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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)

Friday's FA

The text begins with "The École Polytechnique massacre". If you mouse over that link without clicking, either here or in the article, it says "French-language text". That is wrong. Mousing over normally tells you what article you will get if you click. But clicking the link doesn't give you an article about French-language text, nor does it give you an article written in French.

In edit mode, you'll see this is caused by template:lang, which is used 3 times. According to template:lang#Links, the lang template isn't even working when it's inside a wikilink like that, so you wouldn't lose anything by removing the lang links. The fix suggested at Template:Lang#Links doesn't seem to apply because the examples are entire links in another language, but here the word "massacre" is English. So unless someone has a better idea, I could just remove the lang templates that aren't working anyway. Art LaPella (talk) 07:03, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Or yuo could not. @Art LaPella:, please do not change featured content unilaterally. Paging relevant parties: @FAC coordinators: and @TFA coordinators . SerialNumber54129 10:00, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows, I have often made minor unilateral changes to featured articles and blurbs without objection. Even when I ask for attention, I don't always get it. In this case I asked, and I'm happy to leave this issue for others. Art LaPella (talk) 18:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

• I've changed from '''[[École Polytechnique massacre|{{Lang|fr|École Polytechnique|italic=no}} massacre]]''' to '''{{Lang|fr|[[École Polytechnique massacre]]|italic=no}}''' (thus École Polytechnique massacre to École Polytechnique massacre) which gets rid of the problem. This is possibly temporarily unless someone finds a better way; as "massacre" is a cognate from the French this isn't problematic, per se. - SchroCat (talk) 10:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

  This is a browser problem, not a content one, and that change has introduced an error. "massacre" should not be treated as a French word because, in this instance, it's English. The target article's lead has '''{{Lang|fr|École Polytechnique|italic=no}} massacre''' which, being syntactically and grammatically correct, should be used here: École Polytechnique massacre. Bazza 7 (talk) 10:52, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

  Read the opening comment and come up with something that doesn't cause the problems that began the thread. - SchroCat (talk) 11:14, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

  @SchroCat: I did read the comment, and have pointed out already that this is a problem with the reader's browser, not the content. The content generates

  <a href="/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre" title="École Polytechnique massacre"><span title="French-language text"><span lang="fr" style="font-style: normal;">École Polytechnique</span></span> massacre</a>

  The browser uses any inner-most "title" attribute to generate a tooltip; so for hovering over École Polytechnique that will be French-language text, and for hovering over massacre it will be École Polytechnique massacre.

  The tooltip functionality is not a part of the code generated. We must not be led into generating inaccurate content purely to overcome the behaviour of certain browsers.

  The simplest solution to satisfy this non-error is to remove the language tag from around the establishment's shortened name which was also its shortened name in Canadian English at the time of the event; so: '''[[École Polytechnique massacre]]''' giving École Polytechnique massacre. Bazza 7 (talk) 14:17, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

  This is not a “browser problem”. The WHATWG specification of the title attribute says that “The title attribute represents advisory information for the element, such as would be appropriate for a tooltip” and defines an order of precedence for advisory information such that any higher-level elements are ignored. If “French-language text” is not the most relevant advisory information for the text, it should not be in the title attribute. 216.147.127.204 (talk) 03:10, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Art LaPella, that is Friday's (6 Dec) TFA not Wednesday's? JennyOz (talk) 13:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes which is the correct date. Secretlondon (talk) 13:31, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Friday 6 December. - SchroCat (talk) 14:16, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Bazza_7 is correct about this being a browser issue. What should probably be done is to modify the template concerned so that it is possible to supress the title attribute, by writing, say, ''[[École Polytechnique massacre|{{Lang|fr|École Polytechnique|italic=no|title=no}} massacre]]''; or possibly better still by simply removing the title attribute completely. I have raised this on the template's talk page; see Template talk:Lang#Issue with use in links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:27, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Also noting that this is not an issue for users of the WP:Navigation popups tool, so the fix might be better done in whatever (Wikipedia) tool is failing to show the article preview popup. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:33, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Your suggestion of ''[[École Polytechnique massacre|{{Lang|fr|École Polytechnique|italic=no|title=no}} massacre]]'' shows as the following error message for me:

[[École Polytechnique massacre|[École Polytechnique] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |title= (help) massacre]]

(for those who few for who this renders properly, lucky you, but the rest of us are seeing the multi-coloured ''[[École Polytechnique massacre|[École Polytechnique] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |title= (help) massacre]]'')

