Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page
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Main Page FAQThis is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about the Main Page of Wikipedia. [edit] Why am I not able to edit the Main Page?The Main Page and its templates are permanently protected and may only be edited by administrators. Images are protected for the period of time that they are on the Main Page. This cascading protection was implemented as a result of repeated vandalism of the Main Page and keeps our welcome mat clean. If you see a problem, please mention it at Talk:Main Page so an administrator can fix it. [edit] How do I get something fixed on the Main Page?If the error is straightforward, such as a misspelling or obvious error of fact, post it to Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors and an administrator will fix it. For more complicated discussion, such as about image choice or topical coverage, post to Talk:Main Page. If you wish to start an indepth discussion particular to a specific section of the Main Page, it may be more appropriate to bring it to the relevant discussion page, such as Template talk:In the news. Please centralize discussion in one location. [edit] How are templates used on the Main Page?Almost all of the text seen on the Main page is from transcluded templates, which are also protected. The sections that are regularly updated are: Today's featured article, Selected anniversaries, In the news, Did you know, Picture of the day, Wikipedia in other languages and Interwikis. The Main Page also contains one automatically updating number, {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} (currently 2,405,027). There is normally little reason for administrators to edit the Main Page directly. [edit] When is the Main Page updated? Why do you have the wrong date in Selected anniversaries?As an international community, Wikipedia is organized along Coordinated Universal Time, which roughly corresponds to Western European Time. Users in New Zealand thus have their "Wikipedia midnight" at local noon. [edit] Why is the Main Page not updating?The servers may still have the previous day's version of the Main Page cached, so try purging the server cache. If that does not seem to work, you may need to bypass your browser's cache.
[edit] I think that the articles listed on the Main Page are awful. Isn't the Main Page biased towards certain topics? What can be done about it?It is true that Wikipedia has a systemic bias towards topics of interest to computer literate people from industrialized Anglophone countries, which is a result of this being a disproportionately large proportion of its editor base, compared to the world population. The Main Page reflects the bias of Wikipedia as a whole, though people tend to overlook biases that they share. It is important to remember that the selected articles (bolded items) on the Main Page are chosen based more on how well they are written, not based on how much their subjects are important or significant. As a result, various featured articles that have appeared on the Main Page have been criticized for being too trivial, too geeky, too obscure, too commercial, or too political. The In the news, On this day, and Did you know sections have also been criticized for being biased toward one particular subject or region of the world. Some specific examples of groups that have periodically accused the Main Page of blatant bias include Americans being amazed by the continuous stream of new articles on cricket, non-Americans being amazed at the claim that baseball is an international sport, non-Europeans being amazed that the Eurovision contest gets listed on In the news every year, non-geeks being amazed at the frequency of articles on computer and video games, 'encyclopedia conservatives' being amazed at the number of articles on pop culture and 'encyclopedia radicals' being amazed at the number of articles on frightfully dull people and events from long ago. The variety of accusations of bias that have been made on Talk:Main Page is nearly endless. Each Main Page template attempts to mitigate the effects of bias, but they are each largely autonomous in operation, and are strongly dependent on what topics editors contribute to at a given time:
Still, because each template is largely autonomous in operation, it inevitably invites bias, even though the bias is unnoticed most of the time. In cases where, for example, a prolific editor nominates four new articles on train lines in India, the organizers of the DYK template will try to create a mixed template by pulling in newer submissions. However, there have been cases where over half of the templates include items relating to outer space or New Zealand. If you would like to further help mitigate the systemic bias in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. [edit] Why are the images on "In the news" and "On this day" not aligned next to each relevant entry?The Main Page templates are also transcluded on other pages. For example, In the news also appears on Current events and the PDA version of the Main Page. There are also a number of other alternatives to the Main Page that users may use. Changing the placement of the images may interfere with the formatting on those other pages. However, French Wikipedia's Main Page does align images with entries. There has been a previous proposal to highlight the appropriate article entry (see the archived discussion). But for now, the current guideline is to align the image near the top of each template and add a (pictured) caption in the text. [edit] How can I get something fixed before it appears on the Main Page?Sometimes items appearing on the Main Page require some copyediting. However, as there is a process to get much of the content to the Main Page, users have the opportunity to spot issues before they appear for the world to see. A page with those sections planned in advance is available at Main Page/Tomorrow. The various sections are:
[edit] In what order are the other Wikipedias displayed? Where's my language?The Wikipedia languages section and standard interwiki list on the main page only include Wikipedias that have more than 20,000 articles and a minimum depth of 5 (depth is a rough indicator of a Wikipedia’s quality, showing how frequently its articles are updated). There are simply too many others to list on the main page. The "complete list" link displays a list of all active Wikipedias in order of number of articles, along with the depth. The Wikipedias listed on the main page are alphabetized according to their native language names, not according to the languages' English names or the domain names used. This order was deemed the most useful to speakers of these languages (the readers most likely to seek the links). [edit] Is there some way to make the Main Page look better?There are periodic attempts to revamp the look of the Main Page. A community effort in December 2004 to redesign the Main Page and key pages linked from it may be found here. In March 2006, a new design was implemented after several months of discussion and input from the community organized by the Usability WikiProject. For a look at the Main Page on 28 February 2001, see the Internet Wayback Machine archive. For a range of choices, ranging from those past formats to designs created by users, see Wikipedia:Main Page alternatives. [edit] Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google?This feature allowing users to start typing a search without clicking on the search box was previously requested at Bugzilla and the decision was against implementation. See Bug 1864: Cursor should be placed in the search box for the report and discussion. The basic issue is that readers expect to be able to scroll through the Main Page using arrow keys. However, if the cursor is in the search box, using the arrow keys will instead pop-up autotext. This is not an issue with the famous Google search screen because there is no need to scroll. One suggested workaround is using your system's keyboard shortcut to place the focus in the search box. This is Users with registered accounts can edit their personal monobook.js and add the following code if they wish default focus on the search field.
