Today, January 28, is the 50th year anniversary of the LEGO brick and thus Google have changed its front page. I don't know if we should mention it? Snailwalker |talk10:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi. How about for March 29, it says something like: "Earth Hour (8-9 PM local time, various cities around the world)"? I think it's rather significant, as many cities in many countries around the world are taking part in it. Is it noteworthy enough, or is there something in the rules that prevents this? Thanks. ~AH1(TCU)20:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
April 1: Nunavut
What the hell is this: "Jean Chrétien forced the Northwest Territories to carve all of its inhabitants into two pieces". The territory Northwest Territories were divided into Nunavut in the east and the Northwest Territories in the west. None of the inhabitants were 'carved' in two pieces. Also, Chretien didn't force the issue. A large majority of the Nunavut population voted in favour of the issue, then Parliament passed the act. Can someone fix this to be more accurate? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 01:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I caught on to the April Fools soon after I posted this. The other ones like Gmail being used for "1000 megabytes of storage for spam" didn't even register. Ha ha! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Operation Defensive Shield
2002 – Operation Defensive Shield: Approximately 200 Palestinians fled advancing Israeli forces into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, starting a month-long standoff.
Does this really need to be in the selected anniversaries section? The sentence itself is EXTREMELY biased IMO towards the al qaeda palestinians. If it must be there, then I demand it be cleaned up thouroughly, something like this;
2002 – Operation Defensive Shield: Due to mounting unprovoked attacks against Israel, Israeli armed forces, advancing into Bethlehem, are ordered to arrest the Al-Qaeda operatives, resulting in a month long standoff at the Church of the Nativity.
The part where the palestians are supposedly fleeing our advance makes Israel sound like the perpetrator when infact we were simply defending our homeland.Hebrewpridehebrewpower (talk) 11:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
No, your edit is far more POV. The original simply says what's happening, yours active takes the side of the Israelis. J Milburn (talk) 13:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
We may have to open an issue on Bugzilla. The page itself has not changed since 2006[1], but MediaWiki may have changed as such that it cannot handle the tranclusion of all 366 of the templates, and all the other templates it uses. I tried to purge it, but is still does not work.
What alternatives can be used? There are only two I can think of: One is to check all 12 archive pages (Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January, etc.). The other is too check the What links here of the suggested bolded article, filtering the namespace to just "Wikipedia", and checking out each "Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries" subpage listed (example) Which alternative should it be? Zzyzx11(Talk)20:53, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I've never studied this file before, but if the page is unchanged since 2006, then does that mean obedience to the instruction has been impossible since 2006, and nobody noticed because nobody really reads all that blah blah blah anyway? If so, then perhaps choosing one of two more complicated procedures would only further ensure that nobody reads all the blah blah blah in the future, and perhaps we should just remove that instruction unless it can be fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 04:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
The Manual of style for links states that ideally, no more than 10% of words are linked, without adjacent links. And yet this does not seem to apply to the entries for selected anniversaries. Today (Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July 4) we have the extreme example:
I'd like to propose a method that works well on disambiguation pages - namely that only the relevant article is linked (and possibly the year as well). At any rate, the number of links needs to be drastically curtailed. Any thoughts? — Pek, on behalf of Tivedshambo(talk)07:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Maybe it would suffice to follow the extant guidelines on overlinking, eschewing links to concepts and places which are familiar to more or less everyone. We could also try dealing with the section as a whole rather than as a number of independent entries; in other words, link to something only on first instance and not repeat a link in later anniversaries. I am not sure how this would work, though... I suppose many only read an anniversary or two and skip the rest. Waltham, The Duke of11:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Beside the embolded selected article, I would favour linking proper nouns and any link that does require a disambiguation. Other links like hostage and Aircraft hijacking are not necessary.
