Talk:Main Page/Archive 75

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Archive 75


Contents

China proper (Qingzang railway item in ITN)

The article China proper says that this term is controversial or even offensive to many Chinese. I suggest that the wording in ITN be changed to "eastern China" or something like that. --Cam 01:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. --64.229.222.204 10:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

How about changing the "Israel-Lebanon"...

to something of the "Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel strikes back" sort?? This seems to be more accurate - the current writing seems to indicate that Israel is the propogator of the attacks....

  • It is HEzbollah. Reuters is making a mistake[1]. The second letter is e. You can ask any Arabic speaker.--Patchouli 08:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
    Is any Arabic speaker an expert in the romanization of Arabic? There is nothing wrong with the transliteration "Hizbullah". Our article Hezbollah gives more information; see in particular Note 1. --LambiamTalk 12:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Getting to the subject, Israeli officials say that the Lebanese government is responsible. Hezbollah is a legal "party of God" in Lebanon. It is as ethical as the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda except that it murders in lieu of rape.

I say, "Why hasn't the Lebanese government seized Hasan Nasrallah's bank account. If Nasrallah was so loaded those youths wouldn't have money to march back and forth with ammunition attached to their chests and arms. They on Nasrallah's payroll."--Patchouli 08:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay people, let's stop right there. Wikipedia isn't the forum for discussing who's to blame in this very messy and prolonged "trouble" (to borrow from the N.Ireland vernacular). The current entry says "Israeli troops launch a military offensive into Lebanon (pictured) in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah." which is the current state of affairs. --Monotonehell 09:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The current version disregards the firing of hundreds of rockets by Hezbollah towards northern Israel. These rockets have already caused the death of over 10 people, and I think that not mentioning them makes it look like Israel is reacting only to the "minor" incident of kidnapping two soldiers. --80.230.85.180 12:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a headline and as such can't include everything - that's what the article is for. BTW, it would look strange if it said that Israel entered Lebanon for something because of something that happened 4 or 5 days later. Zocky | picture popups 13:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
The Main Page still reflects only what happened 4 or 5 days ago, in a way that suggests this is a one-sided assault. That's not making it short, that's making it factually inaccurate. I suggest something like "The Israeli army continues its offensive in Lebanon, while Hezbollah fires katyusha rockets against northern Israeli cities." --80.230.85.180 15:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
We can't update it every five minutes. This is, again, a misunderstanding of what the In the news section is for. Please try to confine your passions to editing the article so that it includes as much encyclopedic information as possible. --Dhartung | Talk 19:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I think "civilian and military casualties" would be more appropriate than "military and civilian casualties", considering the apparent ratios between the two categories.

The factual account should include Hezbollah entering Israel to murder 7 and kidnap 2 soldiers.

Is it correct to talk of "civilian and military casualties on both sides"? Surely the military casualties are only on one side?

G8 summit

It's kind of strange that G8 summit is not listed in the current events and is not mentioned on the main page, and 32nd G8 summit page still has "Future events" template on top of it.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.197.129.54 (talk • contribs) 10:36, July 16, 2006 (UTC).
So fix it. :) Welcome - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. There's no one person responsible for general content. So if the editors who originted that article lost interest or are busy then it gets left to someone else to take it up and suggest things for the Current events. --Monotonehell 12:34, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Disturbing image on main page

Is it really necessary to inflict that horrible smug grin on us? How about replacing the latest Prime Minister with the first Prime Minister, ie Robert Walpole. Walpole is no longer controversial and in the picture in his article he looks statesmanlike. Olborne 18:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not the best picture, and the article is (as I pointed out in Talk) too focused on history, but I think Blair is the right person to use. --Dhartung | Talk 19:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Image:BlairL.jpg might make a better picture. --Descendall 21:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
{{CrownCopyright}} has recently been changed to a non-free license due to its prohibition on derivative images. See Template talk:CrownCopyright. All images tagged with the license (including Image:BlairL.jpg) are in the process of getting fair use rationales. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 22:24, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

G8 issues

It says here that the two main G8 issues are "energy security" and education... should it be energy, security, and education, as in the summit's article? Or should the other be changed? ROY YOЯ 19:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


It most definately should be changed to reflect the wording of the original article. As I would think global security would be the number one issue given current events. But perhaps the only mistake is lack of punctuation, particularly commas, rather than "energy security" and education. Njjones 19:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


It's time...

Is there a Latin-language wikipedia? and if not, why hasn't it been created? wasn't the first encyclopedia written in latin? isn't this an insult to history? I would create it myself, but I can't because the only latin word I know is "vagina" (and I know it well....)Antimatter 22:03, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

But can you decline it?-gadfium 06:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think you'll find that very few men can decline vagina. --Sam Blanning(talk) 15:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
And those men are almost all priests.That is, those who can use both senses of decline-gadfium 23:36, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_prima Raul654 22:08, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, Latin is the mother language of most of Western Civilization. A Wiki that could translate legal phrases, common medical terms, inscriptions off famous statues and buildings, as well as just infamous sayings might be popular enough. As for the idiot who started this thread; "Illegitame non carbarundum - Julius Ceasar { Don't let the bastards grind you down } " Bptdude 06:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course Wikipedia has an article on that (fake) Latin phrase as well...see Illegitimi non carborundum. :o) EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 07:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

very good.. and here is a nice wiki link that does exist about latin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases Bptdude 09:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow....I probably should have checked before I asked about that....One good thing about wikipedia is that if you make a mistake or say something stupid, someone (or some people) are likely to point out your mistake before you realize it yourself...I don't know any latin, but perhaps I can redeem myself by writing the latin wikipedia article on the vagina...I'll see what I can do... :) Antimatter 21:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, tuum culpa (your bad)....er, if that accusative for "your" is wrong then it's mea culpa (my bad)!--Phil Wardle 08:15, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Try this: http://la.wikipedia.org/

Fact checking for featured articles

Have a look at this edit. A basic and easily checkable fact in the Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom article (the salary) was not updated. This is the sort of thing that justifiably gives Wikipedia a bad reputation. What is the point of saying that our articles can be more up-to-date than others, when no-one checks to see if they are up-to-date? Can processes be put in place to stop this happening again? Carcharoth 23:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. --Dhartung | Talk 00:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Carcharoth 00:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. The above WikiProject doesn't seem very active. Only four other posts on the talk page since the end of April. Though the guideline page is a bit more active. Carcharoth 09:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


F-35 Lightning

Using the terminology of "forward hemisphere"fixes to offer as WP doesn't have a "hemisphere" article and the F-35 page itself doesn't even mention the hemisphere jargon.Figma 01:51, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

"...in that it will reduce X-band radar signals (from tracking radars, often short range) striking the front half of the aircraft, making it almost undetectable (stealthy) to such devices from this direction but not particularly stealthy from the rear and not stealthy to L band (search radars, often long range) from any direction.", perhaps? Though to be honest, hemisphere (which we do have an article on) works perfectly well in my opinion. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
>The F-35 Lightning II, called in development the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), is a military fighter aircraft designed by the United States and the United Kingdom.
Except that it was designed in the USSR. The JSF is the same airframe as the Yak-141 and the twist-pipe jet engine is also based on soviet technology. America paid 300 million USD to Russia soon after end of USSR to gain this technology. 195.70.32.136 06:50, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Discussion at Talk:F-35 Lightning II. Lockheed did license technology but the extent is not easily evident on the public web. --Dhartung | Talk 17:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

In the news ordering issue

Should the relegation of Italian soccer teams really be listed above the Israel-Lebanon conflict? 206.223.242.88 03:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

  • In most cases, all of the items listed on In the news is sorted by most recently added to the page first, not really what recently occurred in the real world first. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
    • The image is a different story, however; it only changes when and if someone gets around to changing it. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't you think it makes sense to do it by what is most significant (like on the Yahoo! front page) as opposed to what order they were added/occurred in the real world? 206.223.242.88 19:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Who gets to decide "what is most significant"? —David Levy 20:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Any admins out there?

Please change the Constitution Day link on the front to Constitution Day (South Korea). Thanks. Mithridates 07:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 07:17, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, why is 2006 is parenthesis after Marine Day? Its article said it was first celebrated in 1996, so shouldn't that be the year listed, or am I misunderstanding what the year in parenthesis indicates? -Elmer Clark 08:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

As Marine day is not on a fixed date. The "2006" refers to it falling on the 17th in 2006. In other years the date will be different. Jmount 09:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

CNN: 7.2 Earthquake has triggered Tsunami

CNN is reporting @ ~ 6:37am(GMT -4) that a earthquake spawned Tsunami has hit the Western Shore of the Asian island of Java, in Indonesia. According to that country's President (as quoted by Rueters and AP wires at this point.) At 6:37am they're reporting 6.8 under sea, meanwhile at 6:54 their "eyewitness" Kathy Quiano: is reporting a "7.2 magnatude quake which read 7.1" on the richter scale.

Related Tsunami news: --The North American Tsunami warning system on Tuesday moved a step forward with an agreement signed to place a Tsunami warning systems in parts of the Caribbean region. Seismic warning station for Barbados CaribDigita 11:08, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

That's grand, but there're two problems. First, you haven't given an updated article. Second, suggestions for the ITN section are made over on Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates, not here. Feel free to update that section once a new or updated article has been found :) GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 12:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

earthquake/tsunami

This is LARGELY more important than the Space Shuttle and deserves first mention on the news section. --Revolución hablar ver 04:20, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

  • The news section is ordered chronologically (which is objective), not by importance (which is subjective). That said, the shuttle landing did occur before the tsunami, so it should go 2nd. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-18 05:27
    • wouldn't it be ordered by what becomes candidate first? --210.86.70.193 09:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Image:JavaLocatie-1-.png Please add this map to it. It highlights Java. --Revolución hablar ver 07:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

    • no, don't be silly, it would be too small as a thumb to be of use --210.86.70.193 09:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Although the inset box on its own looks ideal for giving a sense of global location. --Bazza 13:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The link for "magnitude 7.7 earthquake" leads to the "Penis" article. Might want to change that.

That was fixed the very next minute. Thanks, though! --Dhartung | Talk 19:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

the pass away of Danny Cedrone...

