Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:15, 9 November 2004

'The purpose of this page is to discuss the Main Page'. See the Misplaced Pages FAQ for general questions about Misplaced Pages. You can also ask questions at the Village pump.

How to edit the main page. Before criticizing any content on the main page, remember that everything is editable. If you see a mistake in any of these sections, be bold and fix it. Comment on a new topic

• "Today's featured article" || "In the news" || "Did you know..." || "Browse Misplaced Pages by topic" || "Browse: bar"
• "Selected anniversaries ..." (section data is mainly in MediaWiki's Template namespace, but the top-level resides at Misplaced Pages:Selected anniversaries)
• "Misplaced Pages in other languages" section || "Sister Projects" section

STYLISTIC NOTE: Any item in bold type on the Main Page must be updated and listed on its corresponding subject area page before being listed on the Main Page. For example, a news item should first be listed on current events, then the article on the subject of that news item should be updated to reflect a current event, and then that item can be placed on Template:In the news.

Main Page cache purge - click this link when a change has been made to any of the templates displayed on the Main Page, to clear the Main Page's cache (located on the Wikimedia servers) so non-logged-in users can see the update. This may or may not force your browser's cache to expire. See Misplaced Pages:Reload to learn how to deal with that.

Please post screenshots of the current Main Page to Main Page/Screenshots for debugging design issues.

See TOC talk and the category schemes talk for general discussion of the category schemes on (or not on, as is currently the case) Misplaced Pages's Main Page.

Archived talk

Archives of older material from this talk page: Archives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

The layout of the Main Page underwent a significant redesign, implemented on 23 Feb 2004. Talk archives 1-13 relate to the old design. Archives after this date: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

Talk pages specifically dealing with layout and design, or alternative designs for the Main Page:

• Main Page/Old - the old Main Page design.
• New Design | Temp | Temp2 | Temp3 | Temp5 (prev'ly Temp4)
• Temp6 | Temp10

Protecting no-table version

Is it possible to do this? I can see that the no-table version of the main page could become an easy target for vandals.

Vandalism on the Main Page!

Someone change this quickly, please, it's incredibly embarassing.

Arafat's picture

Arafat is not "Boston Red Sox Logo"... --205.189.150.1 00:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hahaha, yeah, I just noticed that, I was just about to post this myself. - Bloodshedder 01:39, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Fixed, after screenshotting and before logging in. Oops! (That page is publicly editable, BTW, which is why I, a lowly n00b, was able to fix it, though I wanted to leave it.) Suntiger 03:54, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Infinite monkeys

A special case of a prepositon is not a therom. Neither is the zero-one law a prepositon, even though it is obvious

...err, a Prepositon? Is that a sub-atomic particle? Or did you drop the 'i'?

Happy Halloween!

Happy late Halloween everyone! "Antonio Van Helsing Martin"

Hi

sorry for vandalising i was just wanting to see how efficient u guys were. that is all buddies

Main Page Sandbox

It has been done. Templates are comming soon.

In the news

whats up w the font on the dixville story? Sam 01:08, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also, why does the main page report votes as 15 Bush/15 Kerry/1 Nader when Dixville Notch, New Hampshire gives it as 19-7-0? --Calair 06:33, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In the news

Hi guys, This morning a controversial dutch filmmaker(Theo van Gogh) has been murdered in Amsterdam. He was attacked by a man and a woman, and stabbed to death. The man has been arrested, still looking for the woman. See this article on cnn: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/02/netherlands.filmmaker.reut/index.html I don't know if it is important enough, thought I'd notify you guys

nice combination of jacques plante and clint benedict

What's up with the pro-John Kerry ASCII art? Is Misplaced Pages offering an endorsement, or was the main page HA><ORED? --Feitclub 13:13, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

Option number three, simple vandalism. Don't give the vandals more credit than they deserve. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:56, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA.INFO, isn't it about time?