My only concern with the idea of not repeating a link is that an entry might be removed for one reason or another, and the person who made that edit may forget or not even notice to add a wikilink to the remaining instance of that word or concept. I have noticed that this frequently happen on various articles in the mainspace. Zzyzx11(Talk)19:40, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Footer
In the footer template ({{SelAnnivFooter}}), is it really necessary to have the UTC and purge option. I mean, the date is currently mentioned three times and I fail to see the need to purge. --88wolfmaster (talk) 22:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
As per my edit summary when adding this feature, there were two reasons:[2] The first was to help pad main page to reduce the amount of old ITN items when it need to be balanced. The second reason was a temporary solution to the concerns now archived Talk:Main Page/Archive 123#UTC vs. change for local time??. With the feature, this is the only place now on the current main page that shows specifically the current time (not just date, but the 24-hour clock time in UTC), so users – especially new or anonymous ones – are not confused and think the date is "wrong" in their part of the world. Of course, the purge feature provides new or anonymous users an easy way to update the clock and the main page. Zzyzx11(Talk)23:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
20th Century
May I ask why the 'anniversaries' always tend emphasise the events of the twentieth century, and seldom pay heed to the (arguably, more notable) events of the ancient world? Is this due to a lack of interest, or, perhaps, a lack of knowledge on behalf of the administrator(s)? Today, for example, I was pleased to see an event from Late Antiquity; the victory of Belisarius. However, all that remains was, unfortunately, gleaned from the 20th century. I do understand that the annals of the 20th century were certainly more thorough than bygone epochs; however, we (or, you, rather) should simply insert more events from the ancient world, the Middle Ages, etc. This, in my opinion, would improve the quality of the Main Page. ¶ Despite all of this, I can appreciate why all IT-based dates are of importance. The reason is plain. -- Ambrosiaster (talk) 03:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your response, Zzyzx. I can certainly appreciate this matter as well. However, I believe that placing more ancient events in the 'anniversaries' section would bring more attention to the articles in question; to the personages thereof, and consequently, would result in the amelioration the said articles -- articles in dire need of improvement. Take the advice as you will. Yet, I cannot possibly see anything negative resulting from more attention being paid to articles on antiquity. (This being an agreeable conduit whereby users can delve into topics on antiquity) -- Ambrosiaster (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC) -- [Edit: Thank you for the article on 'Recentism'. It was certainly an interesting read, and something which I have long since noticed about Wikipedia.]
There is also the fact that in many cases an exact date is not known or disputed for ancient events. The further one goes back, the worse the situation. Not to mention the Gregorian vs Julian calendar issues. --mav (talk) 01:59, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
On This Day redesign
Hi there. You're all probably aware of the Main Page redesign proposal currently under discussion and development. We'd really appreciate some of your thoughts and comments in particular, because most of the current designs involve significant changes to the On This Day section. Many thanks -- PretzelsTalk!16:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Is the en dash deliberate? I am no authority myself, but isn't the em dash more appropriate for this kind of thing? You're stating the year first, then describing something else. 118.90.45.84 (talk) 08:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Now that I know about the MOS, I don't have a problem... I was thinking along the lines of en-dash: ranges and em-dash: disjoint ideas. I wan't really addressing the MOS in particular in my first comment. Thanks, 118.90.45.84 (talk) 04:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Should this article be included in the Selected Anniversaries template? This year is the centennial of its return to the U.S., and it was rather important... :/ (or should/is the departure date on the SA template?) Cheers, —Ed 17(Talk / Contribs)02:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
It is not on there today because the USS Connecticut article is already today's feature article. The TFA caption on the main page does say, "After the Great White Fleet returned to the U.S. on 22 February 1909". It is a standard guideline to do this to maintain some variety of topics on the main page. Cheers. Zzyzx11(Talk)03:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:OnThisDay lists a few articles, so I don't quite understand your first sentence. The entire template page is currently visibly hidden via <noinclude> tags.
