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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jdforrester (talk | contribs) at 11:22, 19 July 2004 (→Writing Style/Spelling). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Today is Tuesday, 22 October (UTC) 2024. It is now 18:51 (UTC).
In ISO format, the current date/time is 2024-10-22 T 18:51 (UTC).

See the Wikipedia FAQ for general questions about Wikipedia. You can ask questions at the Village pump.

See the talk page on the Wikipedia table of contents and the category schemes talk page for general discussion of the category scheme on Wikipedia's Main Page.

See Main Page/Old for the old Main Page design.

Please post screenshots of the current Main Page to Main Page/Screenshots to assist in debugging design issues, especially when you notice that it looks different from the screenshots which are there.

Main Page cache purge - click this link whenever a change has been made to any of the MediaWiki pages displayed on the Main Page. This will clear the Main Page's cache (located on the Wikimedia servers) so that non-logged-in users can see the update. This may or may not force your browser's cache to expire. See Wikipedia:Reload to learn how to deal with that.

Subsections of the main page use the template namespace to make them editable. See how to edit the main page. If you see a mistake in any of these sections, be bold and fix them.

NOTE: Any bolded item that on the Main Page must be updated and listed on its corresponding subject area page before being listed on the Main Page. For example, a news item should first be listed on current events, then the article on the subject of that news item should be updated to reflect a current event. Then that item can be placed on Template:In the news.

Comment on a new topic

Archived talk

Archives of older material from this talk page: Archives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

The layout of the Main Page underwent a significant redesign, implemented on 23 Feb 2004. Talk archives 1-13 relate to the old design. Archives after this date: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.

Talk pages specifically dealing with layout and design, or alternative designs for the Main Page:

Editing Redirects

Some people don't seem to know this so I'll post it here--if you want to edit a redirect, go to any page and click the edit this page button. Then, for instance, look at the web address: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Triangle&action=edit

Replace the title= with the redirect you want to change, say: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Triangles&action=edit and press Enter on your keyboard. You'll be taken to the redirect's edit page. This is a clever tip they don't teach you in school.--naryathegreat 22:06, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)

Why would you want to do something as convolute as that? Simply type the name of the redirect. Then click on the "Redirected from" link under the title of the article you reach, and you go to the actual page that you can change through edit. Aris Katsaris 01:10, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. That has its merits. Never thought of that one before. Thanks--naryathegreat 01:50, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)\

LOL! THere's the wrong way, the right way and the eccentric way :) --Exigentsky

Copy pictures

Is it a copyvio if I copy a picture/photo from a different language wikipedia site. ??? eg. from nl.wikipedia.org to eg.wikipedia.org

No, unless the original picture is itself a copyvio. -- Grunt (talk) 02:51, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

Can someone please FIX THIS

"If you find Wikipedia or its sister projects useful, please consider making a donation . Donations are used primarily for purchasing computer equipment and launching new projects."

Should be:

"If you find Wikipedia or its sister projects useful, please consider making a donation. Donations are used primarily for purchasing computer equipment and launching new projects."

There wasn't actually a space after the word donation in the wikitext, although one did show up on the rendered page. I think this is a space for that external link icon to be displayed, but for some reason it isn't displayed, leaving a space. I've moved the period inside the link, which is not ideal, but at least is better than an extra space before it. Angela. 19:59, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"Full stop". — Chameleon My page/My talk 20:07, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"Not ideal" indeed. Yuck. Kludges to avoid rendering bugs. *sighs*
James F. (talk) 06:58, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Separation of powers

Why does this talk about the US?

