Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year

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Note about use of 'this day in history'-type data sources:

Please be careful when using 'this day in history'-type website lists as reference sources to update our selected anniversary, day, year and subject articles. Many of the events listed on our day pages come from data derived from other similar lists on the Internet. In my experience, most of those lists contain many inaccurate and flat-out wrong data. In 2003 I was able to expand and fix about half of all the day pages and found that 1/5 to 1/3 of the events listed on my major online reference source for that were at least subtly wrong or had spurious items that could not be confirmed (for a time I tried to use other similar online lists but encountered the same problem). I therefore spent a few hours on every day page I worked on checking facts, moving unconfirmed entries to day talk pages, and then updating the corresponding year and subject articles.

  • My guess is that most, if not the great majority, of these 'day in history'-type website lists swap data back and forth via rewrites that are not checked for accuracy. In time errors must creep in - just like a huge game of telephone.
  • Some entries on these websites seem to totally confuse Julian and Gregorian dates (even converting Julian to Gregorian for events that happened before the Gregorian Calendar was adopted!).
  • Other websites seem to have added events to specific days when the exact day the event actually happened on is not known at all (I've found that many of these guesses are placed on the 1st and the 15th of months on these websites).

In short, please check any fact obtained from these type of websites and also check any fact on our own day pages before updating its corresponding year or subject article (of course, when checking you should largely ignore other 'this day in history'-like website lists - especially the ones that are just copies of our day pages). --mav

Contents

[edit] Opening sentence

Do we really want to begin each anniversary page with something like:

January 5 is the 5th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 360 days remaining (361 in leap years).  ?

Not that I can think of any better first sentence but I doubt, that a 'regular' visitor is really interesed in this. It's good to have, but it should go somewhere close to the end of each page. -- Tobias Hövekamp

"There are 360 days remaining" sounds like something your diary would tell you on the day itself. To me, it doesn't make sense in this context. "Following January 5, there are 360 days in the year" makes more sense, but even then I can't really see how it increases anyone's knowledge about the date. I suggest we get rid of it altogether. Wikipedia is not a diary. -- Oliver P. 11:15, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Something tells me that the phrase "There are" is written in the present tense. --Spixels 23:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Event ordering

Looking at the historical anniversary pages for days I think it would be more logical to order them like this:

Day of the year, Holidays, Events, Births, Deaths

With holidays moved up to the second item from the last. The reason is that the holiday is celebrated every year, so it makes more sense to have it nearer the top so it is easier to find. You could argue that everyone knows December 25th is Christmas, but to those who celebrate Christmas, that is the most significant thing about that, and you would be surprised how many people don't know that it is Christmas. I am more than willing to start making the changes. -- Jim

Please don't change this. Reasons follow:
Not all the holidays we list recur every year (there are notes about Christian movable feasts on some days, for example), and I think more people go to such pages for "what happened today" than for "is it a holiday". Newspaper lists of this sort don't usually bother with holidays at all.
Also, yes Christmas is celebrated every year, but it's also the anniversary of Isaac Newton's birth every year.
Christmas is a poor basis for generalization, because there are lots of holidays on these pages, and while people who celebrate Christmas may think that's the most important thing about that date, there are people who celebrate various saints' days, and the national holidays of varying countries, who don't think they're the most important thing that happened on that day. And even if they do, that may not be the majority opinion. For example, 11 September is a holiday in the Coptic Christian calendar. Is that the most important fact about that date? Is the US celebration of Veterans Day more important than the World War I armistice? Vicki Rosenzweig

[edit] Day page format, with examples

Question about the day pages. For a while now I've been trying to work-out a good way to format them when multiple events happened on the same year. What I've been doing is placing a double * for the second and subsequent events/births/deaths that happened in the same year. This looks nice in the displayed page but is a bit confusing in the wiki code - esp when there are a string of years that each have multiple entries. It is sometime difficult to tell what year the ** entries really belong to. I follow this same syntax when updating year pages and I've already found some insertion errors by others whereby they inserted a new entry with a day inbetween a string of several ** entries. Thus the ** entries following the new entry look like they belong to the new entry and not the old one.

So this syntax has got to go. I previously just delinked repeat year page links on day pages and repeat day pages on year pages.

Is this a better way of doing it do people expect to have every year page linked on a day page and every day page linked on a year page even when regardless of how many times they show-up on that page. Below are some examples

1. What I have been doing most recently (looks best when displayed but is a nightmare of wiki-code):

2. What I was doing a week ago (a bit ugly when displayed but not as confusing in wiki-code):

3a. A little confusing in wiki, looks a bit odd displayed:

3b. A little confusing in wiki, not bad displayed:

4. This version looks the best in wiki-code but it makes it difficult to see where multiple events happended in the same year:

I tend to favor the #3a or #3b since they balance utility for the reader and ease of editing for the contributor. #1 IMO is the most useful to the reader but is a nightmare for the contributor (and as noted above is prone to causing errors). #2 is better for the contributor but ugly for the reader (it also takes-up more space and has jarring blank lines that distract the eye). #4 looks great both to the contributor and the reader but since all the years look the same it is not as useful to the reader. What does everyone else think? --mav 10:11 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)


Choice #1 looks the best to me. Doesn't seem that nightmarish to add to - add the year if it's the first event, add ** if it's not. The hard part seems to be to get periods at the ends of all the sentences... :-) Stan Shebs 14:11 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
I'd vote for what I might call 4b, the format we'd been using: the same as 4, except don't wikify the year when it appears more than once. This produces the following:
But I'm not sure how much of this is that it's better in an absolute sense and how much is that it's what I'm used to. Vicki Rosenzweig 14:47 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)

I think I like 4b best, but I could live with a modified version of 2, if we used a colon instead of a dash after the year. -- Zoe

I'm very against 4b - if only because it looks confusing. It was hard for me to understand the logic behind linking some years but not others. Voting for 2, or 4 as a backup. BTW, is there any current (i.e. 2005) activity on this topic? -- Palfrey 15:25, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

5. Let's try this way: it should look OK in wiki-code and make it easy to see where multiple events happened in the same year (also I prefer it more spaced out):

The sub-headings are optional, obviously, and could be tried with and without the bullets.

[edit] Date format

I've added some lines using the wrong date format, and "born" and "died" symbols:

Should I delete the month and day info:

or fix the date format used?

Please also see my comment, below --Wernher 18:30, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

[edit] Idea to add table to day page articles

I saw a neat HTML navigation box on the Occitan Wikipedia's day pages that I think may be nice to have on our day page articles (see User:Maveric149/Sandbox). There is one big drawback; it adds a bunch of HTML to the day pages. If it therefore worth it? --mav 09:49, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

It is beautiful, but sort of meaningless. It makes sense for easy navigation if the date is nice in the middle, but what about the marginal dates like 1? You have a whole month behind you and nothing before. --Menchi 10:16, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Given the implementation, I am not in favor of this. Daniel Quinlan 10:45, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
It would be nice, but the code necessary probably makes it not worth it. However, if there were a software solution that could be implemented at a higher (lower?) level by the developers, that would be ideal. --Minesweeper 11:09, Nov 11, 2003 (UTC)
I like the look ... is there another "upper level" place it could be placed at? mabey "up" by List of historical anniversaries (if not used in "lower" pages)? reddi
I like it and I think it's worth doing. Although HTML is generally to be avoided, I think that in a case like this where it is a permanent feature of the page and not something that needs to be edited, then the normal issues of how easy it is to edit do not apply. Angela 17:54, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you mean Template:JanuaryCalendar, Template:FebruaryCalendar, etc., then I think it's a bad idea. (Yes, I know this is an old discussion, but I'm behind.) It just adds lots of redundant links that have nothing to do with what the page is actually about. Yes, they're calendars, and they look pretty (ish). But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a calendar. One of the most important points is that they go out of date. Articles should, once they have evolved to a decent state, tell the reader about a certain subject area in a time-independent and place-independent way. Articles should require changing if and only if the facts themselves change. Having time-dependent content on the Main Page is all right, because that is not part of the encyclopaedia proper; it's just there to direct people to content that might be interesting at the time, and it's a given that it will be updated daily. (Good work on that, by the way.) However, having time-dependent content in the encyclopaedia itself is not a good idea. Time-independent articles can be printed, archived, reused on other sites, and so on, without fear that they will suddenly become incorrect just because they might later be read on a different date or in a different place. That's why we have all those "as of 2004" statements, instead of "now" statements. Okay, so technically the calendar says that it is for the year 2004, rather than for "this year", so it's not strictly speaking time-dependent, but it does prompt the obvious question: "Why 2004?" The only reason it's there is a time-dependent one, and that's why it shouldn't be there. I say we should take the calendars out.

A page (or pages) on calendars in which it is explained what calendars are valid in what years would be a good idea, though. Just as long as there is no reference to which one is "currently" valid. -- Oliver P. 11:15, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.


The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was b./d. -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 22:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral born/died symbols?

I noticed that we use the † symbol to mark people's deaths. Might this possibly offend non-western and/or non-Christian readers? Perhaps using b./d. would be the most neutral. Just wondering... --Wernher 18:30, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Current template includes "+", not "†". --User:Docu
Yes, I noticed, but I took the liberty of guessing that the "+" was meant as an easy-to-type surrogate of the "†" ? But, I might be wrong, so please put some light on the issue if some is to be had. --Wernher 20:42, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)
How about + for born, and - for died? --gev 0420 19 Jan 2004 (CST)
Somebody noted that + and † represent Christ on the cross (signifying death) and that * represents the star of Bethlehem (signifying the birth of Christ). If true then we cannot use either. I say we use 'birth' for birth and 'death' for death. --mav 04:51, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I moved this page (back) because it is not an encyclopedia article. The main namespace is reserved for encyclopedia articles. --Jiang 07:04, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

There is contradictory information all over the place as to what is the correct style: b. and d. or * and &dagger. Somebody please clarify. moink 18:33, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Right, I asked in a few places, and the style that most people preferred was b. and d. I've updated this wikiproject page to reflect that. fabiform | talk 02:17, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Great, I think that's the best from a global cross-cultural standpoint anyway. --Wernher 01:07, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Here's a crazy suggestion: let's use "born" for "born", and "died" for "died". It's what we do in biographical articles for people who haven't died yet and (I think) for people whose date of birth is unknown. What reason is there to use a different convention in this page, or in any other page for that matter? -- Oliver P. 11:15, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
For Days-of-the-Year I think b./d. is the best, for brevity and not repeating the full words born/died all through the page. On the biography articles, however, born / died is by all means appropriate. --Wernher 18:57, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Year of birth/death

Is every person listed in the births section also supposed to have their year of death next to them? Currently this seems to be done quite inconsistently. Does the same apply to listing birth dates next to those in the list of deaths? For some reason, the example on Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the Year has birth dates for two of them, but not the rest. Is this just because it isn't finished yet or is there a reason? Angela. 12:52, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

I assumed that people just hadn't got around to it, so I've been adding the year of birth for every person whose article has it specified, just as I've been adding dates of death for those in the births list for everyone who's dead and had it marked on their article. I've been working from Jan 1 through the anniversaries. I've almost finished March, so all those pages should be consistant unless people have done a lot of editing to them after me. fabiform | talk 13:38, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thanks fabiform. I am aiming to do this for August. Angela. 03:09, Mar 5, 2004 (UTC)
In the birthdays section, the death date is always put at the end of the entry line, but at times this can cause confusion. In cases such as "1717 Marie-Anne de Mailly-Nesle duchess de Châteauroux, French mistress of King Louis XV of France (d. 1744)" it looks like Louis died in 1744, not Marie-Anne. To obviate this ambiguity, I suggest that in all entries the death year appear immediately after the person's name, eg "1717 Marie-Anne de Mailly-Nesle duchess de Châteauroux (d. 1744), French mistress of King Louis XV of France". It's simply a matter of correct grammar. Alpheus