More than 30 years ago I got this info : Danny Cedrone passed away on July 17, 1954 What do you think of it? Stephan KŒNIG 10:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If the date can be confirmed (please add references to Danny Cedrone's page), his death can be listed on July 17#Deaths. But, what does this have to do with MainPage ? -- PFHLai 13:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Pokemon

"that Pachirisu is a fictitious Electric Squirrel Pokémon that can shock opponents?"

...as opposed to a *real* electric squirrel pokemon? Or what? I think "fictitious" is understood here. 207.59.86.5 14:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not fair to assume that everyone reading the encyclopedia knows what a Pokémon is. Dark Shikari 15:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I agrees with darth shikari, most people know what a pokemon is however there are a few who don't--Alec trevalyn 16:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. It is a near-policy convention to always indicate that something is fictitious in order to prevent confusion that people unfamiliar with the subject may otherwise have. (For example, Star Wars-related articles often start with "In the fictional Star Wars Universe" even though there is no such thing as a real Star Wars Universe.) —Cuiviénen 02:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Space Shuttle and Israel/Lebanon

I love how the imagery in the front page, as of this edit, shows the space shuttle right next to a note about an escalating Israeli/Lebanese conflict. Let's all escape! MrZaiustalk 21:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

hahaha. Someone should probably change that. dposse 23:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Front page images need to be free, so our only option would probably be something like the Lebanese flag or a free map. --Dhartung | Talk 06:28, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah i always notice images beside the top story that look out of position, but this one actully looks right in the proper position. lets evacuate Earth before World War 3 11:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
The only ones calling it WWIII is the people at Fox News. dposse 16:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
And CNN and Comedy Central! Colbert Report MrZaiustalk 18:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

David Barkley

Can we please get that image removed? It looks horrible. See Image talk:David Barkley.jpg for details. --Liface 02:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I've replaced the image in question with the better version cited on that page. —David Levy 03:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Links

Why are links underlined (as of today?) in the English version of Wikipedia? Camptown 11:28, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

thats your internet browser, if you are using firefox just refresh your page, thats what i do Childzy (Talk|Contribs) 11:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Another topic on Main Page Bias

After spending a little over a year here in Wikipedia, I am willing to make the call: there is a bias, but towards nerds (of which I am a mere Class 2 Nerd). From Final Fantasy X to Starcraft to Perfect Dark to Red vs Blue, Wikipedia has become a veritable nerdgasm to nerdologists and connoisseurs of general nerdology worldwide. Huzzah! (or should I say "Ni"?) --Bobak 14:36, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Articles that make the main page do so because they're well-writted, well-sourced, and have good information. Since a preponderance of so-called "nerds" edit Wikipedia, more "nerd-related" articles are likely to be well-written, well-sourced, and have good information. Thus, more "nerd-related" articles will be featured. It has nothing to do with a bias in terms of which topics are picked for the main page: its a bias of what topics are covered well enough in Wikipedia to be picked for the main page. Dark Shikari 15:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Uhh...Duh. ;-) --Bobak 16:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

ZOMG ENCELADUS! MORE PLANETCRUFT! Delete NN Raul654 01:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

  • This is clearly another case of Wikipedia's blatant Saturnian bias. There's a whole universe out there, people!!! — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-20 05:20
I think it is sad that we are so provincial that we can't even look for an article out of our solar system. I hereby declare a CRUSADE against SYSTEMIC SOLAR SYSTEM STIGMATISM/BIAS on Wikipedia! Forward the Great Attractor and Great Wall! --maru (talk) contribs 05:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
So should we form Wikipedians Advocating Solar System Understatement Program? We can call ourselves WASSUP! The greetings would be awesome: "WASSUP?" "Hell yeah, Γ Quadrant for life, son!" ...of course, this would fall right into the nerd-bias above, but what do you expect from people who think contributing to a free online encyclopedia is a cool way to spend time ;-) (guilty!) --Bobak 20:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • It gets better, FF6 and FF8 are going for FAC at almost the same exact time :-). Kinda like what happened a few months ago, when like 8 FF articles got GA status over a 3 day period :) — Deckiller 04:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

George Bush's first veto

Today, George W. Bush made his first veto against a stem cell research bill. This is his first veto in his 6 years of being President. Is this Main Page worthy?--Chili14 18:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there an updated article? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 18:46, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
What do you mean? On Wikipedia, or from an external news service, like CNN?--Chili14 20:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Stories that feature "in the news" need an updated wikipedia article to link to. violet/riga (t) 20:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Portal:Current events has already been updated, with a link to stem cell controversy, which is updated. But Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates has not been updated. Make suggestions there. --Dhartung | Talk 20:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Englisc Wikipedia

I think it will be nice, if the InterWiki link to Englisc/Anglosaxon Wikipeda is added. I think it made ang.wiki more popular, and - maybe - encourage people to learn the history of their/foreign language. Michał P. 19:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki links are added to the bottom of the Main Page once the Wikipedia has 1,000 articles or more. Is this true for the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 20:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It's at 715. For an obsolete language, that's pretty good. --Dhartung | Talk 20:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Still has a ways to go to catch up with the Latin Wikipedia's 5,400 though :) GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 23:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Yabbut compare the Manx Wikipedia, which just passed 100 articles, and that's a language with living speakers. (And don't bite the newbie wikis...) --Dhartung | Talk 04:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

DYK bullets suck

DYK looked better without the bullets a few months ago. Why use them along with an ellipsis starting each line ? Ugly and superfluous. -- 64.229.179.114 06:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Did you know would be the best place to suggest layout changes to the DYK box. --Sam Blanning(talk) 08:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. (and I thought the arguing is bad on this talk page...) Will copy and post over there. -- 64.229.231.181 18:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Featured Lists

Why aren't featured lists ever on the Main Page? They all have introductory text, and are often as interesting as the featured articles. Is this the proper forum for discussing this? Has it been discussed before? Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 08:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Because they would be hard to do? how would you do it? --210.86.70.193 10:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Featured lists#Featured lists on the Main_Page. --Dhartung | Talk 22:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, the FLs are all meant to have a decent introductory lead section and an image, so you could replace TFA with TFL, say, one day a week. I wonder what Raul654 thinks. -- ALoan (Talk)
Here's an example of how it could be done...
The Anura is the order of animals in the class Amphibia that includes frogs and toads. There are around 5,280 species currently recognized in the Anura class. The living Anura are typically divided into three suborders: Archaeobatrachia, Mesobatrachia and Neobatrachia. This classification is based on such morphological features as the number of vertebrae, the structure of the pectoral girdle, and the morphology of tadpoles. More...
--Samuel Wantman 00:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps FLs would be featured weekly? Because if they don't have a chance of being featured on the main page, then "featured" is a misnomer. --Howard the Duck 05:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

In buisness school, the very first lesson they teach on the very first day is this - if you have a successful product, DON'T MESS WITH IT. This was considered so basic, so obvious, they didn't even teach it for many years. (They started teaching it after New Coke). The featured article is the most popular thing on the main page after the search box (the developers did measurements to this effect last year). This suggestion is bad beyond words. Lists do not make good content to link to - a list is not something that will attract someone's attention, and putting it there at the deteriment of something that is already popular is a non-starter. Raul654 05:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

If that's the case, then we should replace another part of the main page (maybe DYK? OTD?) because frankly, if Featured Lists are featured then they should be at the Main Page. If they would have absolutely no chance of being featured, either rename them or delete the WP:FL page altogether. --Howard the Duck 06:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anybody would miss 'did you know' all that much; frankly though, I'd much rather see something like 'Media of the Day I set up on commons - a different video or song on the main page every day. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Raul654 06:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
But it would put a strain (or will it?) on the servers? And will it be slow to load? WP:FP can subsitute with the "featured media". And we don't have featured media (it is proposed, though). How about featured topics? But since we don't have featured media, why don't we add FLs? --Howard the Duck 06:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly would miss Did you know. If I had to pick something to remove, it would be In the news (which generates false expectations of Wikipedia and encroaches on Wikinews' territory). My understanding, however, is that the section is very popular, so I suppose that it should be left alone.
"Media of the day" is a nice idea, but it makes far more sense for the Commons' main page than it does for ours. I think that we should allow that site to maintain a unique identity. Otherwise, we'll only contribute to the notion that it's nothing more than a place for the other projects to store their media. —David Levy 11:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
As someone who has shepherded both a list and article to feature status, I find Raul's comment to be a bit harsh. I think there are some very interesting featured lists, and I would like there to be a forum where they are more featured. Why? For many reasons: FL's show what a list can become, and with their numerous links connect with a huge amount of content. Some people find lists as interesting as the articles, and lists are as much a part of what Wikipedia is about as are the articles. Certainly, not every FL is worthy of the front page, but there are many that are. An occasional posting on the front page won't hurt anything, and might even be helpful. -- Samuel Wantman 06:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Raul, I think you're reacting to a threat you infer to the Featured Article spot. Nobody said that, though (although I see how you could read it that way). In fact, I think that's the worst place for featured lists aside from the controversy it would cause. --Dhartung | Talk 20:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It's true, the name "Featured List" is largely a misnomer. Having nursed one list article through the demanding FL process, I was left with a feeling of "What now?" The answer seemed to be "Not much", which I found disappointing having worked on the page for so long. I think DYK is a great idea and would seem to meet many wiki-ideals, but my experience of having many articles on DYK is that they simply do not get edits. The topics on which Wikipedia no longer has an article are inevitably on increasingly minor topics and the DYK facts are usually so obscure that the "Did you know...?" phrasing seems facetious. I don't think it would hurt to replace DYK with an FL on one day a week. That said, I realise the inertia with the front page is enormous, and I'm pessimistic. Soo 00:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, it could work by simply replacing the featured picture with a featured list once or twice a week. —Nightstallion (?) 07:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

On this day : July 20

Minor point, but it seems a bit over the top to have two space exploration items right next to each other. How about replacing the 1976 one with:

Cheers — SteveRwanda 11:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The first manned lunar landing and the Viking probe are both hugely significant, certainly more so than one-of-many bombings in London. No, thanks. — ceejayoz talk 11:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
(Comment text removed by Dhartung | Talk. Jimmmmmmmmm, please observe WP:CIVIL, in particular no personal attacks and no legal threats.) Jimmmmmmmmm 11:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
By that logic, every time someone dies in Iraq, it should go In The News? Unless bombings have a greater significance than simply to those affected, if they mean more than just a continuation of a conflict, (i.e. pretty much if they have their own article), they are not notable enough for the main page. Cigarette 14:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Come on, saying "one-of-many bombings in London" is disgracful. I'm not saying that that event should take place but we should have to space events. Jimmmmmmmmm 15:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
My point is, there have been many bombings in London, probably enough to have one in On This Day for half of the entire year. Unless one is particularly notable - the subway bombings, for example - it certainly doesn't measure up in historical significance to humankind's first landing on the moon and one of the first Mars probes. 67.50.35.181 02:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep the two space-related events and add the 1982 event. Today's OTD is too short. --Howard the Duck 12:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

OTD is not too short, but DYK is too long, making OTD look short. And please keep the 1976 event. It's the 30th anniversary today. --64.229.231.181 18:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
You do have a point hehehe. --Howard the Duck 03:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
As I keep saying, OTD should not be held to strict rules, definitely not about hurting people's feelings (because it's not a memorial). The OTD choices should be mixed up differently every year, otherwise the lesser-known events will never, ever get chosen. Maybe what we really need is a script that will randomly generate the entries, so we can stop having these "you forgot Poland" debates. --Dhartung | Talk 21:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The Hyde Park and Regents Park bombings article seems dry and unimpressive. I'd have a hard time justifying the displacement of any of the current selections for that unless it's a 'round number anniversary'. Good articles will always get priority. -- PFHLai 10:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Lack of American News

I realize Wikipedia is the world's encyclopedia, but there is a decided lack of American news ever showing up in the "In the News" section. At first I assumed it was just the coincidental result of a few visits to the front page, but too often I see what I might consider "irrelevant" or at least less vital world news (such as the Italian soccer teams being relegated out of Serie A) while often important American events (particularly political and business ones) go unmentioned. Again, this is not an outright condemnation, but I was wondering if this was a deliberate attempt to be more intercontinental, if there was a conscious attempt to place non-American news items over American news items, or if this was simply circumstantial. I guess my major complaint is that America is obviously part of the world, too, and while we shouldn't necessarily be held up above other nations in terms of newsworthinses, neither should we be deliberately neglected. 168.39.166.127 13:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


Second item on ITN:
Space Shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a 13-day mission to the International Space Station.
There's your American news. --Howard the Duck 13:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

It is world news, and american news is very common here, as there 1 192 some countries in the world... and america get more than 1/192 of the news slots. Dan 17:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

You don't visit enough then mate. Wikipedia can be very American biased at times. The Italian football story is huge but as football is not an American sport you pull that one out as meaningless. Not every political movenment in America needs mentioning, or business for that matter. Today for example in the UK we have had major reforms in the home office but we wouldn't ask for that to be included. Relevant US stroy will be mentioned in In the News as will loads of non-relevant ones so don't worry. Jimmmmmmmmm 13:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
You've really just said the opposite of what everyone else says about Wikipedia's bias. Which leads me to believee no one knows what they're talking about.  ;) Cigarette 14:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)asd
Sorry Cigarette I'm a little unclear as to who you message is aimed at. Jimmmmmmmmm 14:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Check the indent Jimmmmmmmmm, it was directed at the original poster. :) --Monotonehell 15:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Just checking you never know. Jimmmmmmmmm 15:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Three of hte current DYKs are American. But the Italian soccer thing shouldn't be there, IMHO.
Also have a look at Talk:Main Page/Archive 74#American-centricity
Why on Earth shouldn't the Italian football story be there? Three of the biggest teams in one of the biggest leagues of the biggest sport in the world have been found guilty of match fixing, a crime not only punishable by the football authorities but by the law. People could go to jail for this and we don't know who yet there could be major business men or even the former PM, he owns AC Milan. This is a major news story and if some team winning a national cup in America is worthy of main page space then this certainly is. Jimmmmmmmmm 23:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Because, to (I'd imagine about) 70% of Wikipedia users, its some random crime about three obscure teams playing obscure sport in an unknown league of some unimportant country. To said 70% of Wikipedia's user base, San Franscisco Outfielder Barry Bonds not being indicted and the imminent retiring of St. Louis Ram's Running Back Marshall Faulk are 100 times more important, relevent, and news worthy. But we don't compain. Preston 23:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
You can't be serious? I have never even heard about Barry Bonds or Marshall Faulk. The soccer story is on our news, but baseball never is. It is a purely American game, and the rest of the world couldn't give a crap. On the other hand, many of the players who won the World Cup are in a lot of trouble for game fixing. This is much more newsworthy. How many people watch the World Series (if that is what it is called) than do the World Cup? --liquidGhoul 23:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I mostly agree. Please note how I've never suggested that Bonds of Faulk should be in the ITN box, nor have I suggested that the Italian soccer controversy shouldn't be. I simply stated that Americans care about Bonds and Faulk, and not Italian soccer. Do you deny this? Preston 23:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course Americans are going to care more. However, as someone who is from neither a European or American country (and a country which has, until recently, not cared about soccer), I have heard about the Italian scandal, and haven't heard anything about the baseball scandal. Also, if baseball is popular in Asia, that doesn't change much, as most Asian countries do not speak English as their primary language. They would be using different Wikipedias.
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if Bonds is indicted, that should belong on the front page as much as the relegation scandal. The federal indictment of the most noteworthy active player in a sport on charges of perjury in regards to doping is as big a scandal as the match-fixing by a few teams (no players). The Eurocentrics may not realize it, but baseball is huge in East Asia and much of Latin America; not as big as football worldwide, of course. To be honest, I don't believe either story belongs on the front page, but the use of precedents on this page throws everything up in the air. zafiroblue05 | Talk 00:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, the entire section needs a rethink. I am sure that every single person will want 'their' subject covered, and everyone elses ignored. There needs to be some better criteria.

As the original poster, I just want to say that first, I do not think Marshall Faulk's retirement deserves a news notice any more than I think Italian football scandals do. Secondly, I think that first presidential veto by George W. Bush, on no less a grand subject than stem cell research, deserves a news notice, and is at least as worthy as a possible house owned by Augustus. And thirdly, I went out of my way to say that I was not gaming to have every American business story posted on the front page, and yet I was accused exactly of that. This is what I am saying:

If a sports scandal in Italy is worthy of the front page, then a sports scandal involving the greatest hitter in baseball history is worthy of the front page. If not, then both are not. But it appears to me (and I will began collecting evidence on) that when these two stories are presented to the In The News as options, the Italian one is selected more frequently than the American one. And that is what I find unacceptable.168.39.166.127 20:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

People are seriously rising to this? Dear me! violet/riga (t) 21:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Just face it. Wikipedia hates America and supports Terrorism. Preston 00:40, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I object to the last comment...Wikipedia holds no bias against any country. The purpose of an online encyclopedia is international and will not focus on one single country, whether the U.S. or Angola or Panama or so on. I agree that American news reports should have a special place on the main page and for each continent news reports, then subdivided to smaller categories like countries. Will this be a good idea to try out? Wikipedia wants to expand news coverage and generate discussions to produce good results in the edits and addition of new information of encyclopediac value. Not all news reports are going to appear drastic to get considered of historic importance, but we made Wikipedia to have a world scene, not only Italian soccer (football) because the U.S. is in war as some people claimed and I just don't buy that. --Mike D 26 20:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)\
*sigh* Just trying to add some humour to a rather absurd argument. Preston 20:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Surely there needs to be a "beware of trolling" notice added to this page? Carcharoth 13:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm no vandal!

I'm here to tell you that the Norman Wikipedia reached 1000! HOW RAD!

cool! [wossi] 21:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps some general talk page should be as accessible from the main page as the discussion of the main page itself; it's very tempting to post anything unrelated to the main page here. Anyway congratulations! ;) --Cloviz 22:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Augustus

This is yet another example of Wikipedia's blatant bias toward the past. The entire main page is flooded with crap from the past, and this is one of the worst examples--who cares what happened back when the world was only a few thousand years old?! Delete NN empirecruft. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-20 23:53

I totally agree, Wikipedia's bias against the present shows at every corner. I mean, we're a present project, based in the present, created by people who live in the present. I mean, look at the "on this day section" EVERY ENTRY TODAY IS ABOUT THE PAST!!! tell me that's not past cruft. As a present-er, I am appauled at the systematic bias against the present and future brought here by the members of this project! We're all citizens of the present here! We should focus more on it and the future. -- SmthManly / ManlyTalk / ManlyContribs 01:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I bet you can't write something so quick that it's still the present; the past is so much larger, and getting longer and longer...In other words many more important things have happened in the past that there are currently happening. You can say that the main page is biased on History though; and neglecting other sciences, such as Chemistry, Biology, und so weiter.--Cloviz 01:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

This entire qualm is based in trying to marginalize an entire discipline. Moreover, it's a specific attempt at marginalizing information about one of the most important people to Western civilization. The absurdity of doing so is beyond measure or count; I'm lead to wonder if this is an attempted troll. Really. What the hell? -Jack Cosmo

  • Considering that I was the one who added the Augustus entry to ITN, what are the chances that any of this is serious? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-21 02:10
  • Ummm, I think its a joke people. Lisiate 01:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Let me be the first to say, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH CREATIONIST! RUN AWAY! --Kinst 01:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

We haven't even gotten to Wikipedia's bias against the future! There are even policies preventing users from writing about the future, and people freely use pejoratives like "crystal ball" to label anything that doesn't agree with their temporal mentality... — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-21 01:42