When I hear "separation of powers" I think first of the French Republic, and secular republics in general, before I think of America. The Main Page makes it sound like a purely American principle. — Chameleon My page/My talk 21:41, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Blank line at top of page

There is a blank line at the top of the main page. Possibly there are 2 right now. Why doesn't this get fixed? Thue | talk 10:57, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • Some people have been saying that a blank line makes the print version better. That might be why. —siroχo 00:50, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Slow

Hi, I've noticed lately that Wikipedia seems to be slow, and not at any particular time. It just takes forever to load pages, even when it only took a few seconds before. I was wondering if anyone else has this problem. I have a DSL connection and live in Texas, USA, and speed on other sites is not a problem. Is Wikipedia simply outgrowing its bandwidth? I'd just like to know if others are experiencing this, thanks--naryathegreat 01:32, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

It varies for no reason obvious to me. It was slow for me for some time yesterday, seems acceptable now. Possibly it is a result of the developers tuning the site. Thue | talk 19:47, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Marine Corps Establishment

The current line on the front page is incorrect. The Marines were established on November 10, 1775 -- they were re-established in 1798. --Alexwcovington 08:15, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Saxophone

I think saxophone was featured a couple of weeks back. At least I'm sure I saw that picture on the front page. Could someone clarify? Arvindn 09:19, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, Saxaphone was never featured. →Raul654 16:08, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
The saxophone with the same photo was used as a selected anniversary on May 17. -- Popsracer 02:05, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Does wikipedia represent the entire world?

discussion moved to User_talk:Drbalaji_md#Does_wikipedia_represent_the_entire_world.3F

Is Wikipedia democratic or aristocratic?

discussion moved to User_talk:Drbalaji_md#Is_Wikipedia_democratic_or_aristocratic.3F

What is the future of Wikipedia? An experimental poll

discussion moved to User_talk:Drbalaji_md#What_is_the_future_of_Wikipedia.3F__An_experimental_poll

related trolling also moved to User_talk:Drbalaji_md

Random German comment

Immer höre ich nur Englisch, das ist ja total langweilig, kann hier jemand Deutsch? (ja ich weiß, ich gehöre in die deutsche Wikipedia, aber man kann auch in fremdsprachigen Wikipedias seinen Spaß haben!!!)--217.2.41.199 12:56, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Man kann hier seinen Spaß haben, als man auf Englisch sprecht, natürlich. — Chameleon My page/My talk 16:42, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Seing as I don't know German: Vaß? Ilyanep (Talk) 15:46, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

First Beer

Lion Beer is possibly the first brand of beer in Asia. Beer was first brewed in Mesopotamia, and after that in Anatolia, both of which are in Asia. ato 02:10, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

i think this comment should go on the Did you know discussion, not here.--Zero00 11:49, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Selected anniversaries

When selecting anniversaries for the front page, please take care to distribute them geographically somewhat. Today's selected anniversaries consisted of 3 american events and 1 british/american event. That's just not appropriate for the front page of an international encyclopaedia. Zocky 11:49, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template:October_22_selected_anniversaries is made from October_22 and not just for the main page, feel free to select better enteries from the latter to include in the former. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:13, 2004 Jul 13 (UTC)

BegPedia? Shame on you

Is this the new way to resort to beggary? I thougt Bomis makes money with pornographic content - and not with begging?!

PS The red bordered design is real stylish - or better - more than ugly. Shame on you... I would prefer a minimum of 10 pop-under windows and a blinking bold red border:

To help support Wikipedia, please visit the fundraising page, or read about what we use the money for.
15 Popup windows and at least 2 blinking borders -- Rainbow Colored Ilyanep (Talk) 23:58, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
How do you get the border to blink? Must be some inane Internet Explorer bug. :) - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 19:53, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Well, the alternative to this is Google Ads, because MediaWiki really needs the money. The servers have been really slow lately so we need more servers, and it is unfair to expect Bomis to pay. You may be interested in the disscussion of Google Ads here.Jeff8765 20:26, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)
    • See...I'd perfer Google ads. Ilyanep (Talk) 23:58, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • I have to admit that Google ads, do have their merits, according to Jimbo we could expect to get over $300,000 a month with Google ads, far more than we would ever get from donations, I am just worried that the project might fork if we get outside ads of any sort, like the Spanish Wikipedia did a few years back.

