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American Library Association

The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.

19th century
During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, responded to a call for a "Convention of Librarians" to be held October 4–6, 1876, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. IL At the end of the meeting, according to Edward G. Holley in his essay "ALA at 100", "the register was passed around for all to sign who wished to become charter members", making October 6, 1876, the date of the ALA's founding.

Among the 103 librarians in attendance were Justin Winsor (Boston Public Library and Harvard University), William Frederick Poole (Chicago Public Library and Newberry College), Charles Ammi Cutter (Boston Athenæum), Melvil Dewey, Charles Evans (Indianapolis Public Library) and Richard Rogers Bowker. Attendees came from as far west as Chicago and from England. The ALA was chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts. Its headquarters office is in Chicago. Another important founder was Frederick Leypoldt, publisher of Library Journal, who published the conference proceedings.

Justin Winsor was the first president of the ALA, serving from 1876 until 1885.

Many early presidents were also officers in the Bibliographical Society of America. See List of presidents of the Bibliographical Society of America.

20th century
In 1911, Theresa Elmendorf became ALA's first woman president. An analysis of the writings of the first fifteen women presidents gives more insight into the expanded role of women in the association.

During World War I the ALA Executive Board initiated by Walter Lewis Brown established the Library War Service Committee to supply books and periodicals to military personnel at home and overseas. The American Library in Paris was founded as part of this effort.

In the 1930s, library activists pressured the American Library Association to be more responsive to issues such as peace, segregation, library unions, and intellectual freedom. In 1931, the Junior Members Round Table (JMRT) was formed to provide a voice for the younger members of the ALA. The first Library Bill of Rights (LBR) was drafted by Forrest Spaulding to set a standard against censorship and was adopted by the ALA in 1939. This has been recognized as the moment defining modern librarianship as a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the right to read. ALA appointed a committee to study censorship and recommend policy after the banning of the novel The Grapes of Wrath in Kern County, California and the implementation of the Library Bill of Rights. The committee reported in 1940 that intellectual freedom and professionalism were linked and recommended a permanent committee – Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The ALA made revisions to strengthen the Library Bill of Rights in June 1948, approved the Statement on Labeling in 1951 to discourage labeling material as subversive, and adopted the Freedom to Read Statement and the Overseas Library Statement in 1953.

The ALA has worked throughout its history to define, extend, protect and advocate for equity of access to information.

In 1945 the ALA established an Office in Washington, D.C. named the National Relations Office under the direction of Paul Howard.

In 1961, the ALA took a stand regarding service to African Americans and others, advocating for equal library service for all. An amendment to the Library Bill of Rights was passed in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, religion, national origin, or political views. Some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate. In 1963, the ALA commissioned a study, Access to Public Libraries, which found direct and indirect discrimination in American libraries.

In 1967, some librarians protested against a pro-Vietnam War speech given by General Maxwell D. Taylor at the annual ALA conference in San Francisco; the former president of Sarah Lawrence College, Harold Taylor, spoke to the Middle-Atlantic Regional Library Conference about socially responsible professionalism; and less than one year later a group of librarians proposed that the ALA schedule a new round table program discussion on the social responsibilities of librarians at its annual conference in Kansas City. This group called themselves the Organizing Committee for the ALA Round Table on Social Responsibilities of Libraries. This group drew in many other under-represented groups in the ALA who lacked power, including the Congress for Change in 1969. This formation of the committee was approved in 1969 and would change its name to the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) in 1971. After its inception, the Round Table of Social Responsibilities began to press ALA leadership to address issues such as library unions, working conditions, wages, and intellectual freedom.

The Freedom to Read Foundation was founded by Judith Krug, Alexander Allain, and Carrie C Robinson and established by ALA's executive board in 1969.

The Black Caucus of the ALA and the Office for Literacy and Outreach were established in 1970.

In 1971, Barbara Gittings staffed a kissing booth at the ALA Conference underneath the banner, "Hug a Homosexual." This was the precipitating event that evolved into the Rainbow Round Table dedicated to supporting the information needs of LGBTQIA+ people.

Centennial
The American Library Association celebrated its Centennial in 1976. In commemoration the association published Libraries and the Life of the Mind in America.

The American Library Association Archives, established at the time of the Centennial, created an online exhibit which includes a history of the centennial. Clara Stanton Jones, president, Inaugural address was titled, “The First Step into ALA’s Second Century.”

1976-2000
Clara Stanton Jones was the first African American president of the ALA, serving as its acting president from April 11 to July 22 in 1976 upon the death of Allie Beth Martin and then elected president from July 22, 1976 to 1977.

In 1979 and 1991 the ALA collaborated with the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science on two White House Conferences.

In 1983 in response to the National Commission on Excellence in Education Report, A Nation at Risk, leaders in library and information science launched the project, "Libraries and the Learning Society." Librarians examined how public libraries, academic libraries, library and information science training institutions, and school library media centers could best respond to A Nation at Risk.

In June 1990, the ALA approved "Policy on Library Services to the Poor" and in 1996 the Task Force on Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty was formed to resurrect and promote the ALA guidelines on library services to the poor.

The Office for Information Technology Policy was established in 1995 to act as a public policy advocate for libraries in the area of information technology.

The "Congress on Professional Education" took place, April 30-May 1, 1999 in Washington, D.C. with over 100 participating. The purpose was to reach consensus among stakeholder groups on the values and core competencies of the profession and on strategies for action to address common issues and concerns.

21st century
At the beginning of the century The Congress on Professional Education recommended that the Association develop a set of Core Values.

In 2007, Loriene Roy became the first Native American President of the ALA.

In 2009, Camila Alire became the first Hispanic president of the ALA.

In 2014, Courtney Young, president of the association, commented on the background and implications of a racist joke author Daniel Handler made as African American writer Jacqueline Woodson received a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. "His comments were inappropriate and fell far short of the association's commitment to diversity," said Young. "Handler's remarks come at a time when the publishing world has little diversity. Works from authors and illustrators of color make up less than 8 percent of children's titles produced in 2013. The ALA hopes this regrettable incident will be used to open a dialogue on the need for diversity in the publishing industry, particularly in regards to books for young people."

In 2020 Wanda Kay Brown was the first president from a historically black college or university. She also was president during COVID-19 and the live annual conference was cancelled and delivered virtually. Brown characterized her presidency as one of "change, loss, and hope."

In 2021, Patty Wong became the first Asian-American president of the ALA.

In 2022 Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada was the first Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander American president.

In 2023 the Public Library Association of ALA published the Public Library Services for Strong Communities Report addressing the myriad ways libraries nationwide serve and sustain their communities. The "Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People Initiative" developed "New Standards for Library Services for the Incarcerated and Detained," coordinated by the Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services. That same year, the Montana State Library Commission withdrew from the ALA, citing comments made by Emily Drabinski, who self-identified as a "Marxist lesbian".

The Digital Public Library Ecosystem was published by ALA in 2023. It is a comprehensive overview of the current state and operations of the relationships and roles of stakeholders including authors, agents, publishers, distributors, the library community, governments, and trade organizations.

In 2024, in response to proposed Georgia legislation that would prohibit public expenditures on the ALA, the ALA responded that the legislation "is based on false narratives", and the ALA "does not promote any 'ideology'".

The Association was honored with the Toni Morrison Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.

Plans to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Association in 2026 were announced. Courtney Young and Martin Garnar will chair the Commemoration Committee; James G. Neal and Christina Rodriques will chair the Fundraising Campaign Committee.

The Library History Round Table published the "Bibliography of Library History" database containing over 7,000 entries for books, articles, and theses in library history and related fields published 1990 to 2022.

Cindy Hohl, the first SPECTRUM Scholar to be elected president was inaugurated on July, 2024. Her presidential theme is “A Good Way for ALA.”

Archives of the American Library Association
The ALA Archives, including historical documents, non-current records, and digital records, are held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archives. The establishment of the archives and the roles of David Horace Clift, Robert Wedgeworth, Beta Phi Mu, and the Library History Round Table has been documented by the first archivist, Maynard Britchford.

Additionally, the American Library Association Institutional Repository (ALAIR) provides digital access to the publications and intellectual work of the Association.

Membership
ALA membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most members live and work in the United States, with international members comprising 3.5% of total membership.

Governing structure
The ALA is governed by an elected council and an executive board. Policies and programs are administered by committees and round tables. One of the organization's most visible tasks is overseen by the Office for Accreditation, which formally reviews and authorizes American and Canadian academic institutions that offer degree programs in library and information science.

President and Executive Directors
ALA's President for the 2023–2024 term is Emily Drabinski. President-elect, Cindy Hohl, will preside in 2024-2025. (See List of presidents of the American Library Association).

American Library Association Executive Directors
The Executive Director of the American Library Association delegates authority within ALA headquarters to ALA’s department heads, who, in carrying out their assigned duties, are called upon to use ALA’s name, and, in that name, to commit the Association to programs, activities, and binding agreements.

Secretaries of the Association prior to Carl Milam were George Burwell Utley (1911–20); Chalmers Hadley (1909–11); Edward C. Hovey (1905–7); James Ingersoll Wyer (1902–09); Frederick Winthrop Faxon (1900–02); Henry James Carr (1898–1900); Melvil Dewey (1897–98); Rutherford Platt Hayes (1896–97);Henry Livingston Elmendorf (1895–96); Frank Pierce Hill (1891–95); Mary Salome Cutler (1891); William E. Parker (1890– 1891) and Melvil Dewey (1879–90).

