Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page

The Selected Articles section on the Main Page has several purposes, all of which (we hope) support the central purpose of Wikipedia--making a great encyclopedia. The section links to entries of timely interest that are (and this is crucial) nonetheless encyclopedia articles, not news articles.

Wikipedia isn't an online newspaper; but many Wikipedians are motivated to create and edit entries of timely interest, and because Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, it does a much better job with entries of timely interest (or recent events of historical import) than a dead-tree encyclopedia.

(A historical note: the section began with the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack entries put up within minutes of the attacks. The entries led to a massive infusion of interest in the project.)

Selected Articles

In the news: Václav Havel - Shuttle Columbia - Richard Reid - Super Bowl XXXVII - SQL worm Recent deaths: The crew of STS-107 - Lord Younger - Lord Dacre - Gianni Agnelli - Bill Mauldin Ongoing events: Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Plan to invade Iraq - War on Terrorism - North Korea Historical anniversaries: Battle of Stalingrad - Explorer 1 - Native American - Nauru - Guy Fawkes - Pan Am flight 103 - Charles I - Gandhi - Adolf Hitler - The Beatles - Bloody Sunday - Vietnam War

Table of contents 1 adding links 2 Get a link added 3 criteria for inclusion on Main Page 3.1 types of entries that are included 4 Example: 4.1 October 17, 2002 4.2 October 16, 2002

adding links

Anyone with sysop access can edit the Main Page and update the Selected Articles section. This may be the most glamorous reason to get sysop access, which is encouraged for regular Wikipedians.

Wikipedia talk:Selected Articles on the Main Page can be used to suggest links, though the criteria below should make the process relatively automatic.

Get a link added

This is a quick-and-dirty summary of the criteria listed below. To get an entry listed on the Main Page, make sure it's a good entry and it isn't already listed appropriately in Current events (for In the news:...), Recent deaths (for Recent deaths:...), Background articles for ongoing events (for Ongoing events:...), or a recent day page (for Historical anniversaries:..).

criteria for inclusion on Main Page

The most important rule is to use good judgment. If an event of collosal and staggering importance happens, even if a great entry hasn't been written on it, then it would be reasonable to add a link. Most of the time, the following informal but rigorous criteria should help take care of the section.

These criteria are informal and malleable. They do not represent, as of the current writing (October 2002), a formal consensus on how to handle the section. They are little more than an attempt to organize current practice into some degree of objective standards. (See talk to get the back story.)

Current informal criteria for what gets put in the Selected Articles section on the Main Page:

1. All links appearing in section should first be included on corresponding news/deaths/events/anniversaries page
2. All links appearing in this section should go to non-stub entries (greater than 500 chars)
3. No more entries per line than can be seen on a computer monitor with standard resolution and font size without wrapping, for a total of no more than about 20 entries. See MainPage screenshot 800x600.jpg for an example.

types of entries that are included

The links are separated into four categories:

In the news: these should be the five or six recent full entries that are linked from the Current events timeline. See below for an example. Criteria for listing on the Main Page:

1. be listed on the current events page
2. the current event needs to be important enough to warrent updating corresponding article
3. the article must be updated to reflect the new information (but remember: Wikipedia isn't a news report)

Recent deaths: simply, famous people who have died within the last week or so that have updated articles written for the person.

Ongoing events: these entries, which must be ongoing issues or events, should match (most of) three criteria:

1. be listed on Background articles for ongoing events, with links to related articles
2. be listed up top of Current events page
3. be the category of current events that have happened within the last week

Historical anniversaries: these entries are of events that occurred at some point in history on or near the current day of the year. The criteria for inclusion on the Main Page is rather subjective due to the fact that any given day of the year can have a great many historical anniversaries worthy of listing. So relative article quality along with the mix of topics already listed are often deciding factors. Criteria for inclusion on the Main Page:

1. the article needs to be listed in the Events: section of its corresponding day of the year article
2. the article needs to be of moderate to great historical significance (relative to the other historical events that occurred on or about the same day of the year).
3. the historical event needs to be important enough to be included in the article
4. the article needs to be updated to clearly state the event and the exact day it occurred (with the day and year linked).

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Example:

October 17, 2002 astronomy: There is further evidence for the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. The object Sagittarius A has now been identified as the black hole at the galactic center by a team led by Rainer Schödel[?] of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics[?], who observed the behavior of the star S2[?] which is near Sagittarius A. U.S. officials announce the existence of a clandestine North Korea nuclear weapons program, admitted to by North Korean officials. October 16, 2002 Politics of the Netherlands: the first Balkenende cabinet resigns. Because of the constant internal fighting in the new party LPF, the other two governing parties, CDA and VVD decided that continuing the coalition was impossible. It seems almost certain that there will be new elections, possibly as early as December.

the In the news links would be Sagittarius A, North Korea nuclear weapons program, and first Balkenende cabinet, as long as those entries are written to some reasonable degree