It isn't begging, it is reminding people that servers are not bought with good will. The burden on Bomis is already huge considering that more than half of their colo bill probably comes from serving Wikimedia projects. Only having the donation link in the sidebar yields (at most) a hundred bucks a day on average. Compare that with the $3,600 we have taken in during the three days that notice was put up. This is only a temporary notice, as will all such notices be during fund drives. Compare the notice with quarterly public TV and radio fund drives. In those case all you see or hear is the fund drive notice for minutes at a time, but with our message all the content is still there all the time. The only alternative to this kind of thing is to;

  • accept advertisements, and thus risk multiple forks,
  • close-up shop since there is no way we can keep up with demand

We will probably need to buy $35,000 of new servers this quarter (1 July to 30 September) alone just to keep up with projected demand (our traffic is growing at an average rate of 90% compounded quarterly). So shame on you for complaining. Or do you have about $20,000 to bring our budget in line? Thought so. --mav 05:25, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

    • Google Ads are OK if they are opt-in only. — Chameleon My page/My talk 05:38, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Yes that might be a good idea, additionally to or instead of donating money one could voluntarily choose to have Google ads in the left sidebar. In that case it might be not anymore necessary to put the 'donate' notice on top of all pages for all users. Donar Reiskoffer 06:35, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
        • But by entering into a business contract to provide services, wikipedia would stop being a volunteer project and become a business. For many, including me, that is not acceptable. If there was a fork to a non-ad version, I would go there. Zocky 00:39, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I hope that "open source" does not become a new business plan --ganesh 18:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

  • I understand Wikipedia's situation and I am glad these efforts are taking place because they are necessary and this project is necessary for many people. I would also recommend that the Donations in the sidebar be RED or DARKER BLUE so people notice it more easily even without fund drives. --Exigentsky

And this is how they treat those who want to donate money!

(moved to User talk:Drbalaji md#And this is how they treat those who want to donate money! (moved from Talk:Main page))

Writing Style/Spelling

(I didn't know where else to put this, so, if this is not the proper place to discuss such a topic, please move it to a more appropriate venue)

I was looking through some random pages, and noticed something - there are quite a few pages out there that use British-English spellings of words (colour, programme, etc.), and then many others that use the American-English spellings (color, program, etc.). Inconsistency looks bad in an encyclopedia, no matter what form it comes in, so perhaps we should pick a format and make it a standard? -- StellarFury