Activities
The official purpose of the association is "to promote library service and librarianship." Members may join one or more of eight membership divisions that deal with specialized topics such as academic, school, or public libraries, technical or reference services, and library administration. Members may also join any of the nineteen round tables that are grouped around more specific interests and issues than the broader set of ALA divisions.

Divisions

 * American Association of School Librarians (AASL)
 * Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
 * Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
 * Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures- advances the profession of librarians and information providers in central roles of leadership and management, collections and technical services, and technology. Formed from former ALA divisions: Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS); Library Information Technology Association (LITA) and the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA).
 * Public Library Association (PLA)
 * Reference and User Services Association (RUSA).Serves all types of libraries in reference, user services, adult readers advisory and collection development as well as resource sharing, genealogy and archives, business reference and reference technology. Selects Notable Books for an annual list.
 * United for Libraries. The mission of United for Libraries is to support those who govern, promote, advocate, and fundraise for all types of libraries.
 * Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)

Offices

 * ALA Editions (book publishing)
 * Office for Accreditation (OA)
 * Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services (ODLOS)
 * Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF)
 * Public Programs Office
 * Public Policy and Advocacy.(est. in 1945).

Round Tables

 * Coretta Scott King Book Award Round Table
 * Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange RT (EMIERT)-committed to Multicultural education
 * Exhibits Round Table (ERT)
 * Film and Media Round Table (FMRT), from 1988-2018 was the Video Round Table.
 * Games and Gaming (GAMERT)
 * Government Documents (GODORT)
 * Graphic Novel and Comics Round Table (GNCRT)
 * Intellectual Freedom Round Table (IFRT)
 * International Relations (IRRT)
 * Learning RT (LearnRT)
 * Library History Round Table (LHRT) "Bibliography of Library History" database containing over 7,000 entries.

 * Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT)
 * Library Research (LRRT)
 * Library Support Staff Interests Round Table (LSSIRT)
 * Map and Geospatial Information (MAGIRT)
 * New Members Round Table (NMRT)
 * Rainbow Round Table (RRT)
 * Retired Members Round Table (RMRT)
 * Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT)- Est. 1969.Task forces:
 * Feminist Task Force
 * 'Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty Task Force
 * International Responsibilities Task Force
 * Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Task Force (MLKTF)
 * The Rainbow Project Task Force
 * Task Force on the Environment'.
 * Staff Organization (SORT)
 * Sustainability (SustainRT)
 * Round Table Coordinating Assembly (RTCA)

Notable Committees
The Committee on Literacy develops and recommends the association's policies related to the promotion of multiple literacies.

The Chapter Relations Committee develops and recognizes chapters as integral components of ALA, encourages discussion, activities and programs that support the mutual interests of ALA and the chapters.

In 1970, the ALA founded the "Task Force on Gay Liberation, the first professional lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization, which became the "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT), now the Rainbow Round Table.

In 1976, the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship (COSWL) was established as an ALA Council Committee.

National outreach
The ALA is affiliated with regional, state, and student chapters across the country. It organizes conferences, participates in library standards development, and publishes books and periodicals. The ALA publishes the journals American Libraries, Booklist and Choice.

The Graphics Program creates and distributes products that promote libraries, literacy and reading. Along with other organizations, it sponsors the annual Banned Books Week the last week of September. The Young Adult Library Services Association also sponsors Teen Read Week, the third week of each October, and Teen Tech Week, the second week of each March. In addition, the ALA helps to promote diversity in the library profession with various outreach activities, including the Spectrum Scholarship program, which awards academic scholarships to minority library students each year. Additionally, the ALA's Office for Library Advocacy has an initiative called I Love Libraries, also known as ilovelibraries, which attempts to "spread the world about the value of today's libraries," promotes value of librarians and libraries, explains key library issues, and "urges readers to support and take action for their libraries."

The ALA provides many scholarships (over $300,000 annually), a list of which can be found on their website.

National Library Week, the second week of each April, is a national observance sponsored by the ALA since 1958. Libraries across the country celebrate library resources, library champions and promote public outreach.

Awards
The American Library Association confers many professional recognition awards. Association-wide awards include American Library Association Honorary Membership, the Joseph W. Lippincott Award, the ALA Medal of Excellence and  American Library Association Equality Award.

The ALA annually confers numerous book and media awards, many through its children's and young adult divisions.

The Association of Library Service to Children (ALSC) administers:
 * Caldecott Medal
 * Newbery Medal
 * Batchelder Award
 * Belpré Awards
 * Geisel Award
 * Sibert Medal

The Odyssey Award for best audiobook (joint with YALSA), and the (U.S.) Carnegie Medal and for best video. There are also two ALSC lifetime recognitions, the Children's Literature Legacy Award and the Arbuthnot Lecture.

The Coretta Scott King Award honorees are awarded by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Round Table.

The young-adult division, YALSA, administers the Margaret Edwards Award for significant and lasting contribution to YA literature, a lifetime recognition of one author annually, and annual awards that recognize particular works: the Michael L. Printz Award for a YA book judged on literary merit alone, the William C. Morris Award for an author's first YA book, the new "YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults," and the "Alex Award" list of ten adult books having special appeal for teens. Jointly with the children's division ALSC there is the Odyssey Award for excellence in audiobook production.

The award for YA nonfiction was inaugurated in 2012, defined by ages 12 to 18 and publication year November 2010 to October 2011. The first winner was The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery by Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook Press, November 2010) and four other finalists were named.

The Reference and User Services Association awards include annual lists of "Notable" and "Best" books and other media. The Reference and User Services Association awards also include the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, Dartmouth Medal, Sophie Brody Award and Schneider Book Awards.

The Library History Round Table awards the Justin Winsor Prize for the best library history essay.

The Rainbow RoundTable annually honors authors with the Stonewall Book Award).

The annual awards roster also includes the John Cotton Dana Award for excellence in library public relations, and the I Love My Librarian award in concert with the philanthropic foundation Carnegie Corporation of New York and the New York Public Library.

In 2000, the Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (OLOS) launched the Jean E. Coleman Library Outreach Lecture in tribute to the work of the first OLOS director, Jean E. Coleman. Barbara J. Ford gave the inaugural lecture, "Libraries, Literacy, Outreach and the Digital Divide."

Since 2006, the ALA has selected a class of Emerging Leaders, typically comprising about 100 librarians and library school students. This minor distinction is a form of organizational outreach to new librarians. The Emerging Leaders are allocated to project groups tasked with developing solutions to specified problems within ALA divisions. The class meets at the ALA Midwinter and Annual Meetings, commonly January and June. Project teams may present posters of their completed projects at the Annual.

Conferences
The ALA and its divisions hold numerous conferences throughout the year. The two largest conferences are the annual conference and the midwinter meeting, now called LibLearnX. The latter is typically held in January and focuses on innovative session design concepts, while the annual conference is typically held in June and focuses on programs, exhibits, and presentations. The ALA annual conference is notable for being one of the largest professional conferences in existence, typically drawing over 25,000 attendees.

In 2020, Wanda Kay Brown was the first president in 75 years under whom the Annual Conference, scheduled for Chicago in June 2020, was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a press release about cancellation of the conference, Brown stated: "ALA's priority is the health and safety of the library community, including our members, staff, supporters, vendors and volunteers."

Notable members

 * Virginia Cleaver Bacon, member
 * Inez Mabel Crawford, member
 * Essae Martha Culver, first State Librarian of Louisiana
 * Emily Drabinski, ALA President 2023–2024
 * Charles Evans, co-founder of the American Library Association, bibliographer and compiler of American Bibliography (1639-1830).
 * M. Winnifred Feighner, Assistant librarian at University of Montana
 * Barbara J. Ford, president 1997–1998, member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO
 * Loida Garcia-Febo, president of American Library Association, international librarianship
 * Helen E. Haines, member of the Council of American Library Association and editor of its proceedings for ten years
 * Wilhelmina Harper, Supervisor of children's work for the Kern County Free Library, since 1921
 * Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of Congress. Appointed in September 2016, Hayden is the first woman and the first African American to hold the post. She is the first professional librarian appointed to the post in over 60 years.
 * Carleton B. Joeckel, National Plan for Public Library Service, honorary membership
 * Clara Stanton Jones, director, Detroit Public Library, first Black president of the American Library Association
 * E. J. Josey President, ALA, American Library Association Honorary Membership,
 * Abigail Scofield Kellogg, San Luis Obispo City Librarian
 * Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada, President, ALA, 2022–2023

 * Virginia Mathews Founder of the American Lindian Library Association, organized the 1979 and 1991 White House Conferences on Library and Information Services.
 * Elizabeth Martinez, first Latina Executive Director of the American Library Association
 * Jacqueline Noel, vice-president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association and a member of the American Library Association
 * Edith Allen Phelps, twice president of the Oklahoma Library Association, the first professional in the Library Science field in the Oklahoma City system
 * Sarah M. Pritchard, Dean of Libraries at Northwestern University
 * Ida M. Reagan, first vice-president of the California Librarians Association
 * E. Ruth Rockwood, charter member of the Subscription Books Committee, a group to provide evaluations and advice on encyclopedias, subscription sets, and allied compends, newly founded by the ALA
 * Loriene Roy, Anishinabe, first Native American president of the ALA, 2007–2008. American scholar of Indigenous librarianship
 * Patricia G. Schuman, president, 1991–1992, honorary membership
 * Faith Edith Smith, on the Education Committee of the American Library Association and was a member of the California Library Association
 * Linda C. Smith, Chair, Committee on Accreditation
 * Peggy Sullivan, ALA President and Honorary Membership
 * Arnulfo Trejo, founder of REFORMA, American Library Association Honorary Membership
 * Betty J. Turock, president, 1995–1996, honorary membership
 * Robert Wedgeworth, former executive director of the American Library Association, Honorary Membership
 * Patty Wong, President 2021–2022.

