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On this day... (June 22)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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And no Operation Barbarossa? If there's any significant event on this day it's the bloodiest war invasion in modern human history. ShockD (talk) 09:34, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Many OTD entries change each year. Operation Barbarossa has been in OTD on June 22 at least five times. It was the start of four years of war on the Eastern Front and many other events from that war have also been in OTD many times. It's the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII and I think more events from 1945 have been and will be in OTD this year. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:19, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps 'the list of events this day' could indicate the anniversary-years in which each entry has been mentioned on the MP would resolve some queries. Jackiespeel (talk) 16:46, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The information is easily discovered on the talk page of each article. Repeating the information elsewhere is nugatory and prone to error. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:02, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

As this type of query occurs regularly on this talk page 'some means of highlighting' may be relevant - but I belong to the group who want 'unexpected things' to turn up on the Main Page. Jackiespeel (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Here's the thing. I find the "On this day..." section useful for learning important new dates. Like the largest invasion in human history. Of course if I wasn't on Wikipedia few years ago I can't know this. And neither will a lot of other people. Instead we get events such as "Ohio Clean Water Act" featured and deemed "important". How is this important? You can't even compare the two events. I get it you're trying to diversify the list every year and add more stuff to it but doing so also turns it into a backwater and full of irrelevant events for new users. This is my opinion. ShockD (talk) 09:58, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Per Jackie, agree that lesser-known anniversaries can be educational. But would it also be possible to develop a list of two or three dozen anniversaries that are so historically pivotal they should be OTD'd every year? (June 22, 1941, probably would be one.) Or would it take too long to agree on which to include? Sca (talk) 13:12, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Analagous to WP:ITNR. Which causes no end of strife. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Featuring lesser-known dates seems like a better idea than the same dates every time if learning something is your goal. If we'd done it as you suggest, you would have only seen something you clearly already know enough about to speak passionately about; instead you read about a river fire that you apparently had never heard of before. Sounds to me like you got your wish. If you want to memorize large numbers of dates in general, you're almost certainly better off clicking on the complete list. - OldManNeptune ⚓ 20:57, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

No one's talking about "memorizing dates." Some historical events, however, are/were so important they merit remembrance. (From my lifetime: I never will forget the events of Nov. 22, 1963; April 30, 1975; Sept. 11, 2001.) Sca (talk) 21:09, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• But you have forgotten the events of Jul. 20, 1969. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:03, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

No, I do remember that, vaguely. But I remember 11/22/63 (I was 16) in great detail, down to the glint of the sun on the spokes of the gun carriage. Apropos Charleston, I also remember this. [1] Sca (talk) 01:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• Read about that. Damned people. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

(reset indentation) How is this for an idea? As well as a list of important events for its "on this day" column, my local newspaper also has a list of local news items from 1/10/25/50/100 years ago. This means there is a list of important historical events like Operation Barbarossa that get a mention every year, plus space for a few less notable, but local stories that readers may or may not remember.

Of course Wikipedia cannot take the "local story" slant, but perhaps we could adapt the concept so that items which are not world-changing but are nevertheless interesting get mentioned once in a while. The main page may not have enough space for another five items, but how about three items, e.g. 1, 10 and 100 years ago? AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 01:22, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Barring exclusions due to article quality, OTD already gives preference to "round-number" anniversaries. —howcheng {chat} 02:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes Howcheng, I have noticed that. But I am suggesting making it explicit, perhaps in a subsection. I will have a go at putting something together in my sandbox. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:46, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, that was harder than I thought. There was nothing worth listing for 50, 10, or 1 year ago, so I went with 70 as an example. To keep it simple, I put them in one line at the bottom of the list. Maybe the brevity of the entries would entice readers to say "what's that all about?" and click the link for information. Anyway, my idea can be seen at User:Athomeinkobe/sandbox. Everyone is welcome to change it as they see fit. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 03:07, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

That's how I think it should be. Some events should repeat as important anniversaries and others should be diversified as lesser-known interesting facts. ShockD (talk) 09:16, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

And if there were space for 'rather more entries' there would still be complaints about (notable event X) being omitted.

Also - some event are seen as significant #at the time# but disappear from the collective memory (eg newspaper designated 'trial of the century') and others only become significant later on. Jackiespeel (talk) 09:45, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Therefore we've got the "In the news" section. While some events are differently significant for everyone, there are others (like Operation Barbarossa) that are objectively "the largest ever" thus undeniable. ShockD (talk) 09:58, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

It is easier to agree that 'there should be some entries which are likely to be less familiar to users of the Main Page' than decide which events should be mentioned every year (or 'several times in every five year period').

As examples of changing significance - the Battle of Lepanto and the Kursk offensive would have been seen as significant at the time - it would be only afterwards that 'last major sea battle involving oared vessels' and 'largest tank battle of WWII' (has there been a larger tank battle since?). Jackiespeel (talk) 13:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

^{According to German WP – ("größte Panzerschlacht der Geschichte") – no. Some historians rate Kursk as more of a turning point than Stalingrad as it was the last major German offensive against the Soviets. Sca (talk) 14:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)}

'In the news' records things that are happening; before the UK general election a coalition government was a possibility and options were being discussed; the election happened and the discussions were promptly irrelevant.

Many things will happen and will enter the annals of 'On this day' and chronological discussions. The aspects that make some of these events turning points and 'the last...'/'the largest...' etc are only obvious after the event, and can exist 'as a separate aspect' from the historical narrative.

How many times in the previous 5-10 years has Barbarossa appeared in ITN (or otherwise on the MP)? Jackiespeel (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, I'm a new user and I'm just sharing how it looks like from my point of view (a general user, not a know-it-all). ShockD (talk) 16:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess it might as well be asked: what is it that you think should happen? A gigantic straw poll to determine the five "most important" events on any given day in history, and barring new events of the magnitude of Operation Barbarossa pushing old entries off, it remains static? Personally I don't think I'd enjoy that - any of it, the argument over what's most important, or the stagnation of the front page, and I'm not sure what else you'd suggest. Given that Wikipedia is collaborative, that poll would have to take place, for all 366 days; likewise, if you dislike rotating entries, what else is there but to go static, as I can assure you that for every single day of the year there are at minimum five events that someone will balk at leaving out just as much as you do Operation Barbarossa. I guess we could make the list a lot longer, but then, why not just click the hyperlink and get the whole list already? - OldManNeptune ⚓ 23:41, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments on the Main Page

What is rarely commented on is 'how few problems' are actually reported about the Main Page, given the range of viewpoints and coverage.

It is probably impossible to eliminate problems entirely - however vanilla the selection (but how vanilla should it be?), some topics will generate much discussion, or seem inappropriate' chance will mean some areas are over represented on one or several days etc (even if there were themed alternative views etc). Jackiespeel (talk) 16:13, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Lowercase sigmabot III archived the in the news discussion

Why did it stall in the first place? Howcheng? Eman235/talk 12:53, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I dunno. I haven't heard any other comments, so I'll probably put it in place soon. —howcheng {chat} 16:04, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Great. Eman235/talk 16:45, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Dani Schaffel deleting

Hi, everyone can tell me it why the articel Dani Schaffel deleting? after 9 years? What was the info?--Maxie1hoi (talk) 12:58, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

It was created in 2006 and deleted two hours later. The only content was as indicated in the deletion log: [[Category:4Kids Voice Actors]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:32, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

There are 'wikis dealing with actors' - perhaps material on DS fits on them better? Jackiespeel (talk) 18:07, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Bad search result

Bad results on searching "Greece euro 2010". Actually: not just bad, it's useless. -DePiep (talk) 00:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean the search results for Special:Search/Greece euro 2010? Were you hoping to find Greek government-debt crisis? What does that have to do with the main page? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:39, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

PH: What does that have to do with main page - Reader Is King entrance, nothing more. Should I now apologise because not knowing the correct search terms for what I'm looking for? -DePiep (talk) 21:03, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I asked questions because I wanted to know what your cryptic post was about. You didn't answer the questions so I still don't know what it was about. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

"more than 600 mostly Jewish children"

This phrase sounds weird. Usually I would expect whatever comes after "more than 600" to be a set of discrete elements, which makes me read this sentence as implying that he saved over 600 children, each of whom was mostly Jewish. Could we change it to "more than 600 children, mostly Jewish, ..."? Same word count, and only two characters more. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:49, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Or "more than 600 mostly-Jewish children", but that still has the same problem. This would be better at WP:ERRORS I think. Eman235/talk 23:42, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I've changed it. Hopefully that'll be OK. Black Kite (talk) 00:35, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's a smoother read now. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:15, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Lead photos don't match lead headline

Help me.

This issue has been bugging me for a while, but I'm not sure where to bring it up. My apologies if this isn't the right place. The issue is that the sections on the front page, i.e. "In the news", "Did you know...", "On this day ..." will often have a lead photo for that section, but quite often, the lead photo wouldn't be for the first headline in the section. So if a photo catches my eye, and I click the headline next to it, I'm led to a completely different article from what I expect. I know that the right head line will have (pictured) in it, but even knowing that I regularly click on the 'wrong' headline. Is there anyway to make sure that the lead photo always illustrates the lead headline? For example, in today's (2 July 2015) "On this day ...", the lead photo is Amelia Earhart, which is the 3rd headline down. The first headline is about Li Shiming's assassination of his rival brothers. We could have used the painting of Li Shiming as the lead photo instead.[2] But this is not just about "On this day ...", the other two sections regularly do this as well, and it bugs the hell out of me. Thanks, LK (talk) 04:18, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

You missed a large discussion about this issue that happened throughout late last May and early June. Unless I'm wrong, apparently no consensus was achieved on a permanent solution. And thus the current practice seems to remain (the original reason for the current practice is still stated on the Main page FAQ). Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

This is the pinnacle of perennial discussions and has apparently been going on since at least 2006. The last discussion in June got pretty close, but technical issues, personal preferences and inertia always gets in the way. Discussing it more can't hurt, I guess. But this has become a very battered horse. Isa (talk) 05:53, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Why should the photo remain on top if the story doesn't stay on top? How about moving the photo down as its corresponding story moves down? 61.3.104.120 (talk) 08:40, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

@Howcheng, your comment is needed here (again) Eman235/talk 11:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

There are technical reasons why the photo can't move down. The consensus is that some action is required and it looks like we will likely go with adding captions underneath the images while keeping them in their same locations. Unfortunately, testing has not been completed at this time. —howcheng {chat} 12:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure there's consensus about using captions with such small pics. I think there probably is consensus to "leave the item related to the image at the top of the section until a new image is used" (as suggested by David Levy).

FYI, LK, another discussion of this false-juxtapositioning issue took place a year ago. Sca (talk) 12:53, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Strange addition

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Is wiki a tool to garner sympathy for Jews? I only ask this because the inclusion of this mans death in the In the news section seems awfully gratuitos: the man himself is a rather little-known figure in the global scheme of things, but most importantly, don't we have a Recent deaths section (below) precisely to add people like his good self?--120.18.149.178 (talk) 01:15, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

• Wikipedia runs on consensus. A goodly number of editors, including myself, considered a person directly responsible for saving 669 people from certain death worth posting as a blurb. I should think that if another individual who did such a feat passed away, we'd post it as well. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:46, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

That's rather shallow reasoning. Many people have done notable things in different fields, yet that doesn't warrant their inclusion in that section. His notable act had a local impact that should only be in that section if it had been commited in our present time—not decades earlier. The only appropriate place for this man, who committed a notable act, is in the Recent deaths section—along with other people who similarly committed notable acts. The only recently deceased people who conceivably belong in the news section would be the leaders of major groups, countries, faiths etc. who have had a global (not local) impact.--120.18.199.115 (talk) 02:45, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Next time, you should give your opinion on items before they're posted. Everybody is welcome :) Isa (talk) 02:55, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Thankyou, but it was that one addition which initially caught my eye.--120.18.130.47 (talk) 03:37, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

• Per Isa. And please, how is it "local impact" when those he saved have played a role in the film industry, mathematics, healthcare, journalism, etc. in numerous countries? I am curious as to your reasoning. As well as the reasoning behind "his notable act had a local impact that should only be in that section if it had been commited (sic) in our present time—not decades earlier"; the news is his death, not his act. His act is why people are paying attention. And that doesn't have an expiry date on it. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 03:07, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

What i mean by local impact is that his act at the time was notable for only having a local impact, ie. saving hundreds of people from one region. Whether the people he saved became notable themselves is of no relevance to the notability of his initial act. Was the decision to include him in the news based upon his rescue, or what became of the rescued? Anyway, you have made my point: you say "the news is his death, not his act"....Well, wiki has a place for such a case; it's called the Recent deaths section. Wiki needs to enforce a policy where only the deaths of world leaders (ie. people of global significance and impact, like the Pope, Dalai Lama, or US President) merits inclusion in the news section.--120.18.130.47 (talk) 03:37, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Nonsense. The man's impact was and is enormous. It crosses multiple borders and is still being felt today. When adding in the descendents of those children there are at least 6000 people alive today all over the world because of him. The guidelines for deaths at ITN permit the posting of blurbs though they state, for good reasons, that this is rarely done. The bar for a blurb is generally much higher than RD. That said, it is occasionally done when the person who has passed was truly exceptional. At the time of the posting I believe there was only a single dissenting !vote. Even subsequently, the expressions of dissent remain distinctly in the minority. Beyond which it is not a matter of vote counting but more importantly of arguments presented for or against. While I respect your right to disagree (some things have been posted that I disagreed with as well), there was, and I believe still is, a strong consensus that Sir Nicholas warranted a blurb on ITN. And finally, while I believe the blurb was entirely consistent with existing guidelines, I think it bears repeating that guidelines are just that. They are not laws, and unlike policy can be bent or set aside if the community believes there is a good reason. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:19, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

...And meanwhile, we recently had dozens of AU troops massacred in Somalia.--120.18.157.29 (talk) 01:39, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia languages

These seem to be in need of some attention. To begin with, there are new languages in the top categories (such as Vietnamese, Cebuano and Winaray - but what actually made me look at them first was the crazy caps in this section. Deutsch and Nederlands have caps, español and svenska lowercase and so on. This on the fact of it seems very messy - and silly. Is there a very good reason why these should be like that? Akerbeltz (talk) 07:09, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Guess some languages use caps and some don't? 117.192.186.174 (talk) 07:38, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

No, that is DEFINITELY not the reason. There are VERY few languages which enforce lowercase even at the start of sentence or when quoting a single proper noun - only Palawa kani springs to mind. Akerbeltz (talk) 08:58, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Language names aren't proper nouns in many languages though - the French for "French" is "français", for instance. While I agree that the capitalisation looks a bit strange, native speakers of the languages seem to find a consistently capitalised version stranger. Smurrayinchester 13:10, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, the names (including those that are uncapitalized) are styled in accordance with the languages' respective conventions.