As for your question, as stated on Template talk:OnThisDay, I did in fact remove the tag on most of the talk pages it was being used on. If you check my user contributions,[3], I removed them between 04:36, 24 November 2007 and 18:46, 24 November 2007 UTC before I realized it was easier to just use the <noinclude> tags – could have saved me lots of time. You should also notice that some of those talk pages are actually archive pages, so the template was used as a normal message instead of as the normal talk header template. Zzyzx11(Talk)05:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Alright thanks. I mainly wanted to see what the inputs were and compare them to how the archives are set up. As far as WP:AAlerts is set up, I think there's could be work around that doesn't require template to be used. However, if you want to set up the archive in a more "permanent way", you could simply create archives for each year/month at pages like Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 2009 for example. Then I could rewrite the template to handle such an archiving system, and since there's only about 10 pages left that have the old version, it wouldn't be that much of a problem to remove the rest of them. From them on, you'd simply tagging them with (for example) something like {{OnThisDay|22|February|2009}}, either manually or bot assisted.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Alternatively, the current system could be kept, and a template like {{OnThisDay|22|February|2009}} could still be used. The only "problem" would be that 22 February entry might (in a few years) not contain the same entries as it did on 22 February 2009. So basically the link given wouldn't be an "archive link", it'd just be a link to that day's current SA.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:52, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
So if an article gets posted for two or more non-consecutive years, is there going to be multiple {{OnThisDay}}-tags? I could see how a bot would do that, if it is coded a certain way. How is that going to work? Zzyzx11(Talk)16:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
For now, it'd get two tags yeah. If this is a problem, I'd rather leave it to the bot coders to modify the template to handle multiple years, so they don't have to go make their bot through hoops to do its job.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:58, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm the one working on the bot; it's in testing now. As part of the preparation, I made a list of all the past pages (up to 2009-05-14) and extracted the bolded links.[4] Then I resolved / merged the redirects[5] and fixed links to pages that are now disambiguations.[6] Hopefully I did that all right. My intention is to first run the bot over that list (so e.g. Teachers' Day isn't edited 31 times), and then to run the bot daily just after 00:00 UTC to tag the linked pages for the previous day. Any comments before I file the BRFA?Anomie⚔01:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
BRFA filed BTW, when the target page looks like something that needs human attention (i.e. double redirect, dab page, page with redirected talk page) the bot will post somewhere for human assistance. Would you like that here, somewhere else, or just on the bot's talk page? Anomie⚔21:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
Only the first 50 of those were the trial, then it was approved to clean up the other 4250 pages in the backlog. Now it's doing a 7-day trial of the keep-it-up-to-date part of the task.
BTW, there were two pages that I didn't know what to disambiguate them to:
National holiday: 2004-07-21, 2005-07-21, 2006-07-21, 2007-07-21
I believe Talk:Teachers' Day is currently the worst offender. If there is consensus to ignore certain links, I can easily enough have the bot do that. Or {{OnThisDay}} could be edited to do a show/hide button if there are more than a certain number of dates linked.
AnomieBOT ran into its first error today: Since Victory Day is a disambiguation page, AnomieBOT refused to add the template to the talk page. If you want to, add it manually using oldid 298049076. Anomie⚔01:30, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
picture indicator
not enough acitivty on Talk:Main_Page (ridiculous, I know) about this so posting it here
Thanks for replying - >sigh< I thought I might get some ITN and OTD regulars by doing those posts - didn't expect the same guy on both but I suppose it makes sense given how similar they are. Where can we put stuff like this so it actually gets seen, and therefore discussed ? ☭
The most visible page to discuss it is on Talk:Main Page. But since you have tried that already, let me perfectly honest with you: Ever since I have been contributing here on Wikipedia since 2005, every now and again, someone like you suggests we change the picture indicator on OTD and ITN, whether they first make their suggestion on Talk:Main Page, Template talk:In the news, WP:VPR, or some other page. The discussion gets some responses – but ultimately they die down with "no consensus". I could give you tons of examples in archived discussions like this one from 2006. In fact, the only successful discussion regarding changing the main page I have seen was three years ago on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability/Main Page, but everyone was primary motivated by web usability issues. Even last year's proposal to change the main page never gained consensus too.
I mean if you are persistent and determined, you could raise up your issue again. But IMO, it is a lost cause, and I do not see it changing anytime soon. I mean it might have been easier if only one person was doing ITN to gain some sort of consensus, but unfortunately that section is maintained by many people. And of course, the people doing DYK need to agree to your changes too; even though the picture on there always relates to the first hook listed, they still use the (pictured) caption too. Cheers. Zzyzx11(Talk)04:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
I didn't want to get rid of the (pictured) or move the pictures or anything - my idea was to just add a (P) at the start of the text of the item currently pictured to make it easier to zone in on it. DYK wouldn't need it. ☭
The last one is slightly less reader-friendly than the first two, what with the admin stuff at the top. Does anyone have a suggestion for an alternate target for the anniversary tweets? Thanks. —johndburger01:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, that feed is what I process to choose what to tweet. Pointing to that is a good suggestion. I'd rather not point to the template, though—that actually changes every day (effectively), yes? I'd like old tweets to still point to the corresponding day. I see your point about the "admin stuff"—I didn't realize these pages are being edited all through the year. All good to know, thanks. —johndburger00:14, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Movable events?
