Welcome! This page is for discussing the contents of the English Wikipedia's
Main Page. For general questions unrelated to the Main Page, please visit the
Teahouse or check the links below. To add content to an article, edit that article's page. Irrelevant posts on this page may be removed. Click here to report errors on the Main Page.
If you have a question related to the Main Page, please search the talk page archives first to check if it has previously been addressed:
For questions about using and contributing to the
English Wikipedia:
Where is the error? An exact quotation of the text in question helps.
Offer a correction if possible.
References are helpful, especially when reporting an obscure factual or grammatical error.
Time zones. The Main Page runs on
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC, currently 00:49 on 7 July 2024) and is not adjusted to your local time zone.
Can you resolve the problem yourself? If the error lies primarily in the content of an article linked from the Main Page, fix the problem there before reporting it here. Text on the Main Page generally defers to the articles with bolded links. Upcoming content on the Main Page is usually only
protected from editing beginning 24 hours before its scheduled appearance. Before that period, you can
be bold and fix any issues yourself.
Do not use {{edit fully-protected}} on this page, which will not get a faster response. It is unnecessary, because this page is not protected, and causes display problems. (See the bottom of
this revision for an example.)
No chit-chat. Lengthy discussions should be moved to a suitable location elsewhere, such as the talk page of the relevant article or project.
Respect other editors. Another user wrote the text you want changed, or reported an issue they see in something you wrote. Everyone's goal should be producing the best Main Page possible. The compressed time frame of the Main Page means sometimes action must be taken before there has been time for everyone to comment.
Be civil to fellow users.
Reports are removed when resolved. Once an error has been addressed or determined not to be an error, or the item has been rotated off the Main Page, the report will be removed from this page. Check the revision history for a record of any discussion or action taken; no
archives are kept.
Notice to administrators: When fixing POTD errors, please update the corresponding regular version (i.e. without "protected" in the page title) in addition to the Main Page version linked below.
Would most people be willing to entertain a weekly
article for improvement on the main page? Several kinks must be worked out, but I think it would be a great idea (well duh, I'm the guy bringing it up...)
Bremps...03:46, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply
There was a "Today's Article for Improvement" section added to the main page for a few weeks in 2013. It didn't last long and was pulled in May 2013. The subsequent discussion
is here.
Stephen07:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply
We have long-established processes of dealing with vandalism, like
WP:SEMI. Therefore, I don't think that this worry should stop us. And if it were a real concern, why would the same not also apply to the rest of the main page? Schwede6600:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Right, but the distinction is we're explicitly (or nearly so) asking people to come help out. If we do that and they can't, that would look a bit silly.
Remsense诉09:38, 5 July 2024 (UTC)reply
I think this could work out if we're clever; I'll offer the following points:
Maybe the pool should be restricted to
Vital articles or some other deliberately collated set: articles should be prioritized that people are likely to feel are both important, and that they might already feel they can help with.
We should absolutely go out of our way to grease the wheels with the articles: perhaps a AFI coordinator who volunteers their particular attention to editors engaging with them? Definitely helpful and specific maintenance tags and banners, and maybe even a short write-up on each talk page providing concrete ideas for every level of improvement.
I actually think leaning towards thematically relevant articles would be huge for engagement. If we did this yesterday, we should've had
John F. Kennedy up there.
Another idea I perennially tinker with, though it's tangential, basically amounts to "organized gnoming drives"? We pick a few concrete but discretizable tasks for some set of articles: my favorite is Copyedit the lead of every Vital Level-2 article. I think it'll attract a different crowd than existing drives do because it's communal and we can have a fun progress bar that fills up for each task.
Remsense诉14:04, 5 July 2024 (UTC)reply
I think it would be a great idea. Encourages contribution because it appears on the main page, i.e. visibility!
SWinxy (
talk)
04:56, 4 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Support in principle. I suppose the caveat is that we expect everything on the Main Page to be "presentable", so there would have to be a good vetting process to make sure that the articles were fine enough to put in front of non-Wikipedians while also weak enough to justify asking for help with them. UndercoverClassicistT·
C09:28, 5 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Oppose, a direct link to an article without any comment on what is wrong with it is unlikely to help much (and seemed not to attract many edits in the examples given by Andrew). I am happy for us to have a flashing "Get involved!" section of the Main Page to attract people into editing (for example, we could make the Community Portal more prominent), but just a few links to articles in need of improvements will not do that. Random drive-by newbies usually "help" by overlinking, removing valid redlinks or by violating ENGVAR; if we want actual improvement from people who are not already Wikipedians, we need to do more than just say "hey, edit this article". If we want Wikipedians to help, perhaps the Main Page isn't the greatest place for this. —
Kusma (
talk)
10:18, 5 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Comment this went very badly in 2013, so what makes you think it would work now? How would it be organised, where would it go on the Main Page etc.? Why weekly? There's far too little information to make an informed !vote.
Modest Geniustalk13:21, 5 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Support in principle, I've always supported this and I brought up shutting down AFI a couple years ago
here in village pump because of its inactivity, and I don't think they've made any more progress up bringing it back since then. I think this would be a nice way to help bring back AFI.
Lallint00:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Oppose. That's one of the intended functions of the DYK section, though it's been a bit obscured by the incorporation of new GAs with the new articles and new expansions. Unless specifically protected, nothing linked from the Main Page is excluded from editing—I've made copyedit and clarificatory changes to TFA a couple of times, some of them are a bit dusty when they run—but the new articles at DYK are particularly an invitation to tweakage, intentionally so.
Yngvadottir (
talk)
21:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply
I would go farther to say it is not really communicated at all to the average reader that they are encouraged to any special extent to help out with the articles listed at DYK.
Remsense诉23:30, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Oppose I 've been as critical as anyone of the WMF's various projects that have been imposed on us, but
newcomer tasks actually seems to work, I've seen newbies pop up on obscure articles within hours of them being tagged for various issues. I think this is a better tool than inviting the whole world to focus on one crappy article. Perhaps we should add links to that on the main page?
Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today22:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply
I think putting newcomer tasks on the main page would risk splitting focus from the personal newcomer home pages. The WMF growth team has been investing effort into making them the starting point for newcomers, so I'd prefer to get more new users looking at their home page than the main page for suggestions on what to do.
isaacl (
talk)
23:15, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply
One distinction I'd make clear is: I don't think this only has to be something meant for new editors. I for one would be interested in a daily list of pages that I may find engaging to hop into collaborating with others on.
Remsense诉23:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)reply