Note that we're simply displaying the MediaWiki-generated labels associated with the relevant language codes. In other words, we haven't manually specified the formatting in question. —David Levy 13:36, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

As noted in the template's documentation, "this is not a complete list of Wikipedias containing 50,000 or more articles; Wikipedias determined to consist primarily of stubs and placeholders are omitted."

Many Wikipedias' article counts have been inflated artificially via the creation (often by bots) of largely empty pages. When we relied strictly on the quantities reported, some communities employed such a strategy specifically to qualify for our main page's list (a bad thing to encourage, for obvious reasons). —David Levy 13:36, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Ok that explains the inclusion/exclusion, makes sense. But I disagree on the caps. Let's take español. By that logic, which page is FULL of typos [3], not least of all the title of the page. Same for Italiano [4] or Català [5]. Of course it is true that each language has different conventions on how to cap proper nouns but there is a difference between in-sentence case and list case. This is just a list and in any language I can think of, that requires initial caps. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:49, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand your "typos" argument. The Spanish Wikipedia page to which you linked contains context-specific usage (including the title, which MediaWiki capitalizes by default).

There isn't even universal agreement regarding the capitalization of bulleted list items, let alone those presented in other formats. —David Levy 14:19, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

The point is that if Spanish mandated the use of lowercase e in español throughout, then Real Club Deportivo Español is badly capitalised, as would, incidentally the Real Academia's Departamento de "Español al día" [6].

Has someone asserted that Spanish mandates the use of a lowercase "e" in "español" throughout? That certainly isn't my position. As I noted, "the Spanish Wikipedia page to which you linked contains context-specific usage". —David Levy 19:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Bulleted lists are fairly fiddly things to determine regarding caps but the citation form of languages are not, on the whole. If this stuff is coming from Wikimedia, then perhaps someone needs to check just how it is coming from where? Cause there is junk in Wikimedia every now and then and in some cases, there are technical features that cause linguistic junk. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:55, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Are you referring to the Wikimedia Foundation, or did you mean to type "MediaWiki"?

The language codes are converted to the corresponding language names via the "#language" parser function, which is dependent on Extension:CLDR.

Names.php is the master registry of languages that MediaWiki supports. My understanding is that it's separate from the aforementioned feature, but it shows the selective capitalization. —David Levy 19:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm beginning to wonder if someone has mis-interpreted or mis-implemented the CLDR guidelines to capping language names? In CLDR data, localized language names should be given as if in sentence medial position i.e. "en español se dice..." as opposed to "Español" which would obscure the correct capitalisation anywhere but sentence initially. But that is supposed to be used with a context transform rule, if memory serves right, which in a list such as this one should cap all of there. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:01, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Because I really don't know, why is it "Français" in the bar on the left of the page but "français" in the wiki list at the bottom?--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 15:18, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Very good point. This is beginning to look more like a bug than design because there are these two in the language bar on the left: Српски / srpski; Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски. I think there is something in that bar that correctly caps the first initial but fails on these two because it probably cannot distinguish synonyms from, well, anything else and just blindly caps the fist letter and first letter only. Either way, that points to a bug in the list at the bottom. The only reason Deutsch is correctly capped will be because in German it's always capped. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:49, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm baffled as to why you perceive that behavior as a bug. The intent is, indeed, to capitalize the first letter of each distinct item written in the Latin alphabet (as is customary – albeit not universally mandated – in the context of a bulleted list), not the first letter of each language name. If I recall correctly, when the language name-specific capitalization was added to MediaWiki, the sidebar's language links began with lowercase letters until additional code (which initially contained a bug that prevented its application to certain Unicode characters) was requested and introduced.

There is no "bug in the list at the bottom" Its capitalization (and the absence thereof) is intentional. You're welcome, of course, to advocate that this formatting be modified, which would be trivially easy to do (via the "#ucfirst" parser function, along with a bit of custom code if we wanted to capitalize the first letter of each language name instead of the first letter of each list item).

You stated that "the only reason Deutsch is correctly capped will be because in German it's always capped." Apart from the apparent implication that only the capitalized items are "correct", yes, that's exactly why "Deutsch" appears on the list in that format. We purposely begin each Latin-alphabet item with an uppercase letter only if the relevant language requires it. —David Levy 19:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Ok so its intentional, that can still mean it's wrong. Let me put this the other way round. Please point me at the references that were used to back up the decision to uppercase Ελληνικά (which unlike Deutsch can appear lowercased) but not español and I'll go away. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:34, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

That's a different matter (for which the ramifications extend beyond the main page). It certainly is possible that errors occurred when the determinations were made. If so, that's a problem in need of a fix at the MediaWiki level. —David Levy 21:04, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

The sidebar contains a bulleted list, wherein it's customary to capitalize the first letter of each item written in the Latin alphabet. —David Levy 19:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

On what do you base this belief? Your personal opinion that non-bulleted list items must be capitalized? —David Levy 19:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Template talk:Wikipedia languages#Proposal: Capitalize first letter of all language names. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Women's World Cup

USA beat Japan in FIFA Women's World Cup. I know Wiki is behind and slow in providing content/subjects in relation to women, but In The News should be updated to reflect this. Especially when NHL & Prem League cup news were updated almost instantly. I also noticed that Women's World Cup was removed from the On Going section, why wasn't it updated then? [7] JanderVK (talk) 06:58, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

As stated in the big, yellow box at the top of this page, you need to suggest topics for ITN here. There's already discussion for this topic and consensus is that the article will be posted once it's good enough. — foxj 07:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

@JanderVK: Old ITN nominations are kept in an archive. Regardless of systemic bias elsewhere, you may want to check them before making such a baseless accusation; the Women's World Cup was posted faster than the Stanley Cup Finals and much, much faster than the Premier League. -- tariqabjotu 09:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

In news items, it is better to use past tense by saying: "In association football, the United States defeated Japan in the final of the Women's World Cup, and Chile defeated Argentina in the final of the Copa América." But if we want to keep the present tense, shouldn't we say "Chile defeats Japan"? werldwayd (talk) 12:54, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

If you'd like to modify the way in which ITN stories are written, please make a proposal so it can be discussed, right now present tense is used per the Blurb section of Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions. Other issues such as problems with blurbs should be reported at WP:ERRORS. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:59, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Since the initial subject is the U.S. team, slightly jarring that we use British-English syntax, United States defeat (plural verb) rather than the U.S. syntax United States defeats.... (singular verb). Original proposed blub used the U.S. form, United States wins.... Sca (talk) 13:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Fixed by User:David Levy. My fault, I forgot that defeat/defeats is just as jarring as wins/win. Black Kite (talk) 13:20, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of the -ing dodge. Nice work, David. – Sca (talk) 13:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

It's been commonplace for some years now. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:40, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, and I accept the blame for introducing this "dodge" back then. It's the lesser evil, but I wish that a more elegant solution were feasible. (As I've mentioned previously, I like the idea of switching to the past tense, which also would reduce ITN's resemblance to a news ticker.) —David Levy 22:11, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

All we need to do now is find a way of fixing the "X is/are a band" leading sentence issue in every musical band article ... Black Kite (talk) 22:30, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

(reset) Don't forget 'trousers', 'glasses' and 'scissors' which are 'are' unless the same object is referred to as 'a pair of' when it becomes 'is.'

Is there a possibility of developing WP:English to go with US:English, Brit:English and all the other varieties of the language? Jackiespeel (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

No. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:29, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Greece is not ITN then?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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LOL, sort of. So at this moment the top ITN is that US Association Soccer wins cup. Nothing about Greece then. If not on WP, where else should or could I learn the recent changes wrt Greece? -DePiep (talk) 21:44, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Look down a little further in the ITN section. To "Ongoing events", just above "Recent deaths". Greek debt crisis is there. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:54, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Yep. Great. As of course any reader does understand it as you do. By the way, I did click that downhill link. Now there the lede says "encouraged" (to be clear: that is POV). WP is serving the anti-Greek then. Good to know. Now write that in Main_page. -DePiep (talk) 23:01, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:28, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm welcome to what? To edit and improve Main page? -DePiep (talk) 23:43, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

So, what's the link to "ITN & Ongoing events" that explains what Greece & EU is about? Or: why soccer above? -DePiep (talk) 00:15, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried an actual news site? --Khajidha (talk) 09:49, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

The wonderful thing about the Wiki technology is that literally anyone can contribute. If one were to agree with you, DePiep, that an article is poorly worded or needs more "oompf" they could simply fix said article. Regarding the main page, they don't let just anyone edit it becuase enivitably multiple times a day someone would draw a penis over everything or other such juvenile acts of vandalism. Each section, however, is handled by a different group and if you think the "In The News" section is lacking I'm sure they will be glad to have you join the team. Lucutious (talk) 14:39, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Gah. You know the US biaz peeps won if an association soccer item is accused of being biased for the US, not against it. Gotta blame the sorry-arse Euros for losing in the semifinals. –HTD 16:36, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ITN photo (11 July 2015)

Shall we change a photo of a Chilean football player to one of photos of US captain, Carli Lloyd? --George Ho (talk) 22:53, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

• 
  September 2011
• 
  May 2015

We get enough grief for being too US-centric. I say leave it.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 00:13, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Lousy reason, honestly. One's a world championship, the other's a continental tournament. Even if the U.S. Did win it, the world title should get the illustrative picture. oknazevad (talk) 20:38, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Stale ITN

I don't normally comment here, but the SpaceX rocket blew up on June 28, 14 days ago. This is like the Ferdinand Lugo of ITN stories by this point. Are there not any newsworthy stories that are suitable to knock this one off? (Before you point me to ITNC I am aware and I used to contribute there, but haven't in years.) hbdragon88 (talk) 02:29, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

We can only discuss events that are nominated, and can only post events that are adequately updated and gain consensus to do so. Please participate (either at ITNC or just by improving nominated articles) if you would like to see a faster turnover. 331dot (talk) 02:35, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

+1 to what 331dot wrote. I will just add that we are in the midst of a relatively slow news cycle right now. When that happens some ITN blurbs will seem a bit past their shelf life. It happens. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:41, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, please, despite your request, go and help at ITNC. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Portals listed

Just a thought , I think major portal are not listed on the welciming page, many important portals are missing, not subjected to any other group, those that first come to my mind are the following: Current events · Reference · Culture · Health · Literature · Natural sciences · People · Sport

Another thought, as much as I read, under the defionition sociology portals are the following: Arts · Anthropology · Community · Culture · Economics · Education · Geography · Gender studies · Globalization · History · Human rights · Internet · Law · Philosophy · Social movements · Social sciences · Social Welfare and Social Work · Society

One more tought, most of the listed portals are simply science, under the definition are: · Natural sciences · Geography · History · Social sciences · Biology Economics Mathemathics

--Evropariver (talk) 22:49, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

There #is# only so much space on the MP, and people's computer screens/mobile phones. Jackiespeel (talk) 09:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Of course I don't mean listing all. I mean that instead of all types of sciences, could be listed WikiProject Science or Education, but in addition also Sport, Current Events, Law, Human Rights, Culture and Arts--Evropariver (talk) 10:29, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Current Events is linked in "In the news", and Law and Human Rights are Society portals. Sport is missing, as it's in Culture but not Arts. Maybe some changes could be made: the main portal categories include Culture, Education and Religion, which are not linked on the main page, but Arts and Biography are subcategories within Culture and Society. Unfortunately Portal:Culture is not a featured portal. Peter James (talk) 12:54, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

ITN photo of Serena Williams (July 2015)

I have other images of her:

• 
  with a Wimbledon plate
• 
  another headshot from Aussie Open '15

Stick to current image or swap to either of above? --George Ho (talk) 21:15, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

I !vote for the left-hand cropped image, if it's free-use, as it actually shows her in Wimbledon garb, albeit in a different year. I'm not crazy about the lurid green & pink ensemble! --Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 07:47, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Nevermind. We have a New Horizons image right now, so they are useless. --George Ho (talk) 14:48, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

May as well plan ahead for when she wins the US Open... Resolute 15:28, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I need your suggestions on these captions

If we're starting with captions on Saturday, then this is urgent ... I don't have any idea yet whether we're going to get consensus, or what to do until we do get consensus. Please suggest captions on this page for any or all of the images at these links. The first suggestion under each is the current hover-text for each image.

• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 18, 2015
  • Skelton in 1960
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 19, 2015
  • Cover of 1893
  • Cover of 1893 edition [Howcheng]
  • 1893 cover [Eman235]
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 20, 2015
  • Gippsland waratah
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 21, 2015
  • Bob Dylan and the Band
  • Bob Dylan and the Band in 1974 [Howcheng]
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 23, 2015
  • Shinji Mikami
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 25, 2015
  • Elliott Fitch Shepard
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 26, 2015
  • 2013 Atlantic hurricane season
  • Summary map of 2013 season [Howcheng]
• Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 28, 2015
  • French soldiers in the First Indochina War

- Dank (push to talk) 13:39, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

For the missing dates (July 22, July 24, July 27), do you need anything for those? —howcheng {chat} 17:15, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

P.S. Most of the hover-texts weren't my call, here or in past columns, I usually defer to the other TFA coords and the people who add the images. - Dank (push to talk) 17:47, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I've added my suggestion for July 19. Question: Is it necessary to have a caption it's the same as the title of the article, as for Elliot Fitch Shepard? Eman235/talk 18:43, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

The discussion at WT:TFA#I need your suggestions on these captions may or may not be helpful. - Dank (push to talk) 18:59, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so the first caption will hit TFA in about 10 hours. We don't have enough feedback yet to know if there's consensus here and at WT:TFA. I have deferred to others on captions throughout my wiki-career, including at TFA, and I'm going to keep on deferring, at least until some kind of recognizable patterns emerge. - Dank (push to talk) 14:15, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Pinging Chris: thanks for working on the captions. The only thing I noticed was too much white space (in all zooms) beneath the caption at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 21, 2015. (I haven't checked the others.) I reduced the margin, and it looks fine in all zooms to me now (in Firefox), but if that screws it up for someone else, please let me know. - Dank (push to talk) 15:08, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks. That looks good. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 15:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to tweak main page headers from pastel colours to a subtle neutral colour part 2

As the discussion was getting rather long.