Hell, you haven't even mentioned Wikipedia's bias against alternative timelines! Can you imagine: as important a topic as, say, United States under Adolf Hitler, and we still don't have an article! zafiroblue05 | Talk 02:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Must...resist...temptation... --Kinst 02:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Entry reads: 'Mostly sucky.' — ceejayoz talk 17:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • You could have mentioned the male bias as well, 10 out of 10 of persons mentionen in the whole page are men!!! ;P--Cloviz 03:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
      • PFFT! Now you're just being serious. That will never wash --Monotonehell 03:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
    • But, clearly, that's simply to counteract the genetic bias toward females. After all, 3/4 of the sex chromosomes are X (XX for women, XY for men). — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-21 03:20
  • What about the bias against wrong information? Everyone seems to work on keeping wrong information out of the main page. Zarniwoot 03:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
    • I Agree! Keep your neo-clasisist 'truth is beauty' ideals out of our wikipedia! We are post-postmodern and into neo-realism, come on keep up peple! --Monotonehell 03:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

While interesting, I doubt an article about something archeologists believe to have discovered should get top billing in the “In The News” section; especially considering the fact that Earth already has more important issues to deal with such as a certain conflict in Lebanon and an earthquake that had killed over five-hundred, not to mention a lot of other issues that rank higher than an ancient house. --AEdwards 3:35, 20 July 2006 UTC)

They're listed too, right? Albeit chronologically. --Howard the Duck 03:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
ITN is listed chronologically, and lists articles with updated content. It is not a "top news stories" source, and is not a news ticker. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-21 05:24
Very seriously: I thought it was great that we got away from such depressing news and got something cultural up there for a change (that isn't sports). And I have nothing against what's there. --Dhartung | Talk 20:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion: cursor present in "search" field

I would prefer it very much if, on arriving on the Wiki site, the cursor is already in the search field. That way, I could start typing immediately, without first cliking into it with my mouse. I know it is just a small thing, but it is been bugging me for quite some time now... :-) If possible, I would even like to have something like this implemented on all pages. Let me know what you think.

Wikipedia:Main Page FAQ#Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google?

Thanks for that link. I think it is a non-argument though: most people (read: all that I know of) use the scroll-wheel on their mouse, rather than the arrows on the keyboard...

My laptop does not have a mouse or a scroll wheel. Breaking standard methods of page navigation is, in general, a bad idea in web design. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

17th parallel sentence in "In The News" "On this day" is unclear...

"1954 - First Indochina War: The 17th parallel was established at the Geneva Conference, partitioning Vietnam into North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại."

Hadn't the 17th parallel existed for a long time before this? — CJewell (talk to me) 11:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC) (Copied to Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors) --Monotonehell 12:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you for pointing this out. -- PFHLai 16:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Featured non-picture

Great. A featured picture of the day without the actual picture.

Yes, you can click on it to see it. But why can't it be on the actual page? We've had panoramas there before. Daniel Case 14:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

You're the second person to report this issue (which I'm not experiencing). Please try bypassing your cache. —David Levy 14:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Isn't working. Daniel Case 01:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
This image is being ad blocked because it is cached as "upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ad/Dinner_plain_summer_pano02.jpg/450px-Dinner_plain_summer_pano02.jpg". To see it, people should either disable their ad blocking software, or we should move the image to a new name (caching paths are determined by file name). Roughly one image in 256 has this issue and developers have refused to change the caching system to resolve it. Dragons flight 14:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

(pictured)

Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, the picture in the "Did you know..." section is a rhinoceros woodcut, not a bidding box.

Fixed. Thanks. Mushroom (Talk) 17:02, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Featured panorama pictures

Hey, I was wondering if there was any way for featured pictures that are wider than they are long (that are displayed over the text, just like Wikipedia:Picture of the day/July 12, 2006) to be displayed with a width as large as each individual user's screen will allow? This would look really cool on the main page, and a lot of featured pictures only start looking good when they start getting big. - Jack (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Prehaps setting the width atribute to 100%. I'm not sure. Lcarsdata (Talk) 18:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Is that a user setting, or code in the teplate? - Jack (talk) 18:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The Da Vinci Code

Oh, what a coincidence. Made me smile :) Will (Take me down to the Paradise City) 00:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Huh? GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Eh...why don't you share it so we can all smile?--Cloviz 02:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:Spoilers

Today is Mary Magdalene's feast day. The novel is based around cracking codes to discover the truth, which is the blood-line of Mary Magdalene. Will (Take me down to the Paradise City) 11:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

contradiction abt no of articles

at the top of the main pg, it says we currently have 1,268,835 articles. however, clicking on the link to the stats pg tells us that we have 1,268,861 articles. this statistic is probably changing as i type. pls fix this contradiction. thank you. 202.156.6.54 05:51, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

If I remember correctly there is a lag between the stats and the front page figure due to technical limitations. The figure is always in flux, with articles being constantly created and deleted, so a difference of up to 100 isn't a big issue. --Monotonehell 05:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
To clarify, the number is automatically updated in both locations, but the updating happens faster off of the Main Page. The high number of hits on the Main Page slows its updating. —Cuiviénen 19:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thanks. 202.156.6.54 07:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

it.wiki has a new Main Page

hi, any comment on the new it.wiki Main Page? --81.211.179.224 10:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

IMHO the new main page rocks. The new village pump (bar) su**s. --Jollyroger it.wikipedian
The lightblue rectangle on the right shouldn't be covering the cute icons. -- 199.71.174.100 10:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I really would've expected all the bugs to have been fixed before it was rolled out! Could be good, but there are too many problems in IE. violet/riga (t) 12:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't look great in firefox either.--Peta 12:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Horrible. I don't like the way the blue border goes through the icons, and it happens in both Firefox and IE. --Tim1988 talk 15:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Safari, too. — ceejayoz talk 16:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Read their talk page: the icons were intentionally put halfway under like that. It's not a bug. Whether that effect is desired here or not, their layout is excellent--far better than ours is or ever will be (after all, with a community as large as the English Wikipedia's, big changes to the Main Page are unlikely to ever meet approval thanks to our desire to do things democratically, as if a bunch of yes/no opinions ever produced anything innovative). — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 17:03
I couldn't disagree more. Our main page is less flashy, but all of the information is laid out in a logical, accessible manner. The Italian main page places far more emphasis on looking pretty than on functioning as a useful gateway to an encyclopedia. "Innovation" doesn't mean "abandoning sound design elements for the sake of change," let alone change for the worse. —David Levy 17:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps that particular thing isn't a bug but there are plenty of others. violet/riga (t) 19:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
It's more stylish than the previous design (which I strongly disliked), but it still isn't very good. It contains a great deal of wasted space, superfluous decorations, and project information that belongs on separate pages. The static and dynamic content is erratically mixed, and viewing the featured sections now requires even more scrolling. Just as before, much of the important text is significantly smaller than that of articles, which makes it less accessible to many people. (I have good eyesight, and it's uncomfortably small for me.) I hate the rounded corners (which the previous design also incorporated). They're jagged (and therefore ugly), and they don't display in non-Mozilla software. It seems unadvisable to include deliberate inconsistencies across common browsers, and this element was soundly rejected during the English main page redesign process. —David Levy 17:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
You complain about having to scroll to view the featured content, as if that's a problem. Our layout is angled toward presenting our best content, whereas theirs is angled toward helping people find content and understand Wikipedia and its community--something that I think is more important. We should be as reader-centric as possible, especially on our main page. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 17:34
With featured content and project information seemingly strewn about in haphazard fashion, I don't see how their layout is more helpful to anyone. We include links for new users at the top of the page (clearly demarcated from the featured content), so I don't understand your assertion that our readers are neglected. —David Levy 17:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
They provide numerous links to sub-portals right on the main page, which is definitely reader-friendly. And their first block explains Wikipedia, replies to common concerns with Wikipedia, etc. We devote only a few words to that on the entire main page. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 18:28
I prefer the Italian layout, with the exception of the half-way icon thing, which I think is ugly. The English wikipedia is too focused on showing off featured stuff and referencing random stuff(Did you know and On this day). --Kinst 18:53, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
The Italian main page includes the same type of content, but it's jumbled with the project information (seemingly without rhyme or reason). —David Levy 19:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, we wouldn't have to adopt their layout exactly. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 20:35
Again, I'm of the opinion that the overall design is poor. Just because I decided to comment on a particular flaw doesn't mean that my comments on the other flaws suddenly disappear. —David Levy 20:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Portal:Browse is one click away from our main page (thereby avoiding needless clutter), as are Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers, Wikipedia:Introduction, Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:Searching, Wikipedia:Tutorial, Wikipedia:Questions and Help:Contents. All of these are linked at the top of the page. —David Levy 19:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
You talk about the Italian main page being a jumble, then reference Portal:Browse, which is the epitome of ridiculous and useless jumbles. The simple truth is that the Italian Wikipedia's main page portal breakdown is far superior to anything we have. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 19:43
If you feel that Portal:Browse is poorly designed, fix it! This has no bearing on whether the information contained therein should be crammed onto the main page. Obviously, I believe that it shouldn't be. —David Levy 20:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Portal:Browse and the Main Page are poorly designed. Just because I decided to comment on the former doesn't mean that my comments on the latter suddenly disappear. We should have a main page portal breakdown like they use on the Italian Wikipedia. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 20:28
I'm not disregarding either criticism. I'm noting that the issue of Portal:Browse's quality (or lack thereof) is separate from the decision of whether to add such information to the main page (which I oppose). —David Levy 20:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you weren't trying to lump one discussion into the other, why would you word it that way? "This has no bearing on whether the information contained therein should be crammed onto the main page." That's obvious and unnecessary. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 21:00
How, by explicitly noting that the two issues are separate, was I attempting to "lump one discussion into the other"?! I was doing the exact opposite! —David Levy 21:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I complained about the main page. You mentioned Portal:Browse as being sufficient. I said that it wasn't sufficient. You said that my problem was with Portal:Browse, not with the main page. You were thereby shifting my complaint about the main page into one about Portal:Browse, lumping the two complaints together into one. It's a very common tactic. :) — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 21:47
Rubbish! I did not say that "[your] problem was with Portal:Browse, not with the main page." I noted that your criticism of the former was separate from your criticism of the latter. (I can't imagine why you would interpret a statement that "issue A has no bearing on issue B" to mean that "issue B is nonexistent.") My intention was to avoid lumping the two complaints together. Your opinion that Portal:Browse was poorly designed was an argument for improving its content (irrespective of whether said content is to be displayed on a separate page or on the main page), and that was my point. Please stop accusing me of engaging in dishonest "tactics." —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
We can't fit everything onto one page (nor would we want to, as this would be overwhelming), so we use the main page as a means of directing readers to the appropriate content (conveniently broken down into separate pages). This quickly establishes the type of navigation used throughout the encyclopedia. —David Levy 20:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for that logical fallacy. I haven't proposed that we "fit everything onto one page", or even close to that. I'm proposing a block smaller than On This Day that provides quick links to general subjects for readers, so that they can easily find more specific subjects. How is it that the Italian Wikipedia can do it, but, in your words, "we can't"? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 20:57
That isn't what I wrote (unless you define "everything"—which was not intended to reference anything that you wrote—as "a longer portal list"). I'm stating my opinion that including such a section, while possible, is a bad idea. I'm stating my opinion that it's better to include a link to a separate page. I'm stating my opinion that the Italian main page design (which includes such a section) is poor. I'm stating my opinion that our design (which includes a link to a separate page) is good. I don't know how I can make myself any clearer. —David Levy 21:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you've stated your votes, but you haven't backed them up with rationale. The last rationale was about why "fitting everything onto one page" is a bad idea... but nobody was suggesting we do that; you've lumped my suggestion into one extreme (presenting countless links on the main page) to uphold your other extreme (presenting the bare minimum) when my suggestion is closer to your end of the spectrum. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 21:52
1.I most certainly have provided a rationale: I believe that our main page contains an appropriate amount of content (and the Italian main page contains too much). The fact that you disagree with my assessment doesn't mean that I haven't made it.
2.I've already explained that my "we can't fit everything onto one page" comment was not an attempt to address anything that you wrote. It was merely a general statement regarding why we limit the amount of content that we seek to include. I'm not claiming that you advocate "presenting countless links on the main page." —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
So far you've said that we should try to keep the reader-oriented content on the main page short, but there's no reason to go as extremely minimalistic as the current main page is (one word for each vast topic).
It still stands that our main page is highly oriented toward praising the work of editors, and not oriented toward helping readers find content quickly and easily. Instead, we shift that responsibility onto sub-pages that are ridiculous jokes. We should take back that responsibility, keep this page reader-oriented, and fix the problem. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 21:52
1. Obviously, I disagree with your assessment. I believe that that simple, succinct links are the best means of directing readers to the appropriate content. I believe that additional clutter would only distract and confuse people. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
You're oversimplifying the debate. There's a difference between keeping it simple and being overly minimalistic. The current version is as minimal as it gets, but there are more detailed versions (such as the breakdown on the Italian main page) that are simple, yet more functional, useful, and reader-oriented. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:08
I'm oversimplifying nothing. I disagree with you. I believe that our current main page is practical, accessible, inviting and aesthetically pleasing. I believe that the Italian main page is cluttered, disorganized, overly fancy and less functional. You're entitled to disagree, but please stop attempting to invalidate my opinion. —David Levy 00:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Again, your belief that the pages in question are "ridiculous jokes" has no bearing on the optimal location of the information contained therein (which should be improved regardless). —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
You've replied to my 2 words "ridiculous jokes", and not to the rest of my comment. As I said, we should shift the responsibility back to the main page, which is what we present first and foremost to every reader. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:08
I replied to the rest of your comment above (under point "1") by plainly stating that I disagree with you. —David Levy 00:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, clearly this is some brand of consensus-building I've never heard of. Can you explain how two people come to a middle-ground when one of them repeatedly states only, "I disagree with you". — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:08
1. I have not stated "only" that I disagree with you. I've cited the reasons why I disagree with you. 2. What gave you the idea that consensus must be build via "middle-ground" compromise? Please read Wikipedia:Consensus. —David Levy 01:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Middle-ground is the usual outcome, especially when someone will only keep saying "I disagree". — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:55
Again, I haven't "only" stated that I disagree. I've made a good faith effort to accurately and appropriately describe my view on the subject (including the reasons behind my disagreement). What am I supposed to do? Say that I agree? Say that I agree halfway? I don't! Do you want me to pretend that I do?
If one person claims that a cat is black, and another contends that the same cat is white, this doesn't obligate both to agree on the "middle-ground" statement that the cat is black-and-white (or gray). Consensus sometimes lies somewhere in the middle, but not always. —David Levy 02:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Image:DSCN0745.JPG ;) --Monotonehell 21:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC) [I changed this from transclusion to a link to eliminate formatting issues. —David Levy 00:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)]

