Portal talk:Current events/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Redesign Replacement

This redesign has now replaced the main portal page, due to the overwhelming support on the redesign talk page. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 02:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Straw Polls

This straw polls were copied from Portal talk:Current events/Redesign: -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 02:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Time of Archival

Daily Archives

This is the method displayed on this purpose whereby only a certain number of days (in this case, seven) are displayed on the main portal page and rest are on their respective monthly pages.

  1. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. the wub "?!" 22:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. NCurse work 05:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. Batmanand | Talk 09:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Kayaker 01:35, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Monthly Archives

This is the current method on Portal:Current events and the former Current events. All the events for the month are kept on the main portal page until the end of the month when all of the months events are moved to another article (with the chronological order changed from forward to backward). The main portal page is cleared for the next month.

Location of Archival

Article Space

As currently: June 2006, May 2006, etc.

  1. Batmanand | Talk 09:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC). They will, in the future, need to be wikified, but the material in them is encyclopaedic.
  2. Kayaker 01:35, 9 July 2006 (UTC) (agree with User:Batmanand)
Portal Space

As such: Portal:Current events/July 2006, Portal:Current events/August 2006. etc.

Both

The full archives would be kept in portal space, but a shorter summary of the month should go into the article space.

  1. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment: It would be hard to maintain such a system (especially sicne this resembles double book-keeping). -- Evanx(tag?) 13:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Date format of name subpages

What should be the date format of the sub-pages: US-format, ISO-format or European format?

ISO: Portal:Current events/2006-07-01 The ISO format has the advantage of automatically chronologic sorting.

  1. Seems the most neutral. --Donar Reiskoffer 10:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    I'm indifferent. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 10:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. Ordered. LC@RSDATA 14:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. It's the only system which makes sense. --Oldak Quill 19:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I would go for a "2006/07/01" format, since MediaWiki will recognize the directory structure. Pages like "2006" and "2006/07" can simply contain the code {{Special:Prefixindex/{{FULLPAGENAME}}/}}, which will list out all the relevant subpages. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:33, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

US - Portal:Current events/July 1, 2006

European - Portal:Current Events/1 July 2006

  • Batmanand | Talk 11:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC). ISO looks bad, and then you have arguments about whether it should be yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy-dd-mm, or mm-dd-yyyy, or dd-mm-yyyy. I go for European, cos it is the clearest, the easiest to type (no punctuation); and hell, I am a European!
The ISO format is YYYY-MM-DD. Your alternatives are no ISO formats. --Donar Reiskoffer 13:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough, although I still think it can cause confusion about whether it is YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-DD-MM (even if the first is correct, that does not proclude confusion). Batmanand | Talk 13:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

ISO Variant - Portal:Current events/2006 July 1

  1. This is used on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and the use of a month name removes ambiguity and assists in user-friendliness. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Use wikified month and day only

Use July 8, July 9, etc. Solve ISO vs. Euro vs. U.S. issue by wikifying month and year as in current version, which supports readers' date preferences and conforms to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates containing a month and a day.

  1. Kayaker 01:35, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
    That's not possible. This is about the location of the subpages (Portal:Current events/July 8, 2006, Portal:Current events/8 July 2006, or Portal:Current events/2006-07-08). -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
My mistake. What I am really voting for to have the portal contents honor readers' date preferences one way or another. As a contributor of events I can deal with any naming scheme for the portal subpages. Kayaker 02:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC).

Vanuatu Earthquake

I put something up about the Vanuatu earthquake. The event happend on August 8th in the region, but it was still August 7th in parts of the world. Should it be an August 7th or August 8th headline?

Thanks, KevinJ

Thanks for the edit Ezeu. My apologies for making this post towards the top.

I will go to the bottom from now on!

KevinJ 13:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)KevinJ

Hey!