Is there any way that movable events (such as today being Holy Tuesday in the Western church calendar, but obviously not in most other years) could be added to this template? I don't know how in the world it could be done; I simply ask if it would be possible. Nyttend (talk) 05:15, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Six of the ten Holy Week days are already posted on the templates. Do I take it you would like all of them as well? I believe the original reason why the Monday to Wednesday holidays were not added before was because those respective articles were stubs when the OTD templates were created and nobody asked before. Zzyzx11(Talk)16:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Addition to "On this Day"
It would be great if someone could add that today, 7th Oct 2009 is observed as Guru Purnima or Teachers Day in Hinduism. This is as per Hindu calendar and the date would change every year.Bmayuresh (talk) 09:03, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Oops, sorry. This is embarrasing, I didn't notice the 'Main article' until later in the day. Apologies for wasting your time.Eddie | Talk08:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Every year on March 18th is the anniversary commemoriating the martyrs of Turkish War of Independence. So, it would be great if you could add this event to "On this Day" section. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.175.82.218 (talk) 11:16, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Pakistani state of emergency, 2007 falls on novermber 3rd.Suggested blurb "President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule across Pakistan, suspended the Constitution, imposed a State of Emergency, and fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court". Or simply "President Pervez Musharraf declared State of Emergency Pakistan suspending the Constitution."--yousaf46505:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
This was discussed on Talk:Main Page specifically Talk:Main Page/Archive 146#Guru Nanak Jayanti: 2 Nov : On this day.... The short answer is, it's not going to be included as long as the article is in such a poor state. Specifically at a minimum the issues in the two tags need to be fixed. To some extent, you're right that no one is interested in the sense that although we've got several people asking for it to be included, no one has bothered to fix the article which is the only way it can be included. Note that at the time it was proposed on Talk:Main Page, it didn't even have the date for 2009 in the article, so we have got some improvements, but not enough. I did ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sikhism if it could be gotten up to scratch in time for next year but the project isn't that active so I'm not holding my breath. Of course if anyone here wants to get it up to scratch I would welcome and encourage that, then there's a good shot at it being put up for next year. Nil Einne (talk) 02:12, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, then that would create a bias towards older history, whereas DYK hooks can be put wherever one wants, and the ITN probably could if peple wanted to, as the date isn't explicitly there YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it does, and that is really not my first preference. For me, it is only "a short term option" to curtail a serious dispute or heated debate – until the discussion dies down a few days later, it does not produce a definite conclusion, it gets archived off talk:Main Page, the original complainer moves on to something else, and then we can again start to put images for other events. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:45, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
The presence or absence of an image doesn't seem to have any effect of the popularity of a hook, be it on ITN, DYK or OTD. If there is any "image component" that makes people click on a link, it is swamped by the general difference in click rates between various hooks (and that over all three sectors of the Main Page, even though their click-through rates are vastly different). Physchim62(talk)00:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Criterion update?
I have just noticed this:
Criterion #6: "the selected article needs to be updated to clearly state the event or day of the celebration/observance and the exact day it occurred/occurs with the day and year linked (non-Gregorian-based holidays and observances need not state or link the exact day since this will differ each year)."
During the last year, attitudes and guidance towards linking dates have changed. Links are still allowed where there is sufficient relevance, and I can understand why some holidays/observances might be thus treated (especially when that date is very important for the article's subject), but I do not believe it would be either beneficial or appropriate in most other cases. I therefore believe that the criterion ought to be amended to reflect the new state of things and stop encouraging people to link needlessly. (In any case, the date is linked from the Main Page, where people are expected to find the bolded articles anyway.)
On another note, the phrasing seems a little convoluted; call me stupid, but it took me several minutes to make sure that including the full date of the event in the bolded article is explicitly required (especially in conjunction with criterion #5)—reasonable as it sounds, there are always loopholes, and many events are mentioned in articles only with the year. Waltham, The Duke of01:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Regarding your first issue: If you are referring to the debate and subsequent changes to WP:MOSNUM regarding linking and autoformatting of dates, then no, it hasn't yet been updated here to reflect that. So I'll do that now.
