Talk:Main Page/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Wikipedia.com no longer responds on the internet - is anyone aware of that?

Works fine now, I dunno when you wrote that. --Brion 10:56 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

"We started in January 2001 and already have over 27,748 articles". Let me take a wild guess: at the time I read this, we had 27,749 articles?

Either name the exact number, or use a number that is easier to the eye when you give an estimate: "We [...] already have 27,748 articles" or "We [...] already have over 27,500 articles".--branko

I agree, the current wording is odd. --maveric149

Changed. the code said { { NUMBEROFARTICLES } } articles--without the spaces between the { {, so it's not something I could convert into an estimate. Koyaanis Qatsi, Sunday, March 31, 2002

The link "Technology Review" (almost at the end of the main page) does not work ("File not found") --Tobias Hövekamp

I've removed it. If someone can find it's new location (if any), it was formerly " - MIT's Technology Review". Brion VIBBER, Thursday, April 11, 2002

They just moved it, here: http://www.techreview.com/articles/heim090401.asp

Can we add, under "Culture", a category such as "Craftwork"? (I'd say Craft, but that's ambiguous with naval craft and the like.) There are things like metalwork and beadwork which deserve (I think) a top-level category of their own. -- April

• Sounds like a winner to me. Work it into existence with your fingers unless others disagree. Rgamble
• Might also consider adding a crosslink to craftwork from the technology index if it includes generic commercial/industrial/economic hand production such as is still practiced in less industrialized/automated countries. Alternatively specialized articles in both places with crosslinks. user:mirwin  
  • Hm. Which is better: "craftwork" or "handicraft"? It occurs to me that the latter has the implications of hand-crafting (i.e. simple tools), while the first could be ambiguous. -- April

I prefer workmenship....Jason t***Well, Simon... errr... Google says that handicraft when combined with the two examples you gave (metals and beads) have about an order of magnitude more hits than craftwork. (Metal and handicraft = 31,700 hits; Metal and craftwork = 2040 hits; beads and handicraft = 2890; beads and craftwork = 435). I personally know the term craftwork more (draws an image of handcrafted items like you described) but seems like handicraft is the more generally used term. --Rgamble

I think the use of double hyphens "--" to indicate a dash (punctuation) looks a bit clunky and unprofessional, as in the sentence:

...to work--with few exceptions, anyone can edit any article--copyedit...

I would prefer:

...to work - with few exceptions, anyone can edit any article - copyedit...

Or ideally:

...to work — with few exceptions, anyone can edit any article — copyedit...

which looks much better, though I'm not 100% sure it works in every browser/font. Could someone with access to the main page consider making this change? Enchanter

I sort-of agree, and I'd love to use real em dashes, but (1) I do think we have enough users of Netscape 4.X and other older browsers that — would be confusing (though after the new software is installed I'll be able to test that theory by looking at logs). And (2) as ugly as -- looks, frankly, I think - is worse. At least it's clear that--is, in fact, an em dash. And I'm old enough to remember the age of mechanical typewriters when we were all taught to use two hyphens to simulate a dash, so there's historical precedent for the way we're doing it now. Maybe the best option is to reword things to avoid the need of em dashes on the front page, and use real ones on interior pages. --LDC

I love the em dash, and I've been feeling guilty lately for putting them on pages when I'm not sure that they're readable by the vast majority of users — so (see, there's one now) I'd like to see the results of Lee's logs. But I will say that, if we stick with ASCII, then "--" is an ASCII em dash, while "-" is an ASCII en dash (or hyphen or minus sign, of course). That's the way I learned it, at least, and the way that I still write on Usenet. — Toby Bartels, (there's another one!) Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Maybe this is just silly, but: the title of Main Page is conform to the Wikipedia naming conventions; the P should be small (just like "Current events","Bug reports","Special pages", etc.). Jheijmans 07:22 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Well, the simple thing would be to create a redirect; that won't break anything, ¿will it?. Then the programmers can change the hard coded links at their leisure. — Toby 11:00 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Main Page is right in my opinion: it's a proper noun -- there can be only one Main Page, but there can be lots of recent pages, watch lists, special pages, etc. etc. -- Anon.

The Main Page, current events, bug reports, special pages are not encyclopedia articles (as are all namespaced pages) and therefore wikipedia:naming conventions do not apply. --mav

Heres a suggested edit to welcome text on front page for discussion:

Welcome to Wikipedia, a collaborative project to produce a complete encyclopedia from scratch. We started in January 2001 and already have 6,829,283 articles. We want to make over 100,000 complete articles, so let's get to work! Anyone, including you, can edit any article right now, without even having to log-in. You can copyedit, expand an article, write a little or write a lot. See the Wikipedia FAQ for information on how to edit pages and other questions.

In the Wiki spirit, feel free to edit the above suggestion with any improvements! The reasons I would like to see a change are:

• To emphasise that anyone can edit any article, right away, without logging in or anything else. The current 'with few exceptions' seems to detract from this message - it's not obvious to new readers what the 'exceptions' are and might well make them think that they have to be 'approved' in some way before they can edit an article.
• To get rid of the ugly '--' m-dashes which look like they were produced on an ancient typewriter. Enchanter 17:25 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)
  • OhKeeDoeKee. --mav 18:04 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I like the wording and agree with the intent but the front page on which that statement would rest is protected for practical reasons (although the front page is not an article per se so the wording might just work). I will put the new wording in after an hour or two and see if I get yelled at by the other sysops (which reminds me I should log a feature request to allow long-time non-sysop users the ability to edit protected pages -- there simply ain't enough of us to maintain the dozen or so protected pages and no reason why users like you shouldn't be able to edit them). --mav

Mav - I would suggest not making the change to the main page yet. I envisaged leaving it for a few days or so so that people can reach a consensus on some good wording by discussing on the talk page. Enchanter

I think the new wording (about editing articles, that is) is right on! Everybody can edit every article; that is the truth. The only thing that might be necessary is to remind people that not every page is an article. Preliminary suggestion: "(Not every page is an article -- this main page is protected, for example -- but even most of these special pages can be edited by anybody too.)" Although somebody should come up with a better word than "special page" has an technical meaning here. — Toby 13:10 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

I don't mind if you change the wording, but I will very much mind if anyone goes on a crusade to change the dashes to HTML codes--so far as I'm concerned, the simpler the better. --KQ

Agreed - we shouldn't start using the proper — while many browsers don't support it. Enchanter

Heavens no! All I see in Konqueror is a blasted question mark instead of a dash. NOTE: MS Word does this conversion automatically for you so be careful not to edit wikipedia stuff in Word and paste it into an edit window -- it will look fine in IE but will be all screwed-up in many other browsers that don't speak the non-standards compliment language MS products do. --mav

I won't guarantee that M$ does it correctly, but "—" is perfectly standards compliant, as —. I agree that there's no rush to remove "--"s, however, even if I stick "—"s in my signature. — Toby 13:10 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Minor edit -- The word "Portuguese" is mispelled on the main page as "Portugese".

This is an error in the internal string table for displaying inter-language links; I've submitted a correction. --Brion VIBBER 00:28 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Where's the content and history of the Main Page??? Jeronimo 14:10 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Gone, and the history of the page too! Appears the search engine is f%¤"ed as well. I've put up a temporary page, but could someone load up something from a database dump or something? --GayCom