The sectional [edit]s only turn up blank pages now! Anyone else getting this? 68.39.174.238 02:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No I don't get that. Which link is a problem? -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 02:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Date format of name subpages

When I performed the move, I moved the pages to the ISO Variant format (e.g. /2006 July 12). However, this is still up for grabs. Continue to voice your opinion in the straw poll above. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 02:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Before I get a why did you do that???, let me explain that the reason for doing it was that it took into account the comments so far. Ordering, neutrality (neither European nor American), clarity (instead of just all numbers), and consistency with XfD were all mentioned; all those are satisfied in this format. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 03:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Archiving the Events

Is there anyone from the article space archival camp that would be willing to create a set of instructions on how to do the archivals? -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 03:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

As a starting point, I created a new section on the topic... Kayaker 04:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC).

Monthly article and monthly log

Before the month ends, an equivalent to Wikipedia:How to archive Current Events needs to be created to reflect the recent changes. The redesign includes the much-needed introduction of template-based daily current event logs (e.g. Portal:Current events/2006 July 1); together with the daily maintenance described at Wikipedia:How the Current events page works#Adding a new date, a monthly log of daily events (e.g. Portal:Current events/July 2006 is gradually assembled throughout the month.

One thing that remains to be decided is how to produce a month's encyclopedia entry (e.g. June 2006) based on the portal's monthly log.

For context and possible further discussion, I've copied relevant discussions from the redesign talk page, renaming subsections Kayaker 04:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC).

Which namespace

from Portal_talk:Current_events/Redesign#Archivals

Big question: should archivals stay on the article namespace (i.e. June 2006, May 2006, etc.) or should we keep all future monthly archivals in the portal namespace (i.e. Portal:Current events/July 2006, Portal:Current events/August 2006, etc.)? Regarding the issue, I stated (in the Documentation above):

Well, if we're still going to maintain the monthly archives in the article space, we'd have a huge problem because obviously we cannot have all this formatting in the article space. However, if we were to maintain the monthly archives on the Portal and just redirect the future monthly articles to their respective years, this would not be a problem. In my personal opinion, I like this idea because right now those month articles don't really say anything about the months (like articles). Instead, they are just the places we dump the old current events pages (like an archive, which is not what the article space should be used for).

However, Kayaker on the portal talk page stated:

Your idea about putting monthly archives like June 2006 under Portal:Current events (i.e. Portal:Current events/June 2006) is an interesting one that didn't come up earlier. Davodd (talk · contribs) envisioned a yearly portal e.g. Portal:2006 in a comment posted at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals#Portal:Current events. It was and I think still is my thought that we need articles for each month and year in the article namespace for both a theoretical and a practical reason. The theory would be that a given month like May 2005 or year (e.g. 1066) is as much of an encyclopedia subject as anything else in article namespace. The practical reason for leaving them in article namespace is that there are lots and lots of links in article namespace to those months and years, so you'd have a greater and greater dependency on redirects if the current event archives are kept under Portal:Current events. Kayaker 05:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC).

So what does everyone else thing we should do? Archive in the article/main space or archive in the portal space? -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 23:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Also as a third option: I have nothing against keeping the years. 2006 looks like an article; June 2006 looks like an archive. Of course, we can always have both. For instance, we could make the June 2006 article more brief and more article-like like 2006 (see July 2006) and then link to the portal and its monthly archives. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 23:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
A variation on your third option is to add a highlights section to the archive, explicitly sourced from the list of archived events but written as a narrative. Unlike a lot of new articles, an encyclopedic article about a month comes built in with reputable sources via the archive. If the mundane part of the current event archival process were to be improved that would free time that at least in theory could be spent on collaborating on a highlights section.--Kayaker 00:35, 2 July 2006 (UTC).

Contents of monthly archive

from Portal_talk:Current_events/Redesign#So Now a Problem...