As for your second issue: Yes, there might be some loopholes and exceptions, but the main idea is that there is some sort of verification in those linked articles that, for example, all the events listed on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 13 really did take place on January 13 and not some other day. This relates to what is posted at the top of WP:ERRORS: "Remember that the Main Page usually defers to supporting pages for accuracy or when there is disagreement". I'm not sure how else the phrasing here can be modified. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for taking care of this; I see you have simply removed the linking requirement, which is probably the right thing to do in this case.
I have decided to be bold and make a few minor improvements to the phrasing of the criteria. I hope that they look better now (and that I haven't changed their meaning). After doing so, I have another two questions:
The first criterion's "on centennials, etc." looks rather vague to me. Does it mean "centennial, bicentennial, tercentennial and so on"? If so, I think it would be better to state this explicitly in one way or another. One might choose to interpret it more loosely and include, say, semicentennials.
The second criterion's "other historical events that occurred on or about the same day of the year" confuses me. What does "about" refer to here? If it means "around", then it seems wrong, as it is my impression that one should only care about each individual day and not the ones near it. If it means something else, then... I have no idea what it means. Waltham, The Duke of16:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it is a bit vague. In fact, the criterion use to say that they "can only be used when there are not enough qualifying events", but was changed after someone suggested on this now-archived discussion to feature "particularly significant anniversaries, say the 50th, 100th and 200th years since ... preferentially selecting round number anniversaries". But I have seen others also post several semicentennials, like in 2006 when someone added the 250th birthday of Mozart, [7]. So when I do enforce that criterion, I do not revert the addition of such semicentennials. However, I am not sure why 50th anniversaries were not included; the criterion was changed before I became active in OTD. I assume it was in the interest of fairness because, as mentioned in that archived discussion, the 50th anniversary Einstein's death was not posted. But I haven't yet found a definite discussion regarding that.
As for the origins regarding the "about" wording, I really have to dig deep into the archives to when the criteria for all the main page sections were originally posted on Wikipedia:Selected Articles on the Main Page, before they were split into separate pages in February 2004. The wording seems to have been added in 2002 so it was "updated to reflect current practice".[8] Of course, Wikipedia was still in its infancy during that time, with only a fraction of articles and users it has today. So I assume that "about" meant "around" when it was added because many of the first articles that were written back then were about those extremely significant historical events. And so putting a relatively less significant topic on the Main Page back in 2002 really stood out. But today, there is exponentially more of a variety of significant topics to choose from, so the "or about" may be outdated, IMO. I honestly don't really strictly observe that part anyway.
← (Pre-emptive strike to avoid indentation insanity.)
To be honest, I've always viewed the 250th and 750th anniversaries as more important than all other semicentennials (or rather multiples?), and it is my impression that others do as well. "Quarter-millennium" is the most likely association of these numbers, even if nobody actually says that. In any case, vagueness may be beneficial in this case, although I shouldn't object to a wording expressing more clearly the rationale for what one might call "anniversarial flexibility". But again, I am usually in favour of wordiness rather than brevity, which is not necessarily a good thing.
I had a look at the discussion archives for that period. The style of the page (inconsistent signature usage and the use of lines to separate posts) is almost as fascinating as the mentalities of that ancient era, AD 2003. In any case, it seems to be what you say, plus a lack of resources. I find the following extract particularly revealing (emphasis mine):
There simply is no section for them - thus the Historical anniversaries section focuses on actual historical events. So observances like Christmas and Ground-hog Day aren't listed but holidays that mark actual historical events, like Australia Day are listed (Jesus, if he did exist, was not born on December 25th - birthdays aren't listed either BTW). As it is the events listed in the Historical anniversaries section are only there only at most several days. Adding birthdays and holidays would shorten that to about a day. That is way too short to be at all useful since the same items are already all listed on their day page - which is only linked to the Main Page for one day. There is little point in just summarizing the current day page on the Main Page only to replace all the links with new ones the next day. That is too much maintenance for very little benefit. Aside: Is there a list of holidays on Wikipedia? We may decide to just add a new section but to do that we need a list of holidays. See my comment above. ---mav
Considering the progress that has intervened regarding the daily update of the Anniversaries list (who would have thought it?), I strongly suggest removing the "or about" element from criterion #2. Waltham, The Duke of15:14, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
The Golden W, awarded for having content featured in every area of the main page.