[edit] New layout proposal

Some of the lists on day articles have been getting rather long and as a result some people are adding arbitrary sub-headings to break-up the list. I have therefore tried to visually break-up the lists without the use of subheadings and to add value to the day pages by adding links to the century articles (a related WikiProject). I think this is both more useful and looks nicer than having arbitrary sub-headings (see [1] What does everybody think about my new layout proposal? --mav

See March_6/sandbox; added hed into subhed so easier to read at glance, minor terminology chng jengod 02:09, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
I made some changes. What do you think? --mav
I'm not sure it's necessary. I find it easier to find a date just by scanning down the list rather than by reading the subheadings. Angela. 23:39, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
I can live with your latest version. I just hate really long TOCs. --mav
There's a day in february which is absurdly long though. I'll see if I can find it. fabiform | talk 00:11, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
February 11 fabiform | talk 00:30, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
If sections need to be divided (which I'm not convinced they do), February 11 is a lot more readable than March_6/sandbox. I don't think the TOC is too long. Angela. 20:37, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I like the subheads that are clean and short.Makes for easy scanning in both the TOC (which looks trim) and the article itself. -- Decumanus 18:12, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Unverifiable entries

It seems to me that the Births section of the Days of the Year pages are very attractive to vanity posters (and some other forms of light "vandalism"). Do we have some system in place to keep this tendency down, other than just Wikipedians watching over their own birthdays etc? When I occasionally wander around among misc days-articles, I often notice a recently born (say, 1975 and later) or two listed under Births, and when doing a Google check find a page or two belonging to some relatively un-merited high school or college student... --Wernher 01:15, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've spotted some obvious ones (i.e. someone born in 1987 and whose claim to fame is being "a really really cool person").  :) (I put them in bad jokes and other deleted nonsense). Anything more subtle than that has probably passed me by though, I've not googled for names for example. It would be good if we knew who was monitoring which date pages... at the moment I think I've only got one on my watchlist even though I've edited three months worth. fabiform | talk 01:31, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm fed up of people accusing Wikipedians of "vanity". It's a blatant personal attack. I've changed the heading to "Unverifiable entries". -- Oliver P. 11:15, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tense

And why is everything about historical events in the present tense? These events all happened in the past. We have different tenses for things that happened in the past, you know. Is there any reason not to use them? -- Oliver P. 11:33, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Because that is how things were started and people have mostly continued to follow that style. --mav

[edit] Changes

I see that most of my changes have been reverted, although there has been no response to my criticisms on the talk page. Oh well. I'll go through the elements that have been readded in order, and hopefully I'll get a better response here:

  • "{{msg:JanuaryCalendar}}"
    • This is, in a sense, time-dependent and therefore unsuitable for an encyclopaedia article. Wikipedia is not a calendar! See above.
  • horizontal rule above the "see also" section
    • We don't have horizontal rules above "see also" sections in other articles. Why have one here?
  • "December 31 - January 2 - December 1 - February 1" in the "see also" section
    • Unexplained "see also"s are a Bad Thing. If another article is relevant, that relevance should be explained in the article body, and the link introduced in its proper context. For this reason, I embedded the December 31 and January 2 links in a sentence in the opening paragraph, explaining their relevance: "It is preceded by December 31 (in the previous year), and succeeded by January 2." There is no reason to have them in the "see also" section as well. They're just redundant there, and clutter the page needlessly. As for the December 1 and February 1 links, well, I'm lost. I can't think of a single reason why anyone would want those links.
  • "{{msg:months}}"
    • Why the new craze for filling articles with long lists of irrelevant and redundant links? Even in a month article, this list of links would be useless clutter. If people want to know what the months are, they'd go to month, obviously. And January 1 is not even a month! Even if there were a reason to have this list of links in month articles (which there isn't), there would be no reason to have it in articles for days.

Perhaps we should say that January 1 is "the first day in the month of January" in the opening paragraph. Then anyone who wants to know about January (seriously, that is the only month that has any relevance to the date of January 1) can link to it right there, and anyone who wants to know more about months in general can click on month to find out. Isn't that reasonable? -- Oliver P. 00:38, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On a worldwide basis what is the prevalence of the format 19 April (or 19th April) as opposed to April 19. I know the USA have Month-Date as the standard and the UK use Date-Month. My preference is Date-Month, because I'm from the UK, and anyway it's more logical, but what's the global majority preference? Chris (non-registered). User:Arcturus

Norway's date format: Date-Month (indeed I wonder if this is the standard format in most of Europe?). --Wernher 18:44, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Question: If I add an event to a 'Day' page is that event automatically (at some point) added to a 'Year' page? User:Arcturus

In addition to Events, Births, Deaths, Holidays.., and Discography I would suggest a new section is added: National and Flag Days. Any objections or comments? I'm working on 10th May at the moment. Micronesia, The Federated States of, has its national day on this date. Should I add it?

User:Arcturus I'll answer my own question: no point, they'll fit into Holidays and Observances. Arcturus 22:41, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Images?

Is there any policy/consensus about adding images to days of the year pages? I tried it on June 2. What do people think? Ydorb 22:32, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

Not sure. 2nd June doesn't look too bad, but obviously the number of images would have to be restricted to a very small number. Arcturus 22:41, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think if this is limited to one or two images per page it's a great idea. June 2 looks a lot better with the image than without it. Angela. 00:49, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)

Here's an entry from 16th May:

1988 - California v. Greenwood: In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that police officers do not need a search warrant to search through discarded garbage.

Yes, there may be civil liberties issues here, but do we really want this type of 'event' listed? It's hardly earth-shattering. Arcturus 20:15, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This doesn't seem like a notable enough event to be listed there. 16 May doesn't have to include everything that ever happened on May 16. Angela. 00:49, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
I don't like it. There are many different entries on day pages that could merit an image, yet there is very limited space. --mav 21:43, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Why is there limited space? As long as the pages don't exceed 32kb, I don't see the problem with adding an image. Angela. 17:58, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with this either. I've actually thought about this before and I think it's a great idea except we obviously can't have every possible birth/death/event illustrated on the day of the year page. How do we decide what event/birth/death is worthy of having an illustration? --ScottyBoy900Q∞ 03:48, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category

Which would be a suitable name for the category for all pages? I thought of adding Category:Days of the Year (still to be created). -- User:Docu

category:Days would be better, IMO. Adding that to template:months would be the easiest thing to do. But what is the point? --mav 21:14, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok, let's use category:Days, as it's shorter, it's preferable. I had chosen a longer version as this might attract unrelated entries, but we can find a solution for those later. Why? Well I came across Special:Uncategorizedpages, which started (and still starts) with many similar entries. -- User:Docu

Ah - OK then. --mav 05:16, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Births and deaths of assorted animals

In trawling through the day entries I've come across several births and deaths concerning animals. These usually relate to race horses but also include 'Dolly the Sheep' (first cloned sheep) and the like. Presumably the original intention - and maybe the current intention - is to have lists of people only. Otherwise where would it stop? Is there a guideline, written or un-written? Arcturus 16:27, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, include them
  1. I don't see any harm in having those in the birth and death sections. --mav
  2. I don't see any reason whatsoever to exclude animals from the list. --141.219.44.182 19:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  3. If there is an article on or about the animal in question, they should be included in the list. --Phil | Talk 09:15, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
  4. notable animals should be listed if they have articles. i see no reason why we should limit it to people. the key is notablility-if people are interested then it will be relevant.--Jiang 09:19, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  5. Animals that are notable and/or famous should be listed.. Dolly, Laika, Bonzo, Balto, and the like. --GaidinBDJ 13:18, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
  6. If Wikipedia's mission truly is to catalog the sum of human knowledge, then how could they be excluded? (The same argument applies to so-called "Vanity" entries; if the event is documented and can be verified, it should be included.)--64.254.131.106 22:07, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No animals allowed
  1. No animals should have their birth listed, it should be for people only. Astrotrain 13:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  2. Birth (or death) announcements in such lists elsewhere (newspapers, etc.) would only include people. It is implied that a birth/death list only include human beings. Entries here should follow that convention. However, if an animal's birth is an important point in history (such as 'Dolly the Sheep') it might be appropriate for the Events section. The historical significance should be quite high to merit such an entry, and that standard should keep the number of those items low. Notary137 03:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Animal births should be limited to the events section, and only if the animal is significant in some way to human society. Otherwise, an animal births subheading under births may be appropriate. Bigbrisco 02:43, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First Monday in November, etc.

I have just removed Melbourne Cup from November 2, as it is a floating holiday. Is there a particular format for "First Monday in November" etc. listings? -- Chuq 01:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suppose it would go on November ? -- User:Docu
I've seen some people put the year in parens behind the entry. --mav

Could the next occurrance of a floating holiday be listed on a day's page (with year in parens), in addition to its listing on the month's page? It would require yearly editing to keep the info current, so the quantity of such floating holidays may make it prohibitive to allow their inclusion. Notary137 04:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

These articles are about a specific date. The floating holidays you mention are not about the date but about the holiday. With that in mind, it doesn't seem appropriate to add any floating holidays to date articles. Rklawton 04:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for listing in Births and Deaths

User:05 and I have been engaged in a discussion regarding if there should be criteria to decide whether an event, birth or death should or should not be added to a particular day-of-the-year-article, and if so, what should that criteria be.

Nothing is written in Wikipedia to explain exactly what the protocol is for what should and shouldn't be posted in the date-pages - and we should work together to create such an explanation.

In regards to births and deaths, I feel that we should be discriminating in our choices - that the idea is to list the more/most siginficant names on a day-article, not all possible names, and not even moderately significant names. Recent deaths can be used for a more extensive list, and the more historically important names should be placed on the day-articles. IMHO, an article about a particular day is not meant to be a complete compendium or complete list. It is a summary of the most and more important events of that day.

I'd like to hear other opinions, and I'd like to figure out together some sort of protocol or criteria.

