Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors

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Administrators: Clear all reports

Errors in the summary of the featured article

Please do not remove this invisible timestamp. See WT:ERRORS and WP:SUBSCRIBE. - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Errors in "Did you know ..."

Current DYK

• ... that some estimate that maintenance of existing software costs up to nine times as much as creating it in the first place?

This is another blatant weasel – who estimates this? And it's obviously not a "definite fact which is unlikely to change" as there are a range of estimates. The hook discussion started with the figure of "three times" and it appears that such estimates are unreliable because the article repeatedly says that the topic has not been well-studied. Other issues include:

1. The ceiling is obviously a lot higher than 9 and I reckon the sky's the limit. Consider the case of Wikipedia. This was developed on a shoestring using open source software. But now the WMF has a large staff and a huge budget. As I understand it, the staff headcount has gone from half a person to over 700 – that's a factor of about 1,400. And much of the code is still the same legacy stack.
2. Deciding what is development and what is maintenance is often an arbitrary accounting decision. For example, consider Vector 2022. Is that new development or maintenance of the existing system? The article indicates that it would be considered "enhancement" and so classified as maintenance but it's all still a matter of subjective definition.
3. Changes are often incremental and so there's the Ship of Theseus problem. At what point is a system a new creation?
4. The supposed hook fact does not seem to be clearly stated in the article. I've searched for "nine" and "9" and can't find it.
5. The idea that you can generalise in a definite way about such varied activity and systems is inherently suspect. See all models are wrong.

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:28, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Errors in the summary of the featured list

Friday's FL

(August 2)

Monday's FL

(July 29, tomorrow)

Errors in the summary of the featured picture

Notice to administrators: When fixing POTD errors, please update the corresponding regular version (i.e. without "protected" in the page title) in addition to the Main Page version linked below.

Any other Main Page errors

Please report any such problems or suggestions for improvement at the General discussion section of Talk:Main Page.