My point was that it is useful for WP and WMF to have superficially different looks/slightly different colourways (even if they have the same fonts and layouts etc) so that one knows where one is - much as newspapers and other media. Apart from that, so long as the colours chosen are 'not too garish' or are otherwise likely to cause problems, and it is not presented as 'the rebrand to resolve company snarlyups' (which seems not to be the case here), whatever suits (and four weeks afterwards everyone will wonder what the fuss was about). Jackiespeel (talk) 13:30, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I find that ridiculous. First of all, those colors are very generic. Red, green, and blue. Nothing special about them except for their tonality. Second, it's not like Wikimedia uses those colors for their headers on their main page. Third, if people were to be confused as to which one they were on, it would spawn from the fact that they both use Vector, not because some of the headers on the main page of WP use the same colors as the logo on WM. Fourth, these colors are used in other things on Wikipedia already, such as {{clickable button}}. The idea that someone would be confused as to which one they're on because of a color scheme is just absurd. Jacedc (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I think most people would want colours that are 'look-at-able', suit various visual issues, and do not cause problems with the range of computers and handhelds.

Probably most of us have link-clicked between WP, WMF and Wikisource 'and other parts of the wikiverse' without noticing it on occasion: so it might make sense to have eg the colours used being in a slightly different arrangement to draw attention to it (especially for those who are less familiar with the wikiverse in general). It is usually far easier to resolve 'potential problems' before they become 'actually existing problems'. Jackiespeel (talk) 16:14, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

No, you're solving a problem that doesn't exist. These colors are used elsewhere on WP, and the WMF doesn't use the colors as we would use them. They're generic colors that wouldn't cause any confusion. Jacedc (talk) 16:59, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

You do mention using the WMF colour scheme above.

Perhaps there could be a summing up of 'the suggested colourway(s)' and how those for WP and WMF differ/bear a family relationship so that people know what is under discussion (and possibly even the previous WP colourway for comparison). Jackiespeel (talk) 18:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Gadget

An opt-in gadget is now in place under Testing and development section in your preferences, redirecting you to the new Main Page (talk). Any thought on announcing this? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:00, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I support an editor-facing announcement of the page's ongoing development, with a focus on inviting collaborative refinement and testing. It should be made clear that this is a work in progress, with the current revision serving an example layout on which feedback is welcome. (We don't want users to mistake it for a "final" or "official" design that must be accepted or rejected in its entirety, prompting drive-by "support"/"oppose" votes instead of constructive input.) —David Levy 16:17, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Really, really, really digging this. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help! Jacedc (talk) 16:44, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

For the record, I want to note that I'm quite fond of the current revision as well. I have a few possible tweaks in mind, but they relate strictly to relatively minor details. At this point, my main concern would be ensuring that the page is tested thoroughly (to confirm compatibility/accessibility).

Excellent work, Edokter. —David Levy 17:05, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Please post any ideas on the talk page. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:46, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• Announcing this will tell everyone that: it's 2015, we don't have to support old versions of Internet Explorer, nor do we have to keep this neophytic design. Esquivalience ^t 18:25, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

While this is true for developed countries, keep in mind Wikipedia is an indispensable tool for undeveloped countries and other countries across the world that aren't on a technologically advanced level. So yes, unfortunately, we do have to support as much legacy software as possible. And this is coming from a web designer who doesn't even support Internet Explorer 8 and below anymore. Heck, even Microsoft said at the beginning of 2016 it won't support IE8 and below anymore, either. Jacedc (talk) 18:34, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

While there is some HTML5/CSS3 in that page, it does fall back gracefully, even on IE8 and below. The obvious traits like gradients and shadows will not render. The most visible 'incompatibility' is that boxes will not have equal height. But none of these are detrimental. The only snag is that older browsers will not be responsive to viewport/browser size, as they do not understand media queries. So the boxes will not stack on smaller browser windows. But the current page has the exact same problem. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:44, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Right, I'm not saying every aspect should be supported, but basic functionality should. Basically just making sure things aren't completely broken/unusable. As far as "pretty" goes, browser support doesn't matter. Jacedc (talk) 19:15, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I sure missed a lot ;) Gadget is great. I just have one issue: it is now slightly difficult to get to T:MP. Can we put a link to it here? Eman235/talk 19:48, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, I have sort-of announced this at WP:VP/M. Eman235/talk 21:11, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

No problem, just put the link up. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:37, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll be honest: I mostly like it (once I turned styling on), but I don't think TFA, as currently set up (with teeny-tiny image) looks good at full width, and it kind of feels like today's featured picture - one of the featured content sections - is being pushed down too far. Fonts need tweaked, In the news is probably a little too prominent given it updates much more slowly than any other section: the oldest item is over a week old. Tweak a bit? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Font?

Here

Using a different font for the redesigned main page would spice it up a bit, in my opinion - see the image (Verdana text with Open Sans headings):

Any thoughts? Esquivalience ^t 03:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

No to Verdana, Open Sans is fine. Verdana is just as outdated as the current 2006 main page design, it would only set us back further. Jacedc (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I think Arial/Helvetica is fine. We need to think simple, and these fonts are simple. Plus, we should also stay consisted with article typography. Jacedc (talk) 15:01, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Example of Verdana, example of Open Sans, example of Arial, example of Helvetica. Just so everyone knows. Eman235/talk 18:35, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

You might want to use images for this since not everybody has those fonts. I don't have Open Sans nor Helvetica. I also happen to think that web pages should use the default fonts and I usually force my own fonts in the browsers I use, but not everybody agrees with me. Finally, the last time the fonts were changed, mayhem ensued and the changes were reverted. Isa (talk)

Verdana, Open Sans, Arial, Helvetica

That's the best I can do right now. Eman235/talk 19:51, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

IMHO, we should stick with the default sans-serif. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:59, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Second. Default sans serif. Verdana's a big no-no, especially in the web design community. Almost as bad, though not as quite as bad, as Comic Sans, dare I say so. If we do have to use something other than Arial, my vote goes to Roboto, though even then, I'd rather not use it. A pro to Roboto is that it's a free web font, supported by Google Webfonts (which means browser support is as good as it gets).Jacedc (talk) 21:01, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Agree we should stick with default sans-serif. If we want to change the font, it should be done across the site, not just on the Main Page. the wub "?!" 21:32, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Mobile main page

Checking the mobile main page, I see that it's a very shortened selection of the material on this page. Specifically, it appears to consist of:

1. Today's featured article (quite rightly)
2. In the news
3. A button to press to see other languages.

This seems... odd, at the least. I don't want to criticize in the news in itself too much, but given that the mobile version completely leaves out "Did you know", Featured lists, and Featured pictures, and given the relatively slow update of in the news (it's the only part of the main page not to completely update at least once a day, after all), it seems a very odd choice. I'd personally go for either the three featured contents (if we can somehow know the resolution: featured pictures should probably be suppressed on very small devices, but are quite appropriate for, say, tablets.) or go with article, list, DYK, in that order (or just show all four), followed by the language link. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

In case someone agrees with you: Configuring the main page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there a sandbox we can use for that? I've been trying to check the image captions in mobile view but haven't been able to figure out how to get my mobile browser to load WP:Main Page/sandbox with the actual mobile content. —howcheng {chat} 20:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

test.wikipedia.org or test2.wikipedia.org are always available for such tests. Adminship can be requested if required and is granted liberally. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• Check the current MP on mobile Wikipedia. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 04:15, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I like it. I did the rest of the sections. —howcheng {chat} 05:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Main page input

Just in case anyone hasn't seen it, we have Wikipedia:2015_main_page_redesign_proposal/draft/Guy_Macon. My question - have we had polls of readers/visitors previously to see what readers think is good on the main page. I am sure we must have but can't recall seeing one. cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:45, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I think a resounding response would be: SOME content. Not that proposal, which is literally zero content. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that was the result of a discussion that died somewhere along the line. Anyway, not that design. Eman235/talk 18:41, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Definitely not that design. Edokter's looks much better, and it doesn't require a fundamental reworking of every. Single. Main. Page. Segment. Mind, I still prefer our current layout. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:27, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

While I don't think that particular design was done well, there is something to be said for fundamental simplicity. The main page only has to function, and to me I think it'd be able to do so with most efficiency if it didn't have to have a design-of-the-times constantly degrading its value every time said design becomes outdated. Plus, it's also a major performance thing. Jacedc (talk) 15:20, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

This is the best idea for a Main Page makeover I've seen in years, ever since I started paying attention. It makes the encyclopedia more accessible to the people who need it the most. It clears all the vanity-publishing trivia off the main page, where it is completely out of place. I would suggest that it should include the subject area portals (maybe renamed "subject areas", "fields", or something more explicit than "portals"). As a concept, I consider it brilliant. I only wish I believed we could find a way to get behind it and DO it. Awien (talk) 22:57, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I've always thought the "On this day", "In the news", and "Did you know" sections were a gaggy waste of space. Really even the TFP section, too. Sure, that stuff's nice to look at, but it's kind of unnecessary. I know practically no one will agree with me though. Jacedc (talk) 02:09, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Everyone at OTD, ITN, and DYK for starters. Eman235/talk 02:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

"Kind of unnecessary" for what? Haven't you jumped to a UI design without considering use cases or functions of what you are designing? There are use cases for showcasing our developed content, and use cases to get people as quickly as possible to a search or navigation page. With regards to a very simple, lightweight landing page, there's no reason why WP servers couldn't respond with "it seems to be taking a long time to show you our normal main page, would you like a simple one instead?" Stephen 02:46, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Something being unnecessary doesn't have to be unnecessary for a reason. The burden of proof is for it being necessary not unnecessary. I don't know what the rest of your comment means though. And the alternate landing page could be one idea, but if we're acknowledging the normal one is too clunky there's no reason to keep it. It'd be a good idea for something like Gmail (as they currently do), it's another thing for something as simple as the main page. Now that I think about it, I even prefer the landing page over the main page. Jacedc (talk) 02:50, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Why is the main page cluttered with all this "vanity-publishing trivia" (thanks, Awien), anyways? People say "we need to showcase our best work", but my question is "Why use the Main Page as a showcase? Why not have a Showcase Page?" --Khajidha (talk) 12:04, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Also I'm not convinced that DYK and ITN really does a good job of showcasing our "best" work. Maybe stuff like TFA, TFP, etc. Jacedc (talk) 15:29, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• Who said they did? Dif? — Chris Woodrich (talk) 16:39, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not saying anyone did. I'm just saying I think otherwise. Jacedc (talk) 16:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Bandwidth watching is probably something best left for the real front page at https://www.wikipedia.org .©Geni (talk) 10:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Image captions

After testing in multiple browsers (Chrome, IE, Firefox) and operating systems (Windows, Mac OSX, iOS), testing of image captions on the Main Page is complete. If there are no other objections, I plan to institute this on Saturday, July 18. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 16:23, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm all for this and think it a genuine improvement. Mini fist-bump for Howcheng. One minor query however - would it be preferable to tweak the text formatting slightly to further distinguish these captions from the surrounding text which, in some examples, is very close by? I don't know, maybe by putting a pale grey background to the text? Well, perhaps not that as it may be overridden by skin settings. But something else? --Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 07:43, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Not generous enough ;-) — this problem, which has caused (valid) complaint for many years, has finally had some excellent work on it, so a big huzzah to Howcheng. I'd recommend leaving it as-is for a while to determine if the tweak to presentation suggested by 'Eugene is required. I quite like the clean look Howcheng has arranged, so we should wait to see if others complain about confusion with other text before changing it. Bazza (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Roll on the 18th; our long nightmare is almost over! Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 16:18, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, go, go, go! Eman235/talk 19:44, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I see a caption was just added to Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 18, 2015‎. The timing couldn't be better, because I've been wondering (as of yesterday) to what extent FAC standards diverge from Main Page standards, and if so, what should be done about that. I'll ask around and get back with you guys. I'll support whatever Chris's position is on captions in general, but in theory, this could create a problem, by giving us more text to argue about ... some arguments resolve themselves over time, some don't, and I've kind of got a bad feeling about this. - Dank (push to talk) 09:51, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I hope any worries about how to word these new, useful captions won't result in them being removed. General readers and users have rightly complained for many years about the disjunction of illustrative pictures and their associated texts on the main page, particularly in the Did You Know and (misnamed) In The News sections. Howcheng's (and others?) excellent work on providing a remedy for these complaints should not be put in jeopardy by any perceived or otherwise problems their presence presents. Bazza (talk) 11:21, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I just got an email from Chris, and he didn't talk about having a problem with captions on the Main Page in general. If he doesn't, I don't. The solution to the potential problem I'm talking about is dead simple: I need feedback, here and at WT:FAC, on what this month's captions should be. If the suggestions largely line up, there's no problem. If the suggestions reflect differences in philosophy that aren't likely to get resolved quickly, then we need to decide which way we're going, and why. - Dank (push to talk) 13:02, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I do not know if this argument is sufficient enough, but I personally oppose this on the basis that these captions look very ugly. I also do not know if anybody else thinks that and I believe that there should be an RfC before such a change is implemented.--The Traditionalist (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I think you are the first to state publicly your opposition due to aesthetic grounds. —howcheng {chat} 20:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

@Howcheng: I think so too. I find it rather strange.--The Traditionalist (talk) 11:40, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

First, you can make some additional testing here. Second, shouldn't the caption be added to "From today's featured list"? Third, dunno, maybe this was discussed, but why not keep those (pictured) in text? Sometimes it is hard to connect image with fact/text, even with image caption. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

On hold

User:David Levy wanted further testing done, so it looks like we're on hold again. Specifically (and please correct me if I'm wrong, David), he'd like to see users on different Android versions and people using *nix systems take a look, plus have a test by someone using a screen reader. Furthermore, is there an equivalent to Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow for the mobile site? —howcheng {chat} 00:12, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, first caption I guess. Looks good but a bit offset though. Eman235/talk 04:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I went and did the other 3 sections. We can still tweak as needed. Nothing is set in stone here. —howcheng {chat} 05:30, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Vietnamese

Hi, please update the Main Page. Wikipedia Vietnamese has already over 1m articles. Na Tra (talk) 12:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of the language links is at Template talk:Wikipedialang; try asking there. Modest Genius ^talk 13:32, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Alignment of captions

See exchange with Howcheng at the end of this section. Sca (talk) 13:48, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Captions

The Main Page Barnstar, for all those who had a hand in this.