So now there's a problem. A couple users have suggested that the archives go in the article space. However, as you clearly can see, there are a lot of tables and formatting, etc, etc for each of the dates. That (as far as I know) cannot go into article space. So we can't have the appearance of this page and the archives in article space (without a considerable amount of extra work). I noted this in the Downside Section on this page, but I had a feeling the section wasn't fully read. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarify something first. The straw poll about "Method of Section Editing" talks about Normal Section Editing, Table Section Editing, and No Section Editing. I think those phrases are equivalent to "Method of event organization" with "Organize by section", "Organize by templates", and "No change" as the options. What you call tables are more commonly called templates.
If I am correct about all of that, then the problem is solved with Wikipedia:Template substitution. One real advantage of introducing templates for each day of a month is that during end-of-month, you can generate a chronologically-ordered article through substitution, something possible through a WP:BOT. The per-day event templates can stay in portal space, yet we have a monthly article generated in normal chronological order, which through substitution loses its linkage to the contents of the portal namespace.
My assumption is that what the July 2006 article looks like once we're into August is unaffected by any decisions about the look of the portal. The appearance of monthly articles like May 2006 is based on the archival process. Switching to per-day templates for the bulleted list of that day's events is a step towards improved semi-automated generation.
Or have I missed your point? Kayaker 02:08, 9 July 2006 (UTC).
So you're essentially saying that at the end of each month, we would subst: all of the templates from the portal and then remove all of the formatting? So, what would happen on, for example, July 9 if someone wants to edit something from July 1? July 1 won't be on the main portal page, and per the article space-only; archive and subst at the end option, it would not be seen on a page (except the somewhat hidden /2006-07-09 page) until the beginning of August. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 03:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
What I am saying is that July 2006 is left as is throughout the month of July. When we reach August 1, we would create a new July 2006 from the previous month's current events, as is currently done, with the change being instead of copying the events then manually reversing the order of the month's current events it could be done by starting with a standard month's skeleton and then doing a subst of each of July's daily templates. All other steps could remain the same—there's room for improvement to those steps of course, but that's a separate matter. The contents of July 1, 2006 (as proposed) can be edited on July 9 or any other time, and would be accessible, as I thought was currently proposed, through the "More July 2006 Events..." link at the bottom; that link brings the user to an exact duplicate of the current events portals, except that instead of containing a rolling window of the most recently fortnight's worth of events it would contain events since the first of the month. Kayaker 05:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC).
This was what I was getting at too with my vote above. Batmanand | Talk 23:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Alright then; that sounds reasonable (and not too far from the both idea). -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

History not viewable

All we get is the history for the framing portal page, not for the individual days. That's a major design flaw. Any chance of a "hist" button getting added to the "DateHeader2" bar, alongside the "edit" one, linking to the history of the transcluded element in question? Bolivian Unicyclist 22:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; great suggestion. A history link has been added to /DateHeader2. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 23:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
And I suppose a watch link wouldn't hurt either. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 23:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Excellent job. Thanks. Bolivian Unicyclist

Broken links

With the new regime, if you use the calendar in the info box you can click the current month name and go to that month (ok), you can click "<<" and go to the previous month ok, but in the previous month when you click ">>" to come back, you go to a different page which is not ok. Any fixes should take into condsideration all the other monthly events pages which use the same calendar templates. Also, the "list of events by month" at the bottom of the pages doesn't appear to be the same on all the monthly pages. cleanup needed. -- SGBailey 16:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism!!!

someone has completely deleted the wikipedia current events!! plz block this person for some x amount of hours, as i am unable to!70.124.114.165 03:58, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Restored now, and the vandal has been warned. -gadfium 04:02, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
It is still not restored for me. Tis comment still appears for me:
<comment removed>
190.40.23.107 04:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I imagine you are seeing an old cached version. If you can still see it, try purging your cache. Someone removed most of your post mistaking it for the original vandalism; I've restored what you wrote without including the actual braggado.-gadfium 08:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Portal for all CE pages

Shouldn't the pages about Current events for specific countries/areas be in the portal namespace as well? In my opinion, it should be for example, Portal:Current events/United States. What do people think? Should the pages be moved? Newnam(talk) 05:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. However, I think we should make sure all the relevant portals are notified of the switch. I mentioned the change to some of them several days ago and suggested they make the switch. Until now, I don't think any portal has acted upon that request. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 19:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Bot Work, Reminder

Item number one: LDBot, operated by Lightdarkness, will now be auto-creating the date subpages around 400 UTC. Therefore, I have updated the directions in the comments of the main portal page to reflect that.

Item number two: When adding a date to the main portal page, please remove the oldest date from the main page, update the calendar in the sidebar (it's located at Portal:Current events/Calendar), and add the newest date to the current monthly page (currently Portal:Current events/July 2006). Thanks in advance. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 19:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

About the Archives...

