Talk:Main Page: Difference between revisions

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Administrators: Clear all reports

Errors in the summary of the featured article

Please do not remove this invisible timestamp. See WT:ERRORS and WP:SUBSCRIBE. - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Next DYK

• ... that some anarchists reject adjectives?

As the article makes clear, no, that is not at all what "anarchism without adjectives" means. I can hardly think of a less appropriate use of DYK than to feature a term with a non-intuitive meaning paired with a false claim that it does in fact mean what it superficially appears to. -Elmer Clark (talk) 20:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm also confused by this. My recommendation is to pull it, but I'll leave that decision to somebody else. RoySmith (talk) 21:55, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I've substituted the hook with ALT1. Schwede66 22:13, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me! -Elmer Clark (talk) 22:15, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(December 27, today)

• At "and The Indigo Disk taking place", the link is to a redirect.

Pls swap link from

[[Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero#Part 2: The Indigo Disk|''The Indigo Disk'']] :to:

[[The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero#Part 2: The Indigo Disk|''The Indigo Disk'']] ie (The Indigo Disk)

(I think that's right.) And season's greetings to our wonderful main page admins! JennyOz (talk) 09:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. There were in fact two dab links, and I've addressed them both. Schwede66 22:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Monday's FL

(December 30)

Errors in the summary of the featured picture

Notice to administrators: When fixing POTD errors, please update the corresponding regular version (i.e. without "protected" in the page title) in addition to the Main Page version linked below.

Tomorrow's POTD

• In blurb first sentence at "to study human movement under simulator lunar gravity conditions" the word "simulator" should be 'simulated'. JennyOz (talk) 11:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

General discussion

Gender bias on main page content

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.

---

Hi, not sure if this is the best place to comment, happy to be redirected if so. What is the policy on showcasing diversity in the main page content? Reading the main page for 27 October reads like the whole of Wikipedia is written about men! As follows: featured article - biography of a man in the news - 5 items, one about an individual person, which was about a man DYK - 8 items, six about individual people, five of which were about men On this day - 5 items, 4 about people, all of which were about men From today's featured list - biography of a man From today's featured photo - building designed by a man It's important that Wikipedia is inclusive and diverse, and this main page certainly doesn't encourage that impression. Is there a policy on encouraging diversity? If not, how does that get discussed? Cheers, MurielMary (talk) 21:13, 26 October 2015 (UTC)MurielMary

It's fair enough, to an extent. Each section of the main page is determined by a different process, and as such, it's altogether possible that we could feature 18 items about mushrooms. Having said that, sections with control over their destiny, e.g. DYK, OTD, TFL, TFP, TFA, could work on ensuring diversity, but the latter three only have one choice per day. DYK has eight hooks every 12 or so hours. OTD has five or so hooks every 24 hours. Is there a real need to make sure there's an equal spread of male and female features? Is there a trend? Is there an explanation? (e.g. we have three times as many FAs about men as women [as a hypothetical example]). The Rambling Man (talk) 21:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

As regards TFA, at least, the problem is that there's a very limited pool of articles about women which have yet to run. This is a probably inevitable consequence of the nature of Wikipedia; by definition, people who meet Wikipedia's notability standards are more likely to be male (at least in the case of pre-20th-century biographies), as so many of the fields in which it's possible to become notable (politics, warfare, religion, the arts, science...) were fields from which women were either excluded altogether, or strongly underrepresented. If we were to have a 50-50 gender balance at TFA, we would literally burn through every available female biography in a couple of months at most. ‑ iridescent 22:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

• I have to agree with TRM here: it is entirely possible that, by sheer coincidence, we could end up with multiple items on mushrooms, or cricket, or churches, or.... As Jayron says, the best way to combat this is to improve content to the point that it can be featured on the main page. TFA and other processes can only run content which meets their criteria; coordinators cannot simply say "We haven't had a woman as TFA in a while. Let's run Marie Curie", because Curie's article (though well written) has not passed the featured articles process. Since the number of featured articles on women or works by women are limited, that means that, statistically, they have to be spread outstanding. We still do our best, however: this month, for TFA, we've had Mary Margaret O'Reilly, "Lisa the Vegetarian" (centered around a woman character), Luo Yixiu, and Debora Green. For POTD, we've had Ada Lovelace and will soon have a form of Indian dance generally performed by women; there have also works by women, including the photograph you comment on above. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:14, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Chris, thanks for the point of view. I disagree that the best solution is to write more material. This is only one approach to the gender bias problem. It seems that the policies and criteria are set up to favour articles on men and there needs to be change in the systems involved with judging what is "noteworthy" and "valuable". A criteria could be "the article helps Wikipedia showcase a diversity of people from different gender/ethnic/class origins", which would open up the possibility of nominating a wider range of articles. This is not to say that academic integrity or journalistic quality would be compromised, simply that an additional reason for promoting an article (that it contributes to diversity) would be added to the list of criteria. As I've mentioned below, women's history has a different idea of what is considered "noteworthy" and if Wikipedia is to remain current and relevant it would be worth considering widening the definitions at a high level. MurielMary (talk) 00:43, 27 October 2015 (UTC)MurielMary