Both are welcome here, although each article should standardise (standardize?) on one. There is a page full of stuff on this somewhere - hang on... Mark Richards 22:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Please don't end your words with "-ise". The correct spelling in American English is "-ize". Wikipedia should be based upon the American English content, because the servers are located here in the United States. If you want to have your country's spellings of words, you can house the servers.Mr. Grinch 22:07, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I suppose all non-English content should be deleted too, Mr Grinch. — Chameleon My page/My talk 16:24, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Already answered, no worries. It's Wikipedia:Manual of style. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 22:50, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Since neither system is more correct than the other, but a lot of people are very fiercely attached to one or the other, I think the present compromise is a good one. Check out Talk:World War II to get an idea of how much people are willing to argue about it. Harry R 22:52, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I have another suggestion. Have an array list (users can contribute to this) that contains American and British spellings. Let the users select his preference as to which spelling he wants in the preferences. A tag or template on that page can be used to protect key pages (such as 'US Dept of Defense') or "Shakespere's works" from such a policy. (Maybe something like this can also be used for Celcius/Fahrenheit?) ¶ nichalp 18:58, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
What about Kelvin and Rankine?--1pezguy 00:15, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
Kelvin and Rankine too. ¶ nichalp 20:26, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
I believe the general standard is Brit spelling on Brit topics, Murrican spelling on Murrican topics and edit wars on shared topics, i.e. World War II jengod 00:52, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
Not just spelling but whole words change. There are also more than two varieties of English. The is also the issue of the default: if Webster spellings are made default, this is unacceptable. — Chameleon My page/My talk 12:09, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Also, some words can't be replaced on a simple one-for-one basis. Example: 'TV program' in US English would be British 'TV programme' but 'computer program' would be the same in both. Similarly, Brit English uses 'metre' for the unit of measurement and for poetry, but 'electricity meter' for the box recording your usage. And both draft and draught as well. I can't see what's so bad about a global encyclopedia reflecting the diversity of its users, myself. Harry R 13:03, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yes, there are problems with implementation as you correctly stated. The examples that you have cited perhaps can be overcome by also checking the phrases (2 word or 3 word max). Wikipedians should be allowed to edit the list of phrases array to weed out such glitches. ¶ nichalp 20:26, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)
Try not to attempt to simplify that so much; for example, consider the phrase "[...] the program was written [...]": in an article about a computer program, that would stay as it is, but in one about a British television programme, it would have to be changed. Unless you're willing to make available a sufficiently aware NLP to fix this (which would probably win you, amongst other things, a Nobel &c.), stop being so silly. It's not going to happen technically, it's not going to do so socially, and it's certainly not going to happen politically; to attempt to cause the English Wikipedia to schism into en, en-us, en-au, en-nz, en-sa, en-in, en-ca, &c. is worthy of the highest ranked troll. James F. (talk) 11:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Here in Canada, both spellings (for many of these disputes) are generally accepted, as Canada has long had to balance between British and US spellings. However, I do agree that for general-interest categories, it is best to stick to a convention. Maybe we should use the Canadian Press standard style? (Admittedly, this is a bit arrogant and CAN-centric) - RealGrouchy 16:57, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Bots anyone?

I think that ther eshould be a standard of english for every article regardless of topic. It should be American English because it was started in America and thes ervers are hosted there too. Anyway, whatever the standard, it should be used.

Perhaps bots could automatically change words to the standard for example colour to color.

Don't be a dickhead. And eef ze servers were 'osted een France we would 'av to write like zees? Wikipedia should be in standard English, but since there are huge numbers of Americans here, it'll always have to be a mixture of standard and American English. That's not going to change. Sorry, "gonna". — Chameleon My page/My talk 10:59, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I still don't understand why there's a problem with the current system. It's a global encyclopedia which reflects the diversity of global usage. That seems reasonable enough to me. Personally I couldn't actually spell if I had to use American English, which would be a pain in the arse, but generally - it ain't broke. Don't fix it. Harry R 10:02, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Table color stuff

Lysine was complaining in IRC about tables which set the background color but not the font color (which resulted in one case with white on white, depending on browser prefrences), so I inserted several style="color:black;" and equivalent. - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 19:50, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The image accompanying the Christianity article

All I see is a black box with no image in it. When I click on where the image should be, it takes me to a large IKHTHUS image, which I assume is what we're supposed to be seeing. Am I the only one having this problem? RickK 19:55, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

Knowing you're using IE, I went to have a look, and the problem indeed seems to be IE's bad PNG transparency support. I'm going to try to fix the image so it doesn't use transparency. — Chameleon My page/My talk 22:03, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It is now fixed. However, the thumbnail on the front page still seems to be derived from the old image, despite my reloading. What was wrong with the cross, anyway? — Chameleon My page/My talk 22:15, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

TYPO ON THE FRONT PAGE!

The Henson article on the front page .. "most important puppeteer in relevision history" - looks really bad for Wikipedia if we cant notice typos on our face to the world. Palnu 03:58, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) Ah saw that someone fixed it. Palnu 04:02, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You could have fixed it yourself. The main page is editable by any user who knows how. Read Wikipedia:Editing the main page. Guanaco 04:09, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, didnt know that one. Palnu 04:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
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