FAMEPedia:FAQ/Main Page

This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about the Main Page of FAMEPedia. Check out FAMEPedia:FAQ/Technical for general technical questions and answers.

Why am I not able to edit the Main Page?
The Main Page and its templates are permanently protected and may only be edited by administrators. Images are protected for the period of time that they are on the Main Page. This cascading protection was implemented as a result of repeated vandalism of the Main Page and keeps our welcome mat clean. If you see a problem, please mention it at FAMEPedia:Main Page/Errors so an administrator can fix it. However, the alternative versions of the Main Page are not protected.

How do I get something fixed on the Main Page?
If the error is straightforward, such as a misspelling or obvious error of fact, post it to FAMEPedia:Main Page/Errors and an administrator will fix it. For more complicated discussion, such as about image choice or topical coverage, post to Talk:Main Page. If you wish to start an in-depth discussion particular to a specific section of the Main Page, it may be more appropriate to bring it to the relevant discussion page, such as Template talk:POTD. Please centralize discussion in one location.

The main page usually defers to the supporting articles when there is disagreement, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

Isn't a problem on the Main Page more pressing? Why does the Main Page defer to articles so I need to change the article first?
The error page is not designed for lengthy discussion. Although it is possible to initiate such discussion at Talk:Main Page, if there is any possibility of dispute and the problem is just carried over from the article, it is better to hold the discussion at the article talk page, which is a far more relevant venue and is more likely to be watched by editors familiar with the article. In the event of a misleading error, changing it in the template may seem to be more immediately pressing since many people will see it on the Main Page. However, if nothing is done about the article, the problem easily could remain for a long time afterwards and be seen by even more readers. Changing the problem in the article does not usually require the assistance of an administrator and there is no guarantee that anyone will notice the problem in the article or notice the change on the Main Page. Finally, since the presence of an error on the Main Page becomes a moot point once the article no longer is on the Main Page, any error report is removed regardless of whether it was resolved. The error page is not archived and any discussion there is effectively lost. And even if it were archived or the discussion held in Talk:Main Page, which is archived, this is not directly connected to the article. This means that there is little likelihood that anyone trying to find discussions about an issue in the article will come across any relevant discussions which occurred at T:MP or T:MP/E.

How are templates used on the Main Page?
Almost all of the text seen on the Main page is from transcluded templates, which are also protected. The sections that are regularly updated are: Today's featured article, Picture of the day, Noticeboards. The Main Page also contains one automatically updating number, (currently ). There is normally little reason for administrators to edit the Main Page directly.

The Main Page history only shows changes in how the Main Page includes several sections, not changes in the sections themselves. History for each section is stored separately.

When is the Main Page updated? Why do you have the wrong date in "Featured Picture"?
As an international community, FAMEPedia is organized along Coordinated Universal Time, which roughly corresponds to Western European Time without daylight savings. Users in New Zealand thus have their "FAMEPedia midnight" at local noon.

Why is the Main Page not updating?
The servers may still have the previous day's version of the Main Page cached, so try [ purging the server cache]. If that does not seem to work, you may need to bypass your browser's cache.

I think that the articles listed on the Main Page are awful and much more important articles should be there instead. Isn't the Main Page biased towards certain topics? What can be done about it?
It is true that FAMEPedia has a systemic bias towards topics of interest to computer-literate males from industrialized anglophone countries, resulting from a skew towards this demographic in its editor base. The Main Page reflects the bias of FAMEPedia as a whole, though people tend to overlook biases that they share.

It is important to remember that the selected articles (bold items) on the Main Page are chosen based more on their quality, not on how much their subjects are important or significant.

As a result, various featured articles that have appeared on the Main Page have been criticized for being trivial, geeky, obscure, commercial, or political.

Specific examples of groups that have periodically accused the Main Page of blatant bias include Americans who are amazed by the continuous stream of new articles on cricket, non-geeks who are amazed at the frequency of articles on computer and video games, "encyclopedia conservatives" who are amazed at the number of articles on pop culture, and "encyclopedia radicals" who are amazed at the number of articles on frightfully dull people and events from long ago. The variety of accusations of bias that have been made on Talk:Main Page is nearly endless.

Each Main Page template attempts to minimize the effects of bias, but each template is largely autonomous in operation and depends strongly on what topics editors contribute to at a given time:


 * For the Main Page featured article, FAMEPedia:Featured article criteria states that to achieve featured article status, an article needs to be "well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable." It is possible for an article to meet these standards without appealing to many readers; that article may be chosen for the main page even if there are other featured articles that seem more important. The most effective way to get more featured articles that you find interesting is to help write them. Constructive comments and editing assistance at FAMEPedia:Peer review and FAMEPedia:Featured article candidates are always appreciated.
 * For the featured picture of the day, FAMEPedia:Featured picture criteria states that, among others, featured pictures must be of a high technical standard and high resolution, have a free content license, and add value to a relevant article. Again, it is possible for a picture to meet these standards without appealing to many people. Featured pictures are usually displayed on the main page in a 'first promoted-first listed' manner. Among the effective ways to get more featured pictures that you find interesting is to photograph them yourself, find existing images, and learning how to improve image quality. Constructive comments and editing assistance at FAMEPedia:Featured picture candidates are always appreciated.