MurielMary; I'm of average intelligence, so you'll have to excuse me for not finding it, but can you point out the which requirements at WP:WIAFA either stop female-based articles of sufficient quality from being promoted, or which encourage male-based articles of insufficient quality from being promoted. I've read it over several times, and gender of the subject is not mentioned once. Can you explain how two equally-qualified articles, one about a male subject, and one about a female subject, would be treated differently according to those policies? --Jayron32 15:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

• As you've seen below, there will be considerable resistance to the idea that "women need a lower bar" (to paraphrase), and thus the idea is unlikely to be implemented. Creating content, however, is something you or anyone can do without initially seeking a consensus (which would be done at WT:N or a subpage, BTW). I've personally written several FAs on women's history topics (Roekiah, Streatham portrait, Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet! to name a few), as well as numerous DYKs (Nyi Ageng Serang, Ratna Asmara, Fifi Young, etc.); once you're used to it, it becomes second nature.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 12:22, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Whether someting is "noteworthy", however that bar is determined, only affects whether it should have an article in the first place (this is the purpose of WP:N, WP:GNG, and the related policies which determine whether something is important or not important). Beyond being a requirement for having an extant article, noteworthiness doesn't stand in the way of any topic being featured (for FTA/L/P), or being highlighted on ITN/OTD/DYK, which don't require featured status but do require a certain level of article quality. Basically, once it exists, it's solely based on quality rather than subject from that point on. So if the issue is the idea that women's history is underrepresented in articles existing, that's a valid concern which might warrant the creation of a subsidiary policy of WP:N. But if it's about being underrepresented in assessed-quality articles (FA/FL/FP/GA etc), then that's solely down to volunteer effort, which anyone can help with. GRAPPLE ^X 13:02, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Thankfully, MurielMary, this is problem you have the power to fix! Simply find articles about females, and improve them until they meet featured article status (see WP:WIAFA). The more articles you improve to the highest standards, the more articles we can run on the main page! So, just write and/or improve more articles about women, and we'll have more such articles to run! --Jayron32 22:13, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

First off, I see that you're a new editor. Let me welcome you to Wikipedia, Mary. At a time when the site is receiving criticism for the treatment of many women who edit here, it's great to see some new representation from the female demographic, which is underrepresented on Wikipedia. Given that you are still new here, it's probably unrealistic to expect that you can write featured articles immediately. However, that doesn't mean that you are unable to have a voice in what gets featured on the main page. Most of the various processes have their own request or suggestion pages; for example, the featured list process, which I am director of, has a submissions page here. That process in particular may be helpful in balancing the Main Page, since we have many featured lists on women in music and media, among other topics. If there's a list that catches your eye and hasn't run on the Main Page yet, you can propose that we run it at the submissions page. Over time, as you gain experience and confidence, you can write articles that appear on sections like DYK, and maybe even bring an article to featured article status. For now, I'll take your comments into consideration when planning future TFLs. There's only so much we can do (sports FLs lean heavily male, for instance), but anything we can do is worthwhile. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:51, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

MurielMary, thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. One of the easiest ways to get content onto the main page is the Did you know? section. You can start a new article or expand an existing article and put it right up there most of the time. If you tell people you are inexperienced with the process and ask for help, you will find that editors will be glad to lend a hand. Another easy way onto the home page is the In the news section, including Recent deaths. You could also look at the section Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries, though I have no experience with that one. Jehochman ^Talk 23:12, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies and thoughts. To clarify, I wasn't putting my hand up to contribute items for the main page, but it's certainly helpful to know the process for doing that, so thanks for those pointers! In response to RamblingMan, yes, I think it is important to have a balance of male and female features - the world is a diverse place and if an organization doesn't reflect that in its presentation it risks ending up irrelevant, biased or viewed as exclusionary or privileged. In response to Iridescent, the argument of women not meeting the Wikipeida criteria for notability is more of a reflection on the exclusionary criteria than on women's achievements. Women's history as a field has different criteria for notability than general history - for example knowledge about a woman born before say 1900 is considered noteworthy in itself as so little is known about women of that era. There is no additional requirement of "notability" or "achievement" to meet. Wikipedia would help get more women into articles if this guideline was adopted, for example. And Jayron, yes there is more work to do in writing however that alone is not enough. There is also change that can happen in the choices and the criteria for women's knowledge/knowledge about women to be showcased. As Giants2008 states, anything which can be done in this area is worthwhile. For example, when reading an article about a famous man, pay attention to whether his wife is named or mentioned, and if not, suggest that the original writer add that information. In many cases of historically notable men, there was a notable woman alongside him e.g. missionaries, politicians, pioneers and settlers, and the contribution of those women isn't highlighted. Again, thanks for the discussion, interesting to hear different perspectives. MurielMary (talk) 00:04, 27 October 2015 (UTC)MurielMary