Adopt the Italian Wikipedia's layout?

Would anyone else like to see us adopt some form of the new Italian Wikipedia layout (except for the icons-halfway-under effect)? (here's a babelfish translation to better understand the layout) Of course, it will never happen, but one can always dream... — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 17:12

Absolutely not! (See above.) —David Levy 17:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say to adopt it exactly. (see above) — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 17:31
I'm saying that we shouldn't adopt it at all. —David Levy 17:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I like plain and boring..... Childzy (Talk|Contribs) 21:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't like the design at all - I prefer clean and simple. --Tim1988 talk 21:36, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say adopt the colors/icons. I said adopt the layout. I only care about the functionality and usability. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:02
In my opinion, both the aesthetic design and the layout are poor. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
it looks nice. although my first thought is "spam website". It has nice and flashy design details, and you'd be tired of them within a month. dab (ᛏ) 21:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say adopt the colors/icons. I said adopt the layout. I only care about the functionality and usability. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:02
In my opinion, both the aesthetic design and the layout are poor. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll just say: death before pastels and shiny big icons! They invade our message boxes, and we fall back. They assimilate entire front pages, and we fall back! Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
I didn't say adopt the colors/icons. I said adopt the layout. I only care about the functionality and usability. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:02
In my opinion, both the aesthetic design and the layout are poor. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think our present page is cute enough without being a Mac OS/Windows Vista wannabe like the Italian Main Page is. Have we no shame? JRM · Talk 21:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say adopt the colors/icons. I said adopt the layout. I only care about the functionality and usability. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:02
What are you implying, Brian? That we shouldn't adopt some aspects of the layout? :-P JRM · Talk 22:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, both the aesthetic design and the layout are poor. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
translucency is the "blink tag" of the 2000s :) dab (ᛏ) 21:53, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
If done well it looks good. The it.wp guys haven't done it well. But I think Brian was speaking more to the content rather than the form. There's a few good ideas in there that could be taken onboard. Especially the way they've handled the "news", making it totally un-newsy. --Monotonehell 21:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm expressing my distaste for the form especially because nobody else seemed to do so. I'll leave the content to people who are less superficial. :-) JRM · Talk 22:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
"Nobody else"... except for Tim1988, Dbachmann, Childzy, a couple anons, etc. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:16
I got the impression they focused on what they thought were bugs, which turned out to be design choices. I haven't seen anyone say they hate pastels yet, which I do. So there!
Ignore me, I'm just the peanut gallery. I don't actually want to contribute to discussions on the Main Page layout, because, as you've noticed, it takes huge reams of comments to get anywhere. If anywhere. JRM · Talk 22:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for looking beyond the colors and icons! There is hope among us yet :) So, yes, the news section is definitely more article-oriented and less like a news-ticker. Are there any other aspects of the layout that you like? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:05
I'm all for such reform of In the news. —David Levy 22:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
So, "the aesthetic design and the layout are poor", and "we shouldn't adopt it at all", but we should adopt their ITN? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:01
I support the idea of making the section "more article-oriented and less like a news ticker." This has absolutely nothing to do with the page's aesthetic design and layout. —David Levy 00:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
You said, "we shouldn't adopt it at all". Then, you said "I'm all for such reform of In the news." If you didn't mean that you were for this reform, but simply for reform in general, then you need to clarify. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:05
The "it" in "we shouldn't adopt it at all" refers strictly to the page layout. In no way does this statement (or any of my similar remarks) pertain to the individual sections' editorial content. —David Levy 01:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Ha! Suuure.... — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:58
You: "Would anyone else like to see us adopt some form of the new Italian Wikipedia layout (except for the icons-halfway-under effect)?"
Me: "Absolutely not! (See above.)"
You: "I didn't say to adopt it exactly. (see above)"
Me: "I'm saying that we shouldn't adopt it at all."
I expect an apology for your rude implication that I was lying. —David Levy 02:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying you're lying. I'm saying that I get the impression that you alter the reasons behind your statements as it becomes necessary for you to do so. I considered the layout of the news section to be part of the overall "layout", while you seem to have chosen a more restrictive definition of "layout". Whether or not you chose that definition from the very beginning, I don't know. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 01:05
1. Of course you accused me of lying. 2. I'm not referring to the "layout of the news section." I'm referring to its editorial content. 3. Please examine all of the comments that I've made "from the very beginning" (including numerous criticisms of specific design elements). Now find one instance (other than the above regarding In the news) in which I commented upon the editorial content of any section (as opposed to its aesthetic appearance or location on the page). —David Levy 02:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


  • Firstly I think the it.wp mp is too cluttered. But I like the functional idea of the Contents down the right column and the content down the left side, this means those looking for information have a starting point. Although the search box should probably be associated with the contents. -- The first thing that should be catered for is new users and they've addressed this with the selections directly below the welcome bar. The community links below are probably a good idea, pointing people off in appropriate directions. All the links included there would need to be thought through and justified well. -- Then they've put their featured item, did you know and on this day (inclusive of news) in a much better format than we have. I believe it's becoming hard to keep the quality of items up due to there being a limited amount of quality articles left to feature. Reducing those to one a day would help this. They've suceeded in taking the news ticker aspect right out of the front page, which removes the current conflict ITN has with wikinews. --Monotonehell 22:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE trying to read several columns of info. It's not a natural reading style. Keep it simple. (And yes, the cutesy pics and colours are positively barf-worthy too.) --24.79.238.235 07:51, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Language list revision