Political positions
The ALA advocates positions on United States political issues that it believes are related to libraries and librarianship. For court cases that touch on issues about which the organization holds positions, the ALA often files amici curiae briefs, voluntarily offering information on some aspect of the case to assist the court in deciding a matter before it. The ALA has a Public Policy and Advocacy office in Washington, D.C., that lobbies Congress on issues relating to libraries, information and communication. It also provides materials to libraries that may include information on how to apply for grants, how to comply with the law, and how to oppose a law.

Intellectual freedom
The primary documented expressions of the ALA's intellectual freedom principles are the Freedom to Read Statement and the Library Bill of Rights; the Library Bill of Rights urges libraries to "challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." The ALA Code of Ethics also calls on librarians to "uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources."

The ALA maintains an Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which is charged with "implementing ALA policies concerning the concept of intellectual freedom," defined as "the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored." Its goal is "to educate librarians and the general public about the nature and importance of intellectual freedom in libraries." The OIF compiles lists of challenged books as reported in the media and submitted to them by librarians across the country.

The first director, Judith Krug, headed the office for four decades, until her death in April 2009.

In 1950, the Intellectual Freedom Committee, the forerunner of the OIF, investigated the termination of Ruth W. Brown as librarian of the Bartlesville Public Library, a position she held in the Oklahoma town for 30 years. Brown's termination was based on the false allegation that she was a communist and that she had as part of the library's serials collection two left wing publications, The New Republic and The Nation. The ALA support for her and the subsequent legal case was the first such investigation undertaken by the ALA or one of its state chapters.

In 1999, radio personality Laura Schlessinger campaigned publicly against the ALA's intellectual freedom policy, specifically in regard to the ALA's refusal to remove a link on its web site to a specific sex-education site for teens. Sharon Priestly said, however, that Schlessinger "distorted and misrepresented the ALA stand to make it sound like the ALA was saying porno for 'children' is O.K."

In 2002, the ALA filed suit with library users and the ACLU against the United States Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which required libraries receiving federal E-rate discounts for Internet access to install a "technology protection measure" to prevent children from accessing "visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors." At trial, the federal district court struck down the law as unconstitutional. The government appealed this decision, and on June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the law as constitutional as a condition imposed on institutions in exchange for government funding. In upholding the law, the Supreme Court, adopting the interpretation urged by the U.S. Solicitor General at oral argument, made it clear that the constitutionality of CIPA would be upheld only "if, as the Government represents, a librarian will unblock filtered material or disable the Internet software filter without significant delay on an adult user's request."

1970s
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attempted to use librarians as possible informants in the conspiracy case of the Harrisburg Seven in 1971. The Harrisburg Seven, a group of religious anti-war activists, were primarily accused of conspiring to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. The supposed leader of the group, Philip Berrigan, was serving time at the Lewisburg penitentiary. The FBI sought "to use library surveillance and librarian informants" at Bucknell University as evidence of the Harrisburg Seven's "characters and intentions." Boyd Douglas became one such informant for the FBI: he was a prisoner at the same penitentiary with a work-release position at the library. Boyd presented himself as an anti-war activist and offered to smuggle letters he collected while at work to Philip Berrigan at the prison.

The FBI also attempted to use Zoia Horn, a librarian at the Bucknell library, and interviewed other library workers. The FBI met with Horn in her home to debrief her, but Horn refused to answer their questions. She refused to testify, even after she was given immunity from self-incrimination. Horn stated, "To me it stands on: Freedom of thought" and for the government to practice "spying in homes, in libraries and universities inhibits and destroys this freedom." Zoia Horn was charged with contempt of the court and served 20 days in jail. She was "the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession" according to Judith Krug of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Horn continued to fight for intellectual freedom in libraries and beyond. The Intellectual Freedom Committee of the California Library Association now awards the Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award in honor of those who make contributions to intellectual freedom.

In the 1970s, United States Department of the Treasury agents also pressured public libraries across the country to "release circulation records recording the names and identifying information of people who checked out books on bomb making." The ALA believed this to be an "unconscionable and unconstitutional invasion of library patrons' privacy."

As a result of these two situations and many others, the ALA affirmed the confidential status of all records which held patron names in a Policy on the Confidentiality of Library Records. The ALA also released the ALA Statement on Professional Ethics in 1975 which advocated for the protection of the "confidential relationship" between a library user and a library.

1980s
The FBI tried to use surveillance in library settings as part of its Library Awareness Program of the 1980s; it aimed to use librarians "as partners in surveillance." The program was known to the FBI as "The Development of Counterintelligence Among Librarians," indicating that the FBI believed that librarians might be supportive in its counterintelligence investigations. The FBI attempted to profile "Russian or Slavic-sounding last names" of library patrons to look for possible "national security threats." The FBI wanted libraries to help it trace "the reading habits of patrons with those names."

The ALA responded by writing to the FBI director. The Intellectual Freedom Committee also created "an advisory statement to warn libraries" of the Library Awareness Program, including ways to help librarians "avoid breaking their ethical obligations if faced with FBI surveillance."

USA PATRIOT Act
In 2003, the ALA passed a resolution opposing the USA PATRIOT Act, which called sections of the law "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users." Since then, the ALA and its members have sought to change the law by working with members of Congress and educating their communities and the press about the law's potential to violate the privacy rights of library users. ALA has also participated as an amicus curiae in lawsuits filed by individuals challenging the constitutionality of the USA PATRIOT Act, including a lawsuit filed by four Connecticut librarians after the library consortium they managed was served with a national security letter seeking information about library users. After several months of litigation, the lawsuit was dismissed when the FBI decided to withdraw the National Security Letter. In 2007, the "Connecticut Four" were honored by the ALA with the Paul Howard Award for Courage for their challenge to the National Security Letter and gag order provision of the USA PATRIOT Act.

In 2006, the ALA sold humorous "radical militant librarian" buttons for librarians to wear in support of the ALA's stances on intellectual freedom, privacy, and civil liberties. Inspiration for the button's design came from documents obtained from the FBI by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The request revealed a series of e-mails in which FBI agents complained about the "radical, militant librarians" while criticizing the reluctance of FBI management to use the secret warrants authorized under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Renaming of Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal
In 2018, the organization changed the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal to the Children's Literature Legacy Award. According to The New York Times, the name change was made "in order to distance the honor" from what the ALA described as "culturally insensitive portrayals" in Wilder's books.

Copyright
The ALA "supports efforts to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and urges the courts to restore the balance in copyright law, ensure fair use and protect and extend the public domain." It supports changing copyright law to eliminate damages when using orphan works without permission; is wary of digital rights management; and, in ALA v. FCC,  successfully sued the Federal Communications Commission to prevent regulation that would enforce next-generation digital televisions to contain rights-management hardware. It has joined the Information Access Alliance to promote open access to research. The Copyright Advisory Network of the association's Office for Information Technology Policy provides copyright resources to libraries and the communities they serve. The ALA is a member of the Library Copyright Alliance, along with the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries, which provides a unified voice for over 300,000 information professionals in the United States. Currently, the ALA supports bill H.R. 905, also known as the You Own Devices Act, stating "to foster the social and commercial evolution of the "Internet of Things" by codifying the right of the owner of a device containing 'essential software' intrinsic to its function to transfer [e.g. sell or lease] both the device and the software."

ALA-Accredited Programs in Library and Information Studies
ALA-Accredited programs can be found at schools in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada. These programs offer degrees with names such as Master of Library Science (MLS), Master of Arts, Master of Librarianship, Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS), and Master of Science. To be accredited, the program must undergo an external review and meet the Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies.

Affiliates

 * American Association of Law Libraries
 * American Indian Library Association
 * Association for Information Science and Technology
 * American Theological Library Association
 * Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA)
 * Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association
 * Association for Library and Information Science Education
 * Association for Rural and Small Libraries
 * Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services
 * Association of Jewish Libraries
 * Association of Research Libraries
 * Beta Phi Mu
 * Black Caucus of the American Library Association was formed in 1970. "The Black Caucus of the American Library Association serves as an advocate for the development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources to the nation's African American community; and provides leadership for the recruitment and professional development of African American librarians." The current president of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association is Richard E. Ashby, Jr.
 * Catholic Library Association
 * Chinese American Librarians Association
 * The Joint Council of Librarians of Color
 * Latino Literacy Now
 * Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa
 * Medical Library Association
 * Music Library Association
 * National Storytelling Network
 * Online Audiovisual Catalogers
 * Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association
 * Polish American Librarians Association
 * ProLiteracy Worldwide
 * REFORMA is the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking.
 * Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials
 * Theatre Library Association

title: American Library Association


text:
Fabriano

Fabriano is a town and comune of Ancona province in the Italian region of the Marche, at 325 m above sea level. It lies in the Esino valley 44 km upstream and southwest of Jesi; and 15 km east-northeast of Fossato di Vico and 36 km east of Gubbio (both in Umbria). Its location on the main highway and rail line from Umbria to the Adriatic make it a mid-sized regional center in the Apennines. Fabriano is the headquarters of the giant appliance maker Indesit (partly owned by Whirlpool).

