight". Physchim62 (talk) 18:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it to eight. It seems like, according to the article (and its source from The New York Times), eight is decisively correct and four is decisively wrong. -- tariqabjotu 18:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Four death sentences is not "decisively wrong", as we are talking about death sentences given on four different occasions and as it is impossible to kill someone more than once. This edit, on the other hand, is "decisively wrong" when compared to the version of WP:ERRORS that is supposed to justify it. Physchim62 (talk) 19:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see. So he was tried four times, getting two sentences per trial? --Zero ^Talk_Contribs 21:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, it was five death sentences from the first trial and one each from the other three. But I could be wrong: the guy was convicted of killing thousands, he might have had thousands of death sentences for all I know! I know very little about Iraqi law, and I couldn't read the judgments in Arabic even if someone sent them to me ;) All I'm saying is that the two statements are not contradictory, even if we might be able to word things better somewhere. Physchim62 (talk) 22:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll presume your quibble about WP:ERRORS was a joke; you knew what I meant, it's all in basically the same place. Anyway, I still don't see how four death sentences could possibly be correct. He received five death sentences in one trial and three in three others; that's clearly eight. It doesn't matter that you can't kill someone five times, or eight or four; those are eight different sentences that would have each needed to be overturned in order to save him. It's similar to when someone is said to be serving three life sentences (in countries where a life sentence is really until the end of someone's life). -- tariqabjotu 01:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Heh. I remembered the discussion on reclusión perpetua. That was bizarre. –Howard the Duck 02:44, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Another whinge about excessive pipes in the main page

Today's featured picture has an illustration from The Hunting of the Snark, and says it's divided into 8 [[Canto|fits]]. Please please 'please don't do this. This is a terrible example for readers who may become editors. Identifying one of Carroll's "fits" with one of (say) Dante's canti is original research and not allowed, and in general pipes should not be used in a way that encodes assertions about the linked word into the link itself. --Trovatore (talk) 01:35, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Please propose tweaks / revisions to the texts on TFP using WP:ERRORS near the top of this talk page. Thanks. --PFHLai (talk) 05:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. But honestly I care very little whether this particular one is corrected or not; it'll be gone tomorrow. My request is that main-pagers keep this point in mind in general; that they not use pipes in this general manner. --Trovatore (talk) 06:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not original research on my part. See fit: "Also spelt fytte, a canto, a section or part of a poem". howcheng {chat} 07:32, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. OK, maybe. Just the same, pipes are massively overused in the Main Page, and this teaches bad lessons to potential editors. --Trovatore (talk) 07:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Would you have preferred I linked to the disambig page? That practice is discouraged, you know. I suppose I could have left it unlinked, but I thought it was a useful one myself. howcheng {chat} 08:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I would have preferred it unlinked. It's true that I learned something; I didn't know that meaning of fit, but it's not clear it was Carroll's primary intent (the subtitle is An Agony in Eight Fits, so I think fit here means more like seizure, though there may also be a pun on the meaning you linked). --Trovatore (talk) 08:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

According to The Hunting of the Snark it was indeed supposed to mean "section of a poem" and be a pun on "seizure". howcheng {chat} 16:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion/moving/protecting the Main Page

I just observed that it's possible for me to unprotect the Main Page, even though it's not possible for me to move it, and there's no "delete" tab at all. Accordingly, I have two questions:

1. Since the Main Page can't be moved, why is there a "Move" tab? I assume that it could be removed, since the "Delete" tab has been removed.
2. Why is it even possible for me to unprotect the Main Page? I can't imagine a reason why we'd want to do that. Nyttend (talk) 17:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There are multiple locks on the Main Page, so that a single admin cannot actually deprotect it. In practice, it would require a developer to unprotect it for all users. Any admin can edit the Min Page, but at the risk of their admin bit if they go rogue. Let's not forget that the Main Page gets (on average) more than fifty hits per second. Physchim62 (talk) 17:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I imagine though that a single regular admin could unlock any given template, seeing as they are located in the Template: namespace. Random89 06:17, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The Main Page can be deleted or moved by first editing MediaWiki:Mainpage, and the delete link is hidden by CSS IIRC (maybe the move link can be hidden the same way). See this section on the Administrators' noticeboard for background and this mailing list post. Graham87 12:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

"Keep your nose clean" Physchim62 (talk) 13:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, no they can't. All templates on the main page are cascade protected by merit of being on the Main Page. The Main Page itself is transcluded on several other pages with cascading protection so it can't simply be unlocked. All this means that while we have had problems with rogue or compromised admin accounts in the past, it's a lot more difficult now. In terms of beans, this is basically discussed in the FAQ so it's not exactly a trade secret. Nil Einne (talk) 07:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

On this day...

Shouldn't only anniversaries be mentioned which are divisible by 5 like done in the German wikipedia? For e. g., we have 2010 now, only events from , 1050, 1585, 1900, 2005 etc. should be then mentioned not from 1077 or like that. When we had 2011 now, respectively 1051, 1586, 1901, 2006...Just a suggestion. Adherent of the Enlightenment 10.0 (talk) 14:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I would definitely oppose that proposal. Unfortunately, that would mean that the extremely significant events, like September 11 attacks and Invasion of Poland for example, would only get to appear every five years. Also, it will be very difficult to find at least 5-6 articles for each day on events divisible by 5 due to systemic bias here on the English Wikipedia. Zzyzx11 (talk) 15:13, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

In The News photo

I suggest that it should be changed to File:JD_Salinger.jpg. Zazaban (talk) 23:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a fair use image (which for much-discussed reasons are not allowed on the main page) and is currently the subject of a deletion request. Probably not a good idea. Modest Genius ^talk 00:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The Raven - January 29

The "on this date" listing for "The Raven" is not entirely correct. Technically, the January 29, 1845 publication was a republication. However, it was the first publication using Poe's name. --Midnightdreary (talk) 23:14, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Some statistics

Ever wondered who reads what on the Main Page? Well, I've collected some statistics for the first ten days of this month, which I summarize below. I won't bore you with all the statistical details, although questions are welcome. My personal prize goes to WP:POTD, as I would never have imagined that 10,000 people would regularly click on an image to get further details! To give a comparison, and for the same period, the Main Page got a median hit rate of 4.5M hits/day. For those who wish to do their own calculations, don't forget that I've used medians (which damp the effect of extreme values) rather than arithmetic means (commonly known as "averages"). Physchim62 (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Summary Main Page viewing statistics, 1–10 January 2010

Section	Median hits per day		Median hits per story
	whole section	per story	per day*	while posted
Today's featured article	40.6k	—	27.5k	34.8k
In the news	197.6k	—	56.9k	111.3k
Did you know	44.3k	1.0k	1.0k	—
Selected anniversaries	64.9k	7.7k	7.7k	—
Picture of the day	—	12.1k	12.1k	—
* For TFA and ITN, this is a peak daily hit rate, the highest daily hit rate while the story was on the main page. Source: stats.grok.se: thanks to User:Henrik.

Thanks, that is some interesting data. I perhaps wouldn't have expected OTD to get that much. Ucucha 14:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Why not, might I ask? Physchim62 (talk) 16:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Maybe because it's squeezed into the bottom right and requires scrolling :)  GARDEN  17:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree it is interesting that OTD gets more views than DYK, despite it being in a worse position (assuming most people read top to bottom, left to right). TFA gets fewer views than I'd have thought as well. Although I had noticed that my only TFA (so far!) gets about 32k hits when it is in OTD each year, but only got 56k when it was in TFA - Dumelow (talk) 17:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I've worked on two TFAs: one gets between 3k and 8k hits every day, while the other is consistently in the hundreds of hits/day. For me, that was work that was worth the effort. Physchim62 (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Today's Featured Article has only one story, and it's posted for only one day. So why are there 3 different figures for "median hits per day – whole section", "median hits per story – per day*", and "median hits per story – while posted"? Why don't all 3 statistics match the median hits that story gets on its allotted day? Art LaPella (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Well TFA really has four stories on any one day, and people do read the stories from previous days' TFAs in much higher numbers than if the articles were not linked from the Main Page. That explains the difference between "median hits per story – per day*" and "median hits per story – while posted". As far as I can see, the difference between "median hits per story – while posted" and "median hits per day – whole section" is an artifact of the small data set: the two should be very close for a large data set. I can check that point if people are interested. Physchim62 (talk) 19:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's pretty neat. It would make for an interesting study in human internet psychology if we were to mess around with the relative positions of TFA, OTD, and DYK and see if and how the data changes over a similar period of time, perhaps it would even help us to arrange the sections more appropriately (to maximize hits on each respective section). After all, is there any hard data like this that supports the theory that the current format is "superior" to a different format? Now is our chance to find out...Antimatter--talk-- 22:48, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

A proposal to swap the Main Page positions of WP:ITN and WP:DYK earlier this month was shelved. Almost all ITN regulars that had an opinion voted oppose. 03:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the viewing figures are telling us something rather different. If only a thousand readers click on the "average" DYK hook, it's not because of the position of DYK on the Main Page. Even once you've factored in the fact that a DYK hook is only posted for six hours, the "average" OTD hook (just to the right) is twice as effective at getting clicks through to the encyclopedia, and the "average" POTD (even lower down the page) is three times as effective.

