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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

Grammar: It's the RFAA. So "in RAAF's history" should be either "in the RAAF's history" or (better) "in RAAF history". --2A04:4A43:909F:FC64:B8F4:5937:A1E5:6A78 (talk) 00:26, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

As the main editor of the article, I fully agree with the OP -- either option they suggest is better than the way it is now. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:29, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Done, the latter suggestion. Stephen 04:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors with "In the news"

"Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah (pictured) wins the Namibian general election."

How does a person win a general election? Surely her party has won the general election and she has won the presidential election? - Dumelow (talk) 18:31, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Does Namibia have a particular meaning? I don't think general election is limited in that way, at least not in all variations of English. Here, it simply means a regular election where the candidates stand for office. (In the United States, it is primarily contrasted with a primary election) Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:00, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

In parliamentary or semi-presidential systems, a general election means all the seats that are up for grabs, not just the presidential position. In the Namibia system, the preidential election is held at the same time as the parliamentary elections, which is run by the parties. I don't think it's accurate to say that the successful presidential candidate has won the general election, because there are all the other seats in play as well. Analogies to the US election system are not helpful here. If a US presidential candidate is successful, but the candidate's parties don't win majorities in the House and the Senate, would you say that the candidate won the general election? They won the general election for president, which is different from the general election for the House and the Senate seats. I think it would be better to say that "Nandi-Ndaitwah won the Namibia presidential election". Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:21, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

In the United States “general election” is the term used to differentiate from a primary election. It’s the term we use to clarify that is not an election solely within a single political party. So yes we would say the president won the general election even if the president’s party overall lost seats in the legislature. That’s American English.4meter4 (talk) 20:37, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure, let's use American election terminology for all elections around the world, and not try to reflect usage in other countries or systems. Rule Americana. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 20:50, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I think 4 was answering your question, 'would you say' and the answer was, yes. (Although, it would also differentiate from a special election). I was asking what they say in Namibia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Would it be a problem if we say she won the presidential election, while still linking to the general election article? Howard the Duck (talk) 01:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(December 13)

Monday's FL

(December 9)

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.

General discussion

Today's featured story . . . a public service?

I know nothing about the process by which Today's Featured Article is selected, but I have to ask--is today's selection purely coincidental, or is designed to help clarify things for people unfamilar with the terminology in this story in today's news? If so, it kind of seems to be in bad taste, but, meh . . . HuskyHuskie (talk) 18:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

purely coincidental. GB fan 18:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

• Considering the article was scheduled almost two weeks ago, purely coincidental. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed it was - and I must admit that the possibility of a link between the two would not even have occurred to me had it not been raised here. Bencherlite^Talk 14:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

#5 website source?

So, saw this year's donation drive ad, and just had to wonder, what is the basis of Wikipedia being the #5 website? Alexa lists it as #7: http://www.alexa.com/topsites

Even wikipedia it's self cites it at #6, based on outdated Alexa info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.3.38 (talk • contribs) 09:11, 9 July 2013‎ (UTC)

The ranking is based on data from comScore. Pcoombe (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Lol, cherry-picking sources wikipedia seems to be.--85.211.117.11 (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Not really. comScore are a major provider of such analytics, used by many companies and organizations. They donated access to their data a few years ago, and the Wikimedia Foundation has consistently used it for measuring reach since then. m:User:Stu/comScore data on Wikimedia is a little old, but has good information. Pcoombe (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

For what it is worth, Alexa data has about the same level of reliability as Nielsen ratings, for similar reasons. - Tenebris 04:15, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Separatist propaganda

I see that according to whoever writes the stuff on the Main Page, Lac-Mégantic is only located in Quebec, and Canada is not mentioned.

Why are you using a tragedy to promote the Quebec separatist agenda? This is the kind of stuff that I unfortunately expect from the French Wikipedia (which has always had a terrible separatist POV-pushing problem), but I thought the English Wikipedia was somewhat better regarding this kind of stuff. 198.168.27.221 (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Doubt that the editor who wrote the blurb has any interest in Quebec nationalism. It would be wise to assume good faith and not read into things too much. --Somchai Sun (talk) 20:07, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is written down anywhere, but geographic locations in the U.S. and Canada are disambiguated only by the U.S. states and Canadian provinces they are in, and don't usually include "Canada" or "U.S." in the descriptions. We have thousands of examples to choose from, none involving this, and it has nothing to to with Quebec Separatism. It's just sort of the way things are done. There's no need to see spooks here: there's no overt or covert attempt to make any political statement. --Jayron32 20:33, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

While that's the case for article titles, we've never had clear consensus on whether to follow the practice for ITN and this tends to be fairly controversial whenever it comes up. That said, the most common complain is US bias, not Quebec or whatever state separatism. Nil Einne (talk) 22:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

From my experience, U.S. is always listed after American entries, so the OP does sort of have a point. Hot Stop talk-contribs 01:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, I've been going through every addition which included U.S. or Canada place names. The previous one was the West, Texas fertilizer explosion, which does not mention U.S.: [1]. Before that one, it was the Newton, Connecticut school shooting. Again no "U.S.": [2]. The one before that was Hurricane Sandy's landfall, south of Atlantic City, New Jersey, again with no "U.S.": [3]. There were no more blurbs in the past year that have mentioned a U.S. or Canadian placename overtly, so I've stopped looking, but from this small sample, we've not, in the past year, every used a disambiguator other than state or province, when necessary. --Jayron32 02:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

From just a week ago "Nineteen firefighters are killed battling a wildfire in the U.S. state of Arizona." [4] Hot Stop talk-contribs 02:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

We're discussing the use of the phrasing "Locality, Division" not merely any mention of U.S. states or Canadian provinces. The OP is objecting about the formulation "Locality, Division" as opposed to "Locality, Country" or "Locality, Division, Country". Yes, we do call U.S. states U.S. states, but what we don't do is disambiguate localities by the country in these cases. At least, we've not done it once in the past year. And I don't have another 45-60 minutes to search item-by-item through July 2011-July 2012 for the year before that, but I don't ever remember using the "Locality, Division, Country" or "Locality, Country" for U.S. or Canadian placenames. I've you want to search and prove me wrong, be my guest. --Jayron32 02:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, the same item was originally posted as "Yarnell, United States" [5] Hot Stop talk-contribs 02:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. You can win today. --Jayron32 02:38, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I feel I should defend the Yarnell blurb, as I proposed it and tweaked it. See the full discussion here [6]. I don't propose much at ITN/C so wasn't thinking in terms of agreed policy but rather simply trying to write a neutral blurb that worked for the story. You'll see in the comments that ThaddeusB also picked up on my linking of the country name. CaptRik (talk) 07:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The best comparison would be June 21st's "75,000 people are evacuated from their homes during flooding in Calgary, Alberta, Canada", which would indicate the sortof OP has a point - but reading into it an "agenda" is definitely an overreaction. Any indication that User:Thryduulf (the nominator) is a Quebec nationalist? His user page does not load for me. Anyway, it seems likely that Quebec has more notability than other provinces, in the same way that most people don't need to be told where Catalonia is (whereas Asturias would probably need a mention of Spain for most people to place it) 64.201.173.145 (talk) 11:54, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikinews link

What happened to the Wikinews link in the news section? I noticed that it's missing because I usually follow it to go to Wikinews after checking the Wikipedia main page. Ragettho (talk) 03:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

It was removed, per this RFC. - Evad37 (talk) 03:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Just scroll down to the sister-projects section there's a large icon with an adjacent link to en.WN. Tony (talk) 05:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)