Fabriano, with Roma, Parma, Torino and Carrara, is an Italian creative city (UNESCO). The town is in the category Folk Arts (for the Fabriano's handmade paper production).

History
Fabriano appears to have been founded in the early Middle Ages by the inhabitants of a small Roman town 5 km south at Attiggio (Latin Attidium), of which some slight remains and inscriptions are extant. In 1276, Fabriano became one of the earliest places in Europe to produce paper. Since the 13th century and even today, the town has a reputation for fine watermarked paper. This led to Fabriano's prosperity in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and was also one of the factors that led to the establishment of nearby Foligno in Umbria as one of the earliest printing centers in Italy in the 15th century, from 1470 onwards.

Geography
The municipality borders with Cerreto d'Esi, Costacciaro (PG), Esanatoglia (MC), Fiuminata (MC), Fossato di Vico (PG), Genga, Gualdo Tadino (PG), Matelica (MC), Nocera Umbra (PG), Poggio San Vicino (MC), Sassoferrato, Serra San Quirico and Sigillo (PG).

Frazioni
The hamlets (frazioni) of Fabriano are:

Albacina, Argignano, Attiggio, Bassano, Bastia, Belvedere, Borgo Tufico, Cacciano, Ca' Maiano, Campodiegoli, Campodonico, Cancelli, Cantia, Castelletta, Ceresola, Ciaramella, Coccore, Collamato, Collegiglioni, Colle Paganello, Cupo, Fontanaldo, Grotte, Marena, Marenella, Marischio, Melano, Moscano, Nebbiano, Paterno, Poggio San Romualdo, Rufano beach, Precicchie, Rocchetta, Rucce, San Donato, San Giovanni, San Michele, San Pietro, Sant'Elia, Serradica, Valgiubbola, Vallemontagnana, Valleremita, Vallina, Varano, Viacce, Vigne.

Main sights
Fabriano's wealth and commitment to the fine arts in the late medieval period have left it with many monuments.

Churches

 * Fabriano Cathedral, dedicated to San Venanzio (Saint Venantius) (14th century, rebuilt in 1607–17). From the Baroque restoration are the stucco decoration of the interior and the canvasses by Gregorio Preti, Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri, Giuseppe Puglia and Orazio Gentileschi. To the original Cathedral belong the polygonal apse, the cloister and the St Lawrence Chapel with frescoes by Allegretto di Nuzio (c. 1360). Also important are the frescoes with Stories of the True Cross by the Folignate painter Giovanni di Corraduccio (1415).
 * San Filippo Neri - Church in 14th century attached to hospital, converted to oratory of the Philippines in 1628
 * San Domenico
 * Santi Biagio e Romualdo
 * Sant'Onofrio - Church rebuilt in 1727
 * The Benedictine Abbey
 * St Augustine
 * Santa Caterina da Siena - Present church erected 1508
 * Collegiata of St. Nicholas
 * Santa Maria del Piangato
 * St Benedict
 * Oratory of the Gonfalone

Other buildings

 * Palazzo del Podestà (1255) built in white stone from Vallemontagnana and subsequently modified several times. It has a distinctive bridge structure, a memory of the stream which once flowed under it. The central arcade has frescoes from the 13th-14th centuries portraying warriors, and an enigmatic Wheel of Fortune moved by a feminine figure.
 * Sturinalto Fountain (1285), designed by Jacopo di Grondolo, who was inspired by the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia.
 * Communal Palace (c. 1350, rebuilt in 1690). It was the residence of the Chiavelli family, lords of the city until 1435. In the courtyard is a lapidarium with fragments of buildings of the ancient Roman cities of Attidium (Attiggio), Tuficum (Borgo Tufico) and Sentinum (Sassoferrato).
 * Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Malajoli displayed in the former Hospital (Spedale di Santa Maria del Buon Gesù) - The hospital was first built in 1456. The art collection of the Pinacoteca were moved here in 1994. The collection contains works by Rainaldetto di Ranuccio of Spoleto, Master of San Agostino, Master of San Emiliano, Master of the Magi (Fra Giovanni di Bartolomeo), Maestro dei Beati Becchetti, Puccio di Simone, Allegretto Nuzi, Francescuccio di Cecco Ghissi, Master of Fossato, Master of San Verecondo, Ottaviano Nelli, Master of Staffolo, Antonio da Fabriano, Bicci di Lorenzo, Neri di Bicci; Bernardino di Mariotto, Filippo da Verona, Venanzio da Camerino and Piergentile da Matelica, Simone de Magistris, Domiziano Domiziani, Girolamo or Giacomo Nardini, Andrea Boscoli, Orazio Gentileschi, Ambrogio Monaco, Francesco Podesti, and Gentile da Fabriano.
 * Loggiato of St. Francis (c. 1450)
 * Vasari Portico (1316)
 * Paper and Watermark Museum Fabriano
 * Villa Marchese del Grillo

Notable people

 * Totila, penultimate king of the Ostrogoths, suffered his defeat at Taginae near Fabriano on 1 July 552 AD.
 * Gentile da Fabriano, 15th-century painter, whose most famous work, an oil painting of the Epiphany, is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
 * Saint John dal Bastone 12th-century Silvestrine monk, born in Paterno.
 * Francesco Stelluti, co-founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, born in Fabriano in 1577
 * Jessica Rizzo (born 1965), pornographic actress and businesswoman.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fabriano


text:
Awareness

In philosophy and psychology, awareness is a perception or knowledge of something. The concept is often synonymous to consciousness. However, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it, such as in the case of blindsight.

The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience.

Concept
Awareness is a relative concept. It may refer to an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. It is analogous to sensing something, a process distinguished from observing and perceiving (which involves a basic process of acquainting with the items we perceive). Awareness can be described as something that occurs when the brain is activated in certain ways, such as when the color red is seen once the retina is stimulated by light waves. This conceptualization is posited due to the difficulty in developing an analytic definition of awareness or sensory awareness.

Awareness is also associated with consciousness in the sense that it denotes a fundamental experience such as a feeling or intuition that accompanies the experience of phenomena. Specifically, this is referred to as awareness of experience.

Mocenni C. and Bizzarri F. wrote: "The awareness literature can be organized around three core concepts: cognitive awareness, which corresponds to the accurate and deep individual's understanding of one's perception and thinking.(sic) The second perspective argues that awareness is multilevel considering both conscious and unconscious, with an end-stage of awareness... The third considers awareness concerning the recognition of the feelings of others."

Peripheral awareness
Peripheral awareness refers to the human ability to process information regarding all five senses at the periphery of attention, such as acknowledging the distant sounds of people outside while sitting indoors and concentrating on a specific task, such as reading. Peripheral vision is defined as the perception of visual stimuli at or near the edge of the field of vision.

This type of awareness allows one to be prepared to respond to unexpected events. For example, when walking down a busy street while talking to a friend, peripheral awareness will allow for alertness to potential hazards such as cars or pedestrians coming into proximity that may not have been noticed otherwise.

Studies have shown having peripheral awareness enhances overall cognition. By improving peripheral awareness, overall quality of life and productivity will consequently be improved.

Self-awareness
Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes self-awareness, the condition of being aware of oneself. Modern systems theory, which offers insights into how the world works through an understanding that all systems follow system rules, approaches self-awareness within its understanding of how large complex living systems work. According to Gregory Bateson, the mind is the dynamics of self-organization and awareness is crucial in this process. Modern systems theory maintains that humans, as living systems, not only have awareness of their environment but also self-awareness particularly with their capability for logic and curiosity.

Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks. As awareness provides the materials from which one develops subjective ideas about their experience, it is said that one is aware of one's own awareness state. This organization of awareness of one's own inner experience is given a central role in self-regulation.

Neuroscience
Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central and peripheral nervous systems provide more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousness.

Basic awareness
Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the brain stem. Bjorn Merker, an independent neuroscientist in Stockholm, Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in infants with hydranencephaly. "Higher" forms of awareness, including self-awareness, require cortical contributions, but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior springs from the brain stem which human beings share with most vertebrates. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasizes that this form of primary consciousness consists of the capacity to generate emotions and awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. In the same way, people can become conscious of a feeling that they cannot label or describe, a phenomenon that is especially common in pre-verbal infants.

Due to this discovery, medical definitions of brain death as a lack of cortical activity face a serious challenge.

Basic interests
Throughout the brain stem, there are interconnected regions that regulate eye movement that are also involved in organizing information about what to do next, such as reaching for a piece of food or pursuing a potential mate.

Changes in awareness
The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations. One factor is "baseline shifts", due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areas that affects the neural processing of subsequent perceptual judgments. Such top down biasing can occur through two distinct processes: an attention driven baseline shift in the alpha waves, and a decision bias reflected in gamma waves.

Living systems view
Outside of the field of neuroscience, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed their Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote: "Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system."

This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at organic levels that we do not usually consider to be aware. Given the possible relationship between awareness and cognition, and consciousness, this theory contributes an interesting perspective in the philosophical and scientific dialogue of awareness and living systems theory.

Communications and information systems
In cooperative settings, awareness is a term used to denote "knowledge created through the interaction of an agent and its environment — in simple terms 'knowing what is going on'". In this setting, awareness is meant to convey how individuals monitor and perceive the information surrounding their colleagues and the environment they are in. This information is incredibly useful and critical to the performance and success of collaborations. Awareness can be further defined by breaking it down into a set of characteristics:
 * Knowledge about the state of some environment
 * Environments are continually changing, therefore awareness knowledge must be constantly maintained
 * Individuals interact with the environment, and maintenance of awareness is accomplished through this interaction.
 * Generally part of some other activity, making it a secondary goal to the primary goal of the activity.