Sincerely, Kingturtle 06:47, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Support. --Wernher 06:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Support very strongly. Only the most notable people should be listed. Things like Category:January 1 births could have everything in it as well as more specific pages such as January 2003. --mav 02:42, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. To me, the days articles are just like List articles. They're a good place to put the names of people that we need article son, but don't have yet. Where else would you put the death of somebody who died 200 years ago? Current deaths isn't the right place. RickK 07:01, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)
RickK is right. There is no harm of listing events. So what if we get long pages. One editor's "solution" to the page I worked on was to simply delete most of the material. And when I attempted to abide by one suggestion on the talk page I was summarily reverted because it didn't fit the rigid model that editor supported. I think it is hubris to endorse such wholesale and unilateral deletionism. PedanticallySpeaking 16:54, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
There is some previous discussion on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Policy_re:_day-of-the-year_articles.3F and User talk:05. Not sure if there is much to add I haven't said there.
Personally I think it's difficulte to select among those whose fame is not stellar today. Maybe Died on February 15 could be a page separate from February 15. --05 12:47, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have an idea regarding what qualifies. If there is a Wikipedia article about said person, and the article is larger than a stub, then it is allowed as an entry for birth or death on a Day of the year. Unencyclopedic articles that reach such a size will be up to the scrutiny of VfD - we can let VfD be the filter. Kingturtle 01:34, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Something screwy seems to be going on with the number of days remaining, although I've only seen it in January. For example, January 5. Seems slightly impossible that there are 360 days remaining. --Blagh
If you're on the fifth day of the year and there are 365 days in the year, then there are 360 days until the end of the year. Idran 07:15, 22 Jun 2005 UTC
I've been working on the articles for Years in baseball, and had some ideas along these lines with regard to listing births/deaths on the (for example) 2005, 2005 in sports and 2005 in baseball articles. The baseball page would include all relevant deaths in the sport, the sports page would reduce the listings to (on average) the most prominent 8-10 figures from each major sport (in other words, roughly the 1000 most significant figures in a major sport's history), and the main page for the year would list only members of the Baseball Hall of Fame (typically 2-3 per year), along with selected highly prominent figures such as Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Barry Bonds, who are each currently ineligible for some reason. Equivalent standards could be applied to figures in other sports and fields. MisfitToys 23:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for events

I seem to remember that in order for an event to be listed on a day-of-the-year article, that event had to also be listed in the related article(s). Isn't that the case? Please help me remember. Kingturtle 17:32, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That is a requirement for Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries. But it is not a requirement here. At one point I expanded about half the day of the year pages and made sure each event was both checked for accuracy and included in one or more related articles. I encourage people to do that but don't think it would be an up-front requirement. --03:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If were were to put every single event into days-of-the-year pages, it would become excessive. The idea is to give the reader a quick rundown of the major or significant events of that day, not to give a complete list of every known event.

Here is a list I have put together as things to be listed:

  • Firsts, lasts, battles, precedents, truces, assassinations (and attempts), royal weddings, head of state resignations, verdicts?, passages of substantial legislation, terrorist events, milestones?, space exploration, UN Security Council decisions, major natural disasters, creation of new nations, unique scientific events (comets hitting Jupiter)....

this is just a list for brainstorming. please help work this out. Kingturtle 18:23, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Day of the year articles should only have the most important events, yes. But I see no reason why there can't eventually be 'main article' links to things like events of December 3 that have more inclusive lists. This would not be something that all day of the year articles would have. Instead it would be a way to cut down the size of the larger ones without deleting content. At the same time, things like this should be avoided at all costs. Simply moving the whole section's list to another page is not at all acceptable. --mav 03:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is no harm in a long list. So what if we get long pages. One editor's "solution" to the page I worked on was to simply delete most of the material. And when I attempted to abide by one suggestion on the talk page I was summarily reverted because it didn't fit the rigid model that editor supported. I think it is hubris to endorse such wholesale and unilateral deletionism. I disagree most strongly with the two comments above.PedanticallySpeaking 16:54, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
November 22 - less notable deaths removed from the events area. This is obviously subjective but I feel the death of C. S. Lewis is important enough to be retained. We still have for example, Greek troops advance into Albanian soil and liberate Korytsa, Vaudeville actress Lillian Ruell makes her debut - both events of such little general interest that they contain red links. Does anyone have thoughts on notability criteria for inclusion/removal? Dlyons493 Talk 20:18, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

C.S. Lewis IS listed where it belongs -- under "Deaths". The fact and manner of his death did not have historical import the way, say, an assassination or accident (John F. Kennedy or Richie Valens, say) did, so obviously doesn't belong under Notable Events. --Calton | Talk 01:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] External links to various "thisday/birthday" sites

What is the policy about links to various this day in history/birthdays etc sites?

I just reverted a bunch of entries User:Webgeek added to a site called thisdaythatyear.com. Links like this.

It looked like a simple "no commercial links" case to me, and especially since that site was rather empty. But I see that some such sites could have usefull additions to our listings (ways to sort the info and so on), and also I see that we do have links to BBC's "onthisday" on many (all?) dates. So I'm not sure about the policy here, and thought I'd ask you people on this very fine project. Thanks. Shanes 09:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to avoid these links, if they're useful and accurate. Generally, pages to worry about are those that sell things, or push a particular point of view. ThisDayThatYear does neither. See the Wikipedia:External links policy page. --Spudtater 16:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] avoid subcategories

Some day articles have contained subcategories, for example Births will be divided into Before 1900 and 1900 to 1950 and 1950 to 2900.

Such subcategorization is NOT the approved format, and I remove such subcats every time I see them.

  1. The subcats are not on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year sample page.
  2. The subcats are completely arbitrary and have no consistancy. Some might say Before 1900, others might say Prior to 1900. Some might say 19th Century, others 1500 to 1900 and others 1600 to 1900
  3. The subcats ruin the continuity. I use these day-articles with my high school students - and the subcats really are an unnecessary distraction.

Kingturtle 02:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand this. If it's a long list, why not break it up? So what if the model doesn't have them? Not every page is alike. This is imposing a top-down solution on everyone. PedanticallySpeaking 16:51, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
It makes it messy when I use it in my classroom. Students want consistancy. Kingturtle 02:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Linking dates in lead paragraphs

All the Days of the Year articles start out pretty much the same way:

  • September 21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...

Now, if you turn that date into a link ([[September 21]]), date display preference kicks in:

  • September 21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...
  • 21 September is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...
  • 09/21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...

How it's displayed will, of course, depend on how each user has his/her date preferences set. It allows users to see dates the way they want. And, because the linked date was already bolded, it doesn't display as a self-link. Transparent rendering of user prefs.

So for a while I've been linking the dates in the days-of-the-year articles' introductory paragraphs whenever I open up a day-of-the-year article. I'd have thought it was an uncontroversial change, but recently another editor has taken to reverting, arguing that:

  • self links are bad
  • an article entitled "September 21" shouldn't start "21 September"
  • starting a sentence with a number violates standard sentence style

The only one of those that gives me a degree of cause for concern is the third one but I'm not sure how hard that taboo holds in varieties of English that use the dd MMMM format. And does the convenience of having one's chosen date format displayed override that? I think so. But rather than prosecute 366 separate (and, ultimately, very minor) edit wars, I'd like to hear thoughts and opinions from the broader community: the consensus thing. Thanks. –Hajor 01:06, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about this at all. My date setting is set to "No preference". But if someone do like the date written 21 September and have gone to the trouble to adjust their settings acordingly, it would be most consistant if they could see the dates on these pages written that way too. So I'm with you on this. Regarding his objections. Self links aren't bad if you don't see them as links. Self links to pages that redirect to the same page are bad, because then you see them. But when you don't see them, what's the problem? I don't know, maybe some well-meaning bots are or will be removing self-links (since they aparently are useless), and that could be a slight problem here, but a minor one if at all. That an article has a different bolded title than the article-name, is not unusual. Lot's of bios have a differen't title than the full name usually bolded in the intro. I'v never known this is bad. And, finally, if a sentence starts with a date, are you then supposed to change the way you write dates just to avoid a sentence like "11 September 2001 was a tuesday." I don't see anything wrong with that sentence. But I'm not a native english speaker. In Norwegian it's normal to write 21 September, and I've never heard it's bad to start a sentence with a date. Shanes 02:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. The analogy with biographical articles, where the article title doesn't necessarily coincide with the wording in the lead, is a good one, and one that hadn't occurred to me. –Hajor 13:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Also worth noting, self links should show as bold rather than links in the current version of media-wiki, so they're less "harmful" : see June 12.
  • With dates, "wikifying" is not for the sake of the link, but for the formatting, 99% of the time.
  • By coincidence I've just done the remaining days (I think). Thanks to Hajor for drawing my attention to this talk page.
  • I have never heard the suggestion that sentences should not begin with a numeral, perhaps it's the difficulty of finding a capital 2 on the keyboard? If it does violate house style, and we care, we can add "The date " at the beginning of each page.
Rich Farmbrough 14:22, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Not beginning a sentence with numerals is an absolutely standard rule: if you've never seen it, then you must not looked in any writing style guidebook.
  • Microsoft Manual of Style, 3rd Edition, page 131: "Avoid starting a sentence with a numeral. If necessary, add a modifier before a number. If starting a sentence with a number cannot be avoided, spell out the number."
  • Read Me First, 2nd Edition, page 7: "Spell out numbers in the following situations:...Any number that begins a sentence."
  • Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, page 380: "9.5 Number beginning a sentence. When a number begins a sentence, it is always spelled out. To avoid awkwardness, a sentence should be recast."
Any questions? --Calton | Talk 00:55, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The 12 June trick (this diff) is nice: seems that the bold-and-brackets combination is not necessary, and we get the same result using brackets only. Does that work for all combinations of date preferences, skins, etc? Re violating style guidelines (gray area?), caring about that (no, not particularly), and the possibility of rewording to avoid numerals at start of paras: I don't know. How does the U.S. military handle sentences starting with a date? –Hajor 16:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have run its course. Thanks for the input. Any objections to my linking January 1 on the project-page template so that preferences kick in there as well and to close the matter? –Hajor 19:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
There weren't so I have done it. Rich Farmbrough 23:11 14 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] July 20

Looks like PedanticallySpeaking has gone on a bit of bloating campaign on July 20, adding dozens of minor events, minor (i.e.; red-linked) birth/death entries, AND 29 images. A sampling of his additions:

Lawrence F. O'Brien (1972)
Lawrence F. O'Brien (1972)
  • 1972 - United States: Senator George McGovern of South Dakota asks Lawrence F. O'Brien to become his campaign manager in his campaign for president.
  • 1890 - Gonzalo Roig, Cuban composer (d. 1970)
  • 1890 - Richard Billinger, Austrian writer (d. 1965)
  • 1890 - Freeman H. Owens, American cinematographer
  • 1891 - Ralph Faukner, American actor and fight choreographer for films (d. 1987)
  • 1975 - Judy Evans Greer, American actress
  • 1975 - Jason Raize, American actor (The Lion King) (d. 2004)
  • 1976 - Florian Panzer, German actor

See this diff for the complete list. This is, to put it bluntly, overkill. --Calton | Talk 01:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] new template for talk page + link updating

Currently, the talk page of each date-related article (January 1, February 14, for example) includes the "Selected anniversaries" template. The templates, which are now in the Wikipedia namespace, were once in the Template namespace (and some were once in the MediaWiki namespace). The links on the articles' talk pages, however, still link to the old locations (some link to the Template namespace, and some older pages link to the MediaWiki namespace). Anyone up to the task of fixing them?