The Golden W, with Laurels, awarded for having content thrice featured in every area of the main page.
The Golden W Award goes to editors who succeed in having content featured in every area of the main page: Featured Article, Did You Know, In the News, On This Day, and Featured Picture. It is currently proposed as a WikiProject. Please go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/WikiProject Golden W Award if you are interested in making this WikiProject a reality. Time commitment is minimal, less than an hour a month at this point. ɳoɍɑfʈ Talk!16:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
It is not clear what exactly ought to be listed in that template. Is it the days on which the article is selected to appear in bold, which can only happen once a year, or any days on which the article is linked? I should assume the first to be true, and that would be the reasonable thing to do, but no specific guidance is given in the template's documentation. Furthermore, there is also the matter of observances, which can lead to cases as extreme as this. Lastly, how much of all this should be incorporated into {{ArticleHistory}}? For those interested, there is a discussion in progress here. Waltham, The Duke of02:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
AnomieBOT adds the date after any day when the link was bolded, never when the link is incidental. Teacher's Day just happens to be bolded 13 times a year, thanks to it being observed on different dates in different countries; you can follow the permalinks in the template to verify this. If anything comes of your ArticleHistory discussion, let me know at User talk:AnomieBOT; another option would be to adjust {{OnThisDay}} so it automatically collapses itself if a sufficiently high date# parameter is in use, maybe something like this (example). Anomie⚔03:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
As far as I can see, we're running the same entries as we did last year. I just made a suggestion for a new entry on the project page, and there are others as well. Lampman (talk) 00:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Significant enough?
It is very hard to get biological species listed on anniversaries because events related to them are usually associated with specific years or monthly (peer-reviewed) publications. However, I may have one for the Ring-tailed Lemur (an FA article)... but I'm not sure if it's significant enough to supplant one of the other entries. Here's the line I was thinking about:
It might be more notable to also include the fact that it was done "despite the term initially being used to [commonly] describe lorises", a different family of primates. Zzyzx11 (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, was just trying to focus on the event for the day. I didn't realize it helped to make it sound like a DYK hook. Anyway, I've reworded it to accommodate your recommendation. So how should I proceed? I would "be bold", but I don't really know who to kick out or whether my picture can supplant the existing picture. – VisionHolder « talk »01:55, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Right now, I added it to the hidden list of backups.[10] It is too early to tell what condition all of those articles listed will be when January 2011 rolls around, at which time it would be far more easier to "kick out" pages with "'orange'- or 'red'-level article tags". Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 02:58, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I can't remember where the discussion is exactly archived, but that guideline is not strictly enforced since the Main Page is treated more like a portal than a regular article. And since the Main Page is the page that is most visited by newbies, the wikilinks basically says to them, "Yes, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, does in fact have an article on that subject, and here's the link to it." Now, I myself don't advocate linking every single word, but IMO wikilinking at least every proper noun is reasonable.
But are you also talking about, for example on a given day, there are two or more events that are U.S.-centric and all of them have "United States" wikilinked? A problem will occur if an admin hides the blurb that has "United States" wikilinked for the purpose of "Main Page balance" but forgets to wikilink one of the other events that remain listed. Zzyzx11(Talk)01:33, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Days of the year has been marked as a guideline
Wikipedia:Days of the year has been recently marked as a guideline. Since one of the long-standing criterion on SA/OTD reads that "The event and the selected article (bolded item) needs to be listed in the Events section of its corresponding day-of-the-year article", this also means that each listing here should also comply with WP:DOY as well. Zzyzx11 (talk) 23:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Vietnamese items in On This Day
What's up with all of the Vietnam-oriented entries? Seems like there's been one every day for the past month. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:19, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
You are not the first to notice (see Talk:Main Page/Archive 151#Vietnamese items in On This Day). Basically, another admin went through and added a bunch of Vietnamese events to various OTD pages, primarily ones that are A-Class and above. I'm not sure what his exact motivation was, but I assume this user is interested in Vietnam-related articles and/or thinks there is too much U.S.- and/or UK-bias on the Main Page. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 00:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Vietnam is an interesting country with a fascinating history, I'm sure, but perhaps someone should go through and take some of these out? I don't think we need a Vietnamese entry every day. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Ahhh, Mwalcoff is seeing hordes of barbarian articles everywhere...there have been four this month, one every four days, not every day, and in any case, that's just how the events fell in the calendar, there aren't 90 of them for the whole year. Secondly, I'm not out of line with criteria, which says that the article quality is the main point, and those ones were modern A/FAs. If you want more US items go and actually write something useful. Most of your "contributions" to Wikipedia are merely soapboxing and political agitation. Secondly, per your bottom line of what an American is interested in (therefore NCAA sport trumps wars etc) you might also note that Vietnamese history 1954-75 is of great interest to those who share an overwhelming Americo-centric viewpoint, such as you. In any case, OJ Simpson, which is scheduled for tomorrow has unsourced BLP violating content, so if you want it to stay, fix it up. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 04:35, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Have you ever encountered the term "balance the main page" on Talk:Main Page or any other discussion pages? It is similar to when newspaper copy editors shorten or expand the text so it fits the length limits on the pages of newspaper columns.