Did... did we do it? Is it over? Can we celebrate? Isa (talk) 17:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Guess so. Curious that DYK doesn't have a caption though. — foxj 18:43, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe because it's the first item? Also, I didn't know we were getting rid of (pictured)...seems like it would still be useful. But yes, we can celebrate. Eman235/talk 19:25, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

One of the main starting points of captions was to get rid of (pictured). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:18, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh I missed that DYK one... getting it now. —howcheng {chat} 23:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there supposed to be whitespace under the captions? Eman235/talk 00:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

It took me a while to figure out which news blurb the caption and photo are referring to. 72.196.127.84 (talk) 00:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

That's true. If only we could have something inline to identify the image. Something like "(pictured)", or maybe a small icon. Or both. Isa (talk) 00:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Here we go again... still exists, I might add. Eman235/talk 00:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

On a more serious note, a big thank you to Howcheng, David Levy, Edokter and all the others who contributed, commented, argued or just awkwardly lurked. Cheers! Isa (talk) 01:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Not sure it's useful in DYK, since the image is always for the first "hook". And for TFAs in which the subject is the same as the illustration, I don't think we need captions. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

While it is true that the subject of the accompanying picture to TFA is often immediately obvious, there are six instances this month of (pictured) being used. This is particularly helpful when the TFA is a video game, music album or similar where the most obvious choice of image is non-free and hence cannot be used on MP. An example is 13 July; the TFA related to a feature film and presumably the choice was made to picture the director rather than an official film poster or still from the film as these images would contravene MP rules. If an image caption may occasionally be seen as over-stating the point there are several instances where it would have genuine value, such as on 13 July. Also better to have all sections of the MP following the same basic layout. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 08:04, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• As I said, "for TFAs in which the subject is the same as the illustration". If our subject is X, and our picture is X, then we shouldn't run a caption, unless further clarification is needed (like the Bus M-28 image; I included a caption because roads can look considerably different as they pass through different areas). As for captions running when the relevance of the image is less than clear, I have no issue with that. In fact, I wrote the last three captions to be used on TFA. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 08:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I apologise. I ran off at the mouth a bit there without properly reading your post. You raise a good point. A caption is often unnecessary; would it be ok to have captions some days and not others? For some reason I thought this may be problematic if for instance the caption were part of a template. If the putative template can accept a null value for caption then fine. Another point for consideration; what if the subject of the picture is obvious to some but not others? I think I'm arguing just for the sake of it here. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 08:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• I've been trying to keep that in mind with TFA, as seen at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2015. Flood damage caused by a hurricane is marked as such, as is the singer of a song, but in cases where the bold text (i.e. article title) is what is shown, no captions have been added. The templates are currently different for different functions; next time I schedule I'll see if a null value would work with the template Howcheng developed.

I can see a point for consistent captioning of DYK images, and the current Robbins medallion caption works really well. Perhaps the average reader won't know that DYKs consistently show an image from the first article, so in the long run I guess it may be more effective to use captions. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 09:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I made the caption optional. —howcheng {chat} 17:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Should the featured list image also have a caption? Smurrayinchester 14:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
  •  Done —howcheng {chat} 17:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Bravo, people! Clearer, so better. Awien (talk) 17:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Caption justification

Excellent work on the captions - well done to all those involved. Just one comment from me - I would prefer to see the captions centred beneath the images, rather than left justified. This raises three questions:

1. Is this technically possible?
2. Would there be consensus to do this by default?
3. If consensus is to keep them left justified, could it be done as a css tweak instead?

Optimist on the run (talk) 12:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

For #3, here's a simple, hacky line of CSS that you can add to your own style:

.thumbcaption { text-align: center; }

I've got no personal preference on if this should be the default. Organics ^talk 13:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

No need for !important. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Previously, some people expressed preference for a left-justified caption. {{main page image}} supports caption alignment. Right now it defaults to left but that be easily changed to center if that's the consensus. —howcheng {chat} 16:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I prefer to see the captions left-justified. However, I would prefer just a little less space between the bottom of the image and the top of the caption. Congratulations on implementing this. 81.152.224.92 (talk) 19:24, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I see that the space has now been reduced. Nice work, thanks to whoever did this! 81.152.224.92 (talk) 23:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Time to stop the self-congratulatory nonsense, this implementation is appalling. See the section below, rightly questioning the value of this "caption" concept. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: Do you really find the implementation appalling, or just the looks of captions? Or both?

As for the "self-congratulatory nonsense", I made no judgement on the merit of captions. My barnstar was meant to reward the cooperation of the dozen or so people who came up with a design, and implemented, tested and deployed it. It is not perfect (I would personally have kept the "pictured" indicator), but it addresses a recurrent suggestion that has been proposed over and over again. Your words are very harsh ("fabricated by a handful of our millions of readers"), but I like to think that most of these proposals, and the current solution, have been made in good faith. Isa (talk) 16:09, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

View counter

Can someone please repair the view counter? It is now behind by three days. Thanks. Johnsmith2116 (talk) 13:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

What view counter? — foxj 14:48, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

When you click on "view history" and then "view page statistics" it shows the view count. But it is 3 days behind and needs repaired. I'm hoping someone will fix it. Johnsmith2116 (talk) 15:17, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The author of the tool has been notified at User talk:Henrik#Stats down again. He hasn't edited Wikipedia since August 2014. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:30, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to tweak main page headers from pastel colours to a subtle neutral colour

I think one of the reasons the main page looks a bit amateurish is because of the pastel colour headers which look inappropriate and really outdated on the web now. Green, purple and pink don't look right for the main page of an encyclopedia. I think it's time to at least smarten it up a bit, even if radical changes aren't made. I propose a slight tweak of the headers to one colour, ideally a subtle light silver which isn't at all distracting and looks a bit sleeker.

Support ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:22, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Hm...I don't know. Changing anything about the main page isn't going to go over as "subtle". I've said before that the current design looks better in monobook, which also looks outdated. I guess what you're suggesting is a color scheme closer to the Chinese Main Page or maybe Edokter's. Anyway I'm not opposed to it. Eman235/talk 21:01, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

• Strong support. Pastel colors are hideous and outdated. I highly support Edokter's mainpage. Even though he still uses the pastel colors, it's a least way more subtle and only in the headers. Jacedc (talk) 23:05, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't think I agree that the main page looks amateurish.

And I'm pretty sure I don't agree that making it more monochrome would make it better. ApLundell (talk) 03:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Of course you don't. That's part of the problem with wikipedia is that people kid themselves into thinking everything is perfect and are relunctant to embrace change. You become accustomed to things as they are and can't see how much visually wikipedia could be improved with a decent designer. I'm of the opinion that the featured article space should cover the whole screen at the top like in Jacedc's example. Edokter's example is great, much better, but if he tweaked the headers to light silver that example would be more superior I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:11, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Ah! Insults! Then let me reply in kind. I wasn't trying to suggest that the design couldn't look better. Of course it could. There's no design that couldn't. But "The same, but with no colors" is not some brilliant design inspiration, imho, it's hackery inspired by the juvenile perspective that colors are for babies and to look "serious" you must remove them. ApLundell (talk) 20:14, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support: Agree that the current design of the main page looks outdated. I like Edokter's version mainly because it looks smooth and organized and does not require "balancing" of ITN entries in accordance with the length of the left column. But, unfortunately, the Wikipedia purists don't want a single thing to be changed. 117.192.181.169 (talk) 10:24, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support Edokter's version. >99% of visitors will not even notice a change (but a vocal small group will shout that we've destroyed Wikipedia). I'll support any change just to get people used to the possibility that change won't be the end of the world. Deli nk (talk) 10:33, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not broken, it doesn't need to be fixed. Without evidence that a single change in tones will make Wikipedia a "professional place" (which is not because most editors aren't professionals), there's no valid argument. What does Wikipedia an "amateur" place is long-term editors who like to express their "freedom of speech" by saying things like "people kid themselves into thinking everything is perfect and are relunctant to embrace change", solely because someone doesn't follow their ideas. © Tbhotch^™ (en-2.5). 11:00, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
• Support Even the smallest change of colour can make a big difference, and after 10 years I think it's about time for an update. We need to make a change. JAGUAR  11:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

This was the main page 10 years ago. © Tbhotch^™ (en-2.5). 11:13, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

It's not been changed in nine years.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:33, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I can't see the point. The reasons given ("Green, purple and pink don't look right for the main page of an encyclopedia.", "Pastel colors are hideous and outdated.") are purely subjective: there should be a concrete reason — e.g. legibility, technical, accessiblity — to make any change. (And the proposer's dismissal of opposers with a valid view hasn't helped the cause.) Bazza (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Not subjective, but based on real world marketing principles. User:Jacedc is a professional web designer and knows what he is talking about.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:32, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

And artists and fashion designers know what they are talking about, that doesn't make art or fashion design any less subjective. For a purely cosmetic change like this, it IS subjective. One person's "outdated" is another's "classic" is another's "hideous" is another's "ehh, but don't really care". One person's "modern" is another's "boring".--Khajidha (talk) 14:02, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

(Reset) Perhaps there could be a 'colourway of the month' (mostly at the softer/less intense/un-eyewarp or colourclashing hend of the range). Jackiespeel (talk) 15:18, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Okay, here's an objective diagnosis of the Wikipedia main page as it stands and what we need to do to fix it (coming from a professional web designer): Currently, the main page uses black text on pastel colors. As far as mood-inducement goes, this is fine except for the bold, black header text. The original designer of the main page tried to fix this by adding contrast (a darker version of the background color behind the bold headers), when in reality all that needs to happen is to remove the bold text and remove the darker background (though some contrast is still necessary in this case). Doing such things make the overall layout much more inoffensive already by making it easier to look at, thereby easier to read and explore. Looking at the DOM, I also see that the main page uses nested tables on top of using a table layout, when every self-respecting web designer/developer knows that this is a bad idea for so many countless reasons. Seriously, if nothing else, we should be past table layouts by now. Back to the design flaws, around each section is a slightly darker but subtle border, my guess is in an attempt to create separation through contrast. This design move is simply unnecessary, it doesn't add anything to the overall design and at the end of the day, for those complaining that "modernization" means adding a bunch of unnecessary code, is ironically unnecessary code. As I remove the borders in my devtools, I can also see that each section could do with more padding to make everything more computable upon first sight and readable upon further exploration of the page (i.e. it's more comfy).

Now, I've touched upon everything except the need for an achromatic design: On any website, but especially on Wikipedia, the focus should be on the content. A design should reflect the character of the content not the personality of the designer (which is, in this case, very obviously colorfully dull). Achromatic design emphasizes the text, taking away the emphasis on layout and instead making it subliminal and in the background, not at the forefront. So that's why we don't need/shouldn't have pastel, but why is an achromatic design any superior? Well, we do want our readers to be comfortable. It's a simple science that the less color that has to be processed the more freedom and comfortability the eye has in navigating a web page. This is why most modern color schemes are either flat or retro (desaturated is the technical term). In this case, since we're talking about background color, neither flat or retro colors will really work as it induces too much contrast, but you get my point. Achromatic is next in line as a color scheme option. The final result looks something like this. Jacedc (talk) 15:42, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I think there is something wrong with your linked example. I had to move in about twelve inches just to get my eyes to stop watering and it still seems out-of-focus. I am only typing this as my screen is black background with white letters. Now I am leaving the computer to rest my eyes. Rmhermen (talk) 23:58, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like more of a problem with your screen than the link. Looks fine on my end. Jacedc (talk) 03:08, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

As with most such things Wikipedia is 'a product of its times, the programming available at the point of its creation and programming choices made since' - so if it were started now a different set of options would be available (possibly better, just different, or worse). It is also the product of the percentage of people who are 'non-technical who do not wish to rearrange its innards.' Jackiespeel (talk) 16:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

(To editor Jacedc:) I would stand for some color on the MP, again as in Edokter's. It seems more consistent: infoboxes and navboxes are colorful. Eman235/talk 18:49, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

To editor Eman235: Yes, perhaps you're right. Some color, but it'd have to be the right color. Again, not pastel, either flat or retro (something warm). Jacedc (talk) 20:04, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

What if we used the WMF colors? Eman235/talk 20:50, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Generally - it is useful to know when one is in Wikipedia and when one is in WMF, so possibly impractical. Jackiespeel (talk) 21:12, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea of using those colors. I'd have to see an example in practice though. I'll do it myself if someone doesn't do it later and see how it looks. I think it will probably do well with white text. Jacedc (talk) 21:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps two demos: the current MP and Edokter's. Eman235/talk 00:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Demo of the current design using WMF colors (permalink). Eman235/talk 00:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

With pink reassigned to Today's featured picture, what color would be used for From today's featured list (on Mondays and Fridays)? —David Levy 01:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Jackiespeel noted that "it is useful to know when one is in Wikipedia and when one is in WMF". Indeed, the WMF has long sought to counter widespread confusion regarding the organization's structure and Wikipedia's role therein. People commonly fail to recognize a distinction between Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation (and mistakenly believe that all of the WMF projects are parts of "Wikipedia"), so it probably is best to avoid blurring the lines further. —David Levy 01:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I just made an edit that changes TFP and TFL to the same color scheme. I like how it looks, but as Jackiespeel said, if I didn't know that WMF and WP are different, I would probably be confused. I honestly like Edokter's design best. Eman235/talk 01:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I think the notion that people would get confused as to whether or not they're on Wikipedia or Wikimedia is rather silly. It's not like the Wikimedia main page uses the colors they use in their logo. Jacedc (talk) 03:06, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

The problem is more that people don't understand the distinction (or even realize that one exists) between Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, so splashing colors associated with the latter across the former's front page would contribute to the confusion. —David Levy 07:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't. For those that know the distinction it wouldn't confuse them, and for those that don't know wouldn't know either way. Besides, something as subtle as color usage in an otherwise unrelated context would not be in any form a contributing factor to any confusion. Pretty sure the URL and the logo are pretty clear distinctions enough, and we shouldn't let those of whom it is not weigh in to any decision on the design of the front page. Besides, it's not like the WMF uses these super unique colors. It's literally blue, red, and green, three very generic colors. It just so happens that those specific shades work nicely with the front page. Jacedc (talk) 07:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

and for those that don't know wouldn't know either way.

