Talk:1950

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Contents 1 Size in 2004 2 Format 3 Images 4 Condensed TOC 5 Monthly calendars overlink or crowd

[edit] Size in 2004

Events section is long... we could divide it into subsections by month but that would crowd the TOC. - Hemanshu 17:45, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC

[edit] Format

12-December-2006: As of December 2006, each year has a different format, as people add events or special subhead categories, "Nobel Prizes" (1901+) or "Ship events" and such. For example, year '1778' had month-name subheads parallel to the "Events" subhead (which had un-dated events with no months). In the 1900s, Events have been divided into 12 month-name subheaders; for the 1700s, I subdivided Events by multi-month: January-June, July-December, and Unknown-dates. It seems that unless month names are identified in subheaders, the un-dated events get added into scattered locations. For the years 1900-1999, I have used a typical series of edits, to shorten the Table of Contents and allow space for putting images in the Events section:

- in the lead intro, put "Year 19xx" to avoid starting a sentence with a numeral;

- put "link will display the full year" (had been "will take you to calendar");

- simplified Births section as 6 bimonth periods: January-February, March-April, etc.;

- split Deaths section as 4 quarters: January-March, April-June, etc.;

- moved other-calendars box ("Year in other calendars") into the Births section;

- used a break-line ("{{-}}") to separate subhead sections after images;

Editing has been by hand because various year-articles had sporadic groupings of months (such as "May-October") when grouping under Events, Births or Deaths.

As with many Wiki articles, the format evolves, and multiple people must edit to maintain all 5 aspects: new facts, accurate facts, images, Wiki-format, and some consistency with related articles. It is too difficult to expect each person will master all 5 jobs. -Wikid77 12:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

NOTE (for text spacing): Prior to December 2006, for the year articles 1900-1999, the top navigation boxes had crowded the text: daily events had been listed (in many years) with only 5 words per line, due to crowding of text by navigation boxes. Now, the edits listed above should allow over 11 words per line for entries in the "Events" section (on 800x600 PC screens). Also, careful placement of the navigation boxes has allowed space for small thumbnail images to be mixed beside the Events text, to help illustrate events. Thumbnail images can be added without crowding the text. -Wikid77 02:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

12-December-2006: As of November 2006, many years didn't have event images. For many articles in "1900-1999" and the 20 yearly articles "1770-1789", I have been able to add images beside the corresponding text under Events, but that required moving the "Year-in-other-calendars" to the Births section (which is where it "appeared" to be in most years with few events, by automatic formatting). The new images now are near the corresponding Events text. I also had to separate some sections by adding a break-line template:

{{-}}<!-- reset to left margin, for future images above -->

The break-line pushes the next subheader down, below any future Events images above it. Images have been added in a similar manner to the 1770s-1780s, 1880s-1890s, 1900s-1980s, etc. Among those 130+ years, the various articles, originally, each had slightly different formats. -Wikid77 05:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC) [revised break-line + 1880s]

[edit] Condensed TOC

28-May-2007: (revised 09Jun) After noticing other articles with hand-edited sections for smaller Table of Contents (TOC), in late May, I created the short, hand-edited TOC in each article from 1900 to 2001, as the initial stage of 2-month rework. Each article has a slightly different TOC due to variations in the subheader names, such as "Ship events" or "Fields Medalists" or "World population" (etc.). The condensed TOC in each article reduces the top text from about 30-48 lines to 10, with the full-size TOC (at bottom) linked to "Contents (full)" at top. Even though the condensed TOC is only 5-times-smaller, the overall effect seems 10-times-smaller, because the extra surrounding area gets filled with events details or year-overview paragraphs, and the articles seem much more approachable, without the daunting massive Table of Contents scrolling down the page. Repeating the full TOC at the bottom of each article has the additional advantage of providing both top/bottom navigation through those (large) yearly articles. Overall, the condensed TOC has been well-received, and it solved the 3-year-old problem of a crowded TOC when month-events became expanded to 12 months. -Wikid77 04:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

09-June-2007: By June 7, I had streamlined the short-TOC sections, replacing each with one-line templates now, to reduce clutter of top navigation code within each of 103 articles, 1900-2002. It was a tedious task, representing a 2-month effort, ensuring all short-TOC subheaders linked into each article: the subheaders "Fictional" and "Undated" had to be added to many yearly articles, and some sections were moved into a more standard order. Previous experience editing all the 19xx articles made the task easier, but I would anticipate a 2-month effort if condensing other-century, large TOCs: the editing of some years took 1 solid hour each, for reformatting. Also complicating the effort was the reverting of vandalism (5% of yearly articles) which could have become hidden if left unchanged after such massive editing. Beyond that, a few people resisted the new change to short TOCs, blanking parts of more than 40 articles and garbling each year category. Overall, the conversion to short-TOCs involved more than 550 total edits. -Wikid77 13:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monthly calendars overlink or crowd

04-Jan-2008: Many or most year-articles in "1900-1999" once again have those month-calendar images re-added, although they have been removed repeatedly by prior editors. The total of 12 monthly calendars generate over 385 new wikilinks (per year) or 385*100 = 38,500 wikilinks to repeat the calendar display, which had already been provided by the "link will display full calendar" at the top of each article. Also those month-images are crowding the article text, causing numerous large text gaps in the auto-wrap of text. The intent of wikilinking is to connect to other articles for further details, so that information does not need to be repeated within each related article. The rampant trend of "boxifying" another article, such as a 12-month calendar, to be repeated into each related article as navboxes is overlinking and generating millions of spamlinks into the Wikipedia page-link database. In the case of "1900-1999" those month-calendars alone generate 38,500 wikilinks into the page-link database. I am returning to the original design of wikifying the year-articles to only link to the full-year calendar, using one wikilink. For days not described within year-article events, the full-year calendar will provide the 385 extra wikilinks (such as "2 April"). Please help by removing any month-calendar boxes in any of those year-event articles, as has been done by other editors previously. Thank you. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:23, 4 January 2008 (UTC)