The template guidance specifically says not to use this format because it doesn't work on talk and some other pages (as seen above); it's not something you want to try out on TFA blurb on the main page. - SchroCat (talk) 09:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@SchroCat: I suggested earlier that the language tag may not be needed for this establishment name, so a simple '''[[École Polytechnique massacre]]''', giving École Polytechnique massacre will do. Bazza 7 (talk) 13:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't know who wrote the 'advice' at Template:Lang § Links but it is not very correct. This link:

[[École Polytechnique massacre|{{Lang|fr|École Polytechnique|italic=no}} massacre]]

works here in the Wikipedia namespace because {{lang}} does not categorize outside of mainspace. As written, the link will not work on main page because in mainspace, {{lang}} categorizes:

[[École Polytechnique massacre|<span title="French-language text"><span lang="fr" style="font-style: normal;">École Polytechnique</span></span>[[Category:Articles containing French-language text]] massacre]]

[[École Polytechnique massacre|École Polytechnique massacre]]

This is why {{lang}} has |nocat=yes. Use that parameter to suppress the category link in mainspace.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:27, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: The issue is not about categorisation, but tooltips vs. popups. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Sigh. I was responding to Editor SchroCat's comment: The template guidance specifically says not to use this format because it doesn't work on talk and some other pages. In fact it does work on talk and ... other pages as evidenced in the OP. As I explained, it will not work if included as-is on main page. If the {{lang}} template is retained, |nocat=yes is your friend.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth (I suck at writing documentation – it is known), I have rewritten Template:Lang § Links.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:47, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

"Your suggestion ... shows as the following error message..." I suggested that "What should probably be done is to modify the template" to allow such usage; not that it is possible at the moment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:34, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

Piri Reis

• I don't mean to be rude or anything, but how does "that Piri Reis did not map Antarctica in the sixteenth century?" meet WP:DYKINT? I've never heard of Reis, and based on the lede of the article that isn't even what he's known for, letalone are his "Antartic travels" even mentioned in the lede. It's sort of like saying "that Donald Trump isn't Romanian?" E_F⁵ 01:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Well if nothing else it was violating MOS:EMPH, but I've changed the italics to <em>...</em> (reads the same visually, but the distinction matters for screenreaders). -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 01:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks and I am fine with the change but the "em" and "i" tags still sound the same on NVDA and VoiceOver.[1] There's probably some option in NVDA to turn it back on, but emphasis has been turned off by default since late 2015.[2] Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  @EF5 The article should not emphasize this too much, as it's a WP:FRINGE belief, but the idea that his 1513 world map depicts Antarctica is pretty widespread. Try searching around for "Piri Reis map". Outside of Turkey, this may actually be the thing he is most well-known for. Right now, the last paragraph in "Legacy" covers it, and the fringe theories are covered in somewhat greater detail at Piri Reis map. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 02:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Perhaps adding a few words of explanation such as "... as some people previously believed" would provide better context? Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:29, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Or "as Charles Hapgood previously claimed"? Also, the nomination has an alt hook about the Grenada War. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 05:40, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Came here to say what the OP already said. Srnec (talk) 05:25, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  I found it interesting enough to get me to click; the hook is to make the reader wonder why it would be interesting that a mapmaker didn't make a map. The problem here, I think, is in the article, which rather buries the lead by not mentioning it, well, in the lead. It's right that the article shouldn't overemphasize a misconception, but if Piri Reis is popularly best known (though not academically known) for supposedly mapping Antarctica (even though he didn't really), and if secondary sources cover and analyze that misconception, should that (and the fact that it's erroneous) be mentioned in the lead maybe? But that's a question and possible problem of the article, not of the hook. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 08:37, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• Apart from all the above, it's also written rather poorly: "... that Piri Reis did not map Antarctica in the sixteenth century?" Oh, so when did he map it then? Perhaps "that sixteenth-century cartographer Piri Reis did not map Antarctica" would at least get rid of this aspect. Fram (talk) 09:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

IMO the meaning is clear enough. And if somebody has doubts, they can relieve them by looking at the article.

Other than that, I agree that the point should have been expanded on in the article - encouraging readers to click on an article only to find out no more about it than what was already extant in the hook is doing the readership a disservice IMO - but it's too late to rectify an issue like that. Pity, because it's actually a debate with a pretty interesting history, as our own dedicated article on the topic, Piri Reis map, demonstrates. Gatoclass (talk) 17:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

James Smart

• ... that Chief Constable James Smart flooded police courts with over 17,000 cases to prove how impractical it was for home owners to light their own stairs?