As noted above, the WMF has sought to dispel the misconception. My point isn't that such a change would cause a misunderstanding; it's that it would run counter to efforts to address it.

Besides, something as subtle as color usage in an otherwise unrelated context would not be in any form a contributing factor to any confusion.

I neither regard this as subtle nor share your optimism.

Pretty sure the URL and the logo are pretty clear distinctions enough,

I'm unsure of whether Jackiespeel was referring to potential confusion regarding which website was displayed, but I certainly wasn't.

Besides, it's not like the WMF uses these super unique colors. It's literally blue, red, and green, three very generic colors.

My impression is that point is to use the WMF logo's three-color scheme, thereby drawing a connection thereto. If not, such a constraint (which, in Eman235's example, has resulted in the reuse of red/pink) is arbitrary and unnecessary.

It just so happens that those specific shades work nicely with the front page.

I don't disagree, but I think that other shades work better. —David Levy 18:55, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

You can't seriously think that by using colors on main page headers that are used in the WMF logo that people are seriously going to be confused as to which site they're on, or make the distinction between the two sites any more ambiguous? That's ridiculous. People aren't retarded, and while I hate to use such a harsh word, for those of whom it would be confusing... I find the word appropriate. Jacedc (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

You can't seriously think that by using colors on main page headers that are used in the WMF logo that people are seriously going to be confused as to which site they're on,

In the message to which you replied, I explicitly stated that I assert no such thing.

or make the distinction between the two sites any more ambiguous?

Again, this isn't about sites (in my view, at least).

That's ridiculous. People aren't retarded, and while I hate to use such a harsh word, for those of whom it would be confusing... I find the word appropriate.

I find that statement extraordinarily offensive – and not because you used the word "retarded" (which has fallen out of favor, but was the preferred term when I learned it).

I'm baffled as to why you felt the need to write such a thing. I don't know what you mean by "people aren't retarded". To what "people" are you referring, and why on Earth are you doing so as an insult? Wikipedia isn't off-limits to persons with intellectual disabilities (not that this is even germane to the discussion). Are you under the impression that such individuals never use computers and/or seek information online? If so, I hope that your clients are aware of this. —David Levy 21:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps the use of the word was misplaced and I apologize if I offended you. It wasn't directed at any specific person but was used in a hypothetical context. However, you did assert such a thing with this statement: "My point isn't that such a change would cause a misunderstanding; it's that it would run counter to efforts to address it." It wouldn't run counter to those efforts unless it did cause confusion, right? Otherwise, it's irrelevant. Jacedc (talk) 22:01, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Apology accepted.

As I've stated repeatedly, my concern does not pertain to people becoming "confused as to which site they're on". —David Levy 22:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh and also, the example made with the WMF color scheme is great, but get rid of the borders. They're unnecessarily harsh on the colors. Jacedc (talk) 07:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm assuming you meant these? I agree it looks better. Eman235/talk 19:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Are these the same colors used by {{Clickable button}}? Eman235/talk 01:25, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree that modernization is called for, but I disagree that the change proposed would be an improvement (along with Dr. Blofeld's implication that those of this opinion are "[kidding] themselves"). I also disagree with the premise we should embrace "any change" because "we need to make a change". Per Bazza 7, we should be focused on actual advancements, not on change for the sake of change (or to prove that it "won't be the end of the world", thereby countering an imaginary position). —David Levy 00:05, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

A decent reason for opposition. But, see my comments above. Jacedc (talk) 03:06, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I read your comments. You've laid out some valid design principles, but I find your example application unappealing.

In my opinion, the new and old elements simply don't mesh. At this point, the main page is a nine-year-old car with 200,000 miles, so a paint job isn't the most effective approach. It might be time for a trade-in. —David Levy 07:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree completely, actually. The only reason I started with a simple color change is because I know that if I were to start with a drastic change people would blow up in opposition. One subtle, creeping change at a time. ;) Jacedc (talk) 07:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

You'll never get consensus for even one subtle creeping change. If you propose big changes people would blow up in opposition. If you propose small changes people will say that it is not enough. The only way that any change will made to the Main Page is if it is somehow dictated without community wide consensus in a very un-Wiki way. Maybe doing it in stages can work: 1) you could probably get a consensus that a Main Page redesign is needed, 2) maybe you could get consensus to create a working group that is given authority to make Main Page changes on it own, and 3) there is a slight chance that the whole thing won't collapse in wiki-wide rebellion when a change is made. Deli nk (talk) 11:41, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Howcheng has been hard at work on a consensus-backed change to the page's image presentation (encompassing a wider default size and the addition of captions). The key difference is that it's an improvement, proposed to address an actual problem that users have experienced. Other improvements (including those to elements that aren't "broken") are possible, but "Hey, guys. I think x looks better than y. Let's vote." generally isn't the most successful strategy. —David Levy 18:55, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

So you mean everything wouldn't blow up if the MP was suddenly changed to Edokter's design? Eman235/talk 19:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't addressing such a scenario, but I agree with that conclusion. No one has argued that anything catastrophic would occur. This includes those who expressed dislike of Edokter's design, a group to which I don't belong. (I find it promising and attempted to encourage further development.)

There is, however, evidence that non-trivial issues would arise. The current design is less modern, but it functions as intended. If there's one surefire way to sabotage a good redesign, it's to rush through its implementation without thorough testing and refinement – thereby triggering an avalanche of complaints about issues that could have been resolved in advance. —David Levy 21:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I consider the main page's design "broken" -- that is, issues that need to be objectively "fixed", as I detailed above. Jacedc (talk) 19:36, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

The current pastel colors decrease legibility and comfortability, steering many away from using the main page altogether. The WMF color scheme, which include colors that are more neutral and at the same time warmer, increase contrast and thereby legibility, and also increase comfortability. But color isn't the only thing that needs to change on the main page. No, we don't need to "modernize" the main page, I'm going to avoid using that word because it just makes our Wikipedia purists flip their jimmies, and I'm going to instead opt for a more accurate and neutral word: "simplification". The layout is currently unnecessarily Y2K-esque web 2.0. and it needs to be updated. For legibility concerns, user experience concerns, compatibility concerns, accessibility concerns, and functionality concerns. Jacedc (talk) 19:43, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the crux of what you've written above (though I regard the WMF color scheme's hypothetical use as an overcorrection). —David Levy 21:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

• Comment. The present design is very dated, as many people have mentioned on numerous occasions. Edokter's panel style here is an improvement. In the absence of better suggestions at the present time, I vote to implement Edokter's panel style on the present page layout, and at the same time make all the pictures a bit bigger (they are miserably small at the moment). This would be some progress at least, pending bigger and better things in the future. 86.152.162.152 (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

  As noted above, a larger default image width is forthcoming. Edokter's design is an excellent start, but further development is needed. The technical improvements are undeniable, but some of the presentational elements have drawn significant criticism.
  More importantly, I believe that some compatibility/accessibility issues have not yet been resolved. The importance of thorough testing/troubleshooting cannot be overstated. In 2006, despite months of work on a redesign, we accidentally broke the headings' functionality in screen reader software (without realizing this until a blind person brought the problem to our attention). We must strive to avoid repeating that sort of oversight. —David Levy 21:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

  Edokter, got any testers? Eman235/talk 01:18, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

  Edokter can correct me if I'm mistaken (and I hope that I am), but I think that he may have become discouraged (and placed his redesign work on the back burner) when his efforts received a lukewarm response. As I recall, he initially was a bit overeager to pull the trigger (before sufficient testing/refinement had occurred), but the main problem was the community's apathy. Unfortunately, the benefits of modern coding are lost on most (including me, but I know to take Edokter's word for it). —David Levy 05:07, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I can imagine why someone would be disheartened to take on such a project. A lot of people on here like to throw around oppose votes just for the sake of it. Jacedc (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

By the same token, some participants in the above discussion support change just for the sake of it.

Over the past decade, I've witnessed countless attempts to modify the main page (to varying extents), few of which succeeded. The 2006 redesign effort almost collapsed, but it recovered when editors began discussing concrete goals and collaborating to achieve them.

For some reason, we've never managed to duplicate that dynamic. Instead, everyone keeps pursuing methods that have failed time and again. In this instance, it's the aforementioned "Hey, guys. I think x looks better than y. Let's vote." approach, which explicitly invites a "support"/"oppose" response. (In this instance, the proponent began the discussion by casting a "support" vote himself.) Those of us who disagree that the proposed change is an improvement might appear "to throw around oppose votes just for the sake of it", but what alternative do we have? We can provide other forms of input (as seen above), but step 1 is to answer the question that's been asked. And when our good-faith feedback prompts the proponent's assertion that we're "[kidding] ourselves", the likelihood of constructive discourse occurring is reduced further. —David Levy 07:57, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

David Levy, I continue to tweak the design and structure, and sometimes make related changes to individual sections. For instance, a while back I harmonized the image formatting for each main page section (which Howcheng is now building upon) and have given the images IDs. My version still serves as my homepage for nearly two years now, so I can detect any catastrofic issues; it has enabled me to fix any formatting issues that are normally hidden by the use of tables on the main page. One example is streamlining ITN to use templates instead on manual formatting, so these errors are no longer possible. But I am just one man, and I could use more testers, if only to spot any accidental errors. I think accessability is covered, in fact it should be greatly improved over the curret main page because there are no tables and I took great care of document flow and use of standard elements such as headers. POTD remains a headache though; I want to transform that away from using tables as well.

It is true I find the apathy, and the fact a consensus seems impossible to be somewhat discouraging, but the many times my design is mentioned here is uplifting. It means I made some impact, and I do want to build on the design. I already made it more neutral by moving the coloring to the headers instead of the panels. What I lack is better original proposals (as in not using existing colors used elsewhere). I may have "threatened" to just put it up, but I'd rather make this a group effort, and I want to accomodate anyone willing to help. What about a opt-in gadget that would redirect the main page to my version, and advertise this option, perhaps even on the main page itself? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:08, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd be glad to see such a script/gadget. What do you think of the WMF color scheme? Eman235/talk 19:50, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Not a fan. While Wikipedia operates under the flag of the Wikimedia Foundation, they are different entities, and that should be reflected in the content and its design. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:48, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support redesigning the main page. "Fun fact": our current design was adopted in March 2006. Everyone hates user interface changes, but it's 2015. If we don't do anything, our design is not going to break, but it's going to continue to rot until our main page is declared a historic place. Esquivalience ^t 05:07, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

  I think that most of us support the idea of updating/improving the page's design. The community just needs to determine how to go about it (easier said than done). —David Levy 11:55, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• Support: Change will provide a comparative criteria as well. Nannadeem (talk) 07:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

  Can you please elaborate/clarify? —David Levy 11:55, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

  Current and redesigned page can provide a comparison for: (i) comments from editors/users and users who do not have WP account (with a switch-over provision) (ii) improvement relating to tech aspects. Besides encouragement towards updating current page design can be preserved as WP classic page. Nannadeem (talk) 15:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

  Just to be clear, which change(s) are you supporting? —David Levy 16:17, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

  Supporting redesigned 2015 main page by User:Edokter.Nannadeem (talk) 20:55, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose the redesigned main page (for now): It turns an approximately 2-screen-tall main page into a three screen tall one, pushing featured pictures down unacceptably far. This is because it A. Makes TFA a full-width section. B. Uses this to add a new section. and C. Gives excessive prominence (second section) to In the news, the slowest-updating part of the main page - no other section takes more than a day to be fully replaced with new content. As an aside, it also mixes purple, blue, green, and yellow. Colours can be useful for delineating separate sections, but we should really get it down to something that's a little more complementary, say, green, blue and yellow. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:35, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose as not broken, with no evidence presented that the current colours are problematic. There's also no example of what colours this would actually be changed to - just lots of links to Edoktor's completely different layout, which is a separate issue to the colours mentioned in the proposal. Many of the support !votes above don't actually seem to relate to the proposal. Modest Genius ^talk 12:10, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose because there is absolutely no reason to do that. As Modest Genius pointed out above, it is not problematic and as Lord Falkland pointed out four centuries ago, “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change”.--The Traditionalist (talk) 13:15, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - per the above three opposes. Jusdafax 04:12, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

This reminds me of those hubristic restaurant owners on Kitchen Nightmares that insist there's nothing wrong with their restaurant until it finally changes. My intention is not to insult you guys, but if you honestly can't see that the main page is horribly outdated and lacking in any visual appeal whatsoever then I'll have no further input here. Thing is, not only does the current main page lack in visual appeal, it has a visual anti-appeal, so to speak. Surely we must be able to meet in some sort of neutral middle ground which has neither visual appeal nor anti-appeal, just a neutral, ageless design. That's what I'm going for. User:Jacedc (talk) 03:56, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that you are somewhat wrong. As much as you find the Main Page “visually anti-apealing”, I find it visually appealing and also ageless. This is a very subjective question. So, if each one of us has a different proposal, why not leave it alone? It has been so for years. Many people like it, many people do not. It is a matter of taste.--The Traditionalist (talk) 09:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