Wikimedia already owns the domain name wikipedia.info; so isn't it about time to adopt it as the main domain for Misplaced Pages? It sounds more likely for a work like this; it's even almost a full sentence!! --Alif 18:05, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think .info has any particular benefit over .org. People know .org's, if you said wikipedia.info to someone they probably wouldn't know what you were on about. My cynical mind tells me that .info's were invented so that everyone had to shell out more $ to keep all variations of their domain name registered. -- Chuq 23:04, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is the conspiracy-theory explanation :-). Originally .org was meant for not-for-prophit organisations. While this applies to Misplaced Pages in a way, .info is more specif about the site being a source of information. Eventually .info will become as known as the other domains. --Alif 17:07, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

maybe. maybe not. I for one have hardly come accross any sites using the "new" tlds that were even remotely worth visiting. ".info" smells of SEO and dotcom-bubble. dab 17:36, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

WIKIPEDIA moderators are vandalizing their own site?

Check out the discussion of the election results! FIX IT FOOLS!

WikiAtlas?

I'd posted this one before, but it didn't generate any feedback. So here I go again. Does anyone have an opinion on this one?

I love WikiPedia, I love the random page function.

but ... Is anyone else annoyed at how often small town entries come up? It seems pointless to have "Nuclear_winter" and "Dacula,_Georgia" in the same place.

Is there a way to seperate all these geographic entries from the rest?

I would say that inclusion of Wallaceton,_Pennsylvania is certainly non-encyclopedic ... unless you can open the WorldBook set, and find Brights_Grove,_Ontario in there.

This is Natasha and I would like to comment on what you have said about the content of the site and I would have you know that those small towns ARE very needed. I am in history 12 and you learn about some not so important places . and I have even grown up in some not so important places .. and I would be very dissapointed if they didnt come up.

If Misplaced Pages did nothing beyond what its rivals do, there'd be no reason for its existence.

I also like the 'random page' button, and I also find the small town entries dull... but this problem can easily be resolved by hitting the button again ;-) I honestly don't see what the problem is. --Calair 05:59, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the town entries are fine. The only time where they ever get in the way is the random page button, which is a toy, anyway. However, "WikiAtlas" is an excellent idea! I have been wondering for some time how we could standardise custom maps. When I want to draw a map to explain a point in a specific article, I have to search for a public domain map of the area in question on google, and then maybe remove labels in an editor before adding my own information, arrows or whatever. The Xerox Mapserver has been gone for several years, and I don't know of a similarly useful tool to produce basic maps (e.g., the map of Image:Kurgan map.png is based on a Xerox mapserver map). How about starting a WikiAtlas project that somehow links to all geographical WP articles? There is probably not enough CPU resources to generate maps dynamically, but if we had an application that could generate maps from vector data, we could still make a large collection of ready made maps, and illustrate the location of all these little town stubs. dab 07:32, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I also like the idea of a WikiAtlas. I've seen a number of out-of-copyright books that had some fine maps well worthy of scanning. (If only I could fix that darn yellowing...) -- RJH 23:34, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Automatic indexing

Is my article automatically indexed under the respective category or I have to manually edit the category to add the article? --Sbenza 13:47, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you add ] at the bottom, the article is automatically indexed. For people articles you might want to use ]. Hope this helps. Generally, this kind of question should go on Misplaced Pages:Village pump (miscellaneous), by the way. Filiocht 13:58, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Featured article picture

Something's odd about the picture for the featured article at the moment, it's not very baroque at all. Lisiate 23:02, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fixed (not by me) Gwimpey 23:12, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks to however did so, I see the article has now changed anyway. Lisiate 00:24, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lord Chancellor

The current featured article para begins: "The Lord Chancellor, is one of the most senior and important functionaries in the government of the United Kingdom." It could really do with losing that dreadful comma, please. :)

Oh and while I'm at it, the reference to "Tony Blair's ministry" does not, I think, work in UK English. Tony hasn't got a ministry! (No jokes please.) But I'd defer to the view of a person with some UK constitutional knowledge here. 82.35.17.203 00:59, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Link to low-bandwidth Main