  • alright, what we could learn from them is their handling of "other languages". The ten largest wikis, plus minor related (Romance) languages. That's it. Click here for the full list. We need to get rid of the 'other languages cruft' here, at least of the below-10,000-articles ones. dab (ᛏ) 21:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Our list on the main page is basically useless as it stands. I suggest that we list the 10,000+ wikis, as well as the other world languages that have populations larger than the least-spoken of the 10,000+, and keep the rest on the separate list of wikis. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 22:08
      • why 'the other world languages that have populations larger than the least-spoken of the 10,000+'? I think we need to remember that this is the English language Wikipedia, not the Terran Federation one, so the only 'small' languages that I can see should get special treatment are, arguably, Gaelic and Welsh, for being minority languages within an English-speaking country. Or if that is controversial, just the largest ones, say 50,000+, period. dab (ᛏ) 23:06, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
        • I think you misunderstood me. We should present the largest Wikipedias (100,000+), because they are our best work, but we should also present the Wikipedias that represent the largest languages, to counteract the bias of our pool of editors. So, for example, we'd list German, Spanish, etc, because they have 100,000+ articles, but we'd also list Chinese, which represents over 1/6 of the world. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:13
          • My bad, I just realized I was saying "10,000+" when I meant "100,000+" — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:23
  • There's of course the 'third' option, where we list none at all, but simply link to here or here on the principle that they've already done it better. --Monotonehell 23:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, I think we should avoid shifting all responsibility off the main page. Also, none of those lists sort by the size of the population, just by the size of the Wikipedia. Can you comment on my proposal below? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:31

Proposal

How about this:

Deutsch (German) · Español (Spanish) · Français (French) · Italiano (Italian) · 日本語 (Japanese) · Nederlands (Dutch) · Polski (Polish) · Português (Portuguese) · Svenska (Swedish)

but also include:

中文 (Chinese) · हिन्दी (Hindi) · Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) · Bahasa Melayu (Malay) · العربية (Arabic) · বাংলা (Bengali) · Русский (Russian) · ਮੁੱਖ ਪੰਨਾ (Punjabi)

That covers the 100,000+ Wikipedias, as well as all the languages with 100 million+ speakers. All the rest would be listed on the complete list of Wikipedias. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-22 23:23

I just found out that my unicode font doesn't include Bengali and Punjabi. That's 17 list items, such an awkward number. But yes I like your de-bias-ing rationale behind it. I do believe that we should put less emphasis on being the repository of links when there's a perfectly good portal for all of WP at www.wikipedia.org. --Monotonehell 23:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I will invoke the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle and see where we go from there. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 00:38
How about patiently continuing the discussion and establishing consensus instead? —David Levy 00:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
People usually comment on a change when they notice the change. Invoking the change early is not done as a means to say that the change should be finalized early, but simply to get the attention of anyone interested. Otherwise, we are only getting the attention of anyone who happens to frequent this talk page, while leaving other people out of the whole consensus-building process. Read WP:BRD. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 00:54
I don't believe that such a strategy should be applied to the main page. It's viewed by many as "official" (so revert wars are embarrassing), and only sysops are capable of reverting. Unlike many talk pages, this one is read by a large number of people, so there should be no shortage of feedback. —David Levy 01:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Did you read WP:BRD? It specifically says not to revert war. So, why would there be revert wars? Regardless of who actually has the talk page on their watchlist, far more people actually view the main page. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:51
Why do you expect everyone to abide by the terms of the essay that you've unilaterally applied? —David Levy 02:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Alright, you've belittled it for being a mere "essay". Now show what's wrong with its content. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 22:45
I did not belittle the essay. I inquired as to why you believe that all editors would heed its advice (irrespective of whether it's good).
I just boldly switched to a compromise version of the list. If someone reverts to your version, this will violate WP:BRD. Let's see what happens. —David Levy 00:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
You don't seem to understand BRD at all... but do as you please. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 00:15
Your changes constituted "B." Mine were tantamount to "R." The next step is supposed to be "D," not "R." —David Levy 00:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
My intial change was B, as were my subsequent later changes based on the discussion here. Yours was also B. Nobody has gone to R. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 01:10
My "B" was a partial "R" (which counts as an "R" under actual policy). If anything, the fact that it was an attempt at compromise (rather than a complete "R") meant that it was worse for someone else to "R."
Incidentally, we both sound pedantic and utterly ridiculous. —David Levy 02:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
It should be noted, however, that the idea of including fewer language editions was discussed and rejected during the main page redesign process, so your "boldness" defies an existing consensus. It is, of course, appropriate to seek a new consensus. (For the record, I'm undecided.) —David Levy 01:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Was the change actually "rejected" in that a supermajority of the voters were opposed to it, or was there no supermajority either way? In any case, "consensus" is simply a means to bring those currently involved in discussion toward an agreement. If you look at a page like Creation science, for example, consensus is always changing. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 01:51
Err... the page you cited is simply an essay: consisting of opinion, no more, no less. I could very well write up a page saying the opposite: work on consensus if there is disagreement, and then implement changes, especially on high profile pages that aren't true articles. For what it's worth, I disagree with the change: the template was fine before; it was concise enough, while demonstrating more of the other languages. Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
You believe that this massive list-o-links was useful to readers??? It's practically unmanageable. It's also biased toward languages that our pool of editors is willing to edit. For example, it doesn't list Punjabi, which is spoken by more people than most of the other languages on the page. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 02:02
If I recall correctly, a majority (but not necessarily a supermajority, depending upon one's definition) opposed the modification. Yes, consensus is subject to change. I had mixed feelings, and I still do. —David Levy 02:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
So you are for having the bare minimum of links to portals and explanatory pages, but you have mixed feelings about a massive unformatted list of Wikipedias? Can you explain further? — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 02:41
Please stop asking loaded questions. I don't agree that our main page contains "the bare minimum of links to portals and explanatory pages," nor do I agree that the list in question was "unformatted."
I do believe that space is less of a concern here, because the section is at the very bottom of the page. (This change was made during the redesign process. When Wikipedia languages was the second-to-last section, there was more support for the idea of either removing the "1,000" level or hiding it by default. This faded when Wikipedia languages and Wikipedia's sister projects swapped positions.) At the same time, I feel that "1,000 articles" might be an unreasonably low threshold. —David Levy 02:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

(deindenting) I'd agree with that list, but would consider adding the Simple English Wikipedia, given its connection to the English-language Wikipedia. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 02:15
Ah, another minor edit. A point needs to be inserted between العربية (Arabic) and বাংলা (Bengali). GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Done. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 02:29

I'm wondering if it might be good to put the link to the wikipidias in a slightly bigger font than the link to the en article about the language. Aside from making it clearer what links to the other wikipedias, it also could fill up the white space in the second line that looks pretty awkward in many resolutions. zafiroblue05 | Talk 03:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I thought about doing that too. Let's see what others think. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:27

Oppose. I offer the following arguments against the short list of languages:

  1. A longer list of languages is a tiny price for improving multilingual coordination. The English-language Wikipedia has a special role in multilingual coordination due to the international scope of the English language and the large size and influence of the English-language Wikipedia.
    • You talk about "the English language Wikipedia" as if all of its importance must be conveyed on the main page. I fully understand the position we're in, but the previous version was a complete mess of links that I could never see a user sifting through to find what they want. The complete list of Wikipedias looks much better and is easier to scan through. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  2. We can't clearly draw lines like "languages with over 100 million native speakers" using available evidence. In particular, estimates of numbers of native speakers come from sources with imperfect and widely varying reliability. Yet they rarely state a margin of error.
    • We do what we can with the information we have. Sure, it's probably not 100% accurate, but until better information is provided, we stick with what we've got. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  3. There are other factors in the relative importance of languages besides the number of native speakers.
    • The reason "# of native speakers" is important is because we are trying to be as useful as possible to the largest number of readers. If you can suggest any other factors that will help the most people find what they need, we can look at those as well. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  4. The relative importance of languages is a frequently contentious political issue. I hope that Wikipedia does not have an opinion on the issue. The size of Wikipedia's various language editions, and alphabetic order by ISO code, might be the only appropriate ways for Wikipedia to rank languages. For some language editions of Wikipedia, it might make sense for the main page to give special mention to specially related languages.
    • I just ordered them by largest to smallest populations. Alphabetical would be fine as well. I don't understand how this is an "argument against" the current version. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  5. On the English-language main page, I think the only edition that might merit special mention is Simple English. (I'm not as concerned about this point as the others.)
    • I can understand that point, and it seems alright to add. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  6. In general, each article in the English-language Wikipedia lists all of its versions in other languages. I don't see why the main page should depart from this rule. The "in other languages" list is a useful navigation feature. It is particularly useful to people who are not monolingual. Those people are the majority in this world, including about 40% of English speakers (according to Ethnologue).
    • We would essentially be listing 200+ links on one page. It's needless clutter of the main page. If people want to find a language, they simply go to the list of Wikipedias. I don't understand your argument about "people who are not monolingual". — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  7. Twenty languages are not enough. Considering articles World population and List of languages by number of native speakers, I would suppose that the native speakers of those twenty languages leave out some 40-50% of the world's population.
    • More like 35%. The problem with your argument is that it would take far more than adding another 20 to get anywhere close to even 70 or 80% of the population, since the number of speakers drops rather quickly once you get below 100 million. Just out of curiosity, how much of the population did the old page cover? My guess is only about 70-75%, over the current ~65%. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17
  8. The current twenty languages exclude many languages of substantial importance:
    1. All Eastern European languages except Russian.
    2. All Scandanavian languages except Swedish.
    3. Korean.
    4. Hebrew (more articles than Arabic, Malay, Bengali, Hindi, and Punjabi put together; more edits than Russian).
    5. Turkish (more users than Swedish).
    6. Esperanto (1000x the articles of Punjabi). --Hoziron 05:03, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
    • But why are they "of substantial importance"? You said that we should avoid getting political, but your suggestions here seem exactly the way to start getting political. "Importance" is very subjective. "10,000+" is completely objective, and "100 million+" is almost completely objective. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:17

I'm very happy with the new section - it's much closer to what the main page when we originally switched to this layout; the language list was never meant to grow by a factor of 5 - it just happened to so slowly as to avoid complaint - this doesn't mean it was a good thing. Raul654 06:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

  • That's exactly the sort of thing that slowly turns featured articles into crap--small changes that are alright by themselves, but in large numbers make the article a total mess. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 11:01