I find your suggestion, that the notability standards should be relaxed for women, to be highly insulting. The idea that we need an easier notability standard for women, though undoubtedly well-intended, suggests that women can't meet the same standards as men. Women are just as capable as men in every way; they should be held to equal standards. Yes, women have been marginalized throughout history, and haven't had the same opportunities as men; that's a tragedy, and should be foreved remembered as such. But it's not a good excuse for a double-standard that would only trivialize the truly great historical accomplishments of some women. Far from fixing our systematic bias problem, such a group-specific guideline would only further disadvantage other historically marginalized groups for which there isn't an easy notability standard (such groups include: every ethnicity, all religions, etc: practically every group has been disadvantaged at some place and time). If we relax the standard, it would have to be for everyone, which doesn't help at all. The good news is there's still many women-related articles, yet to be written, that would pass current guidelines. The only productive solution is what everyone always suggests here when someone complains about bias: you need to create the content you wish to see. Sorry if that sounds like too much work and not enough grandstanding for your tastes - we are here to write an encyclopedia, after all. 75.250.166.56 (talk) 03:10, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you point us to these "exclusionary criteria" which deliberately set out to prevent more content about females? The Rambling Man (talk) 06:04, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The same arguments against 'lower criteria' would apply to #any# group (including vegetarians 'as the topic has been already mentioned', or 'parts of the world not being the USA') - and to varying extents 'in areas of information gathering and organizing that are not Wikipedia' once they have got past the first stages. (If 'a field of research' is being created, there may be lower criteria in the initial stages.)

My back yard is an underrepresented field of research in its early stage, and so we should demand more articles about it with lower notability requirements (rhetorically speaking of course). Art LaPella (talk) 14:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

As far as I understand - the policy of the Main Page is to show the range of Wikipedia's coverage, and to some extent what constitutes 'particularly good articles' and 'topics that people may be unaware that they will find interesting' - rather than to have a checklist of topics and groups that have to be covered (and can anyone find more than Dr Molly for Moresnet?). Jackiespeel (talk) 13:29, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

• The gender bias that exists is, of course, a bias inherent to history. And not just major world history. To give an example: Much of my writing over the years has revolved around hockey. I have written 59 GA or FA class biographies on players. Only one has been female, Angela James. That isn't so much because I don't care about female players, but because women's hockey at a high level is still in its infancy compared to the men's game and the reliable source coverage is similarly unbalanced. There are easily 50 books related to the history of men's hockey for every one on women's hockey. At the highest levels, men's hockey is a multi billion dollar business that dominates entire sections of newspaper, has television channels dedicated to it and is covered on a mass scale. High level women's hockey is still largely dependent on charity and support and the willingness to play for the love of the game rather than high salaries or mass notoriety. We can lament this disparity at the personal level, but Wikipedia does not exist to right great wrongs. It is not our place to apply discriminatory notability policies based on gender in order to create a false equivalence in notability. Only time and effort will resolve the imbalance you perceive. As others have stated, if you are interested in seeing more women's topics on the main page, you are going to have to roll up your sleeves and put the work in writing articles. Resolute 18:59, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Right now, I see the picture of a woman in ITN. Another picture of a woman in SA/OTD. The DYK is a photo of a statute of a woman. The POTD is also a photo of a woman. There are dozens of men in the TFL pic, but none of their faces can be seen. No one is complaining about gender bias on MainPage today, eh?! Good. --PFHLai 04:22, Mischief Night, 2015 (UTC)

I am. Too many cisgenders on the main page. Where's our trans representation? 128.227.202.200 (talk) 11:38, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

And the left-handed pharmacists? Art LaPella (talk) 13:41, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

@MurielMary You asked "Is there a policy on encouraging diversity? If not, how does that get discussed?" I'm surprised no-one has answered that as there certainly are policies about tackling the gender gap on Wikipedia - it's one of the big issues being discussed at the moment. The New York Magazine says, "Wikipedia famously bears one of the starkest gender gaps in contemporary culture" and there is the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias set up to look at this issue. One of the reasons why there is not enough content on Wikipedia about women is that there are not enough women editors attracted to the project. There is a task force looking at this problem - Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force which is exactly the right place to discuss this. Perhaps if you go there you can ask them to get someone to keep an eye on this page and try to counter dismissive jokes, such as the one about about left-handed pharmacists, made in response to serious concerns raised here. Richerman (talk) 16:11, 30 October 2015 (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.