As a web designer I can say that pastel colors contrasted with bold, black text surrounded by unnecessarily harsh borders has a strong visual anti-appeal. Not to mention it violates various user experience design principles. Additionally, the majority of !voters on here would agree with me. That's why I propose a design that doesn't have a design. User:Jacedc (talk) 15:28, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I think you'll actually find that the voters don't agree with you: The numbers are evenly split, though this is complicated by the fact that it's not clear what anyone's voting on, really. This proposal has changed several times during the voting, and doesn't even begin to match the supposed title. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. On this occasion, I entirely agree with Adam Cuerden just above. I see nothing remotely approaching consensus for this proposal, and those claiming there's support for it are engaging in "everyone who disagrees with me is clearly wrong so their opinions can be discounted" exercises to try to distort the result their way. One of the most important aspects of participating on Wikipedia is the ability to say "I still think I'm right, but I can see opinion is against me so I won't push it". – iridescent 16:27, 26 July 2015 (UTC) (adding) I do support the principle of redesigning the main page, but certainly not on the grounds that two editors, one of whom has a grand total of 528 mainspace edits, don't like the particular colour scheme in use.) – iridescent 16:30, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I think, if we're going to redesign, the first step is to A. Do some discussion, possibly on the back of a concrete proposal, possibly not at first; B. refine the results of the discussion into a concrete, ready-to-use proposal; and then, and only then C. have a vote on implementation. This discussion was a bizarre mix between A. a proposal to lose pastels (with no mockup) and B. voting on a specific mockup which uses pastels. Is it any wonder it's failed to even provide much help moving forwards? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:28, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. I see nothing wrong with the present design. In fact, I find it rather restful. It distinguishes the sections without drawing attention to itself. --Thnidu (talk) 00:24, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• Cautious oppose. I dislike Edokter's design (and for that matter the Chinese page). If we have to modernise I think the French front page might be the way to go, but turning everything to a vague colourlessness for the sake of seeming to be modern is both faddish and dreadfully dull. The French model, though, is quite common across other Wikipedias and doesn't look out-of-date as the English version to me. Dionysodorus (talk) 00:54, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - I would totally agree with Thnidu. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 00:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Kathleen Delaney, Caren Manuel really different?

Hi, I see that Kathleen Delaney redecting back to articel self and not to articel Caren Manuel. I tough that Kathleen is the alias from Caren Manuel. And how I can uploud a fair use image? I have found it a picture from Kathleen Delaney.--Maxie1hoi (talk) 14:23, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

You also asked at the article talk pages; that was the place to ask, although it sure looks like two different people. See Help:Uploading images. And a better place for all these questions is Wikipedia:Help desk. Art LaPella (talk) 04:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Answered on article talk pages: Talk:Kathleen Delaney and Talk:Caren Lyn Tackett#Stella. --Thnidu (talk) 04:32, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Captions and (pictured)

Is it really the best idea to have both the captions and (pictured)? I'm not fond of the captions and prefer the previous system, but it's not a big deal. However, having both of them is redundant and looks rather silly, as if we think our readers are unable to find one or the other. Let's pick one format and stick with it. Nyttend (talk) 20:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I might suggest:

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3 (the one with a picture)
• etc.

In conjunction with a caption. Eman235/talk 22:36, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I think the "caption and (pictured) system" makes it easier for the reader to find out what the image is actually about and where its corresponding story is. With only caption, it takes a while to search the story to which the image belongs, and having only (pictured) led to confusions such as what exactly the subject of the image is. I like the current idea of using both and don't think it looks redundant. 117.192.182.52 (talk) 14:42, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Given the narrow confines of the ITN box, (pictured) seems residual / redundant to me at this pt. Sca (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

I like both together, pretty much per 117... Redundant isn't necessarily a bad thing if it aids the reader. Here I think it does. It helps me at any rate. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:11, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Captions (2)

I am sorry if I “ruin” your celebrations but I would like to ask this: are any other users who find these captions ugly? I cannot be the only one who thinks that they make Vector look like Monobook but I do. They look amateurish and completely out-of-place. Apart from that, they are also not really needed. This is plainly change for the sake of change. Was there any consensus for it?--The Traditionalist (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

This has been discussed multiple times (see the recent archives) as we looked for a way to link the images to their respective items, so the need was established and several solutions evaluated. The latest discussion is right on top. I don't know how plain text below the image can be regarded as 'ugly'; do you have custom styling that may interfere? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I did read the archives and I have not found any sufficient arguments about the implementation of the captions, while 95% of the discussions is concerned with technical issues.

The most obvious solution to what seems to have been the problem, would be to change the ITN picture every time a new event is added and to double-check that the DYK picture is always the one corresponding to the top question. That would have been much easier and would have saved much of the technical experts′ time.

By “ugly” I mean that I find these letters under the pictures anti-aesthetic. I cannot really say why, but to me they look completely out-of-place, as opposed to the (pictured) note.--The Traditionalist (talk) 19:09, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

The DYK pic is always for the top hook. Never been different I believe in last 6-7 years Victuallers (talk) 20:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Someone at one point (archived discussions) referred to the DYK. I am glad that the above has always been the case.--The Traditionalist (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

The most obvious solution to what seems to have been the problem, would be to change the ITN picture every time a new event is added...

The issue with this is that ITN doesn't always have an image to go along with it. I'm not a huge fan of the captions either, but one cannot argue there wasn't consensus for it. — foxj 20:30, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I suppose that you we can always find one... Still, if it the image corresponds to the second-from-top entry (which contains an attractive (pictured)) there is no problem.--The Traditionalist (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Or remove it altogether if there isn't one to correlate to the first story. Sometimes TFA runs without an image because of fair use or some such issue. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:57, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. If TFA without a picture is acceptable, ITN should be too.--The Traditionalist (talk) 12:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

The captions are hideous and ruin the main page, but there you go, we had so many complaints from a handful of users that it was so confusing to our audience that the top item of both ITN and OTD didn't necessarily correlate with the image that some horrendous compromise had to be found. This is it, and it's appalling. But that's where we are, and of course it's all subjective. Some people, particularly those confused by the ITN/OTD out-of-order-image-terror are now satisfied. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: I find it very hard to be persuaded by these people. I read at one point (at the archived discussions) that “you have to read the whole list to find out which entry the image is about”. This is plainly not true. An italic inscription with the word “pictured” catches the eye almost immediately, even when you do not actually want to find who is pictured.

Now, imagine that there never was a (pictured) note and there never were captions, just plain images. This would not have been very helpful (of course), but, even in this imaginary situation, it would not take more than two minutes for someone to figure out which entry the image corresponds to.

Certainly, very confusing.....--The Traditionalist (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, most of the "confusion" appears to have been fabricated by a handful of our millions of readers. But hey, if you don't have anything to worry about, why not create a problem to solve? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:12, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• I am in agreement with TRM. I don't think it was as confusing as some made it out to be; and even if it was, it does no harm for people to read other blurbs and maybe learn something else. I think such a change should have had a much broader discussion(such as a Wikipedia-wide announcement for comment). 331dot (talk) 21:37, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
• In fact, what looked "amateurish" was uncaptioned pictures randomly juxtaposed with completely unrelated text. 109.153.226.6 (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

....which would be quickly cleared up upon seeing the italicized "pictured" next to the appropriate blurb. The ITN box is not so big that it would be lost. 331dot (talk) 22:44, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Except that it often was lost amidst the sea of text. --Khajidha (talk) 01:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

No, because it caught the eye almost immediately. You cannot call about 15 lines a “sea of text”.--The Traditionalist (talk) 09:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Didn't catch my eye most of the time.--Khajidha (talk) 12:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

But that's really odd isn't it? You even knew that each image was accompanied by a (pictured). Right now, the captions are making me think, "so what?" and I then need to go seeking the entry that relates to the caption. Sounds like the grass is greener. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:54, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I just noticed that OTD might be more difficult to browse now that we have the captions, as one certainly does know which event the picture is about, but one needs to search the “sea of text” to find the date.--The Traditionalist (talk) 21:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Prior to captions, informal testing with casual readers (meaning, just asking them if they could tell what the image was of) done by Art LaPella showed that most of the time they could not do so, despite the word "(pictured)" being there. You being a "power user" knew it was there and knew what to look for. Admittedly, we haven't checked again since the captions went in. However, I will say that discussion started weeks ago so there was plenty of time for objections to be made, and as I noted you were the first to object in that whole time based on aesthetic grounds. But note that it wasn't just a "handful" of complaints that we dealt with over the years. This was a recurring question raised by a good number of readers. —howcheng {chat} 09:06, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

How does "Summary map" add anything to the main page on today's TFA image? It's entirely meaningless without reading the blurb or the article. Is this what the captions are designed to do, make things more confusing? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:49, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

The captions are optional; TFA and TFL normally don't need it, unless the image requires some measure of clarification. I guess the same for for the other sections, but I do think a caption linking to its specific item does indeed clarify the relation to such. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Yep, so the captions are now (to our readers) randomly applied. How is this helpful, especially when they say things like "Summary map"? Did anyone think this through at all? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:54, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I think the words "Summary map" can only apply to the only nearby article, which is about a hurricane season. Without the caption, the image is a black rectangle if you don't look too closely.

But that's a detail; the main issue isn't whether we should always have a caption, but whether we should usually have a caption. As you know, that issue has been discussed for weeks, and the problem at ITN has been discussed for years. Art LaPella (talk) 22:31, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

• Please note that the original caption was "Summary map, 2013 Atlantic hurricane season". It was trimmed to "Summary map" by David Levy. Though I can see why he trimmed it, I don't think it should have gone that far. "Summary map of 2013 season" or whatever may have still provided enough context. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 06:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• The entire blurb is about the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. It begins with the words "The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season". How does repeating that phrase (or a portion thereof) provide additional context? To what subject, apart from that of the accompanying paragraph, could the image reasonably relate?
  I removed only the redundant text (which, incidentally, was formatted as a third link to the featured article), but I agree with the Rambling Man that no caption was necessary in this instance. I'm curious as to why you added one (no disrespect intended). —David Levy 09:08, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• As Art says above, "Without the caption, the image is a black rectangle if you don't look too closely." Someone not familiar with the subject, or with hurricanes, might not recognize what the squiggly lines are meant to be. The inclusion of the title in the caption (or an abbreviation, if it had come to that) was to preclude the possibility that someone might misunderstand the summary map as depicting a single hurricane. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:05, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• I don't know why someone would arrive at such a conclusion. In the absence of a statement to the contrary, the natural assumption is that the image relates to the blurb's overall subject. Regardless, there was no need to replace the previous format, in which the blurb began with the same information (without redundancy). This is one of the sections for which an image caption is considered optional (because it almost never contains multiple items at a given time). All else being equal, consistency is nice, but this was not an instance in which all else was equal.
  Just to be clear, I don't regard any of the above as a big deal. (I note this because my comments otherwise might seem more weighty than intended.) —David Levy 01:37, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Personal thoughts: the captions would be better in conjunction with (pictured). Better still, the item of OTD or ITN that the picture is referring to would be marked with -- not in parentheses but a the beginning of the hook (or whatever it's called). Eman235/talk 22:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't particularly like them, though not enough to ask to change back. Also including (pictured) would be a benefit - I miss those and found them helpful. Modest Genius ^talk 07:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with putting "(pictured)" back in conjunction with the caption. —howcheng {chat} 09:06, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I am also of the opinion that these captions look messy and out of keeping with the style of the rest of the page. I especially agree with User:Howcheng that the word (pictured) was helpful, and ought to be included regardless; and I think that that was an largely sufficient way of linking the picture with the article it is connected to. Dionysodorus (talk) 13:59, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't like "(pictured)"; it does not stand out and I still keep scanning the entire text for it. That is why I proposed the icon to begin with. That said, I'm not 100% happy with the technical implementation of the captions, and I wouldn't mind disabling them until that is sorted out. Instead of one catch-all template, I believe the code for the caption should be implemented in each project's respective image template. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 15:54, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion the captions are painfully ugly to look at, and as far as I can see serve no purpose. Where has this huge-scale change been discussed? I've never seen this being talked about before looking at the back-patting and celebrations above. Manxruler (talk) 00:39, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

If you too think it might be a good idea to disable the caption for the moment until the implementation can be improved, Edokter, may I suggest that you might do so, until a better technical implementation has been found? I don't really see any opinions here that would seem to oppose such an idea. My opinion is that a new consensus (perhaps a wider one) should be sought to support the particular technical implementation of the captions before reintroduction; regardless of that, though, I think the first step of disabling them while a better implementation is found, as you suggested, would be a good one, and probably based more on current consensus than leaving the captions here as they are.