I've made a template for fixing the talk pages: {{SelectedAnniversary}}

However, if you use this template, please be sure to use underscores instead of spaces (for instance, "March_3" instead of "March 3"). Otherwise, the above template won't work properly. --Ixfd64 06:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I've spent the last few hours fixing them using cut and paste - I made a few mistakes which should be corrected now. I used {{subst:PAGENAMEE}} as the template parameter for most of them, and they all seemed to work out fine. My impetus for this was finding a comment on MediaWiki talk:December 16 selected anniversaries which would have been hard to find, as the MediaWiki page does not exist. Graham talk 12:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New "This Day in History" link

One good thing about cleaning up July 20 is that I found another external link to go with the BBC one, this one from the New York Times for July 20:

  • [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050720.html ''The New York Times'': On This Day]

Note the form of the end of the URL, being "2005MMDD.html"

I've started adding them whenever I edit a day page -- and I went on a bit of a blitz and added them to all of February. So far, the links have been good, but I'm a little worried what will happen on January 1, 2006, given that the year is part of the URL. --Calton | Talk 00:49, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

given that putting 2004 in the url gives an almost identical page i doubt that much will happen ;) maybe if we keep such links we should have a bot to update them to point at the current years version. Plugwash 16:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] don't you think

the major events on a day should be nearer to the start. i find it crazy that i can go to say December 25 and not see a single mention of christmas until the 6th page after long lists of births and deaths? Plugwash 16:09, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It looks to me like this whole project needs a bit of dusting, as the template does not match any of the articles. Lets have opinions on the following topics, feel free to add more. — PhilHibbs | talk 17:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. Gregorian calendar or Gregorian Calendar (the former is the article name, so I've used that)
  2. ...the Xth (in leap years the Xth) day... or ...the Xth day (the Xth in leap years)...
  3. X days (X in leap years) remain in the year after this day or There are X days remaining (X in leap years) (and please don't put a comma before the parentheses!)
  4. in leap years or on leap years or in a leap year or on a leap year
  5. Order of categories - I propose Observances, Events, Births, Deaths

As Plugwash points out, observances are more likely to be interesting to the reader than anniversaries or births & deaths. — PhilHibbs | talk 17:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Marriages or weddings

I propose we add another category beside Events, Births and Deaths - the category of Marriages (or Weddings). It could be placed after the Deaths categories - maybe just for marriages that entail two notable persons. for example under the year March 28, we could add:

[edit] Weddings

Just an idea - something of interest to married peoples. Kingturtle 02:15, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I must object - for I wonder what would be the criteria for that... important people? I guess the importance of someone comes for what that someones does to contribute to human history, rather than marrying someone. Besides, imagine how many times some people may have married... Qasid 11:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I think only if it's noteworthy enough to include as an event, under events. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-20t18:08z
Qasid, the same criteria for judging noteworthy births and deaths could be used for judging noteworthy wedding anniversaries. Jeandre, i am suggesting that weddings be listed separately so they are easier to find when reading or scanning. it might be fun for people to see who else was married on their wedding day. Kingturtle 13:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
The criteria for notworthy birth or death is that the person already has an article in Wikipedia. I suspect Wikipedia has very few articles about a specific wedding. Even Charles & Diana don't have a separate wedding article. If that wedding isn't notable enough for an article, then a wedding that is notable enough is probably notable enough to fall under the events category under its own merits. At any rate, I think a separate wedding section is a terrible idea for date articles. Maybe you could find a place for such information in some other wedding-related article. Rklawton 17:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I would also say that adding weddings isn't a good idea. Like Rklawton pointed out, very few weddings have specific articles devoted to them. I would also point out that many marriages by "notable" people end in divorce (even Charles and Diana), so by having weddings listed, there would be no good argument as to why divorces, annulments, funerals, etc. could not be listed as well. Births and deaths are concrete - a person can only be born and die once - while many celebrities go through series of weddings, divorces, annulments, etc. (though hopefully they only have one funeral! :) )
...speaking of funerals, it looks like Whitney Cerak[2] will get (at least) two. Rklawton 23:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
those are valid arguments. i can see your point. but i am still interested in seeing a calendar of wedding dates of notable people. maybe i'll start a separate article. Kingturtle 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Kingturtle, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you said "it might be fun for people to see who else was married on their wedding day," it gave me the impression that these pages are just collections of trivia rather than a record of notable global events and notable births/deaths that happened on a given day of the year. I'm sure that some visitors do just click on their birthday to see what else happened that day, but I'm sure that's not the reason why all visitors read these pages. Fabricationary 18:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Fab, what is debated often in wikipedia is whether a particular article is useful or trivial. what might be trivial to me is thought by others to be useful. i can live with that, because some things i find valuable seem trivial to others. i don't think it is trivial to look up your birthday and see who else was born on that day. it can be educational. i also don't think it would be trivial for someone to look up their anniversary to see who else got married that day. Kingturtle 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a huge amount of life, death, history, and other human stuff associated with dates. Given the volume, I think we should keep date articles as non-trivial as possible. However, I would fully support separate articles for world events, deaths, births, marriages, sports, and perhaps others. The main date article could then define the date and provides links to these other areas of interest. So August 6 (Births), August 6, (History), etc. would be fine with me. Rklawton 23:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Break up Category:Days

Currently, Category:Days has over 200 articles, and I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Why not break it into subcategories, one for each month, and put the individual day articles there? Melchoir 06:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Unless there is objection, I'm going to do this pretty soon. Melchoir 22:43, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay... Melchoir 00:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Good work! -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 06:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Another request for Criteria

Every Day article I've checked so far has useless trivial information listed. March 24, 1991 - "The World Wrestling Federation presents the stars and stripes WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles, California, renacting the Gulf War in a wrestling ring." March 23, 1963 - "In London, United Kingdom, Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann win the eighth Eurovision Song Contest for Denmark singing "Dansevise" (Dancing tune)." And so on.

This makes me question the entire purpose of having days of the year articles, since they seem to be nothing but collections of links to wikipedia articles of dubious importance. March 24, 1986 - "Van Halen releases 5150 (album). This was their first album with Sammy Hagar as lead singer." Ok, fine, but was that the most important event of that day, worldwide? Same question for the following: March 24, 1973 - "Kenyan track runner Kip Keino defeats Jim Ryun at the first-ever professional track meet in Los Angeles, sanctioned by the International Track Association."

With no one apparently bothering to check to see if the events listed are really notable, and without clear criteria as to what belongs on the list of notable events, or who does and doesn't belong in the list of births and deaths, how are these articles ever going to be anything but a bunch of trivia links? --Xyzzyplugh 16:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I second that. There are potentially thousands of facts out there in wikiland that can go in each day - some threshold of importance is needed otherwise these pages become pointless. Also, speaking as a non-American, I wonder if there is there really a need for so many baseball facts? --Spondoolicks 15:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template

I made a Wikiproject Days of the Year template that I will replace the plain old text with:

This article is part of WikiProject Days of the Year, a Wikiproject dedicated to improving and maintaining the style guide for date pages.

Be careful when using 'this day in history'-type websites as a reference

Selected anniversaries entry for this day. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before editing this entry.


--Weatherman90 15:18, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Holidays and observances - other calendars

I propose that H&Os only be listed when they fall on the same Gregorian day each year (or a reasonable approximation). There's no use in having a note that Easter or Ramadan (or whatever) fell on this day in 2005, or the day pages will either a) become cluttered up with these dates, or b) become ephemeral, being a pocket-diary rather than an encyclopaedia. Pseudomonas 18:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines

I have just reformatted the moribund Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines so that people who are interested can add themselves to the membership section and co-operate on developing Wikipedia:Timeline standards and specific timeline articles. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:32, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for Events - A Suggestion

Recently, I've dedicated my Wikipedia time to trying to improve the quality of Wikicalendar pages. I've read what some of you have written above about the sorts of events being listed in calendar pages, and I agree, we need to agree upon criteria for what should be listed and what should not. Here are some ideas I came up with:

What Should Be Listed

  • Records significant on a global scale, such as firsts (first human to walk on the moon, to climb Mount Everest, to reach Antarctica, etc.), extremes (maybe hottest/coldest temperatures recorded)
  • Beginnings, ends, and perhaps significant battles or movements in global wars or wars involving at least one country considered a world power at the time of the war. By significant battles, I mean those that turned the tide of the war, such as D-Day.
  • Dates of independence/liberation/formation of countries
  • Dates significant world leaders/movements rose to power (by significant, I mean that the leader/movement had a significant impact on the world during their time in power, not just that they led a major world power).
  • Significant social firsts - date when first country/major country abolished slavery, allowed women to vote, allowed same-sex marriage, and so forth, date when a person/group made a significant social milestone
  • Perhaps attempted assassinations of significant world leaders/influential figures, since successful assassinations should go under "deaths"
  • Natural disasters that killed a significant (few thousand?) number of people, or ones that significantly impacted a major metropolis/country (the tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina, and that sort). Just one listing should do - we shouldn't need to know, for example, date the hurricane formed, date it first made landfall, date it dissipated, etc.)
  • Dates of important documents that had major sociopolitical implications - the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, etc.
  • Major terrorist attacks that greatly affected countries
  • Major dates in the history of world religion. If it's overly speculative (or if the religion is practiced by less than 1 million people or another sizeable number), it shouldn't be included.
  • Milestones in inventions/technology - the date the nuclear bomb was first used successfully, the date the first computer went on the market, patent dates, etc.

What Should Not Be Listed

*In general, events that would not be of interest globally/that do not have an impact on more than one country.

  • Births and deaths - I've seen these put in there from time to time
  • Future events - this is speculation
  • Dates that television programs, movies, books, video games, etc. premiered - this is not notable on a global scale
  • Sport records - unless they are significant world records (speed) or social precedents (first black man to play in MLB)
  • Sport results - stuff like "____ won the Superbowl" is non-notable as it might be of interest to a limited number of football fans in one country. These records should be kept on their own pages on Wikipedia.
  • Dates of festivals (national, local, global) - this is a yearly occasion, not a one-time event
  • Minor natural disasters - i.e. "Mudslide kills two people in rural Kansas"
  • Minor terrorist attacks - i.e. "Suicide bomber kills ten people in Israel"
  • Repetitive events - i.e. multiple sightings of comets, listings of every person to become president of a country, regardless of the impact of their presidency

Withstanding the test of time?

I notice that on many pages, there are many events listed for recent years, while the events listed for past years become sparser. Perhaps we should consider trimming these events to only those we think will be remembered in 10, 20, 50, or more years. For example, from May 13 - "2000 - In Enschede, the Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage. " - was this significant on a global scale? Did it start a war/massive reforms? Did people outside the Netherlands take notice, even then?