Another point which implies that position is unimportant is the fact that the number of page hits for a DYK hook hardly depends at all on it's position in the list (except for the top hook). If there is a dependence (and I'm not sure it's significant), then it's far worse to be at #7 than at #8! Physchim62 (talk) 08:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the most useful statistics are in the first column. Since all 5 sections occupy roughly the same amount of Main Page space, this approximates a comparison of how well each section uses its allotted Main Page exposure. Thus one POTD should be compared to all the DYK hooks for a day, not to the DYK hooks for six hours or whatever that figure is at the moment. By that standard, In The News is by far the most clicked section of the Main Page at 197k per day. Trailing far behind are Anniversaries at 64k, Did You Know at 44k, the Featured Article at 40k, and the Picture of the Day at 12k. This analysis could be further refined by considering that the top of the page counts more than the bottom; that is, if Picture of the Day were moved up then maybe it would get 40k, but I doubt it. Also, there's no way to count how many people enjoy looking at the picture without clicking on the story. I don't believe the statistics include how many people click that picture, or any of the other pictures on the page. Art LaPella (talk) 17:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not at all surprised that ITN is so popular. Besides its prominent position on the page, I find that it is often the first place I hear about imoprtant world events. I probably click an ITN link several times a day. Wikipedia is not a news site, but it would appear that people are treating it that way. Antimatter--talk-- 20:36, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps people use it as a navigational aide, as well -- they see high-profile stories in the press, visit Wikipedia to get an comprehensive encyclopaedic treatment of the same stories, and using ITN as a shortcut for the easiest way to find the relevent article. I'm pretty sure I used ITN this way for the Haitian Earthquake. -93.97.122.93 (talk) 01:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

TFA seemed to be a bit low until I realized that these are click-through stats. Seems reasonable, given the much larger hook, that many people will read the TFA summary and be satisfied enough not to click through. I know I rarely click though to the full TFA article but I often read the whole summary. I'm happy to see SA doing so well since I set-up that section. :) --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 21:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A more controversial interpretation of that statistic would be that Featured Articles are mainly for editors, not readers. Art LaPella (talk) 17:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Canceled Moon Program

I can't find many sources, but the cancellation of NASA's moon program seems frontpage worthy... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7011322.ece —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.71.13.148 (talk) 04:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:ITN/C#The Financial Crisis leads to America abandoning human spaceflight. Art LaPella (talk) 05:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Triviality

Should the criteria for featured articles not include some judgment as to whether the article is not totally trivial or ephemeral? --MWLittleGuy (talk) 18:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The criteria for any article, featured or otherwise, includenotability and verifiability. An article failing those criteria is unlikely to survive for long. Rodhullandemu 19:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Who would get to decide that? Beside the fact that to be a featured article, there had to be enough reliable sources out there that believed it was not trivial, the tag of trivial itself is entirely subjective. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 01:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

White bias

About a month and a half ago - I was raked over the coals for trying to point out that the Featured Article gives preferential treatment to articles on white westerners (mostly men). So, I just sat back and kept track for a while, and in the last 35 days, there have been about 10 white men featured and about 3 white women featured - and none of what North Americans or white Europeans would call "visible minorities". No famous people of any other color throughout history at all since I was raked. Pair this with percentages from the lists on "Wikipedia:Featured_articles" - Politics and government - 84% - Religion, mysticism and mythology - 92% - Royalty, nobility and heraldry - 97% - Sport and recreation - 90%+ - Media - 95%+ - etc etc etc... and you may understand why I needed to light my own coals and lay my own rake beside them. The same thing happens in western schools unfortunately. To this day, the average text book the likes of "A History of Philosophy" is still woefully skewed towards western historical thinkers. Check it out... I'm not saying that eastern countries are any better at being inclusive than we are, but we're here to help people expand their horizons in a fair, inclusive way, right??? Wouldn't it be great to lead by example???Paradise coyote (talk) 18:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It would be great to see more featured articles on people less known to the west but just as influential. Why not write one? Cheers! Scapler (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this simply means that more people have added better content to these pages. If more people were to concentrate on more diverse figures, then they'd be a wider range of featured articles. It's simply skewed to what people in the anglosphere tend to be interesting in, sadly. The spanish language wikipedia has more and better articles on Latin American topics, for example. Zazaban (talk) 22:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page#I think that the articles listed on the Main Page are awful and much more important articles should be there instead. Isn't the Main Page biased towards certain topics? What can be done about it? - BanyanTree 22:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Surely in order to lead by example we would have to swing the bias all the way around and then start positively descriminating against articles containing white males, just so we can get some notable non-white people on the MP. The fact that, for example, the article James I of England is FA class, whilst Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are not, should not be overruled in order to get a non-white person on the main page. As soon as you start doing that the integrity of Wikipedia is lost. People often criticise the fact that there are a lot of computer game related FA's on the main page, but you wouldn't imply there is some form of electronics bias. It is simply a reflection that certain groups of articles are better developed than others and has nothing to do with a racial bias --Daviessimo (talk) 23:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

This is just systematic bias in the encyclopaedia as a whole and the types of articles which are worked up to FA standards, not bias in the FA selection for the main page. Yes, it would be good if we had better coverage. The best way to do that is to work on articles which are in under-represented categories - there's nothing we can do here. See WP:BIAS for a discussion. Modest Genius ^talk 00:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I was under the impression that these articles are approved by senior stewards/editors. If they are, then there is something that can be done. There is always something that can be done - especially when we have thousands of options(articles) at hand... It all comes down to the process that is in place doesn't it? Even if the FA is picked randomly from what is submitted, we have options to change the process, right?Paradise coyote (talk) 00:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

A short answer is we need to produce more FAs on various topics. I do not see any bias in selection for the main page. Materialscientist (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The rules for selecting TFA can be summarised as 1) must already be a WP:Featured Article, which has a set of objective 'quality' criteria; 2) hasn't been selected before and 3) requests for specific articles on dates relevant to their content can be made. See WP:TFA for a full description. The overwhelming factor in TFA bias is the bias that already exists in FAs. Modest Genius ^talk 00:58, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Why labor in FAs when you can manage an article, "quickly" get it posted and make it stay there for at least a week? But that's all another white man bias too so... –Howard the Duck 06:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

35 days' worth of TFA's isn't what I'd call a representative sample, although I'm no statistician. I just quickly reviewed the TFA's for last year, and most of the year, articles about other "races" or cultures appeared pretty frequently. There were occasional periods when mostly Caucasian- or race-neutral topics appeared, but overall, we're not doing as badly as you imply. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 16:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Forgive me for splitting this into 2 comments... I was interrupted. Paradisecoyote, I think the reason you were "dragged over the coals" is because using words like "bias," especially when discussing racial bias, usually (intentionally or not) implies that the inequity is deliberate. Even indirectly accusing Wikipedia editors of allowing racism to dictate the contents of the Main Page was not going to be received well. A more productive, less inflammatory approach would be to:

1. Find Featured Articles about the "visible minorities" you'd like to see represented but which haven't appeared in TFA, or bring a non-FA up to Featured status.