Different categories of awareness have been suggested based on the type of information being obtained or maintained:
 * Informal awareness – the sense of who's around and what are they up to; information you might know from being collocated with an individual
 * Social awareness – the information you maintain about a social or conversational context. This is a subtle awareness maintained through non-verbal cues, such as eye contact, facial express, etc.
 * Group-structural awareness – the knowledge of others roles, responsibilities, and status in a group. It is an understanding of group dynamics and the relationship another individual has to the group.
 * Workspace awareness – awareness with a focus on the workspace's influence and mediation of awareness information, particularly the location, activity, and changes of elements within the workspace.

These categories are not mutually exclusive, as there can be significant overlap in what a particular type of awareness might be considered. Rather, these categories serve to help understand what knowledge might be conveyed by a particular type of awareness or how that knowledge might be conveyed. Workspace awareness is of particular interest to the CSCW community, due to the transition of workspaces from physical to virtual environments.

While the type of awareness above refers to knowledge a person might need in a particular situation, context awareness and location awareness refer to information a computer system might need in a particular situation. These concepts of large importance especially for AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) applications.

The term of location awareness still is gaining momentum with the growth of ubiquitous computing. First defined by networked work positions (network location awareness), it has been extended to mobile phones and other mobile communicable entities. The term covers a common interest in whereabouts of remote entities, especially individuals and their cohesion in operation. The term of context awareness is a superset including the concept of location awareness. It extends the awareness to context features of an operational target as well as to the context of an operational area.

Covert awareness
Covert awareness is the knowledge of something without knowing it. The word covert means not openly shown, engaged in. Some patients with specific brain damage are, for example unable to tell if a pencil is horizontal or vertical. Patients who are clinically in a vegetative state (show no awareness of their surroundings) are found to have no awareness but they are able to sometimes detect covert awareness with neuro imaging (fMRI). The presence of awareness is clinically measured by the ability to follow commands -either verbally, or behaviorally. Awareness was detected by asking participants to imagine hitting a tennis ball and to imagine walking from room to room in their house while in the scanner. Using this technique, a patient who fulfilled all of the clinical criteria for the vegetative state was shown to be covertly aware and able to willfully respond to commands by looking at their brain activity.

Awareness versus attention
Some scientists have proposed that awareness is closely related and in some ways synonymous with attention while others have argued that they are different. There is evidence to demonstrate that awareness and attention have distinct neural correlates, though the majority of research analyses the attention, awareness, and perception of only visual stimuli.

title: Awareness


text:
Talk:Main Page/Archive 15

Main page topic archiving
Great new front page! Can we archive the subject mentioned in "Did you know..." and "Featured article", so that we don't repeat topics too quickly. Either archive the actual paragraphs of text used, or even just the topics in a list. -- user:zanimum

 * Perhaps they could be listed on their respective MediaWiki Talk: pages - archiving the whole text seems a little redundant, though, since we'll have a Page History for each one. - IMSoP 14:04, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

EMERGENCY
I just moved over to a eMac (about 2003 or so), in another room, with IE 5.2 on it. The left hand side toolbar has completely disappeared, down to the very bottom of the page, every page. Did someone change the software for Wikipedia, because it's not just the main page that has changed. -- user:zanimum

 * Did you try a shift/control reload? Dori | Talk 14:20, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, then tried on another eMac with IE 5.2, then on an iMac, IE 5.1.6. Tried logged in and logged out on both, no prevail. Only 2% use macs, but this still is a major problem. Any one else have a mac? -- user:zanimum

 * Yes, but I'm using Netscape, and the new page shows just fine. BTW, more than 2% use Macs. Those are the sales numbers, but any Mac user knows that an LCIII will still function as a useful machine long after a 386 has become landfill (and poor landfill at that...)

 * Also Mac (G4--2000 or so) with Netscape 7. Looked fine a couple of hours ago. Won't be back there to try with IE until this evening. Elf 21:29, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's getting better for every revision!
But I believe it can still be improved upon:
 * The text at the top ought to attract more attention - it is easily overlooked right now. Maybe increasing the text size somewhat and change the background color - maybe switch with the left column since that one is big enough to catch the eye anyway.
 * The 'Featured article'-section is somewhat big. Maybe use a smaller picture and display the 'recent features' in smaller fontsize.
 * The same for 'recent days'.
 * It is not at all clear from the first view you get that there are other, closely related 'pedias in other langauges. My suggestion would be that a reference is given not only to the number of articles in the english 'pedia there are, but also to the number of articles in all the 'pedias. That would not take much extra space, and it gives a hint to non-english new visitors that there is a chance that they might find interesting articles in whatever language they preferrably speak (or read). (Think one could be that nice to them, right?) So after "...in the english version", add "...and xxx,xxx articles in total".
 * The 'Browse wikipedia by topic', well, I think it is also too big, but I don't know how to improve it...

But overall - a nice piece of work! Mikez 14:23, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * It is getting better with each revision. The simplification is good, as is the edition of links to browse my topic and other languages. I think overall it is much better than the previous main page because it advertises Wikipedia much better and divides the encyclopedia stuff from the community stuff. ChrisG 21:28, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Revert; Layout break
The Browse Wikipedia by topic link disturbs the layout for me in Camino 0.7 (Moz/Gecko). It does not serve much purpose anyway, so I'd like a different solution. —Sverdrup(talk) 14:32, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks eloq. —Sverdrup(talk)

 * If you mean

 * People were complaining that they had to vertically scroll forever to get to the category section. I agree that that was annoying so I added, and then readded the link. --mav

 * I personally think it looks ugly because it creates a lot of whitespace, and that the damage of this ugliness outweighs the gain of having to press a button rather than scroll (for a bit, "forever" is a small exagerration!) in order to get down the screen. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:07, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * It is just one line of whitespace above the link. If you can think of a better placement of the link then please say so. --mav

 * Inside the yellow box, where Eloquence just moved it to, is better than below the yellow box, which is where it was when I made my comment, particularly as the "please comment on new main page" will go away fairly shortly. Of course your question supposes that I think there should be a link at all, which I don't, but other people apparently do (or at least they've said they don't like scrolling) so I'll live with it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:35, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Great frontpage, remove extra sentence, hide action bar
The new frontpage (2004-02-24) is great! It lets you go deep into the content, and just asks you to come back to see what's new.

I think the text "From Wikipedia, the Free..." under heading should be removed from main page. The same idea is stated just above and just below it. Besides, it takes vertical space unnecessarily.

There are three columns side by side: two in the page, and one in the left side action bar. I feel the action bar should be off by default, as most of its functionality is available in the links on top of every page. Tero 14:49, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC)

Awful!
Please! Bring back the old page! The new page provides more information, but at the cost of the beauty of the old page. Don't let this change be permanant. Auric The Rad 15:14, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Auric,

 * could you be more specific in describing what you don't like about the new Main Page?—Eloquence 15:46, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's awful (alil' disconcerting, but change always is). Overall I like it [initial impression] ... but the pics are distracting to me (YMMV on that though). I'd just suggest that you put the text in and leave out the graphics [ppl can see them in the article] ... Sincerely, JDR 15:49, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * We can't please everyone. I thought the old homepage was one of the ugliest on the internet, *anything* would have been an improvement on it. And lack of line-height made it not worth trying to follow links on it, because I would often end up with a page whose link was one line above or below the one I tried to click. (This is still an issue with the left nav bar on cologne blue - could we have a typical 140% line height please?)dramatic 01:50, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I liked the previous one much, MUCH better!
I don't want the text of a featured article (or any other, for that matter) on the main page. Same for the news. The previous one, with just a concise lists of featured articles, news items etc. was much better.

The whole thing is starting to look like one of those evil portal sites, that try to be everything but end up being nothing but clutter. The old page had everything it needed, with almost no scrolling required. This is much to long, and the useful information gets lost between news and other useless stuff. WikiPedia is not a newspaper and neither should it be one. rschroev 15:24, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi,

 * Have you seen Plain vanilla main page? We're trying to find ways to offer different layouts to different people, I think you might be in the target audience for that one.—Eloquence 15:46, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

 * I just checked it out. I think it's better than the new page, but not as good as the old one. I liked the news, featured articles, recent deaths etc.; but I liked the fact that those were just simple lists. It's easy enough to click on them to get more info, and since the new servers are installed it's fast enough too.

 * Nope, the new mainpage actually doesn't try to be everything; we actually split off the Community Main Page and are now less (but also more of the same) than before —Sverdrup(talk) 15:48, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Well yes and no. There is both more and less on the new page... more that I don't want to see (on the main page), and less that I want to see, or don't mind to see. I like:
 * A short page, so I can see (almost) everything that's on it at one glance. More useful things at the top, less useful things at the bottom. It doesn't matter that much of stuff that is less important or changes not that much can only be seen by scrolling.
 * Lists of recent additions, news, recent deaths, ...
 * Community stuff, though I don't mind for that to be on an other page
 * I don't like:
 * A long page, because inevitably stuff that I am looking for can only be reached by scrolling down.
 * Clutter, because it means I can't find the stuff I'm looking for at one glance.
 * Intro's to articles, news, ... . They add very little (since the same information can be seen by clicking the link) and attribute to the clutter mentioned above. They can be very useful on a news site, but that is not what Wikipedia is.
 * Case study: quite regularly I visit the main page. With the old page, I looked at the lists at the top of the page. Often there is something I hadn't seen before; if it's something that looks interesting, I go visit that page. With the new page, I have to scroll all the way down and scan the page to see if there's anything new and interesting. Overall the old page attracts me to visit it frequently, while the new one doesn't. At all.

