Template talk:POTD

 Reporting blurb errors or general POTD discussion Please do not post error reports for today's or tomorrow's picture of the day here; post them at WP:ERRORS instead. For general discussion about POTDs, please post at WT:POTD. Thank you.

How is the POTD Determined?
Does someone manually create the POTD?

Check out Featured picture candidates Dark Shikari 13:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent unpleasantness
A weird record lock in the database was breaking the ability to edit this page. I'm not totally sure what the cause of this was, but I've worked around it for now by trimming a link record that lead to it. --Brion 23:07, July 11, 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 06:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Broken front page
Something has broken this template resulting in the following text on the front page: Template:POTD/Error: invalid time Collabi 19:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * beat me to it. here's a screenshot just in case. http://x012.uploaderx.net/x/wikierror.PNG -Indolences 02:15, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Every time I see this report and come by to look at it, it seems to have fixed itself. I updated the Main Page code to skip the intermediate POTD protected template and go straight to the day's template, which might eliminate that error.  howcheng  {chat} 06:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hyphen
Could an administrator please correct the hyphen after Archive to a dash? Thanks. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 10:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Done.  howcheng  {chat} 16:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Howcheng! Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 01:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

YEAH!Mannix Chan (talk) 12:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 January 2014
I noticed is not working, on personal testpages, the userbox, or related media, and produces this bug:

(from ):

Code:

Becomes:

Note the space right after the image file name and just before ".jpg". I think that's why I can't get Picture of the day to work. The fix? Put the tag right after the code:

not

If it doesn't work, I could probably have another go at it. It's only my first stab at solving this bug.

meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 08:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
 * This template has not been touched in 4 years, and the breakage was much more recent. I think it has to do with the media software itself. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:36, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. was 19 January 2010; Internet Archive for [//web.archive.org/web/20130911051746/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_of_the_day September 11, 2013] and [//web.archive.org/web/20130814053658/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Picture_of_the_day August 14, 2013] both display it as working on Wikipedia:POTD. According to, between May 25, 2013 and Dec 7, 2013 we experienced an update (1.21 → 1.22). That's my first lead.


 * To the page at large: this software bug is annoying me, so I'm continuing to work on it. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 00:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * It's fixed. I can't tell if my revision (I requested access to edit the template myself; lined up the tag like I suggested) or something else entirely did the trick, but hey, fixed on every page I've seen. meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 12:38, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

#REDIRECT Correa alba
Today's POTD caption is/was a redlink Correa Alba. It should be Correa alba (genus & species) &mdash; Gaff ταλκ 05:22, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Title and/or Texttitle documentation
When I make an edit like this, I can usually check the template page for an explanation of parameters like "title=" and "texttitle=" here (I changed both, but only one has any apparent effect). However, this page is missing the usual "/doc" page. Art LaPella (talk) 02:56, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * While the template is not intended her general use, it is somewhat lacking. From what I can see, texttitle is used for the alt text for the image, while title is largely ignored.  09:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Wednesday
Wednesday's Template:POTD/2017-10-18 says "this painting depicts rectangular plots of blue, yellow, pink, and red hyacinths." The reference agrees, but my eyes clearly tell me blue, yellow, pink, red (in the distance), and white. (There is also a brown plot, but that could be a pink one just starting to bloom.) Art LaPella (talk) 01:28, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Tuesday
For Tuesday's picture, why are some of the translations abbreviated? For example, "Flavius Eridanus" means "Eridanus River" (a specific river, although different rivers had that name). So translating it as simply "the river" could be considered wrong. Art LaPella (talk) 19:01, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Because they weren't translations, but rather what these are generally represented as. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:13, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

2017-12-18
Template:POTD/2017-12-18 includes the text "combs are among the oldest tools found by archaeologists". This is rather a silly statement since the oldest tools are millions of years of old and combs have not been around for a fraction of that. I'd suggest changing it. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 15:22, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * . Not sure if this page is watched. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 18:45, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Done. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:12, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