2. Request (through the proper channels) that it appear in TFA.

3. Repeat as necessary until you no longer perceive an imbalance.

If your TFA nominations inexplicably fail to produce results, then maybe... maybe... it's time to start using inflammatory language like "white bias." Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 17:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Take a closer look at the statistics... My God... please... There is no inflammatory language in my concerns if you do a proper evaluation. And by the way people... It's business as usual isn't it? An American comic book followed by a white politician? And then - a dance club remix song based on a Christian Bale rant? Is that as progressive as you people can get? Ugh.Paradise coyote (talk) 03:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If you say that the overall numbers look bad, I'll accept your word on it, as I'm not motivated to go keep a tally of every article. My point about inflammatory language stands, though, as someone (you? someone else?) saw fit to name this section "White Bias," which is inflammatory. It assumes deliberate discrimination. That assumption may be tested by following the three steps I outlined above. (The reference you made to "light my own coals" in the original post is a whole different kind of "inflammatory"... ;) sorry, kidding) Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 16:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Try to avoid arguments against the person, please. Whether or not Paradise coyote has graduated high school has no merit on the validity of the statistics. Thank you. Iciac (talk) 11:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Salinger but not Zinn?

The death of the reclusive J. D. Salinger was mentioned but not the death of historian Howard Zinn. Zinn’s most famous work was People’s History of the United States. This work was much more in line with ideals and workings of Wikipedia than works of Salinger, whose seminal works were from the 50’s and 60’s. Wboese (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I missed the debate on inclusion, but I think it would've been appropriate to combine the blurbs. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 22:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Just a question: how exactly is his work being "in line with ideals and workings of Wikipedia" at all relevant?--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Pls go to WP:ITN/C for this. --74.14.19.14 (talk) 00:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how Wikipedia is particularly for civil rights or against war. In fact, if we were either or these things, regardless of how correct any particular viewpoint is, we would be POV. As an encyclopedia, we should not have any ideals in our article coverage. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 00:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

At the heading of the main page of Wikipedia is the statement, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” This seems to be very similar to the premise behind Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States.” History from the ground up, encyclopedia from the ground up; not dictated by some higher authority.Wboese (talk) 08:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

And? Our opinion of his work as no bearing whatsoever on his death's listing on ITN. I'd suggest you read over Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, uh, this has nothing to do with how ITN is selected. It's done by the quality of the updated articles, and the quality of the sources. Not by relevance to Wikipedia's organisation, even if you are wrong...  GARDEN  09:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC) its cold in vienna, on feb.-jennifer rojas from santa rosa(: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.94.254 (talk) 01:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Wii Sports picture

Hey, gang, here's a picture of some people playing Wii boxing that is suitable for the TFA, if anyone's interested. BobAmnertiopsis∴_ChatMe! 02:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I doubt this would be a good idea. --190.226.50.130 (talk) 15:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Why not have a picture of the box art, or a screenshot (like this cropped)? dogman15 (talk) 19:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Because those images are copyrighted and our policy is to include only free images on the main page. See also this section of the main page FAQ - Dumelow (talk) 19:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Web slices

Has anyone ever considered adding webslices to the wikipedia front page? The content on the main page is frequently updated, and so it seems like a prime candidate for adding web slices. Anybody have any thoughts as to why we shouldn't do this? (The templates for webslices is {{WebSlice-begin}}.)Smallman12q (talk) 01:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The template says "Web Slices currently work in Internet Explorer 8 and Mozilla Firefox". Do they work in other browsers too? --BorgQueen (talk) 05:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

There are rumors Opera may support web slices. Not sure about the others though. Mozilla and IE currently have the largest market share...so it's still widely available.Smallman12q (talk) 22:01, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you explain what this would actually do? Modest Genius ^talk 21:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

A "web slice" allows users to subscribe to a portion of a Web page. There is an official video of it at youtube. I've also put up some screenshots at imageshack. There is also a discussion at the Village pump. Currently, it's mainly for IE8, but that may change...Smallman12q (talk) 16:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

<shrug> looks like a fairly pointless feature, but I suppose it can't hurt. It would need to have a thorough testing on all common browsers (including mobile browsers) before being deployed, but if it doesn't change the appearance for non-IE8 I doubt it would be a problem. Modest Genius ^talk 17:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the content on the Main Page changes often enough for this really to be a useful feature. Given that it might potentially break some browsers, I don't think it's even worth the experiment. Physchim62 (talk) 18:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm quite sure it doesn't break any browser.Smallman12q (talk) 18:17, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I see various loose bits of code on User:Smallman12q/webslice test in Firefox 3.6 (a meta tag at the top, an extra section, a loose anchor at the bottom, some irrelevant notes, and your signature). Put together a sandbox of exactly the code you would like to see on the Main Page and get some of the people at VP:T to help you test it properly. Modest Genius ^talk 20:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Will do.Smallman12q (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I've put up some screenshots at imageshack,for those of you with IE8, you can give it a try at User:Smallman12q/Main Page Web Slices.Smallman12q (talk) 23:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Aka-Bo

The statement about Aka-Bo being "one of the worlds oldest languages" is not supported by the language's article, and from a linguistic standpoint it is nonsense (all living languages have the same age). Could we please just remove that phrasing - it is embarrassing that when finally a linguistic fact appears in the news wikipedia should report it like this. ·Maunus·ƛ· 06:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 06:18, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

'all living languages have the same age' err, what? Surely Afrikaans is younger than Hebrew? Modest Genius ^talk 15:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the point is that language change is essentially continuous. Dutch didn't one day suddenly change into Afrikaans so that there was a new language. How old is English? What does the question actually mean? The dividing lines between languges are ultimately arbitrary. Norwegian & Danish are virtually identical, but they count as different languages for political reasons. Peter jackson (talk) 10:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Next time, please post on #Main Page error reports above. --74.14.19.14 (talk) 07:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Potlatch River

Did you know ... "that the original name of Potlatch River, Idaho, was Colter's Creek, which was named by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805?" ("Did you know", 2010-02-05) Maybe this should be under the "white bias" section. But I guess "the original name" of a river is obviously the first name given by a white person. What it was called by the people who lived at the river before (or after) 1805 is obviously irrelevent; they weren't white. At least that seems to be the point of view of the Wikipedia authors and editors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.68.134.1 (talk) 14:46, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Racism is a serious accusation, so be careful, since you don't personally know anyone here, I don't think you can make a judgment. That being said, you have a point, and while I don't think it was intentional, it seems like misinformation to call it an original name, since the people the article says lived there for hundreds of years most certainly had a name for it. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 15:10, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I corrected the hook to say "original English-language name". Ucucha 15:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Next time, please post on #Main Page error reports above. --74.14.19.14 (talk) 07:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

correction needed in In the News

In the announcement about the Iranian Space Agency, the preposition "with" is missing Ed8r (talk) 16:01, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 16:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

is it "onboard" or "on board"? Active Banana (talk) 18:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It should be two words. "Onboard" is an adjective. Corrected. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 23:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Next time, please post on #Main Page error reports above. --74.14.19.14 (talk) 07:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Opinion needed on a picture copyright status

File:AnnaleeDoll.jpg

This image of an Annalee Doll is to appear on the main page in the DYK section. The dolls are covered by trademark, but I see no copyright protection for their image. Please comment if this image is not appropriate for the main page. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 00:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

See commons:Commons:Derivative works#I know that I can't upload photos of copyrighted art (like paintings and statues), but what about toys? Toys are not art! - BanyanTree 03:06, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that implies that we can't use it, as I suspected. Ucucha 03:09, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Does this mean that this image cannot be shown on this talk page, either? --74.14.19.14 (talk) 07:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Not really. I am noting on Commons that it is probably unfree. Ucucha 14:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Featured List?

How come we only cite and highlight Featured Articles on the Main page, when Featured List that are relevant are not given this honor and distinction. So, I am opening this up for discussion on here to be debated? Have at it, but keep it Civil!69.137.120.81 (talk) 22:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

A featured list of the day has, in fact, been proposed occasionally, on-and-off, for the past few years. The main problem has always been getting enough volunteers who would be willing to maintain such a feature on a regular basis 365 days/year. The second reason is that in these discussions, there has also been some disagreement on how to display such a featured list on the main page. Zzyzx11 (talk) 22:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Today's featured list proposal for the now-archived previous proposals. I believe they all died due to an eventual lack of consensus. Zzyzx11 (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Pre-emptive TFP whining

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.

