Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

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Administrators: Clear all reports

Errors in the summary of the featured article

Please do not remove this invisible timestamp. See WT:ERRORS and WP:SUBSCRIBE. - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Today's FA

The blurb could do with a bit of copyediting:

• recent evidence has proposed – Evidence does not propose anything. People propose things.
• Giraffes live in herds [...] but are gregarious – The reason for the "but" is not clear.
• herds of related females and their offspring or bachelor herds of unrelated adult males – Difficult to parse, could use a comma after "offspring".
• Giraffes have been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons – I'm afraid this strikes me as an absolutely pointless sentence. Everything has been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons.
• Giraffes are assessed as vulnerable to extinction – "have been assessed" would be better, or "are classified".

Sojourner in the earth (talk) 04:56, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

@WP:TFA coordinators Your input is required. (I was already getting worried that nobody had any errors today for all of the main page) Schwede66 05:03, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

OK, since it's been a few hours and the TFA coords maybe aren't around currently, I've WP:BOLDly had a go at the first point above, which seeems a fairly straightforward minor error - evidence doesn't propose things, as noted... I've changed "more recent evidence has proposed dividing them into multiple species" → "researchers have recently proposed dividing them into multiple species due to new evidence", which matches some of the wording of the article and doesn't take us over the word limit yet. Happy to revert or amend if needed, but this seems like an improvement. I'm not so convinced on the other points, those seem more subjective decisions, so I'll leave that for now. Happy to revert or discuss if I've made a mistake here. @Wehwalt, Gog the Mild, and Dank:  — Amakuru (talk) 08:55, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Addressing the other points specifically:

• Giraffes live in herds [...] but are gregarious – The reason for the "but" is not clear.
• herds of related females and their offspring or bachelor herds of unrelated adult males – Difficult to parse, could use a comma after "offspring".
  • Actually, looking again, I'm not sure this sentence and the gregarious bit is cited in the article at all. The lead and the blurb say the above, while the cited body says "males become more solitary but may also associate in pairs or with female groups" which doesn't seem the same at all. If we're going to use very old FAs as main page content, we should at the very least be checking that what's in the blurb and the lead still matches the body... Suggest we simply remove that bit unless a quick cited rewording can be found.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:44, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
• Giraffes have been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons – I'm afraid this strikes me as an absolutely pointless sentence. Everything has been :::featured in paintings, books, and cartoons.

  Yes, this seems a legitimate point - the full sentence in the article mostly makes sense - "The giraffe has intrigued various ancient and modern cultures for its peculiar appearance, and has often been featured in paintings, books, and cartoons" - (although I'm a bit lairy about using "peculiar" in WP:WIKIVOICE like that) but the condensed version about it just being in books and paintings reduces it to something almost meaningless. Not a direct error though so I'd leave that be for the rest of the day probably.

• Giraffes are assessed as vulnerable to extinction – "have been assessed" would be better, or "are classified".

  I've changed this to are classified, per the text in the lead of the article.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:44, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I think we've made it clear that we object to copyediting on the TFA day unless it's very urgent or. a clear error. You are not going to find us available in the middle of the night US time. This blurb has been up for well over a month and was, as I recall, a TFA/R. We are anxious to have edits prior to the TFA day since dying has become inactive. Less so on the day.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I can understand why you do not want to be bothered with approving copy edits while you are asleep. But why do you object to others copy editing on the day to improve weaknesses in the wording? Surely that is what happens generally in Wikipedia: we don't normally seek previous editors' agreement before editing an article. And in the special case of the TFA blurb on the day your text has the added protection that only an administrator can tinker with it. Today provides good examples of why it is not in the interests of Wikipedia that you have this possessive attitude to the wording. Or have there really been many cases of edits on the day being detrimental? JMCHutchinson (talk) 11:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. I can understand the desire to have things finalised before go-live day, but this is a volunteer project and we all have limited resource available. Personally I'm open about the fact that I don't have time to check every day's TFA blurb in advance, particularly as I'm heavily involved with POTD and DYK already... and for the most part I wouldn't really need to anyway, you guys do a great job at TFAR and improvements are rarely suggested. But occasionally prose points become clear on the day that weren't spotted in advance, and are raised here at ERRORS. In my view, edits that respond to those issues, as above, fairly clearly made the text better and gave readers a better experience, and that's the most important thing we're supposed to be striving for rather than due process or who exactly WP:OWNs the TFA content. As for "editing through protection", which was raised last time we discussed this, the reason for main-page content being only editable by admins is not because the content is sacrosanct but merely to preserve the reputation of Wikipedia and ensure that vandalism doesn't affect our most viewed page. As such, I don't think that protection supersedes the principle that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. And if you're not available at all times of the day that's all the more reason to allow improvements to be made by others through the day IMHO.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:58, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