So here on Wikipedia's Main Page, a number of admins like to have the text on both the left Today's featured article/Did you know column and the right In the news/On this day column to be about equal – "balanced" – so there are no large blank spaces at the bottom of either column.
So whenever the text on Today's featured article or Did you know is a little longer than usual, admins who "balance the main page" quickly start to add more events to either In the news or On this day. Of course, quickly finding and adding new events to In the news is really not the preferred first choice when there currently may not be good suggestions on WP:ITN/C, and it looks bad re-adding old events. And therefore, it is always easier to add one of the backup events that are available on each OTD template. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 07:43, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
On a related note, there have been a few discussions about formally changing the length guidelines for all the main page sections, but nothing has gained consensus yet. On the one hand, there is a concern that ITN is normally too long since news events posted there can sometimes stay there for days. But then there is a problem with increasing the general number of events on OTD, because there are not enough existing good articles each day, unless people prefer the section look like it always revolves around 20th Century U.S. and/or UK. And then you have the people maintaining DYK who are concerned about the increasing number of eligible candidates there, and therefore don't want that section so short that it increases more backlog. But of course, you don't want Today's featured article to be generally too short that it doesn't give an adequate summary on the Main Page... Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:11, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia's guideline for which calendar to use, in general, is at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Calendars. Because the destruction of the Temple of Artemis happened after 45 BC, the date should have been given in either the Julian or Gregorian calendars.
As for the general rule regarding the Selected anniversaries pages, it defers to the supporting articles for the information. If the article specifies a certain calendar, it will normally be posted here on Gregorian equivalent date.
I have temporarily added it to Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 26, but there is no guarantee that it will stay up there. Please be prepared that another admin may come along, examine the article, and may put cleanup tags on the sections he feels need cleanup. In fact, in the past 24 hours, this particular admin appears to have gone over the upcoming OTD templates for the next month or so, and tagged various articles listed there that he feels needs cleanup. (Incidentally, it is the same admin who has advocated a "B-Class or higher-only" policy, and I've always been able to get people to shoot it down because there is not enough articles due to the current systemic bias on Wikipedia, and it may invalidate extremely internationally significant events. So the next best thing for him to do is to tag those articles for cleanup, but he has until now only looked at the handful of those templates he later added new events on ... not go over the upcoming month's template like now). Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 19:45, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Zzyzx11, I am of course aware of the shortness of either article. I just read the "no stub" rule, and I did not feel confident to remove the stub tag from Heroes' Day (Namibia). It is not only short but could also profit from the attention of an English native speaker. The reason I put this notice is that for the previous two years the article was plain wrong about what is actually celebrated on that day in Namibia. The article survived three main page appearances (2xOTD, 1xDYK) in this state. I see that as an embarrassment, both for WP and for Namibia. Now, I believe Omugulugwombashe is better researched and explains the event just as well. Furthermore, it hasn't gathered any attention yet. If there is anything I can still improve on this article, just let me know. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 08:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Today's OTD refers to "The Palestinian militant group Black September," while the Nov. 17 OTD says, "Sixty-two people were killed by terrorists outside the Deir el-Bahri, one of Egypt's top tourist attractions, in Luxor."
What makes Black September "militants" while the Luxor attackers are "terrorists?"