---

• This started out as a (perhaps ill-advised) tongue-in-cheek comment to reassure people that this is unlikely to be a recurring problem. It has since begun to devolve into trolling and no longer appears to be constructive or beneficial to the main page. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 00:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Blah blah blah American sports two days in a row? Nobody outside the US gives a #@!%$ about baseball or football!!11!eleven!... For the record, Feb 6 was Babe Ruth's birthday, and Feb 7 is the Super Bowl (American football championship). It's highly improbable this will happen again in the future. howcheng {chat} 08:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the birthday item (though I've heard the Super Bowl is somewhat important) but don't they both occur every year? At least birthdays do if memory serves me correctly. I hadn't noticed the two pictures but since it was brought up here I've now suddenly become curious about why they needed to both be used in the same year? --candle•wicke 20:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, this year we had a picture for Ruth, and the Super Bowl is a huge deal in the U.S. It's pretty much the American equivalent of the World Cup championship. It wouldn't be fair to make someone wait a year for a TFP simply because the Super Bowl happens to be the day after. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 21:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

While both occur every year; Ruth's birthday is a set date, the date of the Super Bowl varies from year to year. Thus, they would not always be back to back events. As for the "nobody outside the US gives a #@!%$" comment, I will simply reiterate a previous post of mine on the subject "This is the English Wikipedia, therefore anyone editing on it must have internet access and should be a speaker of English. A quick look at the article List of countries by number of internet users gives approximately 228 million users in the United States and approximately 239 million users in all other countries where English is an official language COMBINED. Given this, approximately 50% of all articles with a regional bias would be US-centric. While that may not be "fair", it is a simple and expected result of the composition of the user base. Admittedly there is a wide range of error here, as even in the US and UK not all internet users are actually using English and still smaller percentages in many of the former African colonies. Also, many people in countries that do not have English as an official language still edit here. However, the general implication that the US will be the single most represented region is hard to ignore." I find it strange that there is so much anti-American bias on Wikipedia, considering the US is the originator of the internetKhajidha (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, but it would be more or less unusable to us without Tim Berners-Lee, who is not noticeably American. On this point, Thriller was written by Rod Temperton, also not noticeably American, and without Ridley Scott, we wouldn't have Alien or Blade Runner. You get the point. What I think you're trying to say is that sheer volume of users does not necessarily imply any cultural superiority, and nor should it. Rodhullandemu 00:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Anti-pre-Web internet bias, is it now? Well, I'll tell you, we got on the Internet just fine without all these fancy graphics, and bells and whistles! You're older than I am, Rodhullandemu, and I remember using the Gopher system to access historic texts from Project Gutenburg before Mosaic came out (all American projects, too). Even without the WWW, we would still have some free online encyclopedia - even if it was a text only copy of the 1911 Britannica (oddly, itself an American project). Seriously, though, it seems that stories are getting stale on ITN too often recently. This section has a better chance of combating bias through the much larger volume of "stories" it carries. Rmhermen (talk) 19:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. Perhaps a better means of separating items on the front page would help. I could see ITN being broken down into sections (sports, arts, international relations). Khajidha (talk) 19:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Im sorry but "I find it strange that there is so much anti-American bias on Wikipedia, considering the US is the originator of the internet" is quite the weirdest argument i have ever seen. what does US being originator of internet have anything to do with bias on wikipedia. -- Ashish-g55 20:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Right. The fact that more than half our readers are from the U.S. is a much better reason to find anti-Americanism weird. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 21:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to point out that I suspect one of the reasons why there exists anti-American sentiments is exactly because of statements such as "the US is the originator of the internet". How any one country could claim responsibility for the internet astounds me, when fundamentally the internet is the result of years of technological research that has taken place across the globe. Likewise, implying that the US is in some way more important because it has more native English speakers, is likely to create resentment because the English language is the de facto global language. There's probably more than a billion people across the globe who have a decent grasp of the language and, as such, we should not be looking to simply cater for the wants of a couple of countries where it is a first language --Daviessimo (talk) 22:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The only reason we supposedly have an anti-US bias is in response to a perceived pro-US bias (and around and round we go!). I'm no fan of baseball or American football, but I must say I prefer the latter to the sumo (and before anyone starts, I'm an Englishman!). HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 22:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Point by point - to User: Ashishg55, the fact that wikipedia would not exist without the internet? It's kind of biting the hand that feeds you. To User: DC, agreed. To User: Daviessimo, from our own internet article "The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks." I also wonder if it would be seen as weird for a Frenchman to say that the opinions of Frenchmen about what a word means in French are more important than that of someone who speaks French only as a second or third language? The meaning of ANY language develops first and foremost among it's native speakers. To User: HJ Mitchell, I also find it funny that such an uproar is made over the appearance of American football on the main page but not over sumo. Khajidha (talk) 23:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

So Khajida you want everyone to treat US like almighty god no matter what the situation may be because apparently it created internet? its almost offensive to say US should get special treatment for "fact that wikipedia would not exist without the internet". cause neither statements are even slightly true. this kind of attitude is exactly why there always seems to be anti-US bias on wiki. -- Ashish-g55 23:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't want the US to be "almighty god". I simply want people not to protest that anything vaguely US centered on the main page is part of some vast conspiracy. Khajidha (talk) 00:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

(re Daviessimo) according to this 52.9% of our readers are from the US, so while it may be true that "there's probably more than a billion people across the globe who have a decent grasp of the language," it doesn't mean they're all on this site. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 23:59, 8 February 2010 (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.

There must be a better picture for the Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees.

The picture on the main screen is pretty irrelevant.

Maybe you could put him with his Lombardi Trophy, perhaps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.179.80.23 (talk) 12:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Do we have a free pic of him with the Lombardi Trophy? BTW, why aren't we "real" (he shouldn't be there) having complaints like what we had when Paul Pierce in 2008? :P –Howard the Duck 13:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

better get a pic of the new prez in Costa Rica. Or in Ukraine. --74.14.19.14 (talk) 02:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Like this one? Modest Genius ^talk 02:44, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Redlinks

I've often heard it said "no redlinks on the main page", but I don't know of any actual written policy covering this. Does anyone know of one? Gatoclass (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Common sense? Don't confuse the readers. :-) --candle•wicke 03:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The Did You Know rule is I7. Art LaPella (talk) 14:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

No policy, but back in the dark ages before oversight the FAQ had an explanation reassuring users that the occasional redlink was temporary and nothing to worry about. The few times I have seen an intentional redlink on the Main Page, which hasn't been in quite a long time, it caused an uproar on this talk page and someone immediately either created a stub or de-linked it. - BanyanTree 10:36, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

It happens sometimes when an admin temporarily deletes a page while they sort out major vandalism. But yeah, it's pretty much common sense that the page which exists purely to show off bits of the encyclopaedia shouldn't be linking to bits which don't actually exist! edit: apparently I forgot to sign Modest Genius ^talk 21:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess I didn't explain myself clearly enough - actually I meant, redlinks within highlighted articles that appear on the main page. Sorry for the confusion. Anyway, the practice at DYK has always been not to promote articles with too many redlinks in them, so I guess we will have to sort this issue out for ourselves. Thanks for the responses. Gatoclass (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, you mean having some red links at any point in an article which is itself linked (perhaps bolded) on the MP? Well the Featured Article criteria usually (but not always) require any red links to be created before being promoted. Otherwise, I don't think there are any restrictions, and can't think of a good reason why there should be. Modest Genius ^talk 22:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's too much of a problem. I'd rather have redlinks than people de-linking things just to fulfil some criteria (although perhaps if there were a lot of redlinks it wouldn't look great). From my experience they are not that strict at FAC (one of my FA's had three redlinks that weren't even mentioned) - Dumelow (talk) 23:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

"News"

In the news section, I see Beyonce's picture , in reference to the Grammy Awards, a line about the Australian Open and a line about a soccer tournament. NONE of this is news!!!! The Grammy Award line has been there since Monday!!!!! Stop disrespecting the REAL people out in the world who are dying in wars, in Haiti, of poverty and starvation. It is disgusting that some people will now think sports and music are news!! Cosprings (talk) 10:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

