Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/January 1, 2005

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was No consensus, positions all over the place. Rx StrangeLove 05:52, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] January 1, 2005, January 2, 2005, et al.

Copies of what can be found in January 2005 (he's now transcluded the days). There's no need to have the information presented by day, every day. Ral315 W_S 18:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete daycruft ♥purplefeltangel ^(talk) ♥ ^(contribs) 18:50, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with January 2005. This is generally not the kind of place for that kind of thing, you know :). Next time maybe try a merge sticker :). Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 19:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The reason that I brought it up here, rather than at merge, is that it was originally part of January 2005, and was "un-merged", if you will. So, I figured this was better. Ral315 W_S 19:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge if there's anything new since the "un-merge" Dlyons493 19:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Note this is only about organisation. No-one is suggesting removing any content. Ral315 says there is "no need" to have day-pages. Good, Ral315 can read the (unchanged) month pages as his preference. I prefer day-pages, so I can read them. Organising the content this way, we all get the display we prefer. The re-merged way, we are restricting choice with no gain. I urge votes not to re-merge, because there is no benefit in doing so. Pcb21| Pete 20:14, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge, Delete the redirects.  Grue  20:34, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Revert to merged version and delete. � Phil Welch 20:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete all similar articles. Daycruft indeed. / Peter ^Isotalo 20:51, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • For the sake of my sanity, could one of you explain why my argument doesn't make sense to you? You don't want to view day articles? Fine. But why deny me that possibility? Pcb21| Pete 21:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• I'd argue that these should be kept but transcluded into the years and the days. I really hate when I'm fixing links to a disambiguation and I have to change the same text in multiple places. --SPUI (talk) 23:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • You do realise that is exactly the situation already, right? There is nothing to delete. Pcb21| Pete 23:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Uh, no? January 2005, January 1 and 2005 all have a blurb about January 1, 2005 (or would if anything happened that day), each of which has to be fixed. --SPUI (talk) 00:05, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
      • Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant. If I understand correctly, you would like 2005, January 2005 and January 1 to contain the same information about that 1/1/2005.... until this afternoon this was impossible... it has now become possible because of the creation of January 1, 2005 which can be transcluded in all three locations if you wish. Pcb21| Pete 00:12, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
        • Hmmm, looking at it, there seems to be a lot more in January 1, 2005 and January 2005 than the other two - and the others would be rather big otherwise. --SPUI (talk) 00:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
          • Agreed, that's why I had that "if you wish" clause ;). In practice, the daily/month articles will be the detailed view to enable us to build up a really useful historical timeline, whereas the anniversary and years will be of a different format, more high-level and generally more topic based than time-based. Lots of ways into the actual articles is a good thing though, IMO. Pcb21| Pete 01:02, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect It will be too difficult to keep the articles consistent with each other. Pick one. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 23:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Perhaps you misunderstand - this operation has not created any more separation of content than before. Contrarily, it has made it *easier* to manage content - see my note to SPUI above. Pcb21| Pete 00:12, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or Re-merge with the months. Indivudual days clearly don't need articles.--Sean Jelly Baby? 02:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge content back to individual months, and delete redirects. It was interesting idea, but after consideration I don't think it's the best thing to do. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Perhaps you'd care to explain why? Pcb21| Pete 08:19, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Certainly. With few exceptions, I don't believe individual days are notable enough to merit individual articles. If you desire a specific reason from Wikipedia:Deletion policy, then "Such a minor branch of a subject that it doesn't deserve an article" would probably suffice (although I don't believe the redirects would need to be kept). I just don't feel that January 8, 2005, for instance, is significant enough to merit being in its own article. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:51, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
      • I would be extremely grateful if some contributors would take a wider view than just articles. We have a tens of thousands of pages in the main namespace that are not articles - lists, disambiguation pages and component pages such as found on the cricket pages. These individual day pages are not so much articles in themselves but building blocks so that we can create more useful articles (see above). With this point of view, I think your concern goes away? Pcb21| Pete 11:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
        • I should also add that in general, I disapprove of article text being transcluded (and I was opposed to the cricket pages being transcluded, as well). Lists and disambiguation assist with article navigation; I don't belive that this sort of transclusion does. — Knowledge Seeker দ 23:27, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• Re-merge, no redirects. These are so small that having extra articles for them seems to me like unnecessary clutter. ~~ N (t/c) 14:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I am going to call you on that. Define "clutter". A database is not physical space. Pcb21| Pete 15:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
    • The main thing is that it complicates editing because when you hit a section edit link and edit a day, you end up at the day page and have to hit "back" to go back to the month page. Nobody wants that. Also, it's probably slower. Those are the only real issues I can think of. ~~ N (t/c) 15:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
      • Seems odd that the day-by-day log is an acceptable method for AfD but is not for actual real-world events worthy of going in the encyclopedia. If that editing problem really bothers you, then AfD must be a nightmare ... get a tabbed browser. Pcb21| Pete 15:44, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
        • Your logic is severely flawed. AfD has 100-150 entries a day; January 1, 2005 has only eleven. AfD gets thousands of edits a day, the only people to edit January 2005 this month have been you, and a couple interwiki bots. Ral315 W_S 16:12, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
          • Ok, I am stupid. Explain the logic flaw to me. Pcb21| Pete 16:14, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
            • You're trying to explain that a relatively small, rarely edited page needs to be split up by comparing it to a large, frequently edited page. Ral315 W_S 16:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
              • Lol, ok let's follow the chain of events that led you to cause me of logical flaws.
                1. Nickpar dislikes the extra mouse click required when finishing up editing transcluded pages.
                2. I put out that the current events page are a drop in the ocean compared to AfD pages, and so he may as well succomb and get a tabbed browser.
                3. You tell me that AfD is busier (The number of clicks required is identical no matter how busy the page is).
                4. You then tell me that actual you were really talking about the utility of the pages themselves rather than the number of clicks required.
              • So it is you that is jumping around with the logic. Anyway all of that is irrelevant. You seem to agree that transclusion is good thing for AfD. Maybe it won't be such a huge boon for date pages (I think that it will, but it will take time as we learn that it useful to link to individual dates sometimes - e.g. dates of people's deaths) but the size of the boon doesn't matter. As long as it's a boon, and the cost to people who prefer to continue to look at the unchanged in look month pages is minimal, then there is absolutely no need to delete these, because they are providing a positive benefit. I note that no-one has argued against that. It all appears to me to be arguments about strict definitions of what is in the article space and an unwillingness to try anything new.... I am glad this feeling wasn't around when Wikipedia was much smaller else we'd have never got anywhere! Pcb21| Pete 19:26, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
                • No, I disagree. Transclusion is bad in any event. The only reason it's used on AFD is because it's a necessary evil. And they're not creating a positive benefit- I could split up any page by sections, and they wouldn't create a benefit. That's essentially what you're doing. To view your articles by section, one would have to manually enter the URLs- something it seems like only you would be doing in the first place. In any event, I'm done arguing with you, because no matter what I say, you have your feelings, and nothing I say is going to change them. Ral315 W_S 20:38, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
                  • So you're allowed to say "transclusion is bad in any event" and I'm not allowed to ask you why or disagree? Pcb21| Pete 08:47, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

