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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

• I uploaded a cropped version of the image featured in the blurb, which looks better in my opinion. Does anybody know which page to purge to make that one display instead?--NØ 15:54, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

  Your cropped one is showing to me now, the one with little of the red at the bottom? Stephen 01:52, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Next DYK

• Q2, 6th hook, "that Planting a Rainbow has been..." Didn't that hook already appear on 23 December? Or, did it get pulled? JennyOz (talk) 11:11, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

This looks like an error

Promoted to Prep 2 here on 18 December

Swapped to Queue 6 here on 20 December by Crisco 1492 but not removed from Prep 2 TSventon (talk) 11:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(December 27)

Monday's FL

(December 30)

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

"Mian Page" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Mian Page has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 December 2 § Mian Page until a consensus is reached. Ca ^{talk to me!} 01:18, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Add number of editors in the topmost banner

I suggest this addition for the following reasons:

• It encourages people to become editors via argumentum ad populum.
• It is a interesting fact about the scale of Wikipedia
• It dispels reoccuring myth that only 100 or so admins edit Wikipedia
• It demonstrates the motto "anyone can edit".

I suggest formatting it like this:

119,004 active editors · 6,929,695 articles in English

Ca ^{talk to me!} 00:50, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

• I strongly support this addition. Cremastra ‹ u — c › 00:34, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
• "100 or so admins edit Wikipedia" factoid actualy just statistical error. average admin does not edit Wikipedia. Sockpuppets Georg, who lives in cave & passes RfA 10 times each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
  But yes, this seems like a great idea! -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 01:24, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
• I shall lend my support as I like this idea. It ties in well with the post on social media by the Wikimedia Foundation (earlier today, yesterday?) about "Wikipedia in numbers". Schwede66 09:54, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support - and maybe also add a edit count? Something like this might work:
  1,260,406,106 total edits · 119,004 active editors · 6,929,695 articles in English
  '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 09:59, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
• I can't see any downside of adding the number of active editors, which is an impressive number given that the count is just for the last month. The number of edits seems a bit meaningless since it is a huge number that is hard to grasp and since what constitutes an edit is so variable. JMCHutchinson (talk) 09:02, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
• Also support this. It's a minor but potentially quite impactful addition. J947 ‡ ^edits 09:08, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
• Good idea; I like the model that CanonNi proposes above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:03, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
• I like Ca's suggestion of just including the number of editors. I'm not super keen on adding the number of edits as it is fairly meaningless to most casual visitors. Also, it will always be off because of caching (and I don't want us to get useless reports of "I made an edit but the number didn't go up!"). —Kusma (talk) 17:08, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

  Very good point, Kusma, about useless reports. Schwede66 18:08, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

• The interpunct might need to be replaced with a line break on mobile devices, for aesthetic reasons. Ca ^{talk to me!} 10:38, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe just a comma to separate them. Stephen 11:01, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

  Personally, I think a comma would be out-of-place since this is not a list. Ca ^{talk to me!} 11:08, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

  It’s a list of two counts Stephen 11:43, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Id support. Maybe something somewhere which explains what active means. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The wikilink to Special:Statistics already provides an explanation. Ca ^{talk to me!} 13:12, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I dunno about other people, but because the link is the amount of people, I'd expect the link to be to the list of people. If it were "active editors" that was linked, I would click it to find out what "active meant". Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The number of articles link also goes to Special:Statistics, though. – Joe (talk) 12:17, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's also a bit dumb. Maybe if we linked both the term and the amount to the same link. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:45, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

How about linking the number of active editors to Wikipedia:Wikipedians, where it is explained? Ca ^{talk to me!} 12:05, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good idea. I would but the editors after the number of articles, though – best to lead with the bigger number. – Joe (talk) 12:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
• This appears to be WP:BIKESHED problem; I believe it would be best if we went ahead with the original formatting and discuss the minute details later. Ca ^{talk to me!} 15:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I never said it was a problem, just a suggestion. – Joe (talk) 15:35, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry, I didn't mean to reply to you in particular. I've changed the indentation level. Ca ^{talk to me!} 15:45, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