News isn't only people dying. (From a purely objective point of view, people die every day, whereas significant achievements in arts and recreation only happen on occasion.) Reporting on less depressing topics isn't disrespectful to anyone, and every notable news agency in the world does it. (Of course, we're not a news agency, but ITN topics do tend to reflect the topics that news agencies cover.) Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 14:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Cosprings you do realize ITN isnt a news source. right now there is WW1 cemetery news on ITN and major reasoning for that is the article that was heavily updated. Haiti was up on ITN for good 2 weeks and if someone who died in a war was important enough to have their own article and have updates made on it then please use WP:ITN/C to nominate and/or support to get the item on main page. no one is "disrespecting" anything here. sport and music is a good thing for ITN otherwise it usually gets filled with death and politics quite fast. -- Ashish-g55 15:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Cosprings, as the same reasons of his criticism were what made me come to this talk page. These three news are entirely pop. Add to this yesterday's featured article Bale Out, and the English Wikipedia main page is comparable to an average boulevard news website. --Abdull (talk) 17:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You don't gain gravitas just by talking about deaths or dead people! Nor is politics the center of most peoples lives. ITN provides a variety of stories which are "in the news"; not all of them will appeal to every reader, such is the diversity of our readership. Any reader who is disappointed is invited to read our "Did you know...?" section every six hours for as long as it takes them to find an interesting story. Physchim62 (talk) 17:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

If I wanted to read the New York Times, I'd read the New York Times. The stories selected here are entirely legitimate based on precedence and ITN criteria.--WaltCip (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with WaltCip's concise point, I feel compelled to point out that our article on the New York Times says that publication's "Features" section includes "Arts, Movies, Theatre, Travel, NYC Guide, Dining & Wine, Home & Garden, Fashion & Style, Crossword, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, and Week in Review" as well as sports in the "News" section. Maybe the OP should stay away from the Times as well...? Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 19:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I come back to see that Beyonce's picture is still on the frontpage, 4 days after the Grammy's took place. Still tennis, still soccer. No real news at all. An insult to the profession of journalism. Cosprings (talk) 21:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

ITN is in NO way journalism to begin with... you may wanna go to wikinews for that... if you have picture for other news items you can suggest one -- Ashish-g55 22:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Cosprings ITN is not a news source and Wikipedians are not journalists. We try to keep a broad range of stories turning over on ITN which are of the greatest interest to the greatest number. Like it or not (I don't much myself), the Grammys are undoubtedly of great interest. The events in Haiti are also interesting, but it would be inappropriate to artificially prolong a story's life on the Main Page. However, if you think there's something that should be on ITN, do feel free to come along to WP:ITN/C to nominate it. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 22:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps this editor would prefer if we posted the Greek presidential election We even have a free image we could use in place of Beyoncé... But let's not be ridiculous. As HJ Mitchell eloquently points out, ITN tries to cover a wide range of topics that might be of interest to Wikipedia readers, so long as they are actually "in the news" and so long as we have a article in the encyclopedia which gives background to the story. "News" is not worth a human life, and so ITN does not require people to die before a story is posted. Physchim62 (talk) 23:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Until we come up with a new title for the section (as has been discussed on several occasions), this type of confusion will never stop arising. Comments along the lines of Cosprings' are quite common, and such users undoubtedly comprise a tiny percentage of those who understandably mistake In the news for a news column. —David Levy 00:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. Every story that is on ITN is "in the news" somewhere, that is one of the criteria. Wikipedia is nothing if not idiosyncratic, I don't think anyone seriously takes ITN as a news service in the sense of Reuters or AFP. The fact is that ITN provides a service that people read, otherwise nobody would complain about it! It provides that service at a fraction of the volunteer time needed for TFA or DYK: in terms of volunteer time per click-through to the encyclopedia, only OTD comes even close to the efficiency of ITN. "Did you know?" has to have a hatnote to warn readers that the hooks come from "Wikipedia's newest articles", that has never been necessary for ITN stories. Physchim62 (talk) 00:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Warn? Rather, it's the very purpose of DYK to showcase Wikipedia's newest articles. Ucucha 00:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, but I cannot put just any old interesting factoid onto the Main Page, as the title "Did you know?" might imply. I have to make sure that my factoid is presented according to the rather artificial conditions set by DYK. Factoids that are presented in that way will be posted on the Main Page for six hours chrono, regardless of whether they are interesting or not; factoids which are not presented in that way will not be posted at all, whether they are interesting or not. Physchim62 (talk) 00:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Or, to get back to the question of the naming of sections, DYK is the only Main Page section which needs a hatnote to explain its (supposed) "purpose" to the average reader. Readers can understand "Today's featured article", they can understand "Picture of the day", they can understand "Selected anniversaries" and, I contend, they can understand "In the news". What they can't understand is how we could have a section entitled "Did you know?" without the hatnote to point out that the hooks come from the newest articles. It's not ITN which is the odd section out, it's DYK: the section which has absolutely catastrophic click-through figures compared to its immediate neighbours, yet the section which is crying out because of the backlog it has to post more of the same. If DYK spared a thought for the reader, it might have the luxury of getting complaints once in a while. Physchim62 (talk) 00:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's not turn this into yet another ITN v DYK row. Both systems have their purpose and both have flaws. I'm tempted to make a complaint about DYK just to be pointy and give it the luxury... HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 01:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not disparaging the section's content in any way. The problem is that the name "In the news" frequently causes confusion regarding the section's format. Time and again, readers (most of whom probably never edit the site, let alone comment on this matter) mistakenly believe that its intended purpose is to report the top news headlines, and this is entirely understandable.

Upon explaining to someone that the section isn't a news feed, a typical response is perplexity as to why we would call it "In the news" or even skepticism that something with that name could be anything other than a news feed. —David Levy 01:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that changing the name would resolve anything, though. Imagine we called the section "Selected news stories" (which is what it is) – we would still get the question of "Why did you select story X and not story Y?" Physchim62 (talk) 01:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The idea is to eliminate the word "news" from the title. (Sorry, I should have been more specific.)

Unfortunately, we've yet to come up with a replacement that's both informative and concise. ("Articles written or updated to reflect recent events" doesn't have much ring to it.) —David Levy 01:41, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

What if, instead of eliminating the word "news", we keep the word "news"—since it's apparent that a great deal of people want it to be news—and just do a better job of keeping the contents current? All a title change does is make it harder for new users to complain about the contents. Streamlining the process would actually address the complaints themselves. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 01:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The naming issue has nothing to with how current we keep the contents. It pertains to the mistaken belief that the section exists for the purpose of relaying the top news headlines (irrespective of their impact on the encyclopedia). Individuals seeking such a service should be directed to Wikinews. —David Levy 02:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It's only a "mistaken belief" if consensus dictates otherwise. Who says the purpose of the section can't be to relay headlines? Obviously we're not in the business of reporting news, but there's no reason we can't use ITN to showcase existing articles which relate to current events if that's what the community wants. The sheer volume of complaints in that department would seem to indicate strong support for it. I know everyone loves to point to WP:NOTNEWS, but I'd like to direct you to WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY. If the system can't keep up with consensus, then the system needs to change. I don't claim to know exactly what consensus is, but we shouldn't discount the possibility out of hand. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department} 02:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I agree that revising the section's format in such a manner is another possible means of resolving the issue. It's not one that I would support (at least, not to the extent that you appear to describe), but I have advocated placing greater emphasis on Wikipedia's ability to provide background information. —David Levy 02:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