Still, because each template is largely autonomous in operation, it inevitably invites bias, even though the bias is unnoticed most of the time. In cases where, for example, a prolific editor nominates four new articles on train lines in India, the organizers of the DYK template will try to create a mixed template by pulling in newer submissions. However, there have been cases where over half of the templates include items relating to outer space or New Zealand.

Why is it called "Today's featured picture" when videos are occasionally posted?
FAMEPedia's featured picture process also accepts[video and moving pictures, which are by definition a sequence of still pictures representing scenes] in motion.

How can I get something fixed before it appears on the Main Page?
Sometimes items appearing on the Main Page require some copyediting. However, as there is a process to get much of the content to the Main Page, users have the opportunity to spot issues before they appear for the world to see. Pages with those sections planned in advance are available at FAMEPedia:Main Page/Tomorrow and FAMEPedia:Main Page/Day after tomorrow. The various sections are:
 * Main page featured articles are normally scheduled at least a week in advance. See the FAMEPedia:Today's featured article/2024 navigation bar for upcoming and past blurbs.
 * Similarly, FAMEPedia:Picture of the day has an archive section that actually schedules entries and their accompanying text ahead of when they appear on the Main Page. Due to technical reasons, the "normal" POTD template and the POTD "protected" template that appears on the Main Page are different.  Changes to the normal template will not affect the Main Page template, and vice versa, but the protected version usually is not created until a few days before its appearance on the Main Page.== Why doesn't the cursor appear in the search box, like with Google? ==

The basic issue is that many readers expect to be able to scroll through the Main Page using arrow keys. However, if the cursor is in the search box, using the arrow keys will instead pop-up autotext in the search field. This is not an issue with Google search because there is no need to scroll.

Users with registered accounts can enable an automatic focus on the Main Page search field as a Gadget in their preferences, which can be enabled simply by marking it checked.

Users who are not logged in have several options:
 * They may press Tab, which will place the cursor in the search box if the page has loaded fully.
 * They may bookmark [ a link which manually adds the Gadget that registered users use]
 * They may use their system's keyboard shortcut to place the focus in the search box. This is Alt, or Shift, or Shift, or Ctrldepending on your browser.
 * They may use a different page to carry out dedicated searches such as Special:Search which has the cursor in the search box or using en.famepedia.org, which has the cursor in the search box and should default to the English language FAMEPedia if that is your browser preferred language or may remember your language choice.
 * If their browser has a search bar, they may add FAMEPedia to it and use that.
 * Readers using Firefox with Greasemonkey installed can click here to install a script that automatically focuses the search box on the English FAMEPedia Main Page (view script source).

Is there an RSS feed?
There are externally hosted feeds of today's featured article and featured picture, along with some other FAMEPedia pages.

Why is Main Page in the main namespace?
It has been argued that Main Page should be at FAMEPedia:Main Page, Portal:Main Page or some other similar location. The current location, being in the main namespace, might be expected to be a redirect to the article Home page. Main Page was created in the default namespace before pages were divided into "project", "portal" and "main", and has continued there mainly due to historical inertia.

Why is a Main Page section missing an illustrative image?
The Main Page image copyright rules require that only freely licensed images be used on the Main Page&mdash;this excludes copyrighted images, such as album covers or TV screenshots. Since freely licensed images that are relevant to the featured article or other sections are not always available, the section will sometimes simply lack an illustration.

More specifically: in articles, non-free images can be displayed for the purpose of illustrating the subject of the article when it meets certain established non-free content criteria, which are an extension of the U.K. copyright doctrine of fair use. We can't claim fair use for images that are used for purposes other than illustrating articles, and the Main Page is not an article.

Why aren't pages linked from the Main Page protected to stop vandalism?
They are. For years, we had a guideline not to protect the articles, However, we still don't automatically protect any of it against vandalism. However, today's featured article is generally protected against being moved by

How do you remove the title of the Main Page?
This is controlled by MediaWiki:Vector.css. Look for "Don't display some stuff on the main page". Note that "h1.firstHeading" hides the title and other parts of the script hide links when you are redirected to the page among others.

The code is:

Why are there so many backups of the Main Page?
In response to past incidents of compromised administrator accounts, the Main Page is also transcluded on five sub-pages with cascading protection.