Thanks for your attention, and please add your comments/opinions/criticisms. Hopefully we can come to an agreement/start a policy that will ultimately improve the qualities of these pages. Fabricationary 23:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been reviewing events for most of the date articles over the last couple of months. Fabricationary's suggestions are right on target with my thoughts. This is an Encyclopedia, not a collection of trivia. Event information in these articles should serve as milestones of human advancement. This precludes most movies, television shows, records, sporting events, video games, and election results. I suggest we use Fabricationary's bullet point lists as our standards and point of reference for future discussions. Kudo's for bringing these issues to the fore. Rklawton 01:41, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Nicely done, Fabricationary. I like your list. While the pages are full of useful information, we need to do something to keep the pages readable. Now that the clamp is on, we need some "diverting", or we'll end up spending a lot of time removing non-qualifying items. Perhaps we need a "See also" section. Some Wikiprojects and Portals have there own Anniversaries section, e.g.
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can find right now. While we force these 'less significant' (my POV) events out of the main wikicalendar, hopefully we are also helping these other 'satellite' or topic-specific wikicalendars grow. Maybe we shouldn't start removing things right away, unless items have another place to go to. Especially for events before 1600s. It's hard enough to get the date right. I don't want to lose them too easily. -- PFHLai 03:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
I think assassinations should be listed twice, once in the events section, once in the death section (if successful). The victim doesn't always die right away, e.g. William McKinley. The blurb in the events section should explain who did it, where and how, and explain the significance. A little context helps. -- PFHLai 03:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Besides natural disasters, maybe we need to include some notable plane crashes, shipwrecks, train derailments and other accidents. The sinking of the RMS Titanic and the Great Fire of London don't qualify, according to Fabricationary's List above. And how about the first reported case or the peak of a pandemic, such as Black Death, the post-WWI Spanish Flu or SARS ? -- PFHLai 03:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
As sports is religion to some, perhaps we should include major dates in the history of sports not related to record-setting. By that I mean the formation of the Football Association, the Olympics, the first Super Bowl, the first America's Cup, the first Stanley Cup, the first Test match in cricket/rugby, etc., not who won the championship in a certain year. -- PFHLai 04:19, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
How about the formation of the United Nations, Red Cross, NATO, Warsaw Pact, the African Union, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other international organizations ? And opening of major landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Panama Canal and the Golden Gate Bridge ? Michelangelo wrapping up his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ? Where to draw the line for these ? -- PFHLai 04:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
One last comment before I log off: Besides wars & battles, don't forget peace treaties, conferences like the Congress of Vienna, and formation of alliances and collaborations such as the Continental System and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. And lastly, don't forget revolutions that don't involve independence/liberation/formation of new countries, e.g. the Glorious Revolution, the Orange Revolution and other coup d'états. -- PFHLai 04:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Great points, PFHLai :). I agree about directing valid entries that may not be globally significant to other sections - as you listed, some of these sections are already in place. In addition to pandemics, perhaps we can detail some accomplishments of medicine - development of the polio vaccination, etc. Perhaps the history of sports points you mentioned can be placed in sport-specific timeline pages, if they get too extensive, as for example many countries have their own football (soccer)/baseball leagues and the date each was established might get too long. Should we include milestones like "Women's figure skating is first held at the Olympic games," or is that better placed at a page with Olympic milestones?
I forgot to add above that release dates of CDs, regardless of the copies sold, should not be included, since they are non-notable on a global scale, and there are already "year in music" statistics available on Wikipedia.
If we can agree on these points, is making this into a working policy feasible? I invited a lot of users active in the Wikicalendar project to discuss this, so hopefully as we get more input, this'll improve. In the meantime, should this, modified with your additions, be stored on a user subpage and amended accordingly? Fabricationary 05:31, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Since no one seems to have any objections, I guess I'll start going through the date pages and removing non-notable items (according to these guidelines we've discussed) soon. Fabricationary 16:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Great! Rklawton 16:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm new around here, looking at how people see notability criteria and stuff. Two thoughts from me. First, Fabricationary could helpfully place the working criteria as an essay on Wikipedia:Notability and in Category:Subject-specific notability criteria. Second thought's a bit trickier. Maybe a bit more effort ought go towards handling floating dates, rather than leaving them just as an inconvenient afterthought. From the Melbourne Cup to Eid and back again there's a lot of notable time-based events that don't live in a tidy date-based world. --Mereda 09:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Hey Mererda, thanks for your input! I've modified the above guidelines and made it into Wikipedia:Notability on a global scale over time. I invite you and all other contributors on this page to look it over and comment as you wish. Fabricationary 06:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
With respect to Future Events, if we know things are going to happen (i.e. the start of the Olympics) why can't they be listed? I only ask because my entry for the date of the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Winter Games was removed. --Lord Tau 11:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Very rarely do we know of any significant world event before they happen. Sometimes it takes years to recognize an event's true impact. The start of the Olympics, past, present, or future, is not significant enough to be included as an event (with the exception of the first Olympics and perhaps the 1936 Olympics). Rklawton 13:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, OK. Just wanted to know. I'm still new at this Wikipedia thing :-) --Lord Tau 15:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Lord Tau :). Additionally, while the Olympics is an event on a global scale, it's predictable since it repeats itself every two years (much like the FIFA World Cup every four years, Wimbledon every year, and peaceful presidential/government elections around the world every few years). If we listed the start/important outcome of, let's say, the 2002 Winter Games, to be consistent we'd have to list all the starts/ends/important events that occurred in all other Olympic games, which would take up a lot of room. I'm sure the Olympics generate much interest and that visitors to the calendar pages might be interested in reading about them, but for the sake of limiting calendar pages to the most relevant and true one-time events in history, we have to exclude them. Besides, someone who's looking for Olympic history will probably not go to the calendar pages but rather search for "Olympics" on the search bar.
Also, I agree with the point Rklawton made about the test of time as a criteria for determining events. You might note on a random date page that there are a multitude of events listed for the last ten years but much fewer listed for the preceding few hundred years. We don't have hindsight and can't predict which of these events will turn out to be watersheds and which will be relatively non-notable, but even if they are removed, they can be reinstated at a later date. Anyway, I hope you keep contributing to the Wikicalendar pages. Fabricationary 16:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major events

I know that there are many events that affected history on every day in history, but perhaps something should be done for those that were even greater than the others. For instance, July 20 had tons of things that happened, but perhaps one of the greatest acomplishments in mankind's history happened, that of Man landing on the moon. Perhpas something such as boldfacing could be done? Tuvas 17:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey Tuvas! Actually, that sort of thing is already in effect on another Wikipedia project - Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries. If you click on the Talk Page of any date page, you'll find a small number of the most important events occuring on any given day listed. These are the events that will appear on Wikipedia's home page that day. Fabricationary 06:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of day pages, again

I think this accidentally got erased:

Minor note, there are actually 367 of them: see February 30. Ardric47 08:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

[edit] New Subheading Format

It would appear that the date article format has been unilaterally changed by a sysop without prior discussion. To wit: April 1. I removed the change, "Periodic events," with explanation, but I received a notice that my actions would not be "tolerated." Silly, me. If anyone has any objections to this format change, you may address them to Mikkalai. You'll probably want to use his talk page since it's pretty clear he doesn't give a fig for project pages. Me? I'm going to run away and hide somewhere. I've never not been tolerated before. Well, maybe once, but she was off her meds, and I still have scars. Oh, and if anyone can interpret the second sentence of his note to me, please do so on my talk page. I can't make heads nor tails of it. Rklawton 01:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.

[edit] External Links

I am in the process of going through the days removing links of academiccalendar.info/december/19.html this form from day articles where they exist. I am removing on the basis that they are being added by an anon IP who is spamming across all the articles, and not entering into discourse about this situation when I have placed spam1, spam2 warnings on his/her talk pages. The links themselves don't even show up on a google search, indicating this is not any sort of well established website, and with the BBC, NYT, and History channel links already in place unless a website can bring something to the party that respected websites don't cover then it is simply linkspam. If anyone has any views please feel free to post them -- SFC9394 13:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Further to my above comment I have now finished the cleanup of the site that was spammed. On my travels I came across links of this form which appear in about roughly a quarter of "date" articles. I would also view that as linkspam, but I have left it in until others give their views, as the links have been there for almost a year, and appear not to have been edited in in the same manner as the spam I reverted today, which was aggressively posted to nearly a hundred articles in two days. SFC9394 15:39, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Good work. Rklawton 16:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this page.


[edit] "Film references"

I notice that November 5 has acquired a section entitled Film References (actually, Film Refrences [sic]) [3].

I've always staunchly removed the observations that Dr Scott in Back to the Future invented the flux capacitor on November 5, 1955... but obviously it would belong in this section. However, I can't see anything in the WikiProject permitting the addition of "film references" sections to the Days of the Year pages. Should this be deleted? - MykReeve T·C 11:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm similarly disinclined to the inclusion of film references. How would such a reference ever be considered a candidate for "On this day..."? -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 22:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Format/Birth/Death Suggestions

After spending some time editing these sections, I've identified some issues that we can discuss, if anyone has thoughts on these matters:

  • Births - should fictional characters be listed? One argument against their listing is that they are not born but rather created.
    • No Fiction But I would support a "Dates in Fiction" project so long as it's totally separate from this one. Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Links to bios tagged for deletion/speedy deletion - should they be retained until the page gets deleted, or removed right away?
    • Editor's judgement some nominations are obvious, some are not. Red links are easy enough to spot in the case of non-obvious nominations. Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • General format - some editors add half a biography to a person's listing on a page - perhaps the general format should be trimmed to (first name, last name), (nationality adjective) (one or two words describing their most important occupation/claim to notability). This would make the pages flow more nicely and prevent a person's description from taking up multiple lines of text in a browser. If the person is a Nobel laureate, the format of the listing people seem to be following is {link to name of Nobel prize person won|Noble laureate) in addition to the standard form.
    • Less is More I think the bio should only be long enough to disambiguate the person. The shorter, the better. Folks can read the bio by clicking on the link. We only need to give the user enough information to assure him/her they are clicking on the right link. Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Amount of detail - is it really important to know that Joe Schmoe is or was a quarterback for the the Miami Dolphins? Not all sports are team sports, so does it make sense to you all if the listing is trimmed to "Joe Schmoe, American football player?" Similarly, while a musician may spend his or her entire career in one band, making it sensical to make their listing "Mary Doe, Canadian musician (The Hallway)," is it necessary to cite actors, who spend their career shifting from part to part, by their notable roles of films?
    • Less is More - as per above. Just include enough to disambiguate - and provide the reader a clue. Ex: "Shirley Temple Black - American actress, diplomat" - is sufficient. Folks can click on the link to read all about her roles and diplomatic postings. Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Does anyone have any thoughts on these matters? Fabricationary 06:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for asking. Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some Gripes with the System As It Is.

1) The "there are x days remaining" tag is unnecessary, and often wrong. It isn't going to be September 5 in 117 days, and even if it were, I wouldn't care. What's the deal with that, anyway? Does it have to be edited every day?!

2) I think there ought to be a 3-tier hierarchy. We already have 2 tiers: the selected anniversary events and everything else. Why not have:

A) Selected Anniversary B) "Notable World Events" C) "Misc."

I know we don't want to inundate users with lame stuff that isn't significant on an international scale. That's a big problem with the internet -- overwhelming people with stupid crap. But at the same time, part of the whole appeal of wikipedia is that you CAN check out stupid crap if you want to. As far as I'm concerned, if a video game has its own wikipedia article, and on that article its release date is listed as June 30, then by all means it deserves a spot on tier "C."

To be able to see a huge list of all kinds of random things that happened on any given day -- that would be really cool. That's something only wikipedia can offer. I understand that we wouldn't wanna drown "important things" in the process, which is why I think there should be three tiers.

The criterion for making tier C would be simple: the event must be internally referred to.

'--Nick 17:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey Nick, while your proposed category C is interesting, it's something I would oppose at the moment. I regularly maintain the Wikicalendar pages, and already, it's hard to categorize what is notable on a global scale from what is not. Attempting to separate major world events from non-major events that are still interesting would require a lot of work, and then it would be very difficult to maintain (as far as stuff like: "Pirates of the Caribbean released on DVD," "Jennifer Aniston and ____ get married," "Mariah Carey gives a concert at some venue," "Local mom and pop shop opens in Cleveland" etc.) If everything is kept, the pages would get humungously long and disorderly, and otherwise a very detailed critera would have to be written and agreed upon by many editors. Have you seen this proposal as to what should determine notability? Let me know what you think. Fabricationary 17:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
The functionality that Nick seeks is already present. It'll also give you a good idea what a mess we'd have if we implement Nick's plan. To see this functionality at work, just go to any date article and click on "What links here." You'll get the list Nick is looking for - and you'll see it's pretty useless. That's what we're trying to avoid happening to the date article itself. Rklawton 17:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
One additional note: You wrote "The "there are x days remaining" tag is unnecessary, and often wrong. It isn't going to be September 5 in 117 days, and even if it were, I wouldn't care. What's the deal with that, anyway? Does it have to be edited every day?!" Actually, the "there are x days remaining" refers to the number of days until the end of the year, not the number of days from the current date to the future date. These numbers never have to be updated (as leap year figures are also included) :). Fabricationary 21:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh! Then I guess I just find that tag unnecessary and ambiguous, not unnecessary and wrong.--Nick 23:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

From an administration/maintenance point of view I can see why "tier C" would be a nightmare. I guess what I'm really driving at though is this: The problem with the notability criteria is that they create a notability bias. As it stands now, there is no place on the wikicalendar to get a "slice of life" -- to get the smaller, more trivial happenings. And if you don't think trivia belongs on these pages, I really disagree with you, because the whole point of these pages IS trivia. I can't think of any reason to check some random date other than something like, "Gee, October 1 is my birthday, I wonder what else happened that day" or "Gosh, what other crazy things happened on April 14 other than the sinking of the Titanic." For pseudo-academic curiosities like these, I think the marriage of Jennifer Aniston to some guy is no less appealing than some bloody skirmish in the Middle East. So I think the ideal date page combines notability and non-notability. In a nutshell, I think the wikicalendar could use some personality.