(redent) One practical problem that ITN often faces is that the existing articles are in very poor shape. That's a very real problem for the encyclopedia, because our redaers don't wait for us to get the article in shape, they just see a poor article and think whatever they think. I'm not saying that's the only bottleneck on ITN, but it's the most serious one in my experience. Some admin has to decide if this is good enough to be featured on the Main Page, just to give a current example. When there is good raw material, as in the case of J. D. Salinger, the story can be posted very quickly. Physchim62 (talk) 02:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Many good points have been made here, however I would just like to point out that the Grammy entry is still up on the mainpage. Cosprings (talk) 00:10, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yep, and looking at the viewing figures for 52nd Grammy Awards (423k since Feb. 1), Taylor Swift (466k), Beyoncé Knowles (241k) and Kings of Leon (123k), ITN was quite right to post the story and is quite right in keeping it up there! Our readers wanted to read these articles which were "in the news", why should they be denied a quick and easy link from the Main Page? Physchim62 (talk) 00:38, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It'll be moved off when other items replace it. We're not BBC News 24 with a new "breaking news" story every fe hours. We update ITN when the consensus is that an item is significant enough to warrant a spot on the Main Page and when we have encyclopaedia content of a certain quality that has been updated to reflect the event. It would be wrong to insist we put some filler up there just to meet a deadline. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 00:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's nice to point out that Cosprings hasn't answered any of the counter-arguments so it's best if we just let this discussion die a natural death. –Howard the Duck 03:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You guys know how I like to come in late and effectively resurrect dead discussions with comments that are so long probably no one reads them. But anyway for all his/her complaints about "Stop disrespecting the REAL people out in the world who are dying in wars, in Haiti, of poverty and starvation" and "some people will now think sports and music are news" (emphasis added), a check on User:Cosprings followed by a glance thru the contribs shows music of a specific kind appears to be Cosprings primary contributions to wikipedia. While there's nothing wrong with that, it seems to me if you are going to complain how we're disrespecting dying people and don't have enough poverty and starvation and how music isn't news, perhaps you should be helping us get these articles on dying people, poverty and starvation up to scratch rather then working on music articles... Or perhaps Cosprings just doesn't like the specific type of music? On a largely unrelated note, I never realised User:Chuck Marean had been banned. Or even that his behaviour was that bad although he was an interesting character to say the least and probably wouldn't have agreed with Cosprings on the dying part (the reason I thought of him). Nil Einne (talk) 20:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I read them... ;)  GARDEN  20:40, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I did too Modest Genius ^talk 22:47, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The retiring sumo wrestler is not notable in the least, to the vast majority of EN wiki readers. It's been up there for days as well! John Terry being stripped of his England captaincy is actually in the news in the UK, even if it is rather tabloid. But I'd contest that it's much more notable than a sumo wrestler almost nobody who comes here has heard of...193.122.22.247 (talk) 17:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

"not notable in the least"? If you've never heard of him, you should click and read... and learn more about other parts of the world. --74.13.130.122 (talk) 05:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

That's good to know! Nil Einne (talk) 16:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello, :) it's nice to see that during the three or so years since I last actively contributed toward ITN, the same complaints and suggestions are still being revisited every few months. (omg this item's been up for ages, cultural bias, sports bias, change the name, etc etc). *waves at the names I remember* (possibly just visiting depending if my work contract is renewed or not next month) Monotonehell 12:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Gate centrism!

Cloud Gate FA, top DYK with photo Westgate. What's going on???? It's Gategate ... 86.133.211.70 (talk) 19:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but then ITN has a known bias against gates – fourteen-metre high straw goats, South Asian transsexuals, elections in countries with smaller populations than your closest large town... it can cope with those, but gates no – so the other Main Page sections have to compensate from time to time! Either that, or submit your timely gate stories to WP:ITN/C... ;-) Physchim62 (talk) 19:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

text for Today's featured picture

The information says that the picture shows

harvesting of iwatake mushrooms (Umbilicaria esculenta)

However, since this is actually a lichen, should it just refer to iwatake (its name in Japanese) without the erroneous word mushrooms? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ed8r (talk • contribs) 16:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Oops! Sorry, here's my sig: Ed8r (talk) 16:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point. On the other hand, the "-take" suffix in Japanese translates to "mushroom", such as in shiitake and matsutake. We could go with just "iwatake" but I wanted to convey how it's viewed in Japan as well. howcheng {chat} 17:13, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Four Simple Words

I Love Russian Battleships. Oh Yeah, one more thing...!!!1!!!

....DYK has been flooded with hooks about Russian Battleships. I think that's five in the last five days! Now, as a person with Wikipedia as my homepage and a healthy interest in Industrial-era naval history, this means two things...First, someone (or some group of people) have been really working hard on making some great articles on these subjects, good enough to warrant main page DYK status, and they deserve congratulations. But second....I almost am afraid to say it so I will use small text: Wikipedia has a pro-industrial-era Russian Battleship bias. Any thoughts, Wikipedians? 74.71.111.96 (talk) 17:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

If you would have taken the time to look at the page histories, then you would have noticed that Sturmvogel_66 worked hard on improving those articles. I doubt that he would appreciate you casting a shadow on his hard work by screaming "bias."

And this goes for everyone who complains about bias on Wikipedia: stop! People work hard to get their content on the front page, please stop diminishing their efforts. Just because there are a large number of articles pertaining to a certain topic does not mean that Wikipedia is biased; just that there are more users, or more determined users, who focus on those kinds of articles. If you think something is under-represented, then do something about it. I'm tired of people bitching and moaning about what articles are on the front page. Stop it. 198.209.75.124 (talk) 02:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Learn to read sarcasm. There's a good bunch of minions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joy.discovery.invention (talk • contribs) 02:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

You will be seeing lots more on battleships of all nations. There is a current drive to bring all articles on battleships to Featured status. For more information see Operation Majestic Titan. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Still, it makes a change from 'the usual subjects of claimed over-emphasis': any bets on when Moresnet and the railways of Tannu Tuva get similar comments? Jackiespeel (talk) 22:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Alexander McQueen?

Who is Alexander McQueen...and how is he important enough to list his death on the main page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Repiceman89 (talk • contribs) 19:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Seems a bit trivial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.58.64.59 (talk) 19:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Really. After the sturm und drang over the addition of Teedy Kennedy, this nobody gets the top spot in In The News? Woogee (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

the difference is prominence in their field of work. if you feel this person does not qualify according to ITN guidelines then please prove so. thanks -- Ashish-g55 22:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Why not read our article on Alexander McQueen... that's what the link is there for, after all! Physchim62 (talk) 22:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Comments about this should really be made at Wikipedia talk:In the news#Alexander McQueen. The death of Ted Kennedy did make it to ITN (although, yes, it was embarrassing about how long it took before it stayed there permanently). Deaths of many other people have been featured on the Main Page in the interim, many of whom were unknown to me (and many of whom, I'm sure, were unknown to you as well). -- tariqabjotu 22:10, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm always confused why only some not-ultra-famous deaths are complained about, and the complainers suggest that they should be deleted as only extremely famous deaths get featured on ITN, when that is very obviously not the case. And FYI Woogee, it's at "the top spot" because it's the most recent item. --AdamSommerton (talk) 22:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Fame is relative and can be local - given that WP is global ITN will include many links considered non-notable to some/blend into DYK articles. Jackiespeel (talk) 14:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Alexander McQueen's death as one of 5 or 6 news items listed on the front page is an embarrassment for Wikipedia and those who "run" it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.242.19.89 (talk) 00:45, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• I remember from too long ago that there was consensus here that deaths of international significance were reported here, such as heads of state or otherwise somewhat global significance. With the best will in the world, I don't see Alexander McQueen, meritorious though he may be, satisfying that criterion. Ted Kennedy, I had no problem with; but I think we could find more important news to report on the main page than this. Rodhullandemu 00:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • That is my recollection as well; after all, we do have a segment in the Community Portal and a page dedicated to recent deaths. I don't have an opinion on the matter, but I do note a gradual relaxation of the rules with regards to featuring deaths on the Main Page. Waltham, The Duke of 09:45, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
  • In American English, "of international significance" is equivalent in meaning to "American". --86.181.236.61 (talk) 09:59, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