Is there a consensus anywhere, except as a side-consequence of introducing captions, for removing (pictured}? In principle, I think, that's a somewhat separate issue from whether the captions are a good idea, although obviously the captions have a bearing on whether (pictured} should be there. A separate discussion and consensus should be found before removing (pictured), and if there isn't a consensus yet I think it should be reinstated provisionally. Dionysodorus (talk) 00:54, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Those who can't find the previous discussion should read starting perhaps here, to the end of the archive file if you have the patience. It was also discussed here. That archive file also has several related discussions, where it was more or less taken for granted that something was finally going to get fixed instead of the usual talking it to death. Art LaPella (talk) 02:15, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Also, there have been years of persistent complaints that the "In The News" image doesn't match the first news story, despite the word "pictured" which is seldom noticed by outsiders. Art LaPella (talk) 03:56, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

There's no reason why we can't use both. Look, different people learn/think/process information in different ways. I think it's fairly rude to dismiss the experiences of those who find captionless images confusing. I understand that certain individuals here don't see the need for them, but their experiences are not universal. Should not our goal here be to make the Main Page more usable for everyone? No, this isn't the perfect solution, but perfect is the enemy of good. Over the years, we've had a large number of complaints from people about this issue, and I was getting tired of having the same conversation over and over so yes, I made an executive decision. Now we're finding that others prefer the word (pictured), so instead of arguing about it, let's just put it back. If we have any UX experts who want to tackle this perennial problem, then by all means let them get to it, but that shouldn't stop us from doing something that increases usability. Focus on the end goal, please. —howcheng {chat} 07:56, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I write the following with the understanding that a good faith decision was made. There is only so much that can be done to make a single section of a page seen by hundreds of thousands of people daily "usable for everyone". Some people might find highlighting the relevant blurb helpful. Some might find flashing lights helpful, or a buzzer, or whatever. We can't accommodate every possible thing that might help people. Personally if we have a "pictured" in the box a caption is unnecessary and redundant. We aren't talking about an entire page, just a small section with 14-16 bulleted lines(ITN at least). How hard is it really to see "pictured" and move one's eyes to the image(or vice versa)? Even if some find it confusing(which is the case with virtually any aspect of society in general) they aren't harmed by momentarily looking at a couple other lines to find the "pictured"; they might actually learn something else. Leaving all that aside, I will restate that this should have had a much broader opportunity for comment, such as a RfC with a notice on Watchlists. 331dot (talk) 09:53, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Of course we can't put in every single thing that might possibly help. But we can follow the 80–20 rule and cover the most common cases. And here you are demonstrating the exact thing I was saying: The #1 complaint about pictures in ITN and OTD is people who have trouble associating them with the right blurb, and you're just blithely dismissing those concerns. This was such a small change that has the potential to drastically increase usability. The problem with opening a large RFC is the same thing that plagues us every single time this complaint comes up: So many conflicting opinions are put in and nothing ever gets done. —howcheng {chat} 03:32, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above shows that:

1. Captions are not of use on TFA or TFL, unless the case is very special (the relation between the image and the subect is not immediately obvious).
2. DYK always uses an image related to the first entry, so if the person who updates it pays attention to this, a caption is not needed.
3. If the ITN picture changes each time a new entry is added, then no caption is needed (if there is no suitable picture, do not add one).
4. Many users agree that OTD needs captions.

--The Traditionalist (talk) 10:31, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! I love summations. I think DYK should have a caption, if like TFA/TFL the connection is not immediately obvious. Eman235/talk 20:28, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

We've tried #3 before. It never seems to last for very long. I think the only time we go pictureless now is if none of the entries have a suitable image. I am of the opinion that DYK should have a caption regardless. —howcheng {chat} 03:32, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

“We've tried #3 before. It never seems to last for very long.” Could you elaborate on this?--The Traditionalist (talk) 09:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I believe the problem is that we often don't have a picture for the highest item on ITN, and if we regularly don't have a picture we get complaints as people dislike the lack of picture and/or find the picture helps to make the section more readable. Nil Einne (talk) 00:16, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm highly disappointed at the messy, cluttered, unprofessional implementation of the ITN captions system. I'm not sure where the consensus for this change came from, but it's obvious there needs to be some refinements if we're going to go through with this. There is a huge amount of unused real estate underneath the caption. The font for the caption looks inconsistent and tacked on compared to the rest of the module. The top of the image is also not aligned with the topmost ITN blurb. And what happened to "pictured"?--WaltCip (talk) 12:51, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

URGENT!

We need article for Fire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous Orbit. See [8]

Please provide some assitants.

This page is to discuss the layout and content of the Main Page, not a general request board. If you would like to see an article created, please visit Requested articles to request one in the proper forum. 331dot (talk) 01:15, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Stella's voice

Hi, everyone know who voice it Stella in the 4Kids dub? Lisa Adams doing it Stella for 3 episodes before the old Stella come back!--Maxie1hoi (talk) 12:02, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Maxie1hoi: Seems this would be better at the entertainment reference desk. Eman235/talk 12:49, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Minor Addition

Hello Everyone, I wanted to ask that whether "Dr." can be added in front of the name of the Missile Man of India (Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam) as a token of respect to that great visionary and human in "In The News Section".This change will be appreciated.Thanks.--Param Mudgal ^talk? 07:12, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

We avoid prefixes like "Dr." even in articles of famous doctors like Albert Sabin. Please see the WP:HONORIFIC guideline. Art LaPella (talk) 23:35, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:CREDENTIAL is actually the relevant section of the guideline. Modest Genius ^talk 14:28, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for clarifying my doubts.It's been a Pleasure.Thanks @Art LaPella: and @Modest Genius:.--Param Mudgal ^talk? 18:03, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Solecistic use of "impacted"

Since Wikipedia is not a newspaper, it is not necessary to use journalese when writing for it. Therefore, please replace "impacted" in the following sentence with an appropriate verb, such as affected or reached: "Eighty-one known tropical cyclones and their remnants have impacted [sic] the inland U.S. state of New Mexico." Autodidact1 (talk) 00:17, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Wanna put this in WP:ERRORS? Eman235/talk 00:43, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Edit request on 7 August 2015

A protected redirect, Wikipedia:Main Page, needs redirect category (rcat) templates added. Please modify it as follows:

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Template Redr is an alias for the {{This is a redirect}} template, which is used to sort redirects into one or more categories. No protection rcat is needed, and if {{pp-protected}} and/or {{pp-move}} suffice, the This is a redirect template will detect the protection level(s) and categorize the redirect automatically. (Also, the categories will be automatically removed when and if protection is lifted.) Thank you in advance! – Paine  00:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

 Done Jenks24 (talk) 00:07, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

You were too quick for me, Jenks24 – you made the edit to the subject page before I could add the talk page (my bad). So could you please also edit the talk page as I've shown above? Thank you so much! – Paine  00:14, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Not a problem. Also done. Jenks24 (talk) 00:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you very much! – Paine  00:26, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Similar request on 7 August 2015

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Both Done --Redrose64 (talk) 08:09, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you thank you! – Paine  10:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Lots of William Etty these days

Is there a big William Etty fan pushing his work on the featured article / did you know sections? I never seem to see the end of the man and his work these days?— Preceding unsigned comment added by BollyDave (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia only exists because people, no different than you, make it better. If you are interested in seeing other subjects on the main page, there is no person who is more qualified than you to make that happen. You just need to dedicate yourself to working on subjects you care about, and they will appear on the main page too. --Jayron32 15:13, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Just to set this complaint in context, the total number of Today's Featured Articles in the entire history of Wikipedia which even mention William Etty is one, and that one (Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball on 1 August this year) was scheduled specifically to coincide with the gallery in which it's housed reopening to the public after a long closure for rebuilding. This list (minus the articles highlighted in red) is what the TFA schedulers have to work with; as Jayron says, if you feel something is underrepresented on that list then write it, since the schedulers can only work with what they're given. (Including today's, Etty has in some form appeared in the "Did you know" section on 11 occasions, with one more in the queue. To put that in perspective, that's considerably less than the number of "Coffee production in…" articles—Coffee production in Puerto Rico, Coffee production in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Coffee production in Panama etc—this year.) – iridescent 16:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Search bar seems big

Hi the search on the top where the tabs are seems to be bigger then what it is set as default in vector. 86.141.119.96 (talk) 23:48, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

It was widened when there is space 14 July [9] after MediaWiki talk:Vector.css#Improve sizing for search field. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 138#My search box is wider today. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:02, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 31, 2015

If anyone wants to tackle this one, I struggled with turning this into a suitable TFA. I think I want to just walk away from it. Whatever you guys want to do will be fine. - Dank (push to talk) 13:56, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? The subject is not exactly edifying, but I see no problem with it. Isa (talk) 20:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

It sounds a bit like a press release. - Dank (push to talk) 21:31, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The article sounds like a press release. There's not much you can do about it. Isa (talk) 22:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

And how the hell did this pass FAC? Isa (talk) 07:48, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the subject is somewhat flat, but as long as it's qualified through the FA process, that's life. I have to say, though, that the article looks somewhat one-sided. Some close repetitions in the blurb could be improved, as well as the clumsy (from the article) mission statement:

JC's Girls is an American evangelical organization of Christian women who preach to female workers in the sex industry. The group supports women wishing to leave the industry, but does not try to persuade them to do so, a stance it has been criticized for alongside the appearance of some of its evangelizing members. Its aim is to gain more acceptance of sex workers in the Christian community, rather than seek to convert them. Now based at The Rock Church in San Diego, the organization was founded in 2005 at Sandals Church in Riverside, California by Heather Veitch (pictured), a stripper for four years before becoming a Christian and leaving the sex industry in 1999. Terry Barone, spokesman of the California Southern Baptist Convention, said that JC's Girls members "are doing what Jesus did ... He ministered to prostitutes and tax collectors." Philip Sherwell of the Calgary Herald called the evangelism of JC's Girls "America's most unusual Christian outreach operation".

Bazza (talk) 09:31, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks kindly. I've copied it to the TFA. Feel free to edit this one, guys. - Dank (push to talk) 11:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Edit warring on TFA for 15 August

At Departures (film): Lugnuts is pulling this with me again—every time he interacts with me, he makes a point of pushing for an edit war. Could someone please deal with his POINTy and incorrect prescriptivism?[10] I'm already at 2RR, and he's obviously trying to push me over the edge. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 13:40, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: This is the talk page to discuss the content and layout of the Main Page, not a general complaint board. Disputes with another user that you cannot resolve should be posted to the Incidents board. 331dot (talk) 13:43, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

This is about Today's Featured Article—ANI is unlikely to deal with it while the article is on the Main Page, which is likely why Lugnuts has targeted it. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 13:46, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Even if so, this is not the venue to deal with the issue. Try WP:ANEW or WP:ANI. This venue is not appropriate to deal with behavioral problems. And if your feeling is "This problem must be dealt with now!" then perhaps you need to step away for a little while. If the consensus at ANI or ANEW is to deal with it promptly, it will be dealt with promptly. But this talk page is no more likely to accede to your demands to act than those are, and is still the wrong place to discuss behavioral issues. --Jayron32 13:50, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32 said what I was going to say(though in a much better way) 331dot (talk) 13:51, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Note that I did raise the issue on Curly's talkpage, and was met with this. Which I've now taken to the aforementioned ANI. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:02, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Note that he did "raise the issue" on my talkpage after several reverts and no attempt to deal with it on the article's talk page. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 14:04, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Main page redesign

Hi maybe some ideas for main page to get it finally implanted can be advertising because a user might not know that it is happening without anyone saying. Maybe open voting like Wikimedia do to vote for there staff. or something similar. It also needs a mobile friendly site since it is very very basic on mobile currently. 151.229.250.233 (talk) 18:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Ive opened a task here https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108487 for this. 151.229.250.233 (talk) 18:35, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Main Page (2015 redesign) (talk). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:58, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

That task request on Phabricator has now been closed as invalid. As Edokter stated, please forward suggestions to the above links. Zzyzx11 (talk) 20:54, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals; especially Wikipedia:2015 main page redesign proposal. -- Taku (talk) 21:13, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I am going to delete the 2014 and 2015 pages, as they failed to attract any notability at completely failed to take off, but unnecessarily clutter up the Wikipedia namespace. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:16, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not happy with the process either. But that doesn't mean we can simply bypass it. I have started Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2015 August 8#Wikipedia:2015 main page redesign proposal. -- Taku (talk) 23:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Why are you wasting everybody's time with unnecessary process on a page that contained absolutely nothing? Sorry to be so blunt, but I am getting thouroughly sick at yet another attempt to suck editors in pointless procedures instead of actually editing Wikipedia. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:28, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The 2015 page served as a consistent path into two proposals. The important one was Guy Macon's, which garnered considerable discussion and was notable for being more than yet another slight tweak of the existing design. There is no reason whatsoever why that shouldn't be available from Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals just like all the others. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 16:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

That proposal has also been around since 2014, and was discussed there as well. This just pointlessly splits discussions, which is why it should not have been created in the first place. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:36, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a rule mandating WP:G6 deletion of a proposal that was floated in a prior year. And most importantly, the discussion that resulted was more substantial than the 2014 iteration and shouldn't be orphaned. Quite different from "contained absolutely nothing". Just undelete it, please. Or merge the discussion with the 2014 proposal if the proposal was indeed exactly the same. Or anything else besides consigning it to the memory hole. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 19:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Then have it merged it with the 2014 discussion. The 2015 page itself contains nothing and just clutters up the place. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the merger makes sense; for one thing, it's 2015 now. For another, where does an editor put his or her design proposal? Here? It makes sense to have some centralized place for design discussions. -- Taku (talk) 23:30, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

What about the main page of NL wiki (nl.wikipedia.org)? It looks a bit like Wikipedia:Main Page (2015 redesign) but I think it is even more neat. Kind regards Coldbolt (talk) 09:22, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The design looks clean, but it is built using tables, which presents a rigid layout that is not mobile friendly at all. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:28, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I personally like the main page of Chinese Wikipedia, which looks cleaner and feels less old (meaning new?). I don't think "mobile friendly" is particularly important. On, say, smart phones, the readers will go to the mobile version of Wikipedia. We should only be thinking of the desktop readers. -- Taku (talk) 22:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi yes but the main page is also shown on the mobile domain. 151.229.250.233 (talk) 14:44, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

That is definitely not the right attitude. Mobiles are not the only devices we have to think about; tablets, small desktops and anything else with a limited resolution that use the desktop view need to be taken into account. Ideally, a fully reactive webpage should fitt on any screen. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 17:30, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I tried a test of the current main page and the 2015 proposal with the browser squished to a few inches. Edokter's rendered much better, except the featured picture. Eman235/talk 20:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

"fit on any screen". No, I disagree. "One-fit-all" need not be our goal. On the desktop screen, the two columns style is much more natural and standard. It is better that our main page looks nice on 90% screens than looks acceptable on 100% screens. For the remaining 10% screen, we should provide an alternative main page. -- Taku (talk) 23:13, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe we should do the desktop main page once approved and is added the main page we should then optimise it for different display that would make it quicker to create a new main page. 151.229.250.233 (talk) 12:50, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

