Wikipedia:Tip of the day/March 29

Working on the Main Page - I

Being the gateway to the encyclopedia - the Main Page is Wikipedia's most frequently visited page. The main page is always protected and can only be edited by admins. But, most of the content on the main page is piped in each day from various departments, via templates. The volunteers in these departments work year round to prepare the content on the Main Page to be viewed by the World each day.

The departments that prep content for the Main Page are:
 * Today's featured article – prepares excerpts from featured articles, to be displayed on the main page.
 * Did you know – prepares and selects "hooks" to new articles or articles that have been expanded by a factor of five.
 * In the news – participants nominate blurbs from Portal:Current events, and decide which of these get displayed on the main page. Admins post the blurbs as soon as they are approved.
 * Selected anniversaries – prepares the pages that get displayed in the "On this day" section of the main page.
 * Picture of the day – copies and formats featured pictures into the POTD scheduling queue, and writes the captions that accompany the pictures.

Anybody can help prep the pages that feed into the main page's templates (up until the day they are displayed on the Main Page), by proofreading and correcting them, and we encourage you to do so. (continued tomorrow)