We can't stop you from editing the TFA blurb, and we don't. I don't think we've ever reverted a change, I've massaged a few that were a bit off or that (as happens a lot) took us over the 1,025 character limit that not everyone who edits the TFA seems to be aware of or able to ascertain. But what we can is make clear our consistent view that the TFA should remain stable throughout the day, absent errors in it, and that WP:ERRORS is named that for a reason. The community has approved each of us to be responsible for TFA as a coordinator, and I'm afraid we tend to be a little hands-on when it comes to that and want to see changes pass across our desk, so to speak. Wehwalt (talk) 12:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Wehwalt for explaining something of your rationale, but can you please expand on why you all think that stability on the day of display is important per se? Perhaps I am not recognising a difficulty. Changes to the wording of other parts of the main page occur routinely; sometimes the original creator disagrees with the change, but I would say that this is rather uncommon and mostly there is agreement that the improvements are worthwhile. JMCHutchinson (talk) 18:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure I'd agree with the premise of that. I see requests often acted upon within minutes. There's hardly time for consensus-building there. Notably, hardly ever is the FAC nominator, who has put in a great deal of work (far more than the other main page processes) pinged to the discussion. They certainly weren't here. I'd personally think that their views, as the person who probably knows the subject matter best of all, is relevant. Wehwalt (talk) 19:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

It is a fair point that the FAC nominator's knowledge is desirable concerning errors of fact and deficiencies in referencing, but no special knowledge of the subject matter is necessary to recognise that some copy edits are improvements, for instance if a change of punctuation or wording clarifies the meaning. In one of today's examples, we can all recognise that "evidence proposes" is nonsensical. JMCHutchinson (talk) 22:06, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

As you wish. But it costs nothing to be courteous and ping them. At this point, we're more or less done with today and we've survived another day with nothing terrible happening, which is what we all want to see. So I'm grateful for what you've said and have taken it on board and I hope those who choose to edit the TFA blurb take ours on board too. Wehwalt (talk) 22:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point, Wehwalt. I'll make that part of my operating procedures. Schwede66 23:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

I've added a couple of tags to Cora Babbitt Johnson; one of the sources for the hook fact is unreliable (BA thesis) and the other doesn't support the claim (Johnson didn't sway Gunderson, he was against the project from the beginning; see Fife pp. 31, 48, 54). Sojourner in the earth (talk) 04:44, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Looking into this; in the meantime, ping to Borg Axoim (welcome!), Launchballer, LordPeterII (welcome back!), AirshipJungleman29, and Amakuru. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:31, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

pulled, provisionally, while this gets sorted out. This is quite perplexing; Merritt 2024 cites Fite 1952, p. 66, for the claim, but the Open Library version of Fite 1952 linked from our article makes no mention of anything of the kind. Neither Gunderson nor Johnson are mentioned on p. 66 of this version, and I don't see a line from the book anywhere that would support this claim. On the contrary, it does seem that Gunderson was against the carving even when he signed the bill. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:49, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, apologies guys - I thought I'd done a thorough job on this set, after a bit of a blood bath last time around, but this one slipped under the radar. Pulling seems sensible for now, since we can't verify the claim.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

all good, happens- gonna start putting more effort into disemboweling hooks before readers see them, in addition to ERRORS. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:07, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Next DYK

Earlier on today, The Times published an interview which contradicts my David Fishwick hook. I think this should be delayed.--Launchballer 17:53, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

@DYK admins: Apologies for the short notice, but this needs to be pulled as inaccurate urgently.--Launchballer 21:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

on mobile, can't get this right now – anyone else got it? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Done. Queue 4 is going live in about 90 150 minutes, so I'm inclined to just let it run one hook short of a full deck. RoySmith (talk) 21:28, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't have time right now to do all the cleanup, so I'll leave it to somebody else to unpromote the nom, etc. RoySmith (talk) 21:29, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

reopened :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 22:06, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I found that source completely by accident and could not have known it would be published. (For what it's worth, the only other English bio in prep, Jude Law, I would not have promoted as I would have wanted the WP:CLUMPs and single-sentence WP:PARAGRAPHs remedied, and I'd want confirmation that apumone.com copied us and not the other way round. A bit too much work to spring on someone with less than an hour and a half on the clock, so yeah, let's roll with eight.)--Launchballer 22:34, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Next-but-one DYK

In the first hook, the "-ever" in "youngest-ever" is unnecessary in this context. Primergrey (talk) 16:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with this. Youngest could mean at that Olympics, so the "-ever" adds clarity.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:14, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

In the fifth hook, "Queen Saw Omma" should have a comma before and after. Primergrey (talk) 16:27, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done  — Amakuru (talk) 22:14, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(June 21, today)

Monday's FL

(June 24)

Errors in the summary of the featured picture

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.

Any other Main Page errors

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