As someone who had opposed Ted Kennedy's listing on the main page, I did point out that that by listing him, we would invariably end up with more deaths on ITN, because he would lead to the 'bar' being lowered considerably (i.e. he was in no way comparable with the types of politicians or heads of state that would have been listed before such as Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Chirac or George Bush Snr). As such Wikipedia has itself to blame because it reduced itself to following the masses of Western media who sensationalised the death, plastering it everywhere. Listings such as Alexander McQueen are simply a manifestation of this reduced criteria, although ironically he does actually pass the 'death criteria' that were defined before TK, notably (b) the deceased was a key figure in their field of expertise, and died unexpectedly or tragically. Anyone who had actually read his article or any of the obituaries that have been written about would recognise this and should be able to accept that, whether they like fashion or not, he made a huge contribution in this area, being held in the same bracket as more 'famous' designers such as Ralph Lauren or Georgio Armani --Daviessimo (talk) 10:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not all that bad. Thanks to the Super Bowl, we'd now regularly list a sport of interest to New Yorkers, the result of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship. –Howard the Duck 13:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

On an interesting and related note there was a recent DYK about Mick Higgins, the New Yorker who played in and won the 1947 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final... at the Polo Grounds in New York. --candle•wicke 14:16, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the entire city should've forgot that the Giants (pro football wasn't that popular that time) Yankees existed at that time. –Howard the Duck 14:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The criteria hasn't changed since Kennedy's death. He "was in a high ranking office of power, and had a significant contribution/impact on the country/region." Euro-centrists just use it to justify adding lesser known Europeans. ~DC _{Talk To Me} 17:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the assertion that the inclusion of Ted Kennedy's death "lowered the bar." His sociopolitical impact exceeded that of many heads of government, including some from his own country. —David Levy 17:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but before that we probably wouldn't have listed every head of state who died. My point is that unless you want to further the perception that Wikipedia has a US bias, you have to apply the same rules to everyone. The relative importance of fashion and politics is entirely subjective, but if you consider Ted Kennedy to have held a important enough position in politics, you can't argue that Alexander McQueen didn't hold an important position in Fashion. How many women do you see these days walking around in Low-rise jeans, because many people consider that it was McQueen who brought them back into fashion. I don't know about anyone else, but I would say that defining how many people wear one of the most common clothes items is a pretty big contribution to society, irrelevant of whether you like jeans or the way they are worn or any other personal opinion regarding what he has done --Daviessimo (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

But he isn't even mentioned in that article: Low-rise jeans. An American singer is given the credit. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Huge chunks of that article lack citations so thats no real surprise. Here is a piece by the BBC that talks about McQueen using them 5 years before Britney Spears --Daviessimo (talk) 18:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

1. I recall longstanding agreement (predating Ted Kennedy's death by quite some time) that the death of any past/present head of state/government would qualify for inclusion in ITN, provided that the requisite article update was performed. (Of course, this doesn't automatically exclude politicians who were not heads of state/government, whose deaths are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.)

2. I'm merely addressing your assertion that the inclusion of Ted Kennedy's death "lowered the bar." I haven't commented on Alexander McQueen. —David Levy 20:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

86 is right; I don't see why America has, in some cases (DYK, for example), codified precedence for main page content. Sceptre ^(talk) 16:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

So what's next? Posting the much awaited, highly anticpated results of the OFC Champions League since you guys post the European and South American equivalents (This is actually a suggestion at WT:ITNR!)? Or the Moroccan equivalent of the Grammy Awards? –Howard the Duck 18:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

What has football or music got to do with death criteria? --Daviessimo (talk) 18:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

as someone who opposed TK too for same reason as Daviessimo stated. i agree that same rules should be applied to everyone. we loosened them up for TK (him not being head of state) and now they have become these bendable guidelines that u can bend whenever you want. so u r bound to see more deaths on main page. everyone who opposed got highly insulted too by many who have never returned to support anything else. point being consensus got turned into a poll where the reasons that were stated by ppl opposing were overlooked due to many ppl just dropping in a word support. what i find interesting is ppl actually arguing that McKeen should not be posted simply because there was a delay or discussion in posting TK (who was eventually posted). talk about weak argument. -- Ashish-g55 04:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The criteria were not "loosened up" for Ted Kennedy; there has never been a rule that deaths of politicians other than heads of state/government are barred from inclusion in ITN. You, like many others, have misinterpreted a touchstone automatically qualifying x as one automatically disqualifying y. —David Levy 04:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

i dont think i have automatically qualified/disqualified anything. there are 100s of countries with 100s of head of state and possibly 1000s of x-head of states. i firmly believed that beyond that should not be added simply because there is a media frenzy about it. otherwise all you will see are deaths on main page. and that is why i opposed. but since it was added i do believe criteria is now loose and many others will pass (and not only in politics). -- Ashish-g55 05:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

You're entitled to your personal opinion that heads of state/government are the only politicians whose deaths should qualify, but ITN has never operated under such a rule. It's impossible to "loosen" a criterion that doesn't exist.

Your claim that Ted Kennedy's death was "added simply because there [was] a media frenzy about it" is a mischaracterization of your opponents' arguments. Ted Kennedy was one of the most influential, controversial and internationally noted politicians in his nation's history. Whether you agree or disagree, there was consensus that his death met our inclusion criteria (not that we should relax them). —David Levy 05:20, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Kennedy wasn't added because of media frenzy. If you believe that you have a pretty profound misunderstanding of his role over that last 40 years (and should probably stay away from ITN). If the rules were bent to allow him, then they're seriously out of wack. But they weren't...just a bit of irrationality. RxS (talk) 05:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

i dont want to start another argument over TK. that chapter is over. as David said im entitled to my opinions whether correct or not at times. but i am interested in knowing if others think the same way as Rxs and suggest that people with opinion not matching that of majority sometimes should just stay away from ITN. i might just... -- Ashish-g55 05:36, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not that your opinion doesn't match with others at ITN, it's that your opinion doesn't match the rest of the world. Uninformed opinions shouldn't be involved with deciding content on the front page of such a high profile web site. RxS (talk) 05:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

its all opinions. i clearly was not alone for kennedy. inclusion/exclusions were both opinions. that were discussed thoroughly, whatever the result maybe. u saying mine were uninformed is ur opinion too. my reasons for opposition werent meant to match the world's opinion. either way if others think the same as above then please say so... -- Ashish-g55 05:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ashishg that there is no point starting this argument again so lets end it there. Why it became an issue when this thread is about Alexander McQueen is beyond me, but hey it is Wikipedia and that seems to always happen. To RxS, I would say some of the comments you made do come across as a little condescending and, as such are not helpful. Why belittle the contributions of any user simply because you don't think they know enough. Both myself and Ashishg have been contributing to ITN for a fair while now and in many instances have worked on getting items to the main page that most editors would never edit because they have no interest in them. I mean Surely becoming elitist is the polar opposite of what Wikipedia stands for. The majority of users outside the US won't be overly familiar with what TK had done, but that is because he was an American politician. It may surprise you, but the rest of the world does not follow American politics religiously! :) --Daviessimo (talk) 09:23, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course not. But if a British or Canadian politician (relatively unfamiliar to me) were to die, I would defer to assurances by British/Canadian editors that his/her sociopolitical stature was comparable to that of a prime minister (instead of insisting that those editors were exhibiting nationalistic bias or succumbing to a media frenzy). —David Levy 16:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

"If you believe that you have a pretty profound misunderstanding of his role over that last 40 years (and should probably stay away from ITN)". That sounds very unhelpful overall and might as well exclude anyone under the age of forty or without a degree in American history and politics. --candle•wicke 16:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, that type of comment is rude and uncalled-for.

As noted above, the problem is not ignorance of Ted Kennedy's history; it's the dismissal of explanations by knowledgeable editors. —David Levy 16:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry if it came off rude but I stand by the statement. If someone doesn't have the tools to make an informed decision about what's notable in world affairs then they shouldn't be taking part in those decisions. It's only common sense.

And as far as having to be 40 years old to (or have a degree) to understand Kennedy's place, that doesn't make any sense. I don't have to be 150 years old to understand Robert E Lee's or Stephen A. Douglas' role in the American Civil War or 1200 years old to know why Charlemagne is important.

The dismissal of explanations by knowledgeable editors is of course a bad thing, and will aggravate the problem. If he did listen to those more informed that'd be different, but that's not the case. This is a Randy from Boise king of thing. RxS (talk) 01:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

On This Day, people did a lot of fighting

I note that every item today is to do with war - using a naval disaster as a pretext to launch a war, fighting battles in wars, surrendering in a war, and protesting against a war which had been launched under a pretext.