Oh finally the evil has been curbed! Much, much better. violet/riga (t) 07:35, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It was very hard to find a particular Wikipedia in that old list anyway - far too many sections. The disadvantage of this new style is that it is highlighting what are currently some of Wikimedia's duffest projects (the Punjabi Wikipedia currently has a "Nobody has really started on this section" notice - in English - on the front page and not even 50 articles!) and it is hiding some of the best other-language Wikipedias. What the language list fails to take into account is that readership of Wikipedia varies widely from country to country - there are some stats on this somewhere, and I particularly remember that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have extremely low readership. This is presumably one of the reasons the Punjabi Wikipedia is currently so dire. While I like the idea that highlighting the Punjabi edition helps counter systemic bias, it's very unlikely to actually draw in new editors. English Wikipedia probably does get more traffic from Hebrew-speakers than Punjabi-speakers, despite the gap in numbers of speakers. On the other hand, we obviously can't use readership-by-language stats directly to pick the selected Wikipedias. May I please make a strong suggestion that would substantially address this? Setting the cut-off at 50,000 articles would substantially address the problem by including more of the other major Wikipedias. (In fact 30 or 40,000 might be a better choice, but that number seems a little too arbitrary). I suspect there is a strong correlation between usage of en: Wikipedia by a particular language group and the size of that language's Wikipedia (Punjabi certainly bears that out) so this would also mean that the displayed Wikipedias were more representative of - and useful for - our front page readership. Here's how it would look:

This is the English language Wikipedia. Started in 2001, it currently contains 2,412,405 articles. Wikipedias are also being written in many other languages:

The 100,000 articles line in the sand is pretty arbitrary, I think switching to 50,000:

  • shows off more of our better projects (any WP with 50,000 articles deserves to be called an encyclopedia - 49 articles, on the other hand, doesn't)
  • reflects better the language skills of those reading the page
  • permanently solves the whitespace problem on the 2nd line
  • seems to at least temporarily solve it on the 1st section
  • is still easily browsable.

It might be an idea to sort the first section other than by language code. I would like to emphasise that my suggestion does not entail continual bloat of the number of WPs shown - if a bloat is approaching, whack the line in the sand up. The 50,000 or 100,000 (or 250,000...) is basically arbitrary. Let's just pick it so that it highlights a decent but easily navigable number of our best projects. The current number highlighted is too low, the previous number too high.

Another thing that really irked me about the current rewrite is the "More than 100 million speakers" when it actually means "Other languages with more than 100 million speakers". In fact, I'm not sure that even that is quite right (maybe it implies that Polish in the top row does have 100 million speakers) but it is definitely closer to the key idea: we don't repeat English and Spanish, which clearly do have 100 million speakers, on the bottom row too. Could somebody either change that or suggest a better alternative? TheGrappler 15:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree with your suggestions, but am unsure what to do about the "More than 100 million speakers" bit. It should be pretty obvious to people that the reason an entry isn't in the 2nd set is because it's already in the first set (eg, Spanish). — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 16:16
    • It just seems silly to be obvious and wrong. At least the "Other languages with more..." is only subtly wrong, if that! Would you mind updating it to my suggestion? Plus or minus the "other languages...", as you see fit. I'd be bold and do it myself but I'm not an admin. It looks a little scrawny at the moment, which can't be helping your argument. There's also the question of ordering - I am drifting towards the idea of ordering by English name for the language, in both of the two sections. Ordering the second by size seems odd if several languages are in the first section instead. Ordering the first section by Wikipedia size makes a degree of sense but would make it harder to find a particular language in the list. Sorting by language code isn't obvious to the general reader. TheGrappler 17:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Alright, I've updated it. I used "Additional languages" instead of "Other languages", but if you find a better synonym for "other", please reply here. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-23 19:50

The new model on the Wikipedia language edition directory is meant not to exceed half the page or any longer. I'm sure the most spoken languages and those with 50,000+ articles demonstrates how more used the languages are. Wikipedia editions in small or dormant languages (under 1,000 articles or under 10,000 speakers) appearedly are novel niches.

There are language revival organizations represent tribal or regional languages threatened with extinction, wanted to promote and celebrate linguistic diversity. They use Wikipedia to create their language editions and select a limited number of articles in their language.

If you feel this is necessital and informative, go ahead and use it as an educational tool in any language you choose. I believe the freedom of expressing your knowledge in any language is an essential part of Wikipedia as an international academic source.

My earlier suggestion for a Cherokee language edition is still disputed and I had one response that most Cherokee in the U.S. don't always use the language, even in a period of revival by tribal members with access to that peculiar language.

The Latin, Esperanto, Volapuk and simple english editions are self-explanatory, because some academic circles are fluent in those languages or to promote literacy for those unable to understand advanced "scholarly" English. You may find the internet in isolated underdeveloped places, where English or the nation's official language aren't widely used.

Many of us like to read articles that explain things in simple, everyday terms or as they say "in laymen's terms". Wikipedia is much aware not every person or any given country don't know/ speak the same language. Universal language literacy in some countries aren't always abided, includes those multi-lingual countries in the developing world.

In the U.S., Russia, India and China, where universal language literacy is high, many of their citizens may preferably use Wikipedia in other minor languages. Also to note English, as well Chinese, Russian, French and Spanish are taught in classes, and students may want to use that language edition as a learning tool to advance oneself in linguistic studies.

Language is a mode of human communication, but it's held as an art form in literature and cultural preservation, and most of all, everyone has the right to speak any language they want in circumstances (i.e. in private and with their family or friends/companions).

I'm sure in business situations, diplomacy and public education, a common language is required to fairly communicate as in everyone understands. But to my fellow Wikis, the multilingual coordination link is your resort to create new language editions and translate our articles. --Mike D 26 23:52, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Compromise version

Based upon the concerns expressed above (and both the favorable and unfavorable criticisms of the new setup), I created a compromise version that still contains well under half as many language editions as before. To improve accessibility, I increased the font size (except for the article links) from 95% to 100%. I also tweaked the introduction's wording, added a link to English language, bolded the middots (to improve their visibility and match those at the top of the main page), and used non-breaking spaces to prevent the interwiki links from being separated from the corresponding article links.

As noted above, the "quantity of speakers in the world" criterion relies upon unverifiable (and controversial) statistics, and it fails to consider the number of Wikipedia users per language (which tends to directly correspond to the number of articles per edition). It also necessitates the inclusion of the Punjabi Wikipedia (which is practically nonexistent) and the Bengali and Hindi Wikipedias (which are rather small). Those are the only three that I've removed.

Meanwhile, we aren't going to improve international relations (or reduce the appearance of "bias") by including the Arabic Wikipedia (containing fewer than 16,000 articles) and excluding the Hebrew Wikipedia (containing more than 41,000 articles).

The obvious solution is the reversion to a multi-tiered "quantity of articles"-based setup, but with a threshold much higher than "1,000" (but lower than "50,000"). "10,000" presently seems reasonable, but this can be occasionally increased (along with the other two tiers) as all of the Wikipedias grow.

Numerically, "30,000" makes slightly more sense for the middle tier than "25,000," but the latter currently results in much more even division.

I'll note that if additional size reduction is desired, we could drop the "10,000" tier entirely. I believe that this would be of little benefit, however, as this would only remove text from the very bottom of the page. As the Wikipedias in question are in decent shape, I see no harm in listing them. —David Levy 00:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Your argument throws up a lot of FUD about the statistics concerning the number of speakers. Now, please answer this: Are you suggesting that any one of the languages that was listed under "100 million+" actually has fewer speakers than any of the 200+ languages that were not listed under "100 million+"? If not, then what foundation is there for your argument against listing the largest languages in the world? Sure, "100 million" may not be a perfectly accurate number, but we have to draw the line somewhere based on the evidence at hand. "FUD, FUD, FUD" accomplishes nothing. We should be revealing our shortcomings, and encouraging others to help counteract this bias. Your version embraces this bias to an even larger degree, by showing off even more languages that outrank some of the largest in the world, and removing the list of largest languages. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 00:19
1. The statistics in question are estimates that we have no means of verifying. The quantities of articles, conversely, are 100% verifiable.
2. The number of speakers per language is far less relevant than the number of Wikipedia users per language (which tends to directly correspond to the number of articles per edition). There might be a billion speakers of "Zxelquent" on another planet, but they aren't using Wikipedia.
3. We aren't demonstrating bias against any languages. We're demonstrating bias against small Wikipedias. The goal is to link to Wikipedias that serve as useful resources, not to one with fewer than 100 articles! The language in question is spoken by a large number of people, but that doesn't change the fact that there's practically nothing there for them to read.
4. With or without the "10,000" tier, the current list is short, manageable and fairly evenly divided, and it contains only Wikipedias in reasonably good shape. —David Levy 00:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I thought that the purpose of linking to small Wikipedias from the largest languages was similar to one of the purposes of DYK: to encourage people to participate in editing/expansion, and also, in this case, counteracting systematic bias. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 01:03
That's a secondary goal, but we have to draw the line somewhere (and we absolutely shouldn't link to a Wikipedia that's barely gotten started). As noted above, the number of people in the world who speak a language does not necessarily correspond to the number of available Wikipedia readers/editors. The quantity of articles per edition is our best available gauge. —David Levy 02:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Let me just point out - on behalf of the speakers of all the "non-important" (because not spoken by 1 bn people or so) languages - that this topic has been dealt with here several times thoroughly and the final consesus has always been that we also keep the smaller languages at the bottom of the page. The last version (that D. Levy managed to revert, fortunately) was useless, magalomanic, politically incorrect, insensible, impractical, ignorant, against the general wikipedia-spirit, and against users switching between several language versions. I am mentioning this here, because I see that the adherents of this side have not noticed this discussion and are nor so loud as one overly active user above. Juro 00:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Can you provide links to these past "final consensuses", and then explain why exactly these past discussions should prevent present and future changes? (Otherwise, why even bring them up?) If users want to easily switch between language versions, they can simply go to the m:List of Wikipedias, linked right on the main page. As for your long list ("magalomanic", "politically incorrect", etc), these are a bunch of words without any arguments. Thus, it is simply a list o' FUD. If you would like to provide rationale, we could possibly reach consensus. Until then, your statements have no foundation. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 00:29