I haven't seen this discussion timely enough, but I would like to add a belated comment: The argument about trans representation is somewhat fallacious or at least misleading because openly trans people represent a distinct and very small numerical minority, while women are about equally numerous as men all over the world (even slightly more in most places), so there would never be an expectation that among the people featured on the main page there would be a trans person more than occasionally. Openly trans people, in fact, are quite possibly no more numerous than left-handed pharmacists, so the argument is equally blatant and ridiculous concern trolling, instrumentalising trans people as a tool to bludgeon a legitimate issue with female representation.

Moreover, I'd like to point out that while I do not advocate the "dilution" of notability standards either, there is already some kind of inherent "skewedness" in principle in that a female pioneer is inherently more likely to attract journalistic and academic attention regardless of her concrete contributions and thus to achieve notability just for the fact of being a woman where women are rare – although it should be kept in mind that (usually) women pioneers are motivated and even forced to work a lot harder than the average male colleague in order to even get to where they are, so their contributions tend to be disproportionately large compared to their rarity, easing concerns that women get attention and thus notability "too easy" just for being female in male-dominated fields. But in theory, a woman in male-dominated fields could be said to be able to achieve notability more easily already, so there is already some inherent "dilution" of notability standards if one were to focus exclusively on merits and contributions. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Don't take anonymous posts on Mischief Night too seriously. --PFHLai (talk) 18:17, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Not other features on the mobile version?

Is there a reason that the other features—all other than TFA and ITN—are not in the mobile version of Wikipedia? -- Frankie _talk 19:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

What, no answers? I believe it's because the mobile version is used on tablets, where there is less room for a big Main Page, and it would be harder to load. Art LaPella (talk) 15:47, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Crashes occur on main home page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) when accessing from Linux Mint (Ubuntu) with Firefox 41.0.2 browser

First noticed on 29 October 2015, when linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, computer crash occurs. This appears to partially have been solved by deinstalling the software colord (and kde-colord) from my system. This error only occurred at the specified link, and not at other links. The problem only occurred in Firefox (version 41.0.2 for Linux Mint). It also occurred in "safe mode". After desinstalling colord (and kde-colord), crashes occur less frequently, but one crash occurred when following the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page link in this article.

They speak your "language" at Wikipedia:Village Pump (technical). Art LaPella (talk) 13:39, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Halloween 2015

I must say. Of all the years here and of all the choices for articles to use for Halloween, this year might have the most scariest article selected for Todays Featured Article. Well done. GamerPro64 03:43, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

If they were rolling toward you... Eman235/talk 04:10, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Loving today's Featured Picture as well. --Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 05:12, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Finally, a sufficiently scary set of pictures... epic genius (talk) 12:11, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this picture is awesome...and so are the vampire squirrels. Eman235/talk 16:44, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

5000000

Has anyone noticed we are 160+ articles past the 5000,000 mark? Simply south ...... time, deparment skies for just 9 years 12:56, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

more information here: Wikipedia:Five million articles.

I like the red banner now below our globe. What is the actual file (could not find its link)? -DePiep (talk) 17:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

@DePiep: File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-en 5m articles.png, created by Fuzheado ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 17:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

For the details: Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/5_millionth_article_logo -- Fuzheado | Talk 17:30, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Could I have found it myself, that is by analysing the mp code? Or are there some more shieldings? -DePiep (talk) 17:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Add one more vote! Great, Fuzheado. -DePiep (talk) 17:36, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

@DePiep: It is not terribly easy to find these days with CSS style sheets and all and it's a DOM background property. Even many utilities used to save the entire web page locally won't download it. I use Chrome to right-click and use "Inspect Element" to find the exact filenames. Thanks. -- Fuzheado | Talk 17:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Well Done

Well Done, wikipedia for 5,000,000 articles.

Did you know... Ugly Formatting

I have brought this up before on the DYK page, but maybe I will have better traction here. Simply put the formatting of the Did you know section looks sloppy, and I can't believe no one else is bothered by this. I would like help from anyone willing to create a Request For Change, so that "... that" will be removed from all future DYK entries. Figure 1: http://i.imgur.com/Vz3kANf.png Ccubedd (talk) 17:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Why would you get rid of the "...that"? It ties each entry to the "Did you know..." header to make a complete sentence. For example, the current first item in the list would be "Did you know that Godalming's Roman Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian (pictured) places of worship, former Congregational chapel, and former Salvation Army hall are all Grade II listed buildings?"--Khajidha (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2015 (UTC)