if (wgPageName == "Main_Page") {
addOnloadHook(function() {
document.getElementById("searchInput").focus();
});
}
Alternatively, the code is available as a Gadget in one's preferences, which can be enabled by simply marking it checked. Readers using Firefox with Greasemonkey installed can click here to install a script that automatically focuses the search box on the English Wikipedia Main Page (view script source). [edit] Why is the word "free" mistranslated in the names of other language editions?The Free Encyclopedia slogan is sometimes the cause of confusion because there are two distinct meanings to the word "free". One relates to "no cost" and the other is to "freedom". See Gratis versus Libre for more. Wikipedia is free to use without cost, but it is also free in the sense of having few restrictions on what may be modified or replicated elsewhere. The latter meaning is mandated by the GNU Free Documentation License, under which contributions site-wide are submitted. This meaning is thus more fundamental to the character of Wikipedia, so (for example) the Spanish-language Wikipedia has the slogan La enciclopedia libre, rather than La enciclopedia gratuita. Other languages have slightly different approaches. The Czech version has "Otevřená encyklopedie", meaning "the Open encyclopedia," while Japanese uses the English loanword フリー ("free"), avoiding using a native word that would force it to specify which meaning of free is meant. [edit] Is there an RSS feed?There are externally hosted feeds of today's featured article and featured picture, along with some other Wikipedia pages. See Wikipedia:Syndication. [edit] Why is Main Page in the main namespace?It has been argued that Main Page should be at Wikipedia:Main Page, Portal:Main Page or some other similar location. The current location, being in the main namespace, might be expected to be a redirect to the article Home page. Main Page was created in the main namespace, and has continued there, mainly due to historical inertia. Several proposals in early 2007 to move the page failed due to rejection or lack of consensus. See the discussions in archives 87, 89 and 90. There are other project-related page in the main namespace. One is the redirect Transwiki, which must exist for the procedure to move unencyclopedic articles to Wikimedia Foundation sister projects. Also, the page for the pound symbol (#) can exist only as a redirect to the Main Page for technical reasons: some web browsers reserve "#" as a shortcut for the front page of websites. [edit] Why is a Main Page section missing an illustrative image?The Main Page image copyright rules require that only freely licensed images are used on the Main Page—this excludes copyrighted images, such as album covers or TV screenshots. Since freely licensed images that are relevant to the featured article or other sections are not always available, the section will simply lack an illustration. More specifically: in articles, non-free images can be displayed for the purpose of illustrating the subject of the article when it meets certain established non-free content criteria, which is an extension of the US copyright doctrine of fair use. We can't claim fair use for images that are used for purposes other than illustrating articles, and the Main Page is not an article. In the early years of Wikipedia, fair use was allowed on the Main Page. Since early 2007 or so, User:Jimbo Wales has made clear that he feels fair use images are not appropriate for the Main Page. Critics, noting Wikipedia:Argumentum ad Jimbonem, argue that Jimbo's reasoning is flawed and negatively affects the quality of the encyclopedia. Regardless, attempts to add fair use images to the Main Page have been beaten back. See previous discussion here for some of the flavor of the arguments. [edit] Shouldn't the "Wikipedia languages" section be categorized differently?Possibly. The categorization scheme at {{Wikipedialang}} is the topic of periodic debate. When first created in February 2004 the template listed all of the foreign language Wikipedias. Over time a lower bound was set to limit the number of items and much discussion has revolved around the internal structure of the template, e.g. what numbers to use as cut-offs. Other suggested categorization schemes include a tag cloud or making two sections, one for the largest wikis and one for the wikis with the most number of speakers, regardless of the size of the wiki, to counter systemic bias. The template structure in periods of low dispute is a reflection of an equilibrium of editor opinion between those who feel that the section should include as many languages as possible, acknowledging as many benchmarks as possible, to those who feel that it should be as simple and succinct as possible. Given that Wikipedias in other language are continually progressing towards new benchmarks, this balance also continually shifts towards new tipping points, at which time editors determine the new structure. If you wish to propose a change, an opinion informed by older discussion at Template talk:Wikipedialang and the archives of Talk:Main Page (a web search may be helpful) is likely to carry more weight. [edit] How are interwiki links in the left-hand column chosen?{{MainPageInterwikis}} includes only the interwiki links to languages with the most number of articles. The cutoff number is identical to the minimum cutoff used in {{Wikipedialang}}. This is the newest template on the Main Page, consensus for its inclusion having been reached in October 2006. (See discussion.) [edit] How do you put the "Complete list" link at the end of the interwikis?The link to the Meta list of Wikipedias is a neat little Javascript hack. Go to MediaWiki:Common.js and search for "complete list" to see the code. [edit] How do you remove the title of the Main Page?This is controlled by MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Look for "Don't display some stuff on the main page". Note that "h1.firstHeading" hides the title and other parts of the script hide links when you are redirected to the page among others. [edit] Why are there so many backups of the Main Page?In response to past incidents of compromised administrator accounts, the Main Page is also transcluded on ten sub-pages with cascading protection. This gives the page additional protection as discussed at Talk:Main Page/Archive 99#Cascading protection backup subpages and Talk:Main Page/Archive 102#Main page/1-10. [edit] See also
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