Personally, I think using a word other than "terrorists" to describe the Munich attackers is wishy-washy: This was an attack on civilians hundreds of miles from any war zone. Our article on the Munich massacre uses "terrorists." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 20:54, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
South Vietnam again
Has anyone counted how many South Vietnam items (especially from the early- to mid-1960s) are now on OTD lists? I think it's gotten out of hand, but I don't want to go through and look at all 365 days. Is there a way to use a bot or something to check this? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:01, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I count 69 out of 365 day articles. I didn't use a bot. It took me 7 minutes using the 12 month articles starting with Wikipedia:Selected_anniversaries/January, and searching for the word "Vietnam" (which also finds words like "Vietnamese", but not "Viet Cong" or even "Viet Nam".) I only counted a day once no matter how many times "Vietnam" occurred on that day. Art LaPella (talk) 02:26, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
The hard part for a bot is determining what is a "South Vietnam" article. I can tell you there seems to be 2714 bolded items on all 366 day articles (don't forget February 29). 230 of those have "Viet" somewhere in the page's wikitext, but that does include pages like Virginia Tech massacre that simply mention one of the victims was Vietnamese. Feel free to edit either list as long as the list is the most recent revision, or copy the list elsewhere if you'd rather. Anomie⚔02:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, most of the items on the that list have no apparent relationship with Vietnam. Battle of Washita River, for instance, is on the list, but that was in Oklahoma. Nothing in Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/November 27, including the Washita River item, mentions anything Vietnamese. Perhaps your bot decided that the word "Soviet" in the unprinted part of that day's anniversaries included the letters "viet", and then reported an unrelated item for the same day. Art LaPella (talk) 04:32, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Battle of Washita River#The Battle of Washita in film mentions the Vietnam War. I'm sure you'll find something similar in every erroneous example. I did warn that passing mentions would be picked up, but it's easier to go through 230 items than 2714 so it may still be somewhat useful. "Soviet" would not be picked up because the "v" is not capitalized. Anomie⚔13:03, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh, maybe. But I think the original question about "South Vietnam items ... on OTD lists" meant mentioning something Vietnamese on OTD, not after clicking the article. Art LaPella (talk) 17:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
I took the question as meaning the topic of the item had to do with South Vietnam, whether or not the country was specifically mentioned in the blurb. OTOH, I have no idea whether there are any related items that don't manage to work in the name of the country. Anomie⚔20:07, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Given the past and continuing overexposure, I propose that there be a ban on all South Vietnam related topics and Ngo Dinh Diem in particular from OTD for one year. Greenshed (talk)
I didn't read all the page and its discussion, so I don't know if someone allredy wa rote about this or not, however I'll write it: I suggest adding a section or at least some sentenses in the section "on this day" about acces wich happened on this day's date according to another celanders exept to the English celander. For example: today is the fiveth day on Hol Ha'Mohed (nrearer to a jew holiday) according to ths Hebrew celander.עברית (talk) 08:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm actually quite surprised there is no guideline written about this, but for events that happened before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, what date should they appear? For example, I just put inTransit of Venus, seeing as how it's listed on November 24, but that's under the Julian calendar. In New Style, it's December 4, and it's currently on display on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 4, but missing from December 4. What general rule do we want to institute? I assume there may occasions where the OS or NS date is better known, so in those cases it would make sense to use the more famous date. howcheng {chat}08:14, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
No. Although technically it wouldn't be a violation of WP:SELF, it's too navel-gazing. Having content about ourselves in the featured areas on the Main Page is like saying, "Hey! Look at how awesome we are!" This is the reason why Wikipedia (when it was a Featured Article) was banned from being TFA, and why Jimmy Wales's photo is listed at Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Unused. howcheng {chat}17:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I think it is a shame Francesco's page was trumped as a feature article on Dec. 5 by 9-year-old rock album; his birthday did not even make it to the planned "On This Day" section. He is the brother of more famous Alessandro Scarlatti and uncle of the even MORE famous domenico Scarlatti. This was interesting news to me, and might have made for an interesting article/feature on the Scarlatti family.
Unfortunately, Francesco Scarlatti is not a Featured Article, which by definition precludes it from appearing as "Today's Featured Article". It also is not eligible to show up in Selected Anniveraries/On This Day because it is currently tagged as lacking references, and we prefer to showcase only our best articles on the Main Page. Lastly, our guidelines for inclusion for OTD allow only for listings for births/deaths on the centennial anniversaries, thus making him eligible in 2066. Regards, howcheng {chat}17:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
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