2018-07-19 bug
I'm not sure if today's POTD being randomly chosen from 2 similar images was an experiment, but it's caused a bug: The  cannot be read directly. See my user page for an example. Also, I would have expected either image to say  (not 425), since multiplying this value by 2.1 normally results in an image that's around 800px wide (or in the case of portrait images, one that's ~800px tall). Of course, I may be the only user affected! nagualdesign 18:27, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

2018-12-08
For Template:POTD/2018-12-08, click the picture. It gets bigger. With some browsers (I tried 4, one of them on a different Windows desktop) the cursor becomes a plus sign in a circle, which tempts me to click it again because that occasionally expands the picture further. It isn't surprising that clicking doesn't expand this specific picture (usually it doesn't). But what's unique is that clicking makes the picture disappear, for each browser I tried. With Firefox I get the top 10% of the picture; with other browsers I get nothing. Art LaPella (talk) 05:39, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

2019-02-14
Template:POTD/2019-02-14 says "Flowers of the Lantana camara plant with a crab spider ..." probably referring to the bug in the lower middle. But something with the same spotted pattern is in the upper middle. So should that be "crab spiders" plural? Art LaPella (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Last minute
You might want to prepare your descriptions earlier. This typo wasn't fixed until after it was on the Main Page, because the text had just been composed two hours earlier. Tomorrow's picture isn't ready yet either. Art LaPella (talk) 00:36, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 25 August 2019
Please amend the template text to ; this should allow the template to accept any valid date formats to display the corresponding POTD. &mdash;  RAVEN PVFF  · talk · 01:09, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Have you tested this change anywhere? Izno (talk) 22:19, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * See below. I've pasted the code onto the sandbox subpage. &mdash;  RAVEN PVFF  &middot; talk &middot; 11:13, 26 August 2019 (UTC)


 * ✅ please update the documentation at Template:POTD/doc and put your test cases on Template:POTD/testcases for future reference. —  xaosflux  Talk 13:08, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

ParserFunction errors
Would you please check recent edits at Template:POTD/Day. I suspect they may have added some pages to Category:ParserFunction errors. For example, Picture of the day/December 2019 has "Expression error: Unexpected < operator" and the page is in the hidden category. Johnuniq (talk) 07:12, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the errors; thanks for notifying. The error lay in the incorrect treatment of a blank parameter, which I've now rectified. &mdash;  RAVEN PVFF  &middot; talk &middot; 14:41, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Johnuniq (talk) 22:25, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Usage of POTDs on portals
Please join the discussion at. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:55, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

2021-07-07
For the Soyuz diagram, expand the picture ("+") to find the annotation under the heading "Block A (top)". I don't know how hard it is to fix a picture, but "Bloc F" (twice) should ideally be spelled "Block F". Compare bloc to block. Art LaPella (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Proteine
I don't know how practical it is to fix a video, but 30 seconds into the video for Template:POTD/2021-10-21, it displays "spike proteine" which should be spelled "protein". I found another objection at Template talk:POTD/2021-10-21 that you probably didn't see. Art LaPella (talk) 04:52, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

2023-03-25
Please see. Ham II (talk) 20:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

VPM Discussion

 * Please see WP:VPM -- RoySmith (talk) 18:20, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Snowflake
At Template:POTD/2023-07-16, the title snowflake is bolded in the first sentence and linked at the end. Other POTDs both bold and link the article title in the first sentence, with no extra mention at the end. Mistake or deliberate? Art LaPella (talk) 01:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Resolved Art LaPella (talk) 04:47, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Want to report a mistake
Hi, While I was preparing pictures of the day for another wiki, i accidentally edited en wiki. I have corrected it now. Sorry for the mistake. see here. Thankyou. signed, 511KeV    (talk) 06:43, 24 January 2024 (UTC)