Too Much Stuff at Once
Simply put.. there is too much content showing at once on the front page. The previous layout was simple and provided the gateway to what viewers may want.

Current events / In the news (Main page) / MW:Itn
Hmmmm. I'm a little confused regarding the update process and coordination between the Current events page, the "In the news" part of the Main page and the Template:In_the_news page. For instance, the Morocco earthquake item of 24 February existed in three versions as of this writing (1815 UTC the same day). Shouldn't all updates be propagated in the order described at the top of this page? Bad coordination of this process is detrimental to the professional impression Wikipedia should aspire to make on its readers. --Wernher 18:22, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yellow box has become too big
The yellow box has become too big because of the browse wikipedia by topic addition. One can barely see the top of the featured articles/news items/ photographs section(my resolution is 800x600 I think) without scrolling. This defeats the whole purpose of a happening main page. KRS 18:29, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Too Tall, Too Much Text
It's a good first stab at a new approach, but I think it introduces some problems which impair its usefulness:

 * Too tall. I'm on a 17" monitor at 1280x1024 resolution and I have to scroll to see part of "Did You Know..." as well as all of "Browse Wikipedia by Topic" and "Wikipedia in Other Languages".  Overall I'd say the height of the feature boxes should be cut roughly in half.

 * Too much text per topic. I'd rather see a very short summary (10 words max) of any individual topic.  The 20-30 word summaries are too long for me to scan the page and decide whether I want to follow any links, so I may as well skip the whole thing.  With the old Main Page I'd just see the entry and think, "Hmm, I wonder what that is?", click on the link, and find out.  Much more efficient and effective.  For instance, I'd trim the "In the news" section as it's shown at this moment to:

 * U.S. President George W. Bush supports Federal Marriage Amendment.
 * Russian president Vladimir Putin dismisses entire Russian cabinet.
 * Earthquake in Morocco kills at least 300 people.

 * Even then, it seems distracting to have links to relatively generic items (like US President) which distract from the news item (Federal Marriage Amendment). The bullet points should strive to focus on one link.

-mhr 18:42, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'll vote for the old page. The new Main Page is too busy; this saeems contrary to what might be the purpose of a Main Page. If we want to feature Julius Caesar a simple link is enough for those who are interested. In consideration of those with slow connections, there should be no pictures on the Main Page. ☮ Eclecticology 18:49, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC)

Since I am on a dial-up connection -- & probably will remain on dial-up for the forseeable future -- I'd rather not see graphics; one reason I like the front page to Google. I found the old version (by this I mean what I saw on the front page 23 February) far better for my purposes than what is there now: it has too much text, requires more scrolling to access links into the site, & the pictures don't impress me enough to want to endure the added download time. But from all of the praise, I expect to see sound & animated gifs added in the near future. :-( -- llywrch 18:52, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Animated gifs. Snerk. We're not desperate. That said, I believe that making the following changes will dramatically reduce the "too long"/"irrelevant" complaints:

This page could be a remarkable engine for promoting Wikipedia's growth. I think it's very important that we not revert to the Old Main Page. The pictures and the design direct and catch the eye. The old version was an initially unintelligible sea of links. jengod 19:09, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Remove obits and holidays
 * 2) Integrate the functionality into news and day in history, respectively
 * 3) Move did you know to right side, beneath news.

 * I strongly disagree. The new version misdirects the eye, making it not at all clear what the relevant info is.  The number of links on the new version needs to be cut down substantially to be useful, since many of them are ancillary to the specific information being highlighted. -mhr 21:44, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * No no no... a number of people like are having complaints with the new layout, and much of the proposed changes make it even worse:
 * please LEAVE the obits and the holidays, but keep them SHORT. Those are exactly the things I want to see. You can also leave Julius Caesar and Aristide, but with a MUCH shorter text. I prefer only the link, like it was before; that's enough to catch interest, and more info can easily be had by following the link.
 * The pictures and the design DON'T catch my eye, they only confuse me.

 * I admit it's better if I maximize my browser so it occupies the full 1400 pixels of my screen, but I shouldn't have to do that, and most screens aren't even that wide. Please please pretty please restore the old layout.
 * -rschroev

Proposition
We could change the margins from 55/45 to 50/50 and swap "day in history" with "Holidays". Not enough stuff on the right currently. (we might want to just add more to right since the stuff is "happening now" on the right as opposed to the left where all the stuff happened a long time ago. Perl 19:10, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Good good. jengod 19:40, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * Changed mind. Right is too crowded. jengod 19:41, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Someone throw out that Obituaries link already. —Sverdrup(talk) 22:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Did it work OK before the fiddle? YES, Does it work Ok now? NO.
If it aint broke......... Tweaking design is fine, providing the site isn't compromised. I now have to scroll down to the bottom of every page to see/use what was previously the left hand column. Bordering on unworkable. Moriori 19:21, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

What happens if we put the "Browse by topic" on the left and the various features on the right? Then you won't need to scroll down for either (at least not for whatever features we put on top), nor will you need a hotlink in the intro box. -- Toby Bartels 20:24, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Out of all things in the universe two dictators on the main page. As for one of them philosopers used to say "Caesar non est ultra gramaticos" - (Ceasar ist not above the grammar rules. You should be ashamed for the intelectual prostitution in the world which will not be less free the picture of the turtle.
 * Well, I'm the one who choose to put the caeser article up. I can't help the other one. As for freeing the turtle... um... yea. →Raul654 21:02, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I gave it a day to try to get used to the new format, but I can't help thinking we lost something. In particular, I think the page is weaker for having moved the About, Village pump, What our critics say about us, etc. pages from the front. Hiding them on the Community Main Page dilutes the chance to celebrate what makes the Wikipedia special. Rossami 21:36, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Also, the pictures struck me as slightly cheesy. Can't say why I had that unfavorable emotional reaction, but I did... Rossami

 * About is linked from every page. Village pump is linked from Contact us, which is also on every page. If you try to integrate everything that is now on Main Page into the frontpage, you end up with what we had before -- a mess of links, none of which provided any information about where they led besides the title. The old Main Page was mystery meat navigation, this one is much more user friendly.—Eloquence

My opinion: the new Main Page is trying to steer Wikipedia away from the realms of a smaller web-community project to a mainstream audience. Trivia and big pictures are more likely to attract a casual user surfing through than a comprehensive page of links designed for those already hooked. I'm missing that community section being on the front page, as the community is at the heart of Wikipedia, and this is something we should be pointing out to all visitors. --Kwekubo 21:56, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * We need to appeal to a wide audience. That's part of how we can hook new users. The community main page is readily available. If you feel the need to see the community section right away when you start, bookmark that page. --Michael Snow 22:16, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Obituaries link on the Main page
Looks like the mini-obits are now gone from the Main page, leaving the link captioned "Obituaries". If we keep it this way we need to go back the that "recent deaths" caption for the link, as we noted during prototying of this page that the link points to articles, not obituaries. Bevo 23:05, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Today in history" or "A day in history"
How about " in history" e.g. "26th February in history"? Mr. Jones 18:43, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My vote is for the first one. -- Tim Starling 00:38, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

  I'm sure I missed this discussion...but why is it "a day in history" and not "today" or "the day"?

 AdamBishop: mav thinks we can't keep it up to date

 well if it's not up to date as "the day", it's not up to date as "a day," so what's the difference?

 AdamBishop: I was referring to "today". "The day" .. hmm .. looks ugly to me

 you should call it "today in history"

 that way it makes sense

 Well, I called it that

 but I'm not inclined to get into an edit war about it

 "a day in history" doesn't mean anything

 today in australia isn't today in america

 I understand this

 as do most people in Australia

 it's perfectly reasonable for "today in history" to actually be yesterday in history, people in other time zones will understand

<AdamBishop> but "a day in history" could mean "any random day in history"

<Xirzon> AdamBishop: change it to "today" if you want. I'll support you

<TimStarling> as long as it's changed at midnight UTC not some large negative time zone

<AdamBishop> well I don't want to get in an edit war about it either :)

<Xirzon> then stop whining ;)

<TimStarling> that's alright, I'll get into an edit war

<Anthere> Tim ?