This hook sounds weird and was queried in the nomination review without a full resolution. Looking into it, it seems that these were not stairs in ordinary homes but the communal staircases and courtyards of tenements. It was practical to light these because that's what was done. The issue was getting it organised and Smart achieved this by making it the responsibility of the police and it then became a public service. It is still managed by Glasgow City Council.

A clearer hook might be:

• ... that Chief Constable James Smart flooded police courts with over 17,000 cases of inadequate lighting of tenement staircases?

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:51, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I changed it to:

* ... that Chief Constable James Smart flooded police courts with over 17,000 cases to prove the impracticality of leaving homeowners with the responsibility for lighting stairs? Gatoclass (talk) 17:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm still not liking the word "impracticality" but the word "responsibility" helps. Today, I was sweeping leaves from the pavement (sidewalk) in front of my house. I'm not required to do this but the local council has yet to get this done and it's good exercise. In the US, I gather the residents are usually explicitly required to keep their sidewalks free from snow. This is not really a matter of practicality; it's a matter of civic duty and pitching in for the common good. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(December 6)

Monday's FL

(December 2, today)

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

Accessibility: We could so do much better

Of the five images currently in the home page only one has anything like suitable alt text.

The current alt texts are:

File:Bird notes and news (1912) (14562015579).jpg

Lord Curzon, winner of the election

File:2014 Rallye Deutschland by 2eight 8SC0443.jpg

Thierry Neuville in 2014

File:Presidente Nayib Bukele (cropped).jpg

Nayib Bukele

File:Shropshire Scotsman.jpg

The Flying Scotsman

File:Sir Winston Churchill - 19086236948.jpg

Black-and-white image of Winston Churchill standing with his left hand on his hip and his right hand resting on the back of a chair

Three of the first four simply repeat the image caption, which is redundant, while the fourth adds "in 2014", which cannot be determined from looking at the picture, and in any case belongs in the caption, if anywhere (why would a blind person need to know that, but not a sighted person?).

What needs to change for things to improve? Do we need to write clearer guidance (we have an MOS page on alt text already)? Do we need to add an explicit check to the criteria for inclusion? Something else?

I'm sure we wouldn't tolerate frequent breaches of other parts of the MOS on the home page, yet the impact of doing so for alt text is far greater, for a proportion of our users, than things like inconsistent capitalisation or curly apostrophes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:33, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Note that even the Churchill alttext isn't alttext. It appears to sighted people as a tooltip, even though the description is helpful only to the blind and annoying to others. Sighted people vastly outnumber the blind, so one might think we'd fix it for sighted people first.

Previous discussion

Art LaPella (talk) 06:11, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

<img alt="Black-and-white image of Winston Churchill standing with his left hand on his hip and his right hand resting on the back of a chair" src="<img alt="Black-and-white image of Winston Churchill standing with his left hand on his hip and his right hand resting on the back of a chair" src="... It's alt text. And no, no one with any sense would think ableist nonsense like "we'd fix it for sighted people first". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Just so you know, the redundant alt text wasn't manually set – {{main page image}} uses the caption for alt text whenever it's not given an |alt= parameter. If you think that default sn't helpful, you could propose removing it at Template talk:Main page image. jlwoodwa (talk) 04:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

It is indeed not helpful and I have made that point every time such use has been proposed (I will do so again for the template in question; thank you). However, in this case my point is that - if we are going to put images in our "shop window" - we should be extra careful about manually adding appropriate alt text. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:02, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I suspect the main problem is the volatility of main page images rotating around ~24hr. Its one thing when the image is used "permanently" in an article, but we don't give the same thought to an image that is here today, gone tomorrow. Masem (t) 12:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

This also makes me wonder why we do not have a tech approach that would automatically draw an alt text from an image description file (whether here or commons) to use as the default alt text if one is not provided in the image tag. I can't see many cases where one appropriate alt text could be written for an image that would apply in any context 99% of the time.

Because alt text is often content dependent. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

People seem to mange to do it OK on ephemeral services like social media. It's not like we don't collectively spend 100s of hours debating transient DYK hooks, for example. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § New main page section: Wikipedia tips

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § New main page section: Wikipedia tips. Ca ^{talk to me!} 07:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

"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)