PS, Kudos to you, Rklawton and Fabricationary, for quick responses and scary-impressive dedication to the site -- I hope my criticism doesn't imply a lack of appreciation! --Nick 23:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Video game launches

Not being aware of this page, and having been asked to find policy about putting video game launches on days of the year, I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Video_game_launches.-gadfium 02:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What should be listed for births and deaths?

Lately I've gone through many Wikicalendar pages cleaning up enties for births and deaths. I've been making sure each entry consists of both nationality and one succinctly-stated description of that person's (most) notable role. I've been shortening stuff like "*[[1930]] - [[John Doe]], American scientist, physician, physicist, and cardiologist, recipient of the [[Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine]]" to *[[1930]] - [[John Doe]], American scientist, [[Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine|Nobel laureate]] for a more succinct presentation. In terms of content and length, I don't think birth entries should be CVs, and I don't think death entries should be obituaries. To learn about a person, a visitor can click on their link, so a mini-biography or an entry longer than all other entries on the page isn't needed on a Wikicalendar page (i.e. if the person's description streches all the way across the page and goes to a second line, it's too long). Any thoughts on this?

Also, besides noting the people who are Nobel laureates, should any other specific awards be mentioned on the Wikicalendar pages under births or deaths? In my opinion, only notable international awards should be mentioned, and the Nobel Prize is probably the most notable award given to scholars in different fields. Should any awards be listed for athletes? The obvious choice might be to list those that won the Olympic Gold Medal, but since there are so many Gold Medalists, multiple Gold Medalists, and a case for then including Silver and Bronze Medalists as well, I don't support their inclusion on the Wikicalendar pages at this point, unless someone can convince me :). Fabricationary 02:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Fab, first of all i wanted to thank you for all your hard work. at one time i had all 366 days in my watchlist. i know how consuming it can be. for now i am only watching the days of august.
i think you're right. descriptions should be short and sweet. country of origin and occupation, title or honor is all that should be needed. maybe rather than Olympic Gold Medalist, Olympic swimmer would work. keep up the good work. Kingturtle 02:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, Kingturtle, and sorry that it's taken this long for me to reply. I like the Olympic idea you suggested - I'll use that the next time "Olympic Gold Medalist" gets added to someone's description. Fabricationary 06:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The future of this Wikiproject? Becoming a portal?

As mentioned above, it is very likely that eventually the lists of events, births, deaths, and other observances will become too long to be listed on one page. For example, for some reason, lots and lots of stuff has happened on July 20, making the page already 30 kb long. As we look to the future of the project, do you all have suggestions?

An idea I have been considering is creating a portal that each day features the current date. That's something that I don't have much experience in, but I was thinking that the current "selected anniversaries" box could be featured prominently, linking to a page just listing events (and maybe observances/holidays too) that happened on a certain date. Other side boxes could link to a births page and a deaths page, or just one page encompassing both.

This might perhaps ameliorate some of the issues encountered in watching the current Wikicalendar pages. Editors tend to post current events that may or may not be significant over time on the events section, so perhaps a more prominent space could be given to the "this date in recent years" box currently on the pages, such as "Are you looking for events that happened on August 23, 2006/2005/etc?" Perhaps links could also be given to pages like 2006 in sports, 2006 in music, 2006 in television, etc., since many edits I've redirected these days come from folks treating Wikicalendar as their personal (upcoming) events calendar. On the same note, we might be able to amend "Events" to a more descriptive title like "This day in history..." or "Significant global events" (with a link to the proposed policy?).

However, I think most frequent editors to the Wikicalendar pages would agree that the biggest issue is the addition of non-notable people (redlinks or no-links) to the pages. If births had their own separate page that is not linked to the Wikipedia main page, then hopefully 1) it would be less visible to casual editors who want to add their birthdate and 2) more tags could be placed at the top and bottom of the page asking people not to add their own birthdate, etc. As it is, if you want to edit any Wikicalendar page and just click "edit this page" at the top, you have to do quite a bit of scrolling before reaching the middle/end of births, and it may be that at that point you haven't seen the "do not add people without Wikipedia articles..." tag after all that rapid scrolling. A specialized births page, also, might allow us to put a tag or template at the top in good humor reminding editors that this isn't the place to tell everyone about their birthday.

Of course their are cons - the most blatant being that there would be about three or four times as many pages to watch as before. However, if received well, there might be less "vandalism"/unhelpful edits than before.

Any thoughts or other suggestions? Fabricationary 06:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I should point out that July 20 is a bit of a special case, because User:PedanticallySpeaking decided to stuff it to the gills with all manner of trivia and images (29 images, as I recall), and probably everything that should go hasn't been weeded out (though two stabs at it, by myself and Rklawton have been attempted). See User:PedanticallySpeaking/July_20 for the full original horror, all 72 KB of it not counting the image sizes.
The obvious way, it seems to me, to cut down Birth sections is exercise a little judgment -- as with events -- and weed the sections as necessary. I deleted one ludicrously minor actor's birth from one page and it was reverted by User:Rklawton, who left a prim little note on my talk page informing me that because the person had an article, they were automatically entitled to a listing -- despite the reality that the person probably didn't deserve the article to begin with. Having a Wikipedia article for a subject should be minimum requirement, not the only one. --Calton | Talk 08:24, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
On the no-links/redlinks thing, surely this could be relatively easily enforced by a bot? Having it on a less prominent page would possibly make things worse rather than better, as scrutiny would be reduced as well. Pseudomonas 10:45, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments, Calton and Pseudomonas.
Calton, I think it would be extremely hard to establish and enforce a "notability" policy for births. For events, we have this one, and if events did happen that aren't notable on a global scale, I find that they can usually be redirected to some other article like 2006 in sports, August 2006, etc. If we enforce notability for people, it could lead to edit warring ("I don't think he's notable/as notable as..."), and removed names could not be transferred elsewhere like events could to satisfy the editor who added them.
I also shuddered in horror upon seeing PedanticallySpeaking's version of July 20 :).
Pseudomonas, having a bot take care of the redlinks/no-links would be awesome and save me and other frequent editors to the date pages lots of work. I don't have experience with bots, but it would be great if such a bot could be created. Just a few (minor) things/situations that the bot would probably not be able to deal with - 1) Sometimes it does happen that an editor is trying to add someone with an article to the list, but he or she doesn't get the link correct; 2) If Joe Johnson, a 10-year old kid who plans to be a World Series-winning pitcher, adds his name to a date page, it won't be a redlink, but he doesn't have an article, so that would still have to be weeded out by hand; 3) If someone adds someone with an article to the wrong date page (as often happens when a notable person dies), a bot probably couldn't fix that. However, all things considered, I think a bot would be an overwhelming benefit to the project. Fabricationary 21:08, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm working on writing a bot for this. One thing I'm considering is to enforce that the linked page must mention the date somewhere on it, so if Joe Johnson was born in 1950, 1960, 1980, or 1981 it'll be OK, otherwise it'll be disallowed. This is somewhat adding new rules, but I don't think it's the end of the world. Pseudomonas 18:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Pseudomonas, that sounds great. I don't see how that's really adding new rules since the rule is that only people with Wikiarticles can be listed, so a link to a disambig page that doesn't match a description on the dab page is most likely a person without an article. Fabricationary 06:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, it'd cut in if a person's article didn't have a birth/death year mentioned on it. OTOH, I think that's an omission worth flagging up immediately. Pseudomonas 07:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible that this message can be the one given by the bot to users who add redlinks/people without articles? It's the one I've been using recently - not a warning, but a brief clarification of the rule. I feel that in general, the people who add their own birthday to the list are acting in good faith, so a friendly note is warranted telling them why their edit was reverted - very few continue those edits afterwards. Also, is there any way the bot can restore the tags at the bottom of the "Births" and "Deaths" section asking editors not to insert people without articles, double-link years, etc.? I've been spot-checking recently and noting that a lot have mysteriously vanished. Fabricationary 06:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
That text seems fine to me, saves me composing my own :) As for the tags at the bottom of the sections, I'll keep that in mind. Pseudomonas 07:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was No subheadings (See also: avoid subcategories) -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 15:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 20th Century subheadings

It appears someone is creating a 20th century subheading in some of the date articles. While I generally object to unilateral format changes to this project, I also object to mass reversions due only to a point of order. So, let's begin the discussion: should the article headings "event", "birth", and "death" have century subheaders? Rklawton 04:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Mild No - the main headings aren't overly long, and it's not particularly hard to find an event or person. Rklawton 04:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong no - quite redundant. Fabricationary 06:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  • No. Pointless and somewhat arbitrary. --Calton | Talk 07:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Dealing with Julian calendar dates

I've got an authoritative source which dates publication of Isaac Newton's Principia as 5 July 1687 in the Julian calendar. This project page seems to imply i should convert that to 15 July in the Gregorian calendar, move the event from the 5 July page to the 15 July page, and link to 15 July in the various articles which mention publication of Principia. The MOS, however, seems to suggest that i should not convert the date but leave as 5 July and link as such. Are all the events listed on day of the year pages meant to be listed as when they occured under the Gregorian calendar or are they a mix of Gregorian and Julian calendar dates?EricR 17:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project membership

At the request of Badbilltucker, I created a membership list on the project page. I've compiled the following list of contributors to this Talk page, and if I have time, I'll leave y'all a message. In the meantime, you can either add yourself, or strike out your name. -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 07:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is this here and not on the project page or in a subpage? Brian Jason Drake 12:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for breakdown of days