<TimStarling> someone's got to do it

</tt>

 * YI, I think the reason it was "A day in history" instead "Today in history" is that today is relative. It's Feb 25 UTC, but it's still Feb 24 in many places...so "a day" covers that. jengod 00:44, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Since I live in UTC+11 and constantly communicate with people all over the world, I can assure you that I understand this point. "A day", however, is an awkward way to express this concept. It's interesting (if slightly irrelevant) to note that the actual time the given events occurred is ambiguous in the same way. An event that occurred on February 25 according to the history books may have actually occurred on February 26 in an eastern time zone. -- Tim Starling 00:51, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Mav, can you please point me to the initial discussion on this issue? I looked in 3 or 4 places but I couldn't find it. -- Tim Starling 00:56, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * What's wrong with Historical anniversaries or Events in history? Both are terms used elsewhere in WP....I particularly like the first.  Are these agreeable to anyone? Jwrosenzweig 00:58, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Fine by me -- Tim Starling 01:03, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Talk:Main Page/Test. The day is being featured so the wording seems fine to me. So does "Events in history" and "Historical anniversaries" for that matter. But "Today" is both too relative and will be expected to be turned over exactly when a new day arrives. Best to not give those type of impressions. --mav 01:04, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Where can/should I post my suggestion of Historical anniversaries, which I'm liking more as I think about it? Is this the best forum? Jwrosenzweig 01:12, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Any change to the main page, regardless of how trivial, requires you fill out Form 27-1 - Main Page Change Request. Note that you will require a photocopy of your drivers license or similar form of identification, witnessed by a JP. Notification of the wiki community should take place by advertisement in the "legal notices" section of the major newspapers. After a period of 21 days of discussion, a vote will be taken. The change may be made if there is an absolute majority in favour. -- Tim Starling 01:22, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Ha, ha Tim. Jwrosenzweig - just go to Events in history. See also Wikipedia talk:Events in history. --mav 02:00, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Bwah! I'm saving that text on my user page. Hee. jengod 02:31, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

I don't like the new page as much. The thing I really liked about the old page is that I could see everything and a glance and then beat down into the topics that were of interest. Now you have to navigate around to find things that might be of interest. I have been using Wiki as my Start Page because it gave me so much in one glance. I already miss it! Scott

Merging "Events in history" with "Holidays"
See. --mav 02:03, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

French main page
Has anyone taken a look at the French main page? They've redesigned as well, but it seems much less busy than our current main page. The French page was the inspiration for the original redesign a while back. The French page keeps the topic categories up high where they are easily visible, and it also retains many of the "community" links for regular editors. I'm mixed about our new page. It's nice to have context for all the featured articles, but it seems like a bit of overkill. The addition of images is nice. As things currently stand, however, the "welcome to wikipedia" message—the most important item on the page— seems to be lost in a maze of current events, et al., and the font size for that box keeps shrinking. Just some thoughts... Minesweeper 02:53, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Welcome is the first link on this page and there is a very easy to find and use link to the cateogory section. See above for a link to my proposal to make this page less busy with a minimum of change. --mav

Euro-Americo centrism!
The next round of Featured Articles really must be on stuff outside Europe and North America. The narrow cultural focus of the present lot is very conspicuous. Adam 04:03, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Hear hear, something Adam and I can agree on. :) But seriously, the conversion of the main page from reference page to a "portal" (shivers!) means there's a whole lot of issues we need to watch for when choosing the features. I can imagine the new front page turning off international visitors if they think it's just another CNN/NYTimes/BBC/Guardian, Euro-American news site. Fuzheado 04:10, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I've already written it. It's going to be Oxyrhynchus. →Raul654 04:58, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * You can't readily say that the Feat. articles section is Eu-Am centric when we've only seen three different feats. Over time, I think featured articles will be a nice aggregate of all our comprehensive articles. (and this group may ofcourse be partly Eu-Am centric.) —Sverdrup(talk) 08:40, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Alternative at Main_Page/Temp10
I have tried a variation- Main_Page/Temp10 - where the encyclopedia is at the side for easy access unlike the present version which links from the main yellow box. It can be much better if it is formatted, I don't know much about layout guidelines. The advantage in my version is that the encylopedia gains importance. (Someone else has referred to the French main page, they seem to have a similar idea)KRS 05:11, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC) P.S. I also think that because my layout is asymmetrical, it is more interesting and aesthetic KRS 05:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I think that section is vastly overrated. Many of these links don't lead to proper overview articles anyway.—Eloquence 05:25, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * If it is overrated, it should live upto the overrating. An encyclopedia has to make this better.KRS 05:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Not necessarily. Magnus Manske has just checked his final category system code into CVS. This will make the current links largely obsolete, and we might be able to do with just 10 or so top category links (the category system supports subcategories).—Eloquence 05:36, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Great! Could we end with system like Yahoo's cathegory index?
 * Forseti 07:38, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * KRS's version is quite good, and if you think about it, there will be much more coherence and solidarity with other language pages. Right now, with the portal concept, none of the different front pages (across languages) will look the same because it's all open-ended with "features".  It would be nice to have at least a strip of topics which is consistent and serves what people come to encyclopedias for -- reference. Fuzheado 07:31, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * If you want to use Britannica or Encarta as a reference, do you use a topical index? Or do you just look up words? Most people use encyclopedias to look up terms, and Wikipedia is very good for that (in spite of the embarrassing fact that we still have to rely on Google as our search engine). The topical index is confused and inconsistent, and not very helpful in locating subjects you want to learn more about. An encyclopedia is not a book, you don't browse it front to back. You look up things.

 * But likewise you could ask if while using Yahoo as pointer for websites you use cathegory system or just searchbox. Most people probably use searchbox, but I doubt that cathegory index is without reason there.
 * Forseti 07:47, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * The current dynamic section provides far more interesting venues of exploration, and I already find myself using them. It evokes emotions by putting individual subjects into context, and thereby elicits sustained interest. It creates a desire to actually visit the frontpage for purposes other than clicking around randomly. The previous "Selected articles" section had similar goals, but was not very good at achieving them because the links were castrated and without context or emotion. You never knew where you would wind up. While some people may like mystery meat, I find it unhealthy to prescribe to all our visitors.

 * The real reason some people dislike this page is that they dislike emotions. They want to use Wikipedia without being "distracted" by powerful influences such as pictures and useful summaries. That is the typical attitude of an academic or an intellectual. However, that attitude is completely mistaken when it comes to distributing knowledge to the general public. In order to do so effectively we must evoke emotions, powerful emotions even, and connect them with the information which we transport. We should not manipulate the reader, instead we should evoke emotions by putting matters in a familiar context, and elaborating on them from there. But emotions are not inherently bad, they are necessary to create new memories.

 * An academic will always be curious and interested in reading about new things, they get a positive emotional response (a "kick") from the act of learning alone. A single word is more than enough to motivate them to read 20,000 characters of pure text. Most people do not function that way and we must do our best to reach these people. The truth is that even most academics, when they allow themselves to, will enjoy the experience more if it is enriched. It is just that they have become used to all emotionally enriched content being inherently of less value, so when they see a "portal" they fear that the content that looms behind that door is going to be dumbed down or even grossly wrong.

 * It is up to Wikipedia to prove that this is not necessarily so.

 * Yes, this is a "portal", an entry page to explore the encyclopedia, as opposed to searching for individual terms. This is a very valuable function, in fact necessary function for us to fulfill our mission of not just accumulating but also spreading knowledge to our readers. We are not just archivists. We are encyclopedists.

 * I fail to understand your criticism with regard to other languages. The category structure is far more complex than the structure of the dynamic section. It will be far more easy to create a consistent dynamic section on all Wikipedias than it is to create a consistent categorization scheme. Just because they all look similar doesn't mean that there's high structural similarity.

 * I hope that the other languages will soon be ready to build their own portals, and I hope that it will eventually be realized by all that such a portal is indeed of higher importance than a mere structural grid. That doesn't mean that the grid is useless, but it shouldn't occupy the front spot and take away space that could be used to get people interested in knowledge.—Eloquence 08:11, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * You have brought out an interesting point regarding emotions vs intellect. I fully agree with you. However, right now, the main page leans too heavily on glamour. What I was trying to achieve is like a middle path . Glamour, emotions and topicality are important and therefore have a larger width and more space for pictures. And more readability when compared to what exists now( with equal column widths). However, what is regular and constitutes the core or underpinning should not be neglected, it should also be accessed, though not too conspicuously. So I have a smaller width and smaller font size. I have personally looked at many categories from the main page, I am sure that many others would do too.  And on an asethetic note, 2 equal width columns look too boring.KRS 09:40, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * See response below at the end regarding categories

Yellow box updated
I've changed the yellow box into a table, right-aligned the "Browse", "Languages" links, and added a text-only link. In Mozilla the top box is now slightly wider than the other boxes, I haven't been quite able to figure out the cause of this.—Eloquence 05:27, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for adding the text-only link. Optim 05:39, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sandbox editing rate
Ever since the new Main Page has gone live, the Sandbox editing rate appears to have more than doubled. I attribute this to the new "experiment" link which goes directly to the editing window. This should also alleviate concerns that the new Main Page is less effective in communicating the open nature of Wikipedia.—Eloquence 05:33, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * I do applaud linking directly to Sandbox. That's great. But there are still many concerns about the new design of portal vs. reference/community. Fuzheado 07:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Main page images should link to relevant article
Visitors would expect that clicking the image would take them to the article that the image belongs to. Linking to the image description page is uninformative and confusing. If it is not too difficult to change this behavior, it would be nice to change it. Arvindn 09:07, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Yep, this is a problem, and yep, this talk page is busy. See Talk:Main_Page a bit up, I posted a temp solution there. —Sverdrup(talk) 09:34, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Move "Plain vanilla Main page" to "Main Page (text only)"?
As I and Eloquence point out on Wikipedia talk:Plain_vanilla_main_page, this page should really be in the article namespace as Main Page (text only). Any objections to me moving the page there? --Lexor|Talk 09:33, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Done. --mav

MediaWiki messages for encyclopedia topic list, language pages and sister projects
Also I created a MediaWiki message: Template:wikipediatoc which can be reused for both the Main Page and Main Page (text only). I suggest we could do the same for the language pages and the sister projects, to complete the modularization of both the Main Page and the "text only" Main Page. --Lexor|Talk 09:33, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Good idea - I put it in. --mav 10:10, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * For some reason Template:wikipediasister doesn't want to include properly. On my browser (Galeon/Mozilla under Linux), I start seeing HTML markup inline after I save the page?  Do you have the same problem? --Lexor|Talk 10:21, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Was fixed by mav by including regular links, thanks. Although I'm not sure exactly why this didn't work.  One for the developers. --Lexor|Talk

 * All this modularization is very good, but since the msg-tags now aren't shortcuts we should try to give them systematic and descriptic names. There is no (noticable) limitation to lenght of msg name and limitation in the use of caps, but looking at the current examples there seems to be :P

 * Right now we have on the main page: {{msg:feature} } {{msg:dih} } {{msg:itn} } {{msg:dyk} } {{msg:Wikipediatoc} } {{msg:Wikipedialang} }. A few more and noone will keep them apart. As I said: they are not shortcuts, why not give them descriptive names?