There must be a link on the main page to some low-bandwidth-friendly version of the page; preferably no-tables and no-text (which can have links to the intermediate variants), for wireless users. Readding a link to the no-tables version, which is as close as we come to that ideal; it in turn has a prominent link to the text-only version (which has none of the first four sections at all). +sj+ 22:23, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

added your note to the Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ , as a start for wireless users. Ancheta Wis 11:23, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chinese Website

大家好，很高兴来到这个地方。不知有没有中文的网页？

慕名而来

在这里

• 繁
• 简

--Voidvector 08:29, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Google search

I want to ask if there is anyway to filter out those Misplaced Pages copy offs like BrainyEncyclopedia in a google search? --Voidvector 08:29, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

they are annoying! I usually repeat the search with a characteristic phrase of the WP article text excluded. dab 15:09, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Try using site:wikipedia.org search terms. -- ] 18:46, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Buffalo, NY Public Libraries

I am posting this not as an act of vandalism, but to reach out to the Wiki community for assistance. The budget of Buffalo, New York is so poorly managed under the current leadership as to require cuts in the funding of the Buffalo Public Schools system and other publicly funded activities and organizations. Now, however, it is planned to close all of the public libraries in the city. Please, Wiki community, either make an "In the news" article about these recent developments or become active in some other fashion, but whatever is done, it must be done quickly. We've not much time.

Thank you, and good day.

I googled, and this is, in fact, true. →Raul654 20:30, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the verification Raul654. Now, once again, I ask of you all, please take action against this!

Intro paragraph

The intro paragraph ends with: "Learn how to edit pages, experiment in the sandbox, and visit our Community Portal to find out how you can edit any article right now." Now, there are two ways to interpret this, either as these three clauses:

• Learn how to edit pages
• Experiment in the sandbox
• Visit our Community Portal to find out how you can edit any article right now

Or as these three clauses:

• Learn how to edit pages
• Experiment in the sandbox
• Visit our Community Portal to find out how you can edit any article right now

Either way, this is far from great prose. In the former set of three clauses, the last half of the third clause is redundant with the first clause. The latter set of three clauses is even worse, with the first clause being redundant with itself and the second clause of the set not making any sense at all. This is unfortunate, because I think the main page of Misplaced Pages should display some better prose.

Now, I would fix this myself, but I don't want to change the main page until I get the approval of other Wikipedians first. Basically, what we need is some sentence that has links to three places (Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page, Misplaced Pages:Sandbox, and Misplaced Pages:Community Portal) while avoiding the redundancy of having "edit a page/article" twice in the same sentence. Here's a tentative proposal for the fixed sentence:

"Visit our Community Portal to find out how you can edit any article, or experiment in the sandbox."

—Lowellian (talk)] 07:36, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

Unconfirmed news? REMOVE!!

Please remove "unconfirmed news" item. This is not a news agency or a blog website! Awolf002 15:32, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC) lol

From which source is this "report"? --ThomasK 15:46, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

This looks fishy -- there isn't even any article at the end of the link. And CNN isn't reporting anything about this. I think it's bogus. 23skidoo 16:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That's why I ask. --ThomasK 16:26, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

It's been 3 hours at least and no media report on CNN or anywhere else I can find. I'd remove this myself but I don't know if regular users are allowed to. Yesterday about this time some hacker put a message up on the main page. Could this be another troublemaker? 23skidoo 18:43, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have just removed the rumour, WP should not report on rumours, but at least give the news time to settle. Note that any user, even anonymous users without accounts can edit the News section here: Template:In the news, for that matter, any page can and may be edited by any user (with a few exceptions, but in those cases there is no edit button). -- ] 18:50, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

ok, but how is this a rumour:

His death is being reported by some Palestinian sources, but explicitly denied by others.

that's just a simple fact: the Palestinians don't seem to be able to agree whether or not he is dead (we never did claim he was dead). dab 19:06, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)