It seems to me that there are fundamentally two potential users for these date pages. The wikipedia portal managers, who will use them for selecting data to be included in the portals, and someone who is just interested in the day in general. Given that the portal managers will have an interest in these matters, I propose that we potentially either break down the pages to include all those who have relevant anniversaries on that date and somehow mark those who are counted as being more important, or separate out those which are counted as being more important. I would think maybe one of the criteria for differentiation would be how important any of the existing wikipedia projects consider the given subject. If, for instance, any portals or projects covering the same subject matter as portals counts the subject as being of either "top" or "high" importance, then I believe that they can reasonably be included on the date listing either on the top or with an asterisk, bolded name, or whatever. This will make it substantially easier for portal managers to update their portals. Perhaps, in some circumstances, we might even "mark" those of the highest level of importance for the given period (week, perhaps) between each update of a given portal. Anyway, I'd more than welcome any responses. Badbilltucker2 19:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Badbill. The idea doesn't sound bad, but I tend to think that putting that idea into practice would introduce subjectivity to the pages more than historical objectivity. You're probably aware of the "Selected Anniversaries" derived from events on each date which is what appears on the main page on a given date (and also on each date's talk page). I think the editors who have worked on that have done a good job in selecting events of global pertinence from a variety of fields (i.e. world news, major happenings in a country, even sports/entertainment here and there). Here the "most important" events are bolded for emphasis, but on the page itself, these events are not bolded. A system that involved bolding events on date pages or sectioning them out by "Related to (such country/project)" or "Most Important" or "Entertainment/Art/Politics/etc." would 1) require a lot of work, 2) be subjective, and 3) make the pages longer and bulkier. Let's see what others have to say. Fabricationary 19:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
All points well taken and which I can agree with. However, I do note the rather huge number of portals out there, beyond simply the main one. Would anyone else object to putting in a greater number of events related to a particular date so that more portals would be able to find things relevant to their specific subject on the date pages? Badbilltucker 21:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jewish dates

I'd like to bring your attention to Wikipedia talk:Jewish dates. Please add your thoughts to that page. Thanks!—msh210℠ 19:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikify Days of the year

Most the the wikipedia articles on days of the year have an extremly long list of events which in my few should broken down with section headings. For example 1900-1949, 1950-1999. The only problem with this is that all the pages would need to be consistent, which would mean updating 366 days. I would be interested in your feedback. --Benjaminevans82 20:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

See #20th_Century_subheadings. -- Jeandré, 2006-09-27t17:55z

[edit] Fictional events

I was wondering about the "No Fiction" policy here. I totally agree that if a fictional event/birth/death/holiday appears in those lists it should be deleted, no question, as it could be very confusing. However, I don't really understand where the harm is in allowing a separate section for such events from sufficiently noteworthy works of fiction. The article for November 12th (picked at random, I'm sure there are many others), for example, has a Fiction section that I think is noteworthy. Could we discuss the possible relaxation of the habitual deletion of fiction from the date pages? Adxm 22:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

What makes a fictional event -- er...non-event -- notable? Contrast with September 11#In Fiction or 42 (number)#In pop culture. Maybe we have should nail down the notability criteria for real events first? -- Robocoder (t|c) 05:48, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Maybe, but why not nail them down at the same time?
I would agree with what has been mentioned here before, that most people look at these pages for events, real or otherwise, on their birthday, or wedding anniversary or similar for friends/family. Some may use it for serious research, I don't know, but I would like to know about events on my birthday, and I'm sure others would too.
*I suspect that the current "immediately delete" policy does not fit in with people's wishes.*
How about if an event, fictional or otherwise, is mentioned in a *directly relevant* main WP page, which by its very remained existence must be notable, then we allow the event to stand and not otherwise. This would stop really obscure references to pieces of fiction as well as facts: if there is no mention of the event in a main article then it can't be notable. -- Adxm 09:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see very narrow guidelines for fiction. If any fictional event mentioned in an existing Wikipedia article is valid, then this entry, which I reverted from October 19 yesterday, would be allowed:
-- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 15:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of fiction, etc. But I think the date articles are long enough already - and they are getting a lot longer. For example, I suspect most biographies don't have birth/death dates represented in date articles. In the long run, I think these articles will split into Date Event, Date Birth, Date Death, and Date Observances articles due to length. Adding Date Fiction to existing date articles will just break their backs sooner. Instead, I suggesting creating the Date Fiction series of articles right away. Events, births, deaths, and observances will eventually follow along. The date articles we have now could then consist of the main section with information about the date and a "See also" section with links to related articles (events, births, etc). This will keep individual date articles from getting too long as well as meet the needs of fiction fans. Hmm, this may also accomodate the horoscope fans, too. Rklawton 05:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I second Rklawton's idea, and point to List of important dates in fiction as a starting point, possibly to become obsolete, considering the oft escapist nature of the internet.69.137.129.2 00:01, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I am seeing more and more days of the year with a "fictional events" subheading. Is this officially discouraged? Should I remove these? (example: March 25 Joyous! | Talk 15:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other holidays

I know a reliable website, http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html, and there may be more, that includes the lesser-known holidays such as World Egg Day (October 13), National Gum Drop Day (February 15), and Interntional Mountain Day (December 11). Although they may seem non-notable, people looking for information about their birthday would find it useful and interesting. Due to many international users, we might want to dramatically cut down the holidays actually used. What do you think? Reywas92Talk 20:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images, revisited

A while ago I noticed that someone was deleting the images from all of the date pages. After it went on for a while, I decided to revert it, mainly because the apparently indiscriminate nature of the deletions concerned me. Do we have any guidelines for what images (if any) are appropriate on those pages? My gut feeling would be that, while we don't need an image on every page, there are some iconic dates for which an image is definitely called for, including September 11 and November 22. Any thoughts? -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 04:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

150px images go pretty well with list-type articles. I'm thinking specifically of List of Registered Historic Places in Illinois. The image should be very specific to the event in question and not something generic. For example, the first man on the moon event should show an image of Armstrong's first steps and not the NASA logo. The user in question claimed that showing images of some events and not others demonstrated favoritism. However, I disagree with that notion as a basis for banning all images entirely. Images make Wikipedia's articles far more useful and interesting. Rklawton 05:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi it's me. How can you disagree that it's favoritism while in the same sentence you indicate that some should have images and some shouldn't? That is direct application of the definition of favoritism. I see the date pages as a jump off point for all events that happened to occur on the same date, as their topics are much too numerous to fairly focus on any one event. I agree that images are useful and interesting, but choosing an image already widely associated with a certain date offers no new information to readers. Since the most reasonable image candidates are for the most popular events, I find them redundant on the date pages, as their events' very popularity heightens the possibility of images on their respective popular pages. I look forward to talking more about this.69.137.129.2 23:49, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I never suggested that some events listed on a date article shouldn't have images. Next, we make choices in date articles all the time. For example, not all events that occur on a particular date are notable enough for mention in a date article. Choices are a fact of life, and the fact that we must choose does not mean we must choose nothing at all. A few event images make date articles look nicer, and that's sufficient. Rklawton 00:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
"Nicer" is a matter of taste, and by thinking that no images make the date articles look nicer, that is sufficient by your argument. Also, I assume we agree that "not all events should have an image", which is an equivalent statement to "some event(s) should not have an image". However, you make a good point about choosing which events make it on the list. But once they're on, the list is egalitarian. Readers have mentioned that they mostly use the date pages to look up other events that happened on their birthday, or some other kind of anniversary. Probably the second most likely reason is for research. In both cases, they are probably aware of the most famous events on that day, and are rather looking for events they are unaware of.69.137.129.2 00:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
So it's OK that we are egalitarian in our selection of events, but after that we can't be egalitarian? The "all events must have images – or we're biased" argument just doesn't fly. At any rate, what I had in mind when I wrote about some events would not have images was simply that some events have no images available. Nothing else you've written serves to indicate that date articles should have no images whatsoever. The articles will look nicer, regardless of a reader's motivation for visiting the page. And I see no valid reason for banning images in these articles. You've been editing here for perhaps a week. I suggest you hang around a bit and see how things are done. Rklawton 05:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
You need to look up egalitarian, as your definition is backwards. Also, I'm not saying all events should have images, in fact quite the opposite. I've already addressed your point about articles looking "nicer", and I think I refuted it quite well. This discussion is in a stale mate until you recognize (understand?) my point and address it. And while I honestly appreciate your willingness to help what you consider new users (really, that's good stuff!), I have been using and editing wikipedia since 2003, I just have a new IP now.69.137.129.2 18:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The current count appears to be 2 in favor of event images and 1 opposed. Rklawton 19:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Criteria for listing in Births and Deaths

I think there should be some more discussion on the criteria for listing in Births and Deaths, as the two years old discussion above (here) didn't lead anywhere. As such new users are unaware what to include or they are making their own rules as there are currently no recommendations or guidelines for this. So I suggest developing some basic criteria/rules/recommendations and adding them to the wikiproject page. The text by Kingturtle got some support then and could be used as a starting point.

Quote from the old discussion (Kingturtle 15 Feb 2005):

In regards to births and deaths, I feel that we should be discriminating in our choices - that the idea is to list the more/most significant names on a day-article, not all possible names, and not even moderately significant names. Recent deaths can be used for a more extensive list, and the more historically important names should be placed on the day-articles. IMHO, an article about a particular day is not meant to be a complete compendium or complete list. It is a summary of the most and more important events of that day.

Best, feydey 17:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Strong Oppose - The current approach - that the person must have a Wikipedia article of their own - is simple to understand, easy to follow, and causes very little editorial disagreement. If we go with any other standard, we're going to invite edit wars as editors differ in their opinions. The current approach seems to cause virtually no problems or disagreements, and the articles aren't too long. If they should become too long, then we could split them into constituent pieces without too much headache. Let's not make a lot of extra work for ourselves here. Biographies must already pass a notability test just for inclusion within Wikipedia. Rklawton 23:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I admit it, I get annoyed when someone adds a bunch of no-name wrestlers or porn stars to the date pages. But, as long as the size of those pages remains manageable, there's a lot to be said for sticking with the black-and-white rule: If the person being added links to a legitimate Wikipedia article, then he/she is more or less entitled to a place on the date pages. Just the fact that the article exists ensures at least a minimal level of notability, and if we start to say "yes, that person has an article, but I don't believe he's really notable", we're inviting edit wars. But events are a different problem, and we do exercise some judgment there. For the most part, we don't allow movie releases, CD releases, book publications, software releases, or consumer electronics releases. That policy (applied with good faith common sense judgment) has worked so far. I can see it breaking down if someone decides to absolutely insist on adding the PlayStation or Nintendo release, and demanding to know where in the rules it says he can't. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 23:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Jim. On the bright side, I've been able to successfully nominate quite a few bios for SD and AfD because someone thought to post a link to their bio in a date article - an act which brought the bio to my attention. Rklawton 23:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Rklawton and Jim Douglas. Such a criteria would be difficult to compose and enforce. Fabricationary 00:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, agreeing with Rklawton and Jim Douglas. My particular annoyances among the births (in addition to the wrestlers) are US child television stars (I didn't know there were so many) and so-called supermodels, but the general point stands. --CalendarWatcher 00:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd think that the discussion can be condensed to a basic criteria (below), and added to the project page under

  • Listing criteria:
    • Births and Deaths
      • If the person being added links to a legitimate Wikipedia article, then he/she is entitled to a place on the date pages.