  No vote now. I see absolutely no reason to care. ~~ N (t/c) 23:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Merge back from whence it came, but I see no reason not to 'redirect. A date seems like a natural search term. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, after taking a closer look at the pages it looks like this does indeed work alright, with some nice flexibility addded. For now, however, I would strongly oppose going back and making single-date pages for the times prior to our own compilation of current events. Give this time to settle before expanding the new organization substantially. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, else merge, and potentially sanction serial responder for being querulous. Ambi 14:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • It's actually policy for you to have to give a reason for deletion. So I hope you don't think my asking you to do so is also querulous! I'm sorry if I sound frustrated, but I know being able to link to individual dates is going to be a big boon for Wikipedia long term and I am frustrated that I have not summoned up the linguistic skills to convince others. AfD is a frustrating place when you are trying to change the status quo. Pcb21| Pete 16:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep From what I noticed, on the main Jan 2005 page, the transclusion works good, so we need separate pages to make the transclusion work. Zach (Sound Off) 20:36, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Also it would be great if interested parties could check out January 1 (the new box on the right) for a way of presenting information that has opened itself up now that we can link to individual pages. Pcb21| Pete 20:54, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I can understand why these pages would have been unwanted in the past; but now that wikipedia itself has become one of the best online sources for current news, and background on news events, I think there will be enough content for these pages, at least for now on. (But don't create pages yet for dates more than a few years in the past). Eugene van der Pijll 22:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Strong Keep with Community Discussion about future standards for this type of information. In the long term, cataloging individual dates could be a very useful and innovative use of Wikipedia. The massive hypertext data of Wikipedia enables a better cataloging of the events of an individual day than ever before. However, currently we can only search it by year and day only, not the two combined. Wikipedia should eventually be considered a resource for social science data mining. Combined with semantic tags, maybe we could discover for example whether people are more or less likely to commit suicide on days with bad news or disasters. Or whether different periods of the year are more likely to be associated with different types of historical incidents. Although the standards for this information need to be discussed, a day actually ranks pretty high there up on the quality of encyclopedic knowledge. I think this is an excellent test by Pcb21 and a taste of the future of Wikipedia. Don't cut Wikipedia short.

On top of that, it has immediate value because people are interested in what happened on their birthdays and wedding days, etc. And the edits to Pcb's article will give us ideas about how to manage this information. That's the beauty of Wikipedia. Tfine80 22:18, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Well thought-out attempt to produce a more versatile structure to the way this data is held, and should be supported on those grounds alone. SP-KP 22:25, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree. To tell the truth, a day and year article is probably more useful than a day article alone. A day page (ie. January 1) is only useful for commemoration and superstition. Different and changing calendars, leap years, and other things make them pretty meaningless anyway. Day and year pages would solve the calendar problems through redirects and would open a huge new use of the database. The status quo set-up for dates is NOT the future, and the longer we use it the longer it will take to convert eventually. This is a huge project however. Tfine80 22:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep there is enough content, and the transclusion method works quite well for the time being. Sam Vimes 14:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge/move to wikinews and delete it off of the face of wikipedia. :P --Cool Cat ^Talk 23:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  They have an incompatible licence these days :(. Pcb21| Pete 23:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  I'm sure if Wikinews wanted this system they'd already have it. ~~ N (t/c) 23:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Here's a suggestion: Move it to a subpage of a WikiProject. This way it is not in the main article space, but it's still exists. Maybe like a Wikipedia:On this day project. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - If I understand this correctly, this transclusion system will make watching the articles harder (for vandalism and content) and seems unecessary. Broken S 03:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.