• Proposal. As a first step, I propose that the styling of Edokter's design here is implemented, but initially using the existing panel layout. I propose, barring any technical issues that I'm not aware of, that this is done straight away, or at least soon. I think that the styling is a small but noticeable improvement over what we have now, but hopefully not radically different enough for anyone to start getting in a state over it, demanding another five years of consultations, resignations of directors, etc. If nothing else, doing this may be a way of breaking the seeming mental or procedural block that has prevented any change to the Main Page look and feel over many years. 31.51.134.82 (talk) 21:04, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

The suggested redesign is quite significantly different, likely too much so to enact immediately. — foxj 23:56, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I think "quite significantly different" is an exaggeration. Relatively small cosmetic change is more how I would put it. Remember, I am proposing that the existing panel arrangement and panel contents are unchanged. Given that, which aspects do you think are "quite significantly different"? 31.51.134.82 (talk) 00:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The current panal layout does not accomodate a dynamic layout too well. OTD would jump too far down in that scenario. The priority is the layout anyway, not the styling. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. The most urgent priority is to fix the dated styling. Where the other point is concerned, can your styling not be just applied to the present layout without affecting such issues? Are there technical difficulties in doing that?31.51.134.82 (talk) 23:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

As sick as I am of the 90's design, it is not the defining reason to change. It needs to change because the layout is static, build using tables and plain hostile towards mobile. We need a fluid layout to accomodate the wide range of devices that are no accessing Wikipedia, including mobile users that opt to use desktop mode. I do have a test version using the fluid layout with the old design, have a look. But as I said, it's not an ideal layout (and styling would be easy to adapt). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't suppose that change could be applied while all the necessary discussion is had over the modern version? Eman235/talk 19:58, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

untitled section

The procedure for commenting on the main page is so circular, that I suspect it discourages comments from the public and in so doing sullies the reputation of wikipedia. All that one sees are "This is not the place" messages. There is a list of other places that someone might be looking for, but not one of them seems appropriate for this comment: The front page is currently an affront both to bomb-blast victims and to golfer Jason Day. The In the news section has "A bomb explosion in Bangkok, Thailand, kills 20 people and injures more than 120 others." juxtaposed with a photo of Jason Day after hitting a drive in golf, very much as if he were either responsible for the bomb blast or applauding it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:07, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Most of this is nonsensical. The reputation of Wikipedia has nothing to do with this talk page and most discussions started here run their full length. In the rare cases when a "not here" message is posted, a link to the appropriate venue (in this case, the ITN talk page) is usually available. As for the thumbnail, I like to think that most readers are able to understand that the golfer has nothing to do with the bombing. After all, the next item in the list is about golf, mentions Jason Day and has (pictured) next to it just to make sure.

In any case, what would you recommend? The current scheme is by no means perfect (captions were added just a few weeks ago), but it is the best that the community has been able to come up with so far. Any suggestion is welcome! Isa (talk) 14:29, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

"Any suggestion is welcome!" Clearly not, or you wouldn't begin a response with an insult like "Most of this is nonsensical." Surely you could come up with the obviously implied suggestions to (1) move the thumbnail down to the news item it belongs to and (2) allow readers to provide comments without such heavy-handed discouragement. Whatever. I tried. Have had enough of this and am signing off now. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

There are always going to be the occasional odd match ups between the headline and the picture. I doubt that anyone, even for a second, thought some ball-whacker was the bomber. If the picture was of Abu Hamza then I might understand the confusion. Man Over-bored (talk) 15:45, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

The "not here" messages are not discouraging comments, they are encouraging them by telling people where they ought to go to make them. And as for the image thumbnail locations, while it may be so that "any suggestion is welcome", I think I speak for a large number of people when I say: Could we please not have that discussion again? 69.210.135.69 (talk) 15:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Some of the "not here" messages are not phrased in such a way as to encourage people to go further along in the process. Several of the responses I have seen have seemed more along the lines of "how could you NOT know about Wikipedia regulation 279, section 18, subsection 4-C, paragraph 2, sentence 8 which CLEARLY states" and less along the lines of "Thank you for your interest, I have passed your concerns along to relevant area. If you encounter another problem along these lines in the future, please report it here" (with "here" linked to the proper page). --Khajidha (talk) 17:55, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Furthermore, a response like the "Thank you ..." above is likely to get removed as off topic, along with the original question. Welcome to Wikipedia! Art LaPella (talk) 02:04, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be on WT:ITN?--72.196.127.84 (talk) 22:12, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It was actually about to be archived. Thanks. Isa (talk) 00:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Islamic State?

Hello All, please do not refer to the organization called ISIS or ISIL, called by themselseves DAESH, as the Islamic State. Not only does this legitimize and credit them in an ironic way, but it also gives the wrong impression that they are an Islamic State, which they sure are not! -Dominator1453 (talk) 05:50, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

"Called by themselseves DAESH"—er, no. They, fairly notoriously, find that term so offensive that using it is grounds for summary beatings in territory they control. ‑ iridescent 08:33, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:NPOV. We don't not call something what it is just because we personally have strong beliefs about it. As a matter of convenience the article is at ISIL at the moment, stuck in a rut of repeated and constant WP:RMs that never gain consensus. (I'll leave the fights for others to wax on.) hbdragon88 (talk) 07:00, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Well to be fair to Dominator1453, the Main Page is supposed to defer to individual articles. If the article is at ISIL then we should use that on the Main Page (it seems someone has already changed it). Modest Genius ^talk 09:38, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah I agree on that, but if you look at Talk:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, topic creator believes that we should never use Islamic State, even if "irresponsible mainstream media" do so, that it still isn't the "right way" to refer to him (as if there is an one absolute single answer). In other words, he's pushing an agenda. hbdragon88 (talk) 09:59, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

The President of the United States uses ISIL. I think we ought to defer to his judgment.--WaltCip (talk) 11:15, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Whatever next? Terrorists in the Republic part of Ireland calling themselves an Army? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:20, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

To be strictly accurate, the IRA are far more active in the non-Republic part of Ireland. ‑ iridescent 11:27, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You're grossly misrepresenting the history of the Irish Republican Army, which was not a group of terrorists and pre-dated the Irish Republic by several years. Although this is getting rather off topic... Modest Genius ^talk 11:32, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

This didn't help.--WaltCip (talk) 12:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Anyone for single quote marks, as in 'ISIS' or 'IS' – ?? That would signify something like "so-called" – since they aren't recognized as a state by any de jure state (as far as I'm aware). I suggested this formulation a year or so ago. Sca (talk) 12:51, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

technical difficulties

Um, am I the only one seeing big red letters all over Wikipedia giving the message "Script error: The module returned a value. It is supposed to return an export table. Script error: The module returned a value. It is supposed to return an export table." Because I am seeing that on nearly every page. Is it a problem on my side or is Wikipedia experiencing Technical Difficulties?--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

This isn't the place to post this, but technical staff are aware. — foxj 00:40, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't know where to go.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 00:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Technical issues are best discussed at WP:VPT (I'm surprised Foxj didn't point you there). There's a discussion going on there already. Modest Genius ^talk 09:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, it's the Village Pump indeed! — foxj 13:00, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Please fix the typo

The piped link display text should read "United States Air Force Test Pilot School"; it currently omits the key word "Test". Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Pictured?

Seeing that ITN, DYK and OTD now all use a caption below the pictures in their respective sections, might it be time to stop using (pictured) in the text portions of those sections. It seems redundant. Calidum 19:55, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

You can browse the archives to have a look at the previous discussions. It seems that the indicator helps locating the entry associated with the image. It doesn't seem redundant to me. Isa (talk) 20:25, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Question

(As the bot has been over zealous)

Is two birds on the MP a record?

(I am not against the occasional themed page - or 'creatively improving articles to get above average mentions on the MP') Jackiespeel (talk) 18:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You must not have been around for the bird puns that constantly saturated this main page every time a flock of birds graced the page. No, two is not a record in this case (but two crows could be an attempted murder).--WaltCip (talk) 19:24, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

See apophenia. Come back if you don't understand the concept, well try to explain it to you.--Jayron32 20:25, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Phew, what a relief. I thought we were in for a heavy bout of amnesic shellfish poisoning. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:35, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

My comment in brackets applies.

I saw a group of five magpies earlier today- is this sufficient to make a conventicle/tidings of them? Jackiespeel (talk) 21:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

You silver-tongued devil. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:16, 2 September 2015 (UTC) but you need to see one more to really spoil us, Mr Ambassador.

They had shiny tail feathers. Jackiespeel (talk) 09:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

If you got 19 more, maybe we could have a pie? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:46, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Choices

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• Hurricane Elena – I really must wonder why we would give prominence to a weather event that took place 20 years ago. Sca (talk) 00:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Um, yeah, I mean 30 years ago. Sca (talk)

• • Thirty. Thirty years ago. And you could ask the same question for most any TFA. The answer is the same too: someone brought the article up to FA status, and one of the TFA coordinators has decided that it should be run today. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • There is no reason that TFA events need to be current events. That's what ITN is for. TFA is to highlight featured-quality Wikipedia articles. Full stop. It makes no difference on when the event in the featured article took place. --Jayron32 01:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I believe it is being given prominence today because it is the 30th anniversary of the storm. Featured articles being displayed on a particular anniversary of the event is a fairly common occurence on the main page. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 01:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • It's also a very high quality article. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • We should cancel tomorrow's FA too. Why would we give prominence to a warship that sailed more than 200 years ago. Stephen 10:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
  • There seems to be a misconception that TFA is for "what is important in the world today" rather than a showcase of Wikipedia's featured articles, that may or may not be relevant to what's going on. If you want to see current events in Wikipedia, mark you, there is always WP:ITN.--WaltCip (talk) 10:36, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Okay, okay. It is a pretty good article in terms of being comprehensive.

I just don't find the event itself of much interest at this remove: It did what hurricanes do. But others may be intrigued. Sca (talk) 14:05, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:FANMP#Meteorology has loads of hurricane/cyclone/typhoon articles awaiting their turn in the limelight, and more are being promoted to FA all the time. If we're ever going to get through that backlog we need to run some occasionally. If you don't like the topics covered in TFA, the best response is to get more articles promoted to FA in areas you do like or are poorly represented on WP:FANMP. Modest Genius ^talk 14:28, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict)

Understood. I'd be likely to favor (human) history articles, but others may find the dusty, distant deeds of the past uninteresting or irrelevant – which is how I feel about old hurricanes.

(Is anyone else sick & tired of hearing about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina 10 years later? Overkill, as we used to say in the news biz.) Sca (talk) 14:45, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Dusty deeds are a dime a dozen on Wikipedia.--WaltCip (talk) 15:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

As are clichés. Avoid them like the plague! Sca (talk) 17:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Indeed. There are some areas which have received considerable attention from FA writers and are thus very well represented. Australian aviators, Kentucky governors, mushrooms, and pre-independence Indonesian cinema are likewise quite well represented at FA.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 14:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I really must wonder why we would give such prominence to a boring old war that took place 100 years ago, or a dead old lady, or some old stories. Stuff that happened in the past is so dull and unimportant. (All of those articles were TFAs, by the way). --71.119.131.184 (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Didn't the cities of Athens and Sparta 'end' the Peloponnesian War 'only a few years ago'?

The answer, as usual, is 'if you know a better topic, develop the article.' Jackiespeel (talk) 09:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Articles should showcase quality. And all articles that do this should have a shot at being on the front page. This comes up a lot but I don't see the problem...--109.149.122.179 (talk) 17:48, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• WP:FANMP is what you have to choose from for TFA material (or try this list for the same list sorted in a different way). Feel free to pick one, head on over to WP:TFAR and explain why it ought to be on the main page. ‑ iridescent 18:54, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

today singapore got election

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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can put in the news or on this day?

You can start a conversation here to have it added to the "In the news" section of the main page. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 08:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I forgot to add, national elections are usually added once the winner is known and the relevant article is updated and in good condition. So perhaps you can help work on Singaporean general election, 2015 first. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 08:07, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

News at Main_Page / also regional portal pages

I have a general question about this news page here, and maybe also in combination with the regional or national portals on Wikipedia.

Question 1: Main_Page: The question is about the relevance to have news on the Main_Page, as it normally does not catch my attention. Until I saw a article which is related to my location, than I started thinking where the news are coming from? (not clear, as there a no references provided, like with other WP article) and why do they show up on my screen in the country I'm currently at?

Anyway, I self answered that, using a VPN and proved that the news are not only displayed on the screen here in asia, but yes they are (with my limited testing skills and resources) also the same in europe and america.

Sometimes I'm using: WikiNews so I wonder why the news on the Main_Page don't come from there, as they are part of the Wikipedia-family and Wikimedia-organization?

Question 2: Many Portal:$Country pages As I visited many outdated portals (at least they looked outdated to me). Could WikiNews being integrated (with a header) on the regional or even country portals as it's part of Wikipedia/Wikimedia organization? Sorry for asking a maybe stupid question.

--huggi - never stop exploring (talk) 06:35, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

• In The News has worldwide news, so it isn't surprising to have news about any country, including your own. As you discovered, we provide the same news for everyone worldwide.

• The first news item, for instance, is about an explosion in India. If you click "An explosion", you get a Wikipedia article, complete with references. Similarly for anything else on the Main Page: you have to click the bolded phrase to find the supporting article and its references. So everything is referenced, even though you can't see the references on the Main Page.

• Why don't we have WikiNews on Wikipedia? The usual explanation is: WikiNews is for news, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. In The News is a section of Wikipedia that shows encyclopedia articles that happen to be in the news. But it's still part of an encyclopedia, not the news. That explanation is often invoked to explain why a news item hasn't appeared yet.

• However, that explanation only makes sense from the perspective of the authors, not the readers. Readers want to know what happened in India, not which bureaucracy is providing the story. If Wikipedia were a business for profit, then it would fear readers flocking to a more user-friendly competitor. But they're volunteers. Thus Wikiland's separate fiefdoms are likely to remain separate, with separate news sources. Similarly, someone on the Africa portal probably wants to know all about Africa, regardless of whether our ancestors would have looked for the information in a news broadcast, a paper encyclopedia, a paper school textbook, a paper dictionary, or at a travel agency. But I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Art LaPella (talk) 14:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC)