Talk:Main Page/Archive 5

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Archive 5
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"Non-English Versions" sounds so crass. (I mean, what would you think if the French page referred disdainfully to "Versions Non-françaises"?) How about "In Other Languages"? --Brion 01:48 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

"In other languages" sounds good to me. Enchanter--Pheng 2000 01:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)i can understand itInsert non-formatted text here
Me too! -- Oliver PEREIRA 02:07 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)
Done. Our honor is restored. :) --Brion
I understand the difference between the two language lists, but I don't understand why lists giving different information are labelled almost identically, "In other languages" and "Other languages". I believe the "Other languages" list is active wikipedias and the "In other languages" list is Wikipedias aborning. However, even an English speaker would have trouble telling the difference from the way the page reads. I thought this was going to be fixed before the page went on line. Ortolan88

Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! Okay, so if today's the Wikipedia's second birthday, shouldn't the phrase "We started in January 2001" say "We started on January 15, 2001"? And how about having "Wikipedia" in the "Historical anniversaries" list...? :) -- Oliver PEREIRA 02:07 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

Done. Perhaps we'll take it out tomorrow, though, it just doesn't seem dignified. ;) --Brion 02:15 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)
Thanks! And I'm actually quite pleased to see that you've rejected my suggestion of "January 15, 2001" in favour of "15 January 2001". I've never liked the month-day-year way of doing things, but I think round here I've been brainwashed by the dominant Wikipedia convention... -- Oliver PEREIRA 02:45 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)
It does look nicer that way - as an added bonus the lack of a comma means that we don't get a line break at lower resolutions! Come to think of it we might want to eventually consider moving all day pages to the [day month] format. It was a mistake to make these pages in the American only format to begin with. There are far more English speakers who use the [day month] format. But that can wait. --mav

Much easier to nav, mav.--Sv


Cute. Thanx but I'm not responsible for the neat new table - I just helped tweak it. --mav

I must say that I preferred "in January 2001". Other than on Wikipedia Day, the exact date doesn't seem to matter much. In fact, some people working on the new design wanted to replace it with "in early 2001", but I think "in January 2001" would be best. Also, I think the first and last link in the "Other Languages" list should have the same font size. --Eloquence 09:09 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

The 15 is harmless since it doesn't take-up much room and doesn't cause a line break. I agree about the font size thingy. --mav

I'm going to be out of town, so when the hour of the 100,000 article arrives, could somebody replace the Wikipedia Day link on the Main Page with a link to our press release? --mav 10:11 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

Well, I think the Wikipedia Day link should be removed now since Wikipedia Day is, like, over. --Eloquence 12:29 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure it still isn't the 15th somewhere in the Pacific? :) Yeah, the link should probably go, but please link the press release in the same way when we hit the 100,000 article milestone. --mav
It goes the other way, Mav. It's the 17th here in Oz, by all of 19 minutes. But don't let that stop you. In fact, you better hurry - there are only 363 shopping days left till Wikipedia day!
You are on the other side of the International Date Line silly - we Americans are always a day behind you. ;-) --mav


sysops should vote on articles of the week or something which people are encouraged to work on Vera Cruz

Bored? Try Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub, Wikipedia:Votes for NPOVing, Wikipedia:Requested articles or the most wanted list. These and others will soon be conveniently listed on a separate page, I hear. --Eloquence


plz add, Banana to the main page. Vera Cruz

Not without some added info, and under the name "Banana extinction". --Eloquence 12:29 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

"15 January 2001" should be changed to "January 15, 2001".

Why? There is no reason to link to the day and year pages - they say nothing about the project and that is the subject of the paragraph. Only links that directly relate to what the project is should be in the intro paragraph - everything else is a distraction. --mav


I agree. Can't we just change it to "January 2001"? That would be even less distracting. --Eloquence
Why would that be less distracting? It's just less informative. What's wrong with specifying a precise date? It is an important date, and one that we celebrate every year with big parties, and so on. ;) -- Oliver PEREIRA 01:40 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
I won't push this, I just think it's a classical case of "too much information". I also prefer "January 15, 2001" to "15 January 2001", even though I'm German where the latter form is used (with a dot after the 15). My feeling for English tells me that the first form is more natural, but I may be wrong. --Eloquence
I agree that "January 2001" is enough. Enchanter 01:52 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
I don't get this at all. Is there a reason behind it? It's only three extra characters, and it makes it a precise date, rather than just a vague statement about the general time period during which it happened. Precision is good. :) -- Oliver PEREIRA 02:21 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
One more argument strongly in favour for "January 15" would be that this is what we advise people to use in Wikipedia:Manual of style. We also seem to say we should link them. We might as well introduce them to policy in the first thing they read. Indeed, the date and year pages normally don't mention every item that links to them, but in this case they do of course. We might want to link to Wikipedia Day as an alternative given the recent excitement over it, but "15 January" is clearly not wanted. -Scipius 02:47 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
From what I know, "15 January" is British English and "January 15" is American English. The standard in Wikipedia is "January 15" so let's stick to it. Please, please, please, keep the 15 in the date. It's a very sentimental date for me... um, well... and it's cool because the Esperanto Wikipedia started on November 15! --Chuck SMITH
If all that is changed is the removal of the 15, then I don't mind the change but I won't be doing it myself. --mav


could the link to Multilingual coordination be turned back to normal size please ?

Why? Having it full sized right next to smaller text is both ugly and causes a line break. Besides, that page is the very first link on the Main Page (under "multilingual") after Wikipedia. You can't get a higher profile than that. --mav

It is very poor practice to have a list labelled In other languages with 28 languages on it, located 2 cm away from another list called Other Languages with 10 languages on it. They are two different lists and should be labelled something like Wikiepedia Projects in Other Languages and Wikipedias in Other Languages. Look, I hate to be a nag, but this is the fourth time I've raised this obvious point. Please pardon the bolding but I don't seem to be getting through on this one. Ortolan88

I looked in vain for several minutes, came back here to see the exact phrasing, and went back to ctrl+F. The "other languages" section is in the page's footer, uneditable by all except developers: below "Edit this page" etc. 10.5 cm away on my monitor.  :-) Koyaanis Qatsi 03:46 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

No, it is a protected page.

Oh, I thought you wanted the bottom part changed, not the top. I can do that, if you'd like ... you're not a sysop? Stunning. I'd certainly vouch for your good intentions. ... Or maybe you don't want it. That would make you even smarter than I thought you were. I'm only now realizing I don't much want it (oh, let's see, after ... about 18 months ... slow on the uptake). Koyaanis Qatsi

Keeping my street cred. Ortolan88

I read about that somewhere. Koyaanis Qatsi, soy chai drinker
Well, somebody objected to the wording "non-English editions" since that can be viewed as us stating that the other language editions are not "equal" to the English version - that they, as a group, are somehow different. The suggestions you make are also too wordy and will cause a line break at lower resolutions (which as you know is a bad thing for a heading to do). How about Other Available Languages or even In 32 Languages? --mav

I'd think we'd want the "32-language" heading to be very inviting, since it includes projects that are just getting started or are moving very slowly, and we want more involvement, but we'd want the "10-language" heading to brag that there were active Wikipedias in those languages without offending or harming the interests of the languages on the longer list.

It's a tricky problem of wording. It would be best to have the single list of 32 languages. Lacking that, the two lists should be distinguished.

The difference betewen them is vast. Looking in languages I can sort of fake my way through, Norwegian has no article on Henrik Ibsen or Edvard Munch, Swedish has no article on Ingmar Bergman, Danish has no article on Hans Christian Andersen, Catalan has no article on Salvador Dalí, Italian has no article on Leonardo da Vinci, and Portuguese has no article on Vasco da Gama. They are just getting started. By contrast, French, German, and Spanish are quite respectable, even compared to the English Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has articles on all those people. German has most of them. Someone else can check the other "big" languages.

So, all that said, how about Other Languages and Other Wikipedias? Of course, they're all Wikipedias, but they aren't all equal. Maybe Phase 1 and Phase 2? Or something else short that won't wrap. But it isn't good practice to have two different lists with almost the same label. Ortolan88

The list within the page text is obsolete, a holdover from the days before we had the interlanguage links available to link every page to its equivalent in other languages. However, some people have insisted that the prominent interlanguage links on the main page be kept limited to the languages with more developed and active article bases. Thus the vestigial, but more complete, inline list has lingered around.
I think this is a rather annoying, schizo way to go about it, and I'm open to alternate suggestions that are both clear and fair and reasonably satisfy the two conflicting needs: A) make it immediately obvious to random visitors that Wikipedia is being worked on and is available in their language (cf What to do with www.wikipedia.org), and B) keep the main page from being overly cluttered by a list of fifty languages, half of which have less than ten pages. (Consider also users with smaller screens, who may have to scroll down before seeing any content.) --Brion 06:14 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)
Hm. How about we do the opposite? Have all the language links for any wiki that has a home page and then only list the most active ones in the body of the page? That way the interlanguage linking is consistent with the way it is done on every other page and we highlight the most active wikis. --mav

I believe that the approach Mav gives us here is the best. It is clear, consistent, and fair and gives a boost to the less active Wikipedias. Ortolan88

Keep in mind that the list is going to get longer and longer, particularly if "has a main page" is the only criterion. Try looking at the French main page on an 800x600 screen -- between the header and the languages, fully half your screen is taken up before we get to explaining what Wikipedia is and why it's so darn great. And it's not even a complete list now, much less in the future. We need to think about ways to make it take less space and scale better. --Brion 16:56 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)


Hear ye, hear ye: As a temporary anti-Slashdot effect measure, I've disabled page counter updates and made the main page static if gotten to via a direct link to http://www.wikipedia.org/ . This means that the main page will _not_ reflect user's login state or edits made until the crisis is over. --Brion 08:06 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Brion! What about the special utilities like short pages? --mav
They don't seem to be getting hit much, but for safety's sake I've put the heavy special pages into "miser mode" fulltime until things calm down. --Brion 08:51 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

Well, for some reason I can't access the main Wikipedia mailing list, and nobody answered me when I asked on wikien-l, so let me ask it here. Every time I have come to Wikipedia over the last two days, I have had to log in each time, even though I have "remember me" checked. Is it just me, or is this happening to everybody? -- Zoe

I am not having that problem. Sorry, I expected someone who could tell you more than that (e.g. a developer) to get back to you. Best, Koyaanis Qatsi


Zoe, is this just when you go to http://www.wikipedia.org/ directly, or on every page on the 'pedia? If the former, this is a known side-effect of the static main page that I put in to reduce the server hammering we were getting from the Slashdotting (a significant portion of hits were to that url, and it reduced the load on the server to hand out a file instead of running the script for a virtually unchanging page being requested so often). Since the flood has largely subsided, I've just now gone ahead and removed it, so the 'live' wiki, complete with login information, will be available on the main page. If this doesn't clear up your problem, let me know.


As far as the mailing lists, yes I believe the @nupedia.com addresses have been removed for some reason; send to the general list at wikipedia-l @wikipedia.org now. --Brion 02:28 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

The link to Afrikaans http://af.wikipedia.com/ is missing! It can't be because it is too small, because it is higher in the top 20 than Frysk (Frisian). - Patrick 12:55 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Fixed (there are other languages missing as well). See also the above thread. We are trying to work-out a better way to list and display links to the other languages. --mav

I would like to change the opening sentence from:

Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia.

to

Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a neutral and accurate open content encyclopedia.

The reason being is that the "complete" part will happen naturally in time whereas neutrality isn't a foregone conclusion and really does need to be emphasized. NPOV is also central to what the project is. --mav

I think it's the other way around. There are many online encyclopedia and dictionary projects, but most of them are specialized (plant encyclopedias, math encyclopedias, computer term dictionaries etc.). The name "Wiki"-pedia may suggest to a newcomer that we are somehow not a general encyclopedia but about a strange computer thing called "wiki". On the other hand, there's always a natural expectation for an encyclopedia to be neutral and not advocacy, so this does not really need to be emphasized.
If you're trying to do what I think you're trying to do then you want to give higher exposure to NPOV to make sure that more people read it and therefore add more neutral prose to Wikipedia. However, while the subtleties of NPOV are not always intuitively clear, most serious contributors to this project quite naturally adopt a neutral tone. The kind of people who add biased nonsense are often simply too immature to work on such a project, or they do it in purpose (i.e. they try to get away with it). Besides, many POV contributions probably come through search engines, so they won't really read the intro. It might make sense to link to NPOV from the edit screen, in the space which is currently entirely occupied by a large, fat copyright warning. --Eloquence 14:27 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
Your idea is better. The current text is too long to be useful and needs to be cut down to bare basics. That will leave us room to write a sentence or phrase about NPOV. This is even more important now that old hands are outnumbered by new hands. We need NPOV accountability. I'll work on new boilerplate text sometime in the next few days. --mav

That WW III thing is a bit misleading, isn't it? The article in question only says that World War III almost happened, but, erm, luckily it didn't! Hugh Trevor-Roper should be added to the recent deaths, though, I think. -- Oliver PEREIRA 20:44 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

It still is a historical anniversary: Eight years ago yesturday Russia almost launched a nuclear attack on Western Europe. I would say that that is a very important moment in history and the only appropriate place for us to have such information is an article that talks about the possiblilty of such a war. The Cuban missile crisis was another time that WWIII almost started. Hugh Trevor-Roper is listed. --mav
Okay, I see. I wasn't complaining about the article; I just thought that putting "WWIII" in "Historical anniversaries" made it look like WWIII actually happened on that day in history! But of course people will know that it didn't, and can click on the link to see what is meant, so fair enough. And thanks for adding Lord Dacre and pointing out the Selected Articles on the Main Page page. -- Oliver PEREIRA 17:27 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)


Can someone add a link to Super Bowl XXXVII? Or does that not fit in the news/events cats?

Reluctantly added. If nothing else, it's a cultural phenomenon. --Brion 01:28 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

To get something listed on the Main Page please consult Selected Articles on the Main Page. --mav

howabout a link to the How to's page, maybe this will spark some more interest, I didnt even know we had a list of how to's-Stevert

I concur -- where is it, anyway? Should be hard to search for, given that both "how" and "to" are stopwords. -Eloquence

its How-tos maybe the subject of another spin off sister project: hehe -Stevert ps. proabably would fit under culture, other, or sister...

OK - where do you want the link? I kinda think ==Other Category Schemes== is the only thing that would work. --mav

"MLK Jr"? this is getting a little silly. Until I link-hovered I was thinking maybe this was a new virus, something from NASA or a numetal band. Mav, you'll never guarantee "one-liners", in fact at comfortable browser width they're all one and a half. PLease don't overuse abbreviations. -- Tarquin 00:02 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry - I overestimated the familiarity of that acronym. It was an important link but if I didn't use an acronym then Martin Luther King, Jr should have been one of two links on that line. I'm not sure what you mean by "one and a half lines." Do you have a screen res of 800 by 600 and do not have your browser window maximized? If you do then you should be used-to much ugliness and horizontal scrolling. Most other people at that res surf with a maximized browser window. I'm thinking about adding a second line to Historical anniversaries so that links are listed for at least a week before being removed - there is just too much history to cover. BTW, the thought of a junior virus or spaceprobe made me chuckle. :-) --mav 01:03 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
It is a well-known fact (at least by typographers, editors and graphic designers) that the human eye reads text most comfortably in short lines of about 10 words. This is why newspapers and magazines are printed in columns. My screen res is 1152x864, but my browser window occupies just over half. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TenWordLine . This is something I have mentioned several times before, in the context of floating tables and images that force text into a column that is about 2 or 3 words in width if the window is at "ten-word width" for the rest of the article. "Most other people at that res surf with a maximized browser window" -- then they are wrong, and tiring their eyes for no reason. It would be nice if this basic principle of good layout actually made its way into the Wikipedia GroupThink; I've been pasting that list from C2 often enough -- Tarquin 01:17 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)


Historical anniversaries: Apollo 1 - Anne Boleyn - Roe v. Wade - Unabomber - Louis XVI

I count 9 words, two numbers and one v. I'm also well aware of the 10 word per line rule. --mav


How-tos = yeah, mav, the Other category looks like it, too. We might have to put a disclaimer though, at the top: Wikipedia and Bomis absolve ourselves of any liability in the accuracy of these below How-to's and if you die, in the course of bad advice, we not take the blame for it, nor give out any cash to make your relatives happy. -Stevert ps we should change the main title to non-stopwords like Howto, How2's, yadda....


How tos listed. Yes some short disclaimer is probably needed. However it really would be best if we had a general disclaimer lined from every page in Wikipedia next the the copyright notice. Having all these separate disclaimers (that can be edited no less!) is messy. I've already proposed this on the mailing list and there was support for it but nobody (including me) has done the work yet to actually write such a disclaimer. --mav

Perhaps something short is in order, rather than something written in tinytext , like:

Wikipedia and its parent company, Bomis, disavow liability for any injury, arising from incorrect statements in all Wikipedia pages. All use of the material on Wikipedia, as under the GPL public license, is free, and its accuracy is soleley the responsibility of the user.

-howzat? -Stevert

What is the reason for this disclaimer? I very much doubt that there is any real threat of legal action ("I read this on some website and didn't bother to check any further" is unlikely to get anywhere in court). And at the end of the day, it is up to the owner of the site (Jimbo) to decide whether there are any legal risks, not us.

Provided that the general information we give about the project makes it clear that any member of the public can edit a page, and it does, no reasonable person would rely unquestioningly on what they read here. Enchanter

well, I dunno... I just write the stuff. On another topic - I use the WOB color scheme, but the wikipedia logo shows up crappy. Its a png, but its got jaggies on it.. who's logo is it, and might I try a hand at making the alpha distinct and workable for all schemes. Its piddly, but most things show up wrong on black background.. despite the fact that black is really a lot easier on the eyes, and should be used more often... -Stevert

See meta:Logo suggestions/leading candidates

Suggestion for anniversaries February,2 Battle of Stalingrad. Ericd

Yep - it will be listed as soon as Feb 2 arrives. --mav

Call me egocetric (LOL) but I liked the read page markers...will they be back, and when?

AntonioMartin

I think so - but they are not going to be the dumb hit counters that we had before. They will be based on server logs so they will only count one IP once. I'm not sure when that will be done though. --mav

---

Add a link to meta on here... Vera Cruz

There is a link to Meta on the Main Page, but it is referred to as "Commentary". It's in the section headed "About the Project", over on the right-hand-side of the page. Hope this helps. -- Oliver P. 10:01 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)

January 4, 2003. To all Wikipedians: Is everyone having trouble reaching wikipedia and its pages tonight, or is it just me?

AntonioMartin

The whole thing was down for much of the day. I guess somebody restarted the server. --mav
Jason has rebooted the server. Still don't know what crashed it, but spot-checks of the logs are consistent with the couple of times this has happened before -- everything just suddenly stops. The machine stays sort-of connected to the network but doesn't respond to requests, and no more background activity is recorded in logs. Sigh... --Brion 08:41 Feb 4, 2003 (UTC)


There's a lanugage on the main page called "????", which links to [[1]], a page filled with question marks. What's up with that? User:zanimum

That's Russian, apparently you don't have a Cyrillic font installed. This is what it should look like. --Eloquence 16:03 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)
Well, after the Russian link, shouldn't we add Russian, just so those without the font don't get confused? Matter of personal opinion and taste really, but you know. user:zanimum
Zanimum has a good point; it should be treated just like Chinese. -- Toby 20:29 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)
Better? --Brion 20:35 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)
Much! Thank you! I never meant to sound picky or anything, it's just at my work computer, the font's not installed, as it is on my home computer, and so I figured other computers wouldn't have that font either. user:zanimum