• Displaying the 'active editors' variable significantly discounts all of prior editors associated with those millions of articles being discussed in the same line. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:57, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I suppose you could say something like, "6,925,100 articles in English written by <number of users that have made >0 undeleted mainspace edits> editors" to be maximally precise. – Joe (talk) 16:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  What I'm saying is that the 48,456,278 {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} is certainly way more than the 119,004 {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}, and that the 6,929,695 {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} certainly would not have been possible with only the later. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Advertising how many "active" users we have isn't necessarily a problem, I'm saying we shouldn't in anyway suggest that such a low number of contributors has led to the number of articles we have to casual readers, reporters, etc that would read the line. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Perhaps something like "currently maintained by X active editors"? (Which also discounts all of the many unregistered editors). — xaosflux ^Talk 16:19, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  "by over" maybe.... — xaosflux ^Talk 16:20, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Why, though? "X active editors" isn't saying that that's all the editors who've ever been. It's doing the opposite, by qualifying "active". Getting a bot to keep a tally of total editors ever, per Joe, could be a cool idea, but there's nothing misleading or incorrect about just listing active users, and it's potentially of more interest to readers. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 03:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not opposed to somehow advertising the currently active editors, just saying we should ensure that such a figure isn't associated with the total count of all articles made by a much much larger group. (As the original problem is suggesting that readers are underestimating the number of volunteers that have built Wikipedia). — xaosflux ^Talk 18:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I absolutely support this. Maybe also include the number of edits made in the current calendar day? ApteryxRainWing🐉 | Roar with me!!! | My contributions 18:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Better would be in the last 24 hours, especially as most readers will not know when Wikipedia's midnight is. Certainly better than a count of all edits since Wikipedia began, although not a priority in my opinion. JMCHutchinson (talk) 09:20, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

@Jmchutchinson Well, Jimmy Wales lives in the Carolinas so it could reset at midnight Eastern. Although last 24 hours works as well ApteryxRainWing🐉 | Roar with me!!! | My contributions 18:13, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Thinking it about it a bit more, maybe the preceding calendar day ("yesterday") would be computationally easier. We certainly don't want a figure that increases from 0 each day, and it may be undesirable to have one that fluctuates minute to minute. Instead maybe consider over the last week up to and including yesterday, to iron out variation over the weekly cycle. JMCHutchinson (talk) 14:17, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't see the point in this, or the relevance of this number to readers. It might make sense on a page intended to be viewed only by editors, but the Main Page is for readers. None of the bullet points are convincing e.g. I've never heard anyone suggest that there are only 100 editors. It's a only minor bit of clutter but would serve no useful purpose. Besides, it's not clear what constitutes an 'active' editor - the very different numbers quoted above suggest this could be seriously misleading. Modest Genius ^talk 20:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Special:Statistics, where the number comes from, defines it as "any editor that has performed an action in last 30 days", which appears to include IP editors as well. Ca ^{talk to me!} 23:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  It is labeled Active registered users - of which IP editors are not. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:23, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for the correction; when the language is set to Spanish, it just reads "active editors". I wonder if it is possible to get a count of all editors, including IP editors. Ca ^{talk to me!} 02:52, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

  A single editor could have many IP's and a single IP could have many editors. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, that was a problem I imagined; though I do not want to discredit the work of IP editors, they are hard to keep track. Ca ^{talk to me!} 01:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

• I suggested this idea back on December 8 at the VPR[1], so yes I would support it. Some1 (talk) 03:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Next steps

I see a broad consensus for including the number of active editors, but there seem to be a lot of discussion on the finer details, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Should I make a RfC for this? Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, most of us want the number of edits/active editors in the banner, but an RFC might help figure out the smaller details we keep arguing about Apteryx!🐉 | Roar with me!!! 🗨🐲 14:43, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Informal RfC

Five questions to decide on the formatting. Note that this doesn't preclude any further changes in the future.

Which figures should be added to the current text?

1. Active editors (original proposal)
2. Active editors and total edit count
3. Active editors and edit count in last 24 hours(requires a bot to continuously update the figure)

Which symbol should be used as the separator?

1. Use interpunct (·) (original proposal)
2. Use comma

Which symbol should be used as the separator on mobile skins? =

1. Use line break
2. Use comma

How should it be ordered?

1. Smaller number(s) first (original proposal)
2. Bigger number(s) first

Wikilinks?

1. Wikilink all of the numbers to Special:Statistics (original proposal)
2. Wikilink only the first number to Special:Statistics
3. Wikilink "active editor" to Special:Statistics

Ca ^{talk to me!} 12:27, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

If a bot is difficult or resource hungry, an edit count for yesterday (preceding calendar day) would serve the same purpose as a count in the last 24 h. JMCHutchinson (talk) 08:51, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

From a maintenance and server load perspective, a bot updating daily is no different than a bot updating every minute (i.e., just a line of code's difference and resource usage that rounds down to 0). -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 05:30, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

@Ca Do you expect people to respond here with their opinions on these 5 issues? Or is this just a draft for a forthcoming formal RfC?

If you plan on having another, better-publicized RfC, I'd recommend relisting the original question Should this be added at all?; the original consensus for this had less than 10 editors. [Personally, I think it's a great idea. But all changes to Wikipedia face incredible opposition, so a stronger consensus would be helpful in overcoming that.] ypn^2 04:31, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I should have been more clear, but yes, I was expecting people to give their opinions. However, I am waiting before pinging everyone to see if anyone have any more suggestions for the questions. I count 13 people who support the proposal and one who explicitly opposed it; I feel that a RfC is going to have the same consensus for inclusion. Ca ^{talk to me!} 05:49, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

So perhaps you could split the five questions into separate subheadings, to allow for clearer discussion of each issue? ypn^2 16:49, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Good idea Ca ^{talk to me!} 07:39, 25 December 2024 (UTC)