The current version (David Levy's version sans the 10,000k section) looks good to me. It's aestehtically appealing because it is approximately the same size as the 'sister projects' and 'Other areas of Wikipedia' and it includes virtually all of the important languages. Raul654 00:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

While I would prefer to retain the "10,000" tier, the current setup is acceptable. —David Levy 00:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to include the couple languages that are "100 million+" but below 25k articles, but this looks alright. At least we have the top 5. — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 00:59

I have no idea why the "importance of languages" is being discussed. This is about linking important Wikipedia projects, not "important languages". Punjabi is a major language. pa-wiki has 49 articles. Hence, no matter how important Punjabi may be, pa-wiki is not linkworthy. This is English wikipedia, not United-Nations-Wikipedia, hence we have no responsibility to link minor projects. dab (ᛏ) 19:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Because it's a rather obvious systematic bias. One of the largest languages in the world has one of the smallest Wikipedias. To not link to it seems like we're trying to hide our inherent bias. But maybe that's something more appropriate for www.wikipedia.org — BRIAN0918 • 2006-07-24 23:54

Judging by the discussion above, Brian0918 clearly has a lot of energy that needs a useful outlet. Perhaps he could Punjabi (one of the largest languages in the world, after all), and translate some articles...? -- ALoan (Talk) 14:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea...the internet is a global service, so I believe someone in India and Pakistan who is fluent in Punjabi can help out improve their language edition. What is pa-wiki anyway? someone please explain that one. I think Punjabi uses the Arabic script, although I might be wrong as many languages in India is written in Sanskrit script (an ancient language of Northern India used 2,500 years ago). --Mike D 26 23:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

War between islam and christianity now and then

There should be something on the frontpage about the 550 year old defence and battle of Fort Nándorfehérvár, one of the most decisive early victories against ottoman turkish conquest in Europe. The 550 year celebrations are held during this weekend throughout Hungary. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Belgrade —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.70.32.136 (talk • contribs) 17:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC).

Great idea, so write the article, place it as a date on July 12, and it will probably appear next year.--Dhartung | Talk 20:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Way to go, that should put him in his place. -- klaus
Wikipedia:Don't bite the newbies. But people do have to realize that the absence of their pet topic should be an incentive for them to get involved. --Dhartung | Talk 04:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
This 1456 event was indeed a selected anniversary that day and was shown on MainPage for 24 hours straight. I'm not sure what the problem is. --PFHLai 16:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words in FA intro?

The intro to today's FA now reads: In the 1992 presidential election campaign, Pat Buchanan made extensive use of the phrase in his surprisingly strong challenge to Bush in the Republican primaries. I can't help but ask, "Surprising to whom?" Does this seem like weasel wording or POV commentary to anyone else? Would this be better asked on the article's talk page as it's in the article without any citation there as well? Dismas|(talk) 00:22, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think it should be changed to merely "in his challenge to Bush", as the point you brought up, and the question "Strong, compared to what?" should be reason enough to eliminate them both. Picaroon9288 02:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
A sitting president usually has a breeze in the primaries; Bush did not. It was a stronger challenge than most sitting presidents get. Raul654 06:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
True, but it sounds like a prejudgement of Pitchfork Pat. Not that such a judgement would be unwarranted (from Crossfire to the Oval Office?), but that "surprising" was inappropriate. --Dhartung | Talk 05:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I disagree, the grandparent has it right: the surprise was that Bush got any opposition at all, not over who the opponent was. A revision: In the 1992 presidential election campaign, Pat Buchanan made extensive use of the phrase in his unusually strong showing against the normally-unchallenged incumbent Bush in the Republican primaries., which better conveys what was so unusual.

"mounting military and civilian casualties on both sides"

Implies some kind of parity. In fact, Lebanese deaths are an order of magnitude higher than Israeli losses. In this report - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5206470.stm - are the values "More than 350 Lebanese have been killed in the 11 days of violence, many of them civilians. Thirty-four Israelis have been killed, including 15 civilians killed by rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israel." That's a factor of 10:1. The phrasing on the front page is misleading. "[M]ounting military and civilian casualties, particularly on the Lebanaese side." would be a fairer reflection of the true state of affairs.

Bear in mind that the ITN blurb isn't designed to act as a full news story. As it stands, it's already the longest blurb up there, and is both neutral and accurate. Those interested in learning more can click on the link provided to do so. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 02:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I think it rather non-neutral for precisely the reason described above: it treats as equal an order of magnitude difference. Yesterday, I had a copy of the Observer which cites this exact phrasing in reference to media bias (tossed it, or I'd give the quote). Whether they were referring to Wiki itself I don't know. Marskell 14:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Nothing in the statement implies equality of the losses, only that both "sides" are suffering "increasing" loss, which is fact if you accept there are two sides, which I do not. Again this points to the idiotic concept of NOPV, how do you state something on this without someone seeing it as biased. And probably the only way to state it without someone seeing it as biased would be to remove the true meaning from what is happening. For example even the use of the word "sides" gives me some problem since Lebanon is not at war, Israel is a side, but Hizbollah is a faction not a nation, so which is the side, the headline implies that this is a war between nations, that everyone killed on one side is part of a group as opposed to the other. I would rather "total dead and injured mount in Lebanon and North Israel" but someone somewhere would state that this created an equality between the two sides. Another statement like "Israel is destroying Lebanon" would be fine by me, but would be likely viewed as NOPV by 50% of the readers in the US. And Hezbollah is still holding 2 Israeli troops, if they handed them over that might end it, Hezhollah is also a guilty party, how do you seperate those killed in fighting for Hezbollah from innocent civilians? Its just not possible to describe this in any human form without some subjective perspective. This is simply a cornerstone of modern philosophy since the early 20th Century. Its strange that the only place anywhere I read anything like NOPV is in Wikipedia. Any freshman in critical methods, history, or philosophy would know the complexity of such a claim, and yet Wikipedia takes it for granted, its almost never questioned which is really strange. Are the claims I read that Wikipedia is a cult dominated by followers of Rand to be taken seriously, it seems like it. As for the war in Lebanon and Northern Israel, having been to both places, here is the headline "humans continue to show what asses they are, innocent people die!" --Rhooker1236 15:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
It is the absence of qualification that leads to the implication of "equality of loss." Re the rest of it, of course there will always be some who find any statement on a topic like this non-neutral—but that doesn't invalidate the NPOV policy. In its absence, it's hard to see how drafting sentences like this would be any easier. Marskell 12:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Grammar

"The Israeli-Lebanese conflict continues with mounting military and civilian casualties on both sides; other nations rush to evacuate their citizens; the UN warns of a possible upcoming Lebanese refugee crisis."

There are two semicolons in this sentence, which is grammatically incorrect. Try replacing it with something like:

  • The Israeli-Lebanese conflict continues with mounting military and civilian casualties on both sides; other nations rush to evacuate their citizens. UN officials warn of a possible upcoming Lebanese refugee crisis.

OR

  • The Israeli-Lebanese conflict continues with mounting military and civilian casualties on both sides. Other nations rush to evacuate their citizens, while the UN warns of a possible upcoming Lebanese refugee crisis. TomStar81 01:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Try WP:ERRORS. --64.229.207.138 18:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

unclear ITN

The ITN that says "Former Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, scheduled to stand trial in 2007 for crimes against humanity in Democratic Kampuchea, dies in a military hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia." is very unclear. When I had read it, I thought the trial was going to be in Democratic Kampuchea. I would suggest putting a comma after the 2007. 03:24, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

When I read it, it also sounded ambiguous to me. I've removed the phrase "in Deomcratic Kampuchea". Someone may want to add it back in later, but at least in this way, is sounds clearer. --HappyCamper 03:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, it added nothing useful. Democratic Kampuchea was just the name of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. --Dhartung | Talk 04:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia main page

No need to complain for now, because the main page is very organized and not cluttered of unneeded information. The new multi-lingual coordination list is short and avoids rambling of how many languages exist in the world. The news articles can be expanded by let's say 10 paragraphs and given the links for more details. However, the Cherokee language suggestion hasn't been accepted. On the other hand, Nepali is expected to get included as the language has a million speakers. I love the main page's current format and let's keep things rolling smooth in Wikipedia. --Mike D 26 20:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics, Nepali and Cherokee Wikipedias have 79 and 50 articles respectively. Not sure what "speakers" has to do with anything. --Dhartung | Talk 04:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see, it's buried in #Proposal. --Dhartung | Talk 05:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I think that 100000+ and 20000+ would be a better chose (than 50000+ and 25000+) --Lucinos 07:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

In the news - Miss Universe 2006

Can someone add a wikilink to the Zuleyka Rivera article? Carioca 03:21, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Done! --Madchester 03:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but the article is actually duplicated: Zuleyka Rivera and Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza. It is better to use the Zuleyka Rivera instead of the Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza in the Wikipedia's main page, to prevent a redirect. Carioca 03:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I just can't believe this is considered more significant (as determined by its placement at the top of the section) than a military campaign that has already displaced half a million people, killed hundreds, and may yet trigger even worse. When historians look back in the future at how Wikipedia recorded "in the news" as a first draft of history, this will be another reason why our discreditors don't take an online, democratic encyclopedia seriously. Is the policy that the most recent news must go at the top, or is there some standard for keeping the top story the most important? Bruxism 06:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to have to agree with Bruxism. The Miss Universe thing doesn't warrant being higher than the conflict on the main page. It doesn't even deserve to be above the Tour de France. Some prioritization is necessary here.--72.197.96.86 06:37, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of repeating myself; the current ITN format places entries in the order at which they are added. There's no subjective judgement made as to one item's significance over another. To do so would just lead to more arguments. (Another reason to revisit the format of ITN) --Monotonehell 06:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Did the disucussion on name changes for ITN get anywhere? I haven't checked. Maybe a whole raft of ITN changes should be proposed, or is it better to try and get bits through piecemeal, bit-by-bit? Carcharoth 17:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The discussion ended with no real conclusion. The result was several speakers that raised the problems and several more who claimed there were no problems. Piecemeal changes usually end up like something designed by commitee; not really good for anything. I think it would be better to examine the holistic problems and solutons and put forward an entire model for replacement that addresses all concerns. But changes are slow on WP. --Monotonehell 19:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)