 * —Sverdrup(talk) 10:40, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree, that's why a tried to give mine slightly longer names, with the "Wikipedia" prefix to make them standout as being messages about modular content related to the 'pedia. I suggest itn -> wikipedia_inthenews, dih -> wikipedia_datesinhistory or somesuch. --Lexor|Talk 10:59, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yellow box removed
On Jamesday's suggestion I removed the yellow box around the top paragraph. He pointed out that a box makes it look like an advertising banner and therefore likely to be ignored. That seems to be a valid point.—Eloquence 09:59, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Personally I think the new main page looks great... but I showed it to my brother, who uses the pedia occasionally as a reference, and he preferred the old version. His reasons were entirely different to mine, and equally valid, which I guess just goes to show that you can't please everyone all the time. He said the extracts were just fluff and the bit he wanted was the (alas nonexistant) search engine, or failing that an Index.

He did make one good point though - if we are going to have a seperate community main page it needs to have its own link in the sidebar. He also thinks that the 'Wikipedia by topic' link should be there too, and he thinks there should be a text-only version of EVERY page (he assumed the text-only button would disable pictures for the entire pedia, not just the front page. KJ 10:34, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Proposal of new design/skin
See new discussion page at Talk:Main Page/New Design

Graphical Article Counter
Shoot me down if I haven't searched enough of the archives to answer this myself.

What do people think of having a graphical article counter like this for the total number of en: articles and perhaps also total all-languages articles? - Gaz 12:51, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure why you think it should be graphical. Also, is an up-to-date article count really that important?  As long as the count is updated periodically it will be pretty accurate, and there's always the statistics page. --HappyDog 12:56, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * We already have an up-to-date article count. The count on the main page is dynamic, and up-to-date. Include a count on any page by doing  which looks like: . Perl 15:10, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Self-promotion of Wikipedia mainly (thats why the current counter is on Main Page), and graphical because it looks cool. - Gaz 14:14, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Nope, it looks so - nineties-ish. As it is now, you can put any wiki formatting on the number, which is much better. —Sverdrup(talk) 15:48, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

While I'm here, why is the main page called Main Page? - Wouldn't "Welcome" be more appropriate? - Gaz 14:14, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * ROTFL - Forseti 14:41, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Timezone Sensitivity?
A challenge to the team developing this page: How difficult would it be to present the correct date for the visitor's timezone? Since W is served from California, most visitors will experience some times when the date they see is "yesterday's". Here at GMT+13 (NZ + Daylight time) I see yesterday for 21 hours of each day. Given that there are a number of date-sensitive features, I think this would be worthwhile. The tricky bit is getting the info to php - This rules out using javascript, but I realize that reverse DNS would put too much load on the server. The compromise might be to adjust dates for logged in users only, with their timezone stored in preferences. dramatic 21:29, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * The correct date for the person's timezone is not possible. But we can and should state which timezone we use. Today is Monday, July 29, 2024; it is now (UTC) -> Today is Monday, July 29, 2024; it is now  (UTC) Not sure where to put it. WP is served from Florida now, BTW. --mav 21:36, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Mav, I don't agree with 'impossible' - plenty of forum software manages to display all dates adjusted to the user's timezone - done server side based upon a preference stored in the user's profile. Just don't repeat the mistake of some systems which limit the adjustment to +/-12 hours. dramatic 22:18, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Updates to the selected anniv section are done by humans and only one version of each MediaWiki page can be displayed at one time. --mav

I see yesterday for 21 hours of each day Nope. The servers of wikipedia run by UTC. And problem is, do we want to show the correct date? We cannot for example serve different historical anniversiaries to different people the same time, so the anniversiaries would be out of sync with the date showed. — Sverdrup (talk) 21:33, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * I stand corrected: I see the wrong date for 13 hours of each day in summer and 12 hours in winter.
 * I would hope that the anniversaries and holidays functions are being handled in such a way that the datasets don't have to be redone each year - i.e we are building up a pool of 365 entries for each. Then, the data can simply be called with a date parameter.dramatic 22:18, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Why is this an issue? We don't say "This day in history" so why do you expect to see that? See: Selected anniversaries--mav

 * Actually, a set of MediaWiki:July 29 pages might not be a bad idea...
 * James F. (talk) 04:38, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Holy shit!!! It works!! I created Template:February 26 and referenced it via  to get:

 * {{July_29}}

 * Is that cool or what? In fact featured articles can do this too. That way both sections will get updated automatically every day so long as a MediaWiki page was previously created for that day. This is awesome! --mav 06:38, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Let's just use it for the anniversaries for now and see how it works out. I think for the featured article having a single page with a single history might be more convenient.—Eloquence 06:43, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * Very cool, mav, it seems the {{-thingies} } can nest after all. — Sverdrup (talk) 10:10, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Main Page/Archive 15


text:
Ponhea Yat

Ponhea Yat (ពញាយ៉ាត, UNGEGN:, ALA-LC: ; c. 1390 – 1463), also known as Borom Reachea II (បរមរាជាទី២, UNGEGN: , ALA-LC:  ; บรมราชาธิราช, ), was the last king of the Khmer Empire and the first Khmer king of the post-Angkor period.

Ponhea Yat complained to the Yongle Emperor in 1408 and 1414 of raids by the Champa King Indravarman VI. He dispatched Kun Si-li Ren-nong-la to visit China.

He was forced to flee Yasodharapura in 1431 as it was indefensible against attack by the Siamese, resettling first in Basan (Srey Santhor), but after it became flooded, fled to Chaktomuk (now part of Phnom Penh).

In Phnom Penh, the king ordered the land to be built up to protect it from flooding, and a palace to be built. During his reign he also ordered the construction of six Buddhist monasteries around the city, and his remains are housed in a stupa behind the Wat Phnom.

King Ponhea Yat was succeeded on his death by his first son Noreay Reachea, who reigned until 1469 and who was succeeded in turn by Ponhea Yat's second son, Srey Reachea.

title: Ponhea Yat


text:
Wild Rose

Wild rose is the common name of certain flowering shrubs:
 * Any wild members of the Genus Rosa (see List of Rosa species), or, more especially:
 * Rosa acicularis, "wild rose", a rose species which occurs in Asia, Europe, and North America
 * Rosa arkansana, "wild prairie rose", a rose species native to a large area of central North America
 * Rosa canina, "wild rose" or "dog rose", a climbing rose species native to Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia
 * Rosa virginiana, "Virginia rose", a rose species native to North America
 * Rosa woodsii, "wild rose" of the sagebrush steppe in the Great Basin of North America
 * Genus Diplolaena:
 * Diplolaena grandiflora, an Australian flowering shrub

Wild Rose or Wildrose may also refer to:

Places

 * Canada
 * Wild Rose, Edmonton, neighbourhood in Edmonton, Alberta
 * Wild Rose (electoral district)
 * Wild Rose, Saskatchewan
 * Wildrose, North Dakota
 * Wild Rose, Wisconsin, village
 * Wild Rose, Richland County, Wisconsin, unincorporated community

Arts, literature, music

 * Wild Rose (band), a country music performance group
 * Wild Rose, a novel by American writer Deb Caletti
 * Wild Roses, a painting by Vincent van Gogh
 * Wild Rose, a musical by W. O. Mitchell
 * "Wild Rose", a song by the Bombay Rockers
 * "Wild Roses", a song by Of Monsters and Men from Fever Dream, 2019
 * "Where the Wild Roses Grow", a song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue

Film and television

 * Wild Rose (1939 film), a Hungarian comedy directed by Béla Balogh
 * Wildrose (film), a 1984 American drama directed by John Hanson
 * Wild Rose (2018 film), a British musical drama directed by Tom Harper
 * Wild Rose (soundtrack)
 * Wild Rose (musical), a stage musical based on the 2018 film
 * Wild Roses (film), a 2017 Polish thriller drama directed by Anna Jadowska
 * Wild Roses (TV series), a 2009 Canadian television show

Bars, brewers, beverages

 * The Wildrose (bar), Seattle lesbian bar opened in 1984
 * Wild Rose Brewery, a beer brewery located in Calgary, Alberta
 * Wild Irish Rose, an alcoholic beverage produced by Canandaigua Wine Company

Politics

 * Wildrose Party, a political party in Alberta which merged into the United Conservative Party
 * Wildrose Party of Alberta, forerunner of the Wildrose Party
 * Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta, a provincial political party consisting of the merging of the Freedom Conservative Party of Alberta and Wexit Alberta
 * Wildrose Loyalty Coalition, a political party split from the Wildrose Independence Party

Ships

 * USS Wilrose II (SP-195), a United States Navy patrol vessel in service from 1918 to 1919 sometimes referred to in U.S. Navy records as "USS Wild Rose"

title: Wild Rose