I know that this focus is by chance, and is not usual. However, could the Main Page have an informal rule that at least half the OTD items deal with something else?

If it's got to be gruesome to be news-some, I'm sure there must be juicy catastrophes, accidents, pestilences, etc. to fill in the spaces. Of course, there are a lot of boring subjects like marriages, births, deaths, discoveries, inventions, nation-building, advancement of science, and so on, but who wants to read those ... Michael of Lucan (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I swapped a few of the items to diversify the topics. -- tariqabjotu 15:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way. Unfortunately, there is a lot of systemic bias on Wikipedia. A significant majority of existing articles that pertain to events from the 19th Century and before do in fact have to do with wars and battles. And we already do have frequent complaints that we post too many 20th and 21st Century events anyway. And further complaints that we seem to feature U.S. and U.K. events too much. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 21:28, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Correction to TFA blurb

"A year later, it was announced that both bears would relocate to Marineland in southern France sometime in late-February 2010." The date for Flocke's move to France has been pushed back, and the date is still unknown; could "late-February" be removed from the blurb so as not to get anyone's hopes up, please? María (habla conmigo) 15:40, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your report and for updating the article. I've asked for the blurb to be synchronised with the article intro in the error section at the top of this page where it's better to make these sort of requests. (Do note that the main page always defers to articles so you do need to update the article first as you did.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:46, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Nil Einne, I appreciate your help and the useful info. :) María (habla conmigo) 19:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Languages

For the WIkipedia Languages section, shouldn't the columns be changed now since German wikiedia now has more than 1,000,000 articles, so shouldn;t that be in the column that should say more than 1,000,000 articles, rather than in "more than 500,000 articles" Gman124 ^talk 02:44, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Not really. Until there are others that also reach the 1,000,000 article mark, it would be a waste of vertical spacing and layout to add an extra line just for only one, IMO. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

And such has consistently been the consensus when this has been proposed (on many occasions). In fact, the creation of a "more than 500,000 articles" tier was rejected until recently (even when several Wikipedias qualified). —David Levy 03:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Non-free image on the main page?

Is it acceptable now? Don't let the bogie commons "licence" (sorry, Owen) fool anyone. NVO (talk) 03:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

No it is not. Are you referring to any specific image? Materialscientist (talk) 03:21, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

File:Vkhutemas.jpg. NVO (talk) 03:23, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to meet the requirements of {{PD-Ukraine}}. You disagree? Dragons flight (talk) 03:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no evidence that a magazine of a Moscow-based college was ever published in Ukraine. This issue was published in Moscow in 1927, as is prominently printed in upper left corner. NVO (talk) 03:31, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This cover was definitely published in Moscow in 1927 by the state-owned publisher Moskva, thus might be {{PD-Russia-2008}}. Materialscientist (talk) 03:52, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to apply, since author El Lissitzky didn't die until December 1941 and served in World War II. 10 more months and it'll be template:PD-old-70, though. -93.97.122.93 (talk) 11:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be 1 year and 10 months? Nil Einne (talk) 13:34, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The image is public domain in the U.S. The U.S. copyright was not restored by the Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) because Russia only had a 50-year post mortem auctoris copyright term on the relevant date (see Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights). The PD-Ukraine tag on commons is a farce, as the image was obviously first published in Moscow and publication trumps nationality of author in international copyright law. The file doesn't meet commons inclusion standards as it is still copyrighted in any Berne Convention country (apart from the U.S.) which has a 70-year pma copyright term. Physchim62 (talk) 12:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I can't upload the image to Wikipedia myself, but I have added an {{Information}} template to File talk:Vkhutemas.jpg if an admin would like to bring it over here (as should have been done already, for security reasons). Physchim62 (talk) 12:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Security was in order (the file was protected on Commons), but I have uploaded the file to en.wiki for copyright reasons and tagged as {{subst:PD-US}}. Please ask another admin if copyright tag needs a change (as I'm going offline). Materialscientist (talk) 13:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! The correct tag is {{PD-US-1996}}. The other tags should be removed: with all respect (and many thanks) to Owenhatherley (talk · contribs), he didn't create the image, he merely scanned it. I think the best way forward is to do a cut-and-paste move from File talk:Vkhutemas.jpg: I'm the only author on that page, and I don't give a **** about the strict attribution of those edits! Otherwise do a page move, as long as that won't break anything. Physchim62 (talk) 13:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Tom Mix @ Battle of Ciudad Juarez????

Checked the Wikpedia article on Tom Mix, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mix , and the IMDB Tom Mix page, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594291/ . Neither mentions participation @ Juarez and the IMDB shows several 1911 movies. Think his picture and ref need to be removed from 'Battle' article. Tapered (talk) 02:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

No, see Frank McLynn's Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution, p. 95, which mentions Tom Mix as participating in the battle. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like Tom Mix needs an update. --74.13.127.98 (talk) 04:52, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyvio?

File:Yoga Asanas.JPG looks like copyvio —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.238.236.92 (talk) 13:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it does! Thanks for noticing it: I've now asked for it to be deleted. If you notice any more, feel free to add {{imagevio}} to the description file (the section you get to by clicking "Edit this page" on an image page) and follow the instructions which appear. Physchim62 (talk) 13:57, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I spent 15 minutes trying to find appropriate template, but I couldn't, so I reported it here. Thanks for help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.238.236.92 (talk) 14:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Deleted. howcheng {chat} 17:57, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Alexander Haig "number-two ranking officer in the Army"

What has Alexander Haig done to deserve his place on your home page above! the important news like Madeira, a coup, the avalaunche, building falling, a new element invented, the collapse of a government? This must be some mistake, An ordinary politician and surprise surprise a second rate "number-two ranking officer in the Army" soldier but I suppose can expect more ordinary Australians and politicians from Afghanistan no one knows when they die too especially those with "This section needs additional citations for verification" halfway down the page like this piece of poperganda does beside everything it says about his time in Vietnam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.203.12.243 (talk) 18:38, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A couple of points, Haig meets the criteria for ITN inclusion, namely: "The deceased was in a high ranking office of power, and had a significant contribution/impact on the country/region." I would not call the Secretary of State and "ordinary politician", and as for his military career, he was Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, meaning he controlled ALL NATO forces in Europe while in office. Also, the elements was not recently invented, but recently NAMED; it has been on the periodic table of elements for quite a long time. Cheers! Scapler (talk) 19:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

These criteria are only applicable if he died in office, or unexpecteadly early. As an 80+ year old, his death was utterly unremarkable, and as everybody has noted, not deserving of an ITN listing in the slightest. MickMacNee (talk) 01:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

That would be "everybody" accept those who established a consensus on the nomination page. Don't mistakingly believe that all those who agree with you constitute "everyone". Cheers! Scapler (talk) 04:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Check again. There was hardly a consensus when it went up, and there definitely isn't one now. Still, the mob has had its way, and ITN moves one step closer to being a US news ticker. MickMacNee (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I would say that there was definitely a consensus at ITN/C when I posted it (11 to 3 if you want to go by the !vote count) and there is still one in support of it now - Dumelow (talk) 11:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Are we going by vote counting now then? Ignoring the consensus in the guidance, strength of argument, and everything else normally meant by the word 'consensus'? Because in that case I'd like about ten nominations to be reconsidered, that had numerical support but were just ignored, for god knows what reasons. MickMacNee (talk) 12:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Note that I said "if" you wanted to use the vote count (which is sometimes used as a false indicator of consensus). Reading the arguments I believed (and still do) that the item should be posted, I didn't just blindly follow the numbers. The fact that it comes down to an admin's opinion on whether to post or not is a less than ideal way to run ITN but is unavoidable in the current system - Dumelow (talk) 12:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Haig's death was notable for posting, fine, but is it notable enough to stay there for days? Notice of Haig was posted to ITN 36 hours ago [7]. I suspect that it's not "in the news" anymore. Google news (US ed.) has nothing on it. Nothing on IHT or CNN front pages. Should it be "in the news" when mainstream media already dropped it? NVO (talk) 12:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

ITN items stay there until they're bumped off at the bottom. –Howard the Duck 05:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The order of the items is based on the date when the event happened and not the event's perceived importance. Hut 8.5 20:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)