That one sentence would guide others to some degree in the BaD section. Is there something to add/change here? feydey 17:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Such a note already exists as an in-line note within the date articles following both the births and the deaths sections. Rklawton 17:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The only problem with that would be the word "legitimate." Do you think, instead of legitimate, "at least two other distinct Wikipedia articles" would work? Fabricationary 17:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Two? Assuming one article is the individual's biography, what would be in the other article? I suggest this wording: Individuals listed under births/deaths must have their own biographical article in Wikipedia. Rklawton 17:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd say legimate has the meaning that the article is not a prod or CSD. feydey 20:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
That's the criteria that we currently have - "do not add anyone without a Wikipedia article to the Wikicalender pages." If we wanted to add additional criteria to prevent the listing of some people with biographical articles that some editors deem insignificant, such as little-known actors/wrestlers, etc., we could establish the criteria that they not only have their own biographical article but that their biographical article is linked to by a second independent article (other than that Wikicalendar page, a user's page or talk page, or an image page). For example, if Joe Schmoe is a professional baseball player, he will not only have his own biographical article, but that biographical article will be linked to by perhaps a page containing the current roster of the team. Along the same lines, little-known actress Janey Blainey, who is said to have "appeared in a lot of TV commercials," will have a biographical article that is not linked to by any other Wikipedia article and can be removed from the date page. This might weed out a few more articles than those that would normally be nominated for deletion via XFDs. Fabricationary 22:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
On second thought, maybe the second article should also exclude lists. Take for example, Anthony Ocaña (listed on March 7, whose biographical article only links to a date, a year, and two lists. [4]). Fabricationary 23:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm jumping into this late, but Fabricationary's comment exemplifies whatlinkshere. Why can't the number of inbound links to an article be used as an additional requirement (beyond simply notable enough to have a Wikipedia article)? -- Robocoder (t|c) 19:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
What's the proper count then? I'd say it adds a needless complication - especially as the number of inbound links can change up or down from day to day. Rklawton 19:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Film listings

Hanuman Das (talk • contribs), apparently thwarted from creating separate "X in film" pages (such as the now-deleted March 15 in film page) has taken to adding sections into date pages (as in here). Pretty big step. So, what's the feeling on the appropriateness of these? Yes? No? Maybe? --Calton | Talk 05:57, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I expressed my opinion at WP:AN#March 15 in film. The user rejected my comments, and proceeded to continue adding the movie releases to the day of the year pages. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 06:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I did not reject your comment. I said I would be happy to keep the film info in separate articles. You didn't even respond to that suggestion. Since it has been threaten that those articles were deleted AND I was advised to put their contents into the Day of the year articles, that's what I've been doing. Frankly, I'd prefer separate articles WHICH HURT NO ONE. I asked you to quantify the harm done to Wikipedia by having those separate articles in scientific terms, but you ignored that. Well? What precisely is the harm? —Hanuman Das 06:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I did respond to that comment -- I said that this information serves no purpose whatsoever, in any form, either in individual articles, or on the day of the year pages. The only reason I haven't mass-reverted your edits to the day of the year pages so far is the thread on WP:AN. While I've been waiting for further input on that thread, you've been continuing to make edits that you have been warned are likely to be reverted. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 06:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, it would be only polite of you to also take it up on WP:FILM, where some people seem to like the idea, and the main objection is that there's no point in working on it because of the idiot deletioninsts who like to delete any list having to do with film. Nobody has called it pointless or objected on any other ground. Funny, that. —Hanuman Das 06:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
OMG, Jim! I see you've been here all of from September of this year! How'd you'd get to be such an expert on everything? Is there somewhere I can go to get some of the expertise myself? Maybe the Johnny Depp article? —Hanuman Das 06:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Is there somewhere I can go to get some of the expertise myself? I'm sure a lot of people have been asking that question about you. Meantime, at the risk of editcountitis:
  • Total edits: 10,893
  • Mainspace edits: 6,084
  • Total edits: 5,148
  • Mainspace edits: 2,957
So he has twice the edits you do in a mere fraction of the time. You sure you want to continue the dick-waving? --Calton | Talk 07:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
idiot deletioninsts who like to delete any list having to do with film You may want to brush up on the those mindreading skills while you're at it.

Oh my, Calton, just as civil as usual I see. Called any other women stalker boy lately, or is that reserved for Ekajati? —Hanuman Das 07:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm being factual, spam boy. And being criticized for incivility by someone using a phrase like "idiot deletioninsts" (sic)? "Mr. Pot, it's Mr. Kettle on Line 4: he says you're black."
P.S.: I have 18,000 edits and have been here as long as you: do you have an insulting excuse for dismissing me, too? --Calton | Talk 07:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

WARNING I came here due to a film being added to a date I watch, and I find a full-blown flame war going on, usenet style. Be aware; I have used up all my tolerance this week on others. If I see one more post here not addressing whether films should be added to date articles, but comparing, exchanging or even discussing insults, I will block for disruption.

That said, adding film info to date articles is absurd. It is trivia-creep. Don't do it. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 10:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Support - per KillerChihuahua. Rklawton 13:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I support NOT adding movie release dates to date articles. —Wrathchild (talk) 20:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I also support not adding film info to articles. Too trivial. Fabricationary 07:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need for explicit statements of project guidelines?

We've had a lot of good discussion on this page, but would it be helpful at this point to summarize our working guidelines on the project page, such as:

  • Only the births and deaths of people who are themselves subjects of Wikipedia articles should be listed. To have an article, a person must meet the criteria outlined in WP:BIO. Being part of a group with an article or having the page that bears one's name redirect to a different article does not qualify as having one's own article. (And of course, articles are not userpages.)
  • Only the births and deaths of human beings should be listed.
  • The date pages should be kept clean of trivia such as film history, fabricated holidays and observances, fictional events, etc.
  • Items listed under "Events" should be notable on a global scale, as defined by such and such criteria. Also, only past events should be listed - the Wikicalendar is not the place to speculate on future events.

As for the event criteria, does everyone still think what we came up with earlier this year is appropriate? I apologize for its bulky title - if we still think it's viable, we could move the page to a more appropriate title (maybe something like "WikiCalendar Event Criteria?") and link it to the project page so it's readily visible and can be referred to when need be. Fabricationary 07:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Does anyone object to the above points being put on the project page? Fabricationary 07:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with "Only the births and deaths of human beings should be listed.". If an animal is notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia article, then it should be fair to note its birth/death on these pages. This shouldn't be a serious problem in practice; very few animals reach this level of notability. I agree with all of the other guidelines. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 07:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

As far as animals with Wikipedia articles, you've got the clones, dogs, cats, orcas, etc. Not that many in comparison to humans with articles, but still enough where we should decide one way or the other. Fabricationary 07:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Turns out there's a catch-all category: Category:Famous animals. Hmm...more than I would have guessed. I still think that Koko (gorilla) is more interesting than any hundred wrestlers...but I can see this getting out of hand if someone goes on a mission to add all of those (hundreds?) of animals to the date pages. Like most things around here, this would all be fine if we could just count on common sense to prevail. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 08:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, my best bet would be to try to include only those persons and/or animals (and I belong to both WikiProject Cats and WikiProject Dogs) who either have or we think would have Top or High- importance to one or more existing projects, as per the standard assessment criteria at, for instance, Wikipedia:WikiProject Charismatic Christianity/Assessment#Importance scale. Otherwise, given that we have at least about 300,000 biography articles, we could expect every page to have at least one or two thousand entries, which, while they would certainly be encyclopedic in terms of inclusiveness, would be monsters to develop and maintain. Maybe taking a similar approach to the various important dates would work as well. Badbilltucker 15:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your input, Badbill.
The way it seems now, based on my observations, is that there's not that many editors actively adding valid (i.e. not redlinked/no-linked) entries to the Wikicalendar, so those 300,000 or so biographical articles will never all end up on the project. Your idea of only allowing those of high importance might be something we have to implement if there is a rash of adding entries, perhaps bot-driven. I checked all of today's births, December_30#Births, and only Rudyard Kipling, Sandy Koufax, and perhaps Tiger Woods (out of a hundred-and-then-my-head-spun entries) would qualify for listing if we only took articles of top or high importance. The vast majority of articles had not been given ratings, and many (maybe even the majority) did not even have the template for future ratings (or talk pages did not exist). It's going to take a lot of work by editors who assign those ratings to get to a point where we can use those ratings as a discerning factor in deciding who is "notable enough" to include.
I'm going to go ahead and add the list of items above to the project page, minus the animals one until we can establish a consensus. Anyone else have thoughts on this? (Where's Rklawton, and doesn't CalendarWatcher monitor this page?) Fabricationary 03:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One page per day?

I can see there is one page called January 1, 2005, but not January 1, 2007. Why? Wouldn't it be better to be able to link to January 1, 2007, instead of January 1, 2007? Then you can see what actually happened on that particular day instantly. Jacob Lundberg 15:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe what has been done in the last year or so is to make a page for a month of year (so January 2007 would be this month's page) and have events listed for each date as subheadings. I personally prefer that way to having a new page for every day - in fact, January 2005 already exists with all that information for each date already! Perhaps the individual date pages should be deleted or merged? Fabricationary 15:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not have both? I don't know how the month articles are generated but couldn't it be possible to make sure that the same information is available under the heading "January 1" on January 2005, as on January 1, 2005?
If I for example read about some one who is born on January 1, 2005, and I want to know what other things happened that day, I will have to click many times before I can read about it. I think creating one article per day would be a good way of making Wikipedia even better. /Jacob Lundberg 20:38, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it's needless clutter, but this is not the project that oversees those pages. You might want to bring your ideas up at the place that deals with these matters, Portal:Current events. Fabricationary 22:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-notable?

The July 21 article has an item for the release of HP7. It seems pretty clear to me that this will be notable on a global scale and for years to come (at least 'til the fuss about the 7th movie dies down, and it is almost certain that there will be a 7th movie). Maybe the exact date of the release won't be important in a few years, but it will be this year.

This makes me wonder why all future events and all events pertaining to books, etc. are considered non-notable. Brian Jason Drake 09:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, we don't post most entertainment evens or any future events. Rklawton 13:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I gathered that. I still don't understand why. Brian Jason Drake 03:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Consider what would happen if we did. Rklawton 19:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
What would happen? Clearly we should not post most entertainment events, but there seems to be clear evidence (best-seller list, movie revenues) that this is a very significant one. Why does it matter if it's in the future? Brian Jason Drake 02:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
How many books are currently on the best seller list? How many rotate through that list each year? Answer: waaaaay too many. Rklawton 15:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
How many books get turned into record-breaking movies? How many books top best-seller lists for weeks (months?) at a time? Brian Jason Drake 02:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Alot. However, few will have ANY cultural impact. HP7 on the other hand, will be significant event for millions of people, being that it is symbolic of the end of 'childhood' for many people who grew up reading these books. Bigbrisco 17:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with what you wrote about a symbolic end of childhood for millions. That, however, is nostalgia and not "cultural impact." We aren't going to look at the world differently because of the HP7 movie release. Consider Star Wars episodes I-VI. Only Star Wars IV (the first one released) had any meaningful cultural impact (ushering in a new standard in science fiction movies) rates a mention in these articles. Rklawton 18:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

How significant is The Fellowship of the Ring? From the state of the article, not very, at least compared to Harry Potter. I've just removed this (as well as HP7 again) from the July 21 article. Brian Jason Drake 12:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References?

The July 21 article has one item that can be verified using reliable sources (the HP7 release date). The reference is also given in the HP7 article and no other item in the article has a reference. There appears to be nothing on the project page about references. Brian Jason Drake 09:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


This is basically a list, so the source articles should hold the references. Rklawton 13:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project page

This talk page has a lot of great ideas. Isn't it about time we moved some of them over to the project page? Rklawton 04:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I got an idea.

I think there should be listed in "Deaths on RANDOM DAY" how the people died. Just short about that. That would save people having to go to the article to see it, what do you guys think about that idea? TheBlazikenMaster 23:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

P.s. When someone replies to this please leave a comment on my talk page. Because I'm not part of this project. TheBlazikenMaster 22:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Not unless the way they died is somehow significant. Brian Jason Drake 01:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Note from new user

[moved to User talk:Relentless1234567#Note from new user by Brian Jason Drake 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)]

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