So what's the verdict on the archiving? Right now, I'm outnumbered 2-1 on the archival process. I'm, of course, okay with that, although I think it would be best if one of those two editors were to take care of the article-space archival plan, at least for July 2006 so I and others can see how it would work. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 14:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I would do it but my wikipedia time is limited for a while (which was one reason for my not proposing a bigger redesign when I championed and implemented the move into the portal namespace). Perhaps a volunteer from Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events? I know there's only two of you listed but perhaps there are others who are active but not in the participant's list. If not, feel free to implement archival however you see fit, factoring in as best you can any obligations you think are left over from getting the redesign accepted by the community. Kayaker 02:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC).

Highlights

I vote to remove the "Highlights" section. --user:mnw2000 03:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

    • I don't mind either way. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Two advantages to having it is that it is relevant to the portal (see Wikipedia:Portal) and it is actively maintained, something that some portals find challenging. While it wasn't my idea to include it, once proposed I thought it was a good idea Kayaker 01:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC).

I think you are all right. It should either be removed or actually updated on a daily basis. That highlight on the Qana airstrike has been on there forever. And I know this sounds really harsh, while it was big news and probably worthy of being a highlight when people thought it was 50 or 60 civilians being killed, it's old now and not as relevant to things that actually happened today. There is a mechanism to updating the featured article, the featured picture, the did you know and the on this day sections. Why not the In the news section? User:Cdogsimmons 20:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Fact is, while Israel dominates the news, far more people are being killed in Baghdad right now and the events there are going to have much longer impact. Who decides what is notable? Lieberman's defeat isn't a highlight? 75.1.5.188 16:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Current events in middle east

Why not make current events in middle east? After all, most of the conflicts, disputes, and wars in the modern world are occurring there. Eshcorp 14:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

In fact, it does exist, but no one uses it. See Current events in the Middle East. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Umm, that might be because it isn't linked to in this portal.. people don't know it exists Eshcorp 19:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've took the liberty to add it to the news browser, please remove it if you think it shouldn't be there. Eshcorp 19:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I attempted without luck to start a conversation about what's in the browse bar here. I added China and India in the initial version of the browse bar based on the theory that its presence would help attract editors to keep it updated. Here it is, several weeks later, and a single event was added to China and apparently absolutely nothing happened in India worth noting.
IMHO the main reason for including any portal in the browse bar is that there exists one or more editors (preferably several) committed to keeping it current, whatever its topic. If it isn't updated at least weekly by someone (and preferably daily), it really isn't a current events portal.
Kayaker 01:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC).
I've added all the events related to the middle east since july 11th I believe. Eshcorp 11:30, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Editing

It seems to me that one cannot access the first line of the news for July 23rd (re. Nationa (US)l gas price), in order to edit it.

Am I right? If so, what can be done about this?Duncan.france 01:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed it probably around the time you were attempting to edit the item. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 01:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Creation of new date for 25 July 2006

I have been trying for several hours to created 25 July 2006 as a new date. For same reason, it comes up as a red link. We need to have a system to ensure that we can create a new date as soon as a newsworthy event occurs somewhere in the world. There are parts of Asia and Oceania that are well ahead of UTC and we need to have a system that caters to timezones throughout the world. Capitalistroadster 07:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I just copied the previous day's contents into it, deleted the news events for that day, and changed the date in one place. I gather a bot usually does this but is currently on vacation. Some bots have all the fun!.-gadfium 09:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Lightdarkness is on vacation. LDBot usually creates the next day's page at around 0400 UTC (before any place in the world reaches that date). I removed the instructions on how to add the new date because the bot for the most part will take care of it. (for the record, it requires inserting something like {{subst:Portal:Current events/DateHeader|2006|07|25}} into the new page). I'll add the next couple of days right now. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 12:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
All the pages for July are added; I'm not sure when LDBot will be returning. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 12:18, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Please remove Floyd Landis

For the last 6 days or so Floyd Landis' image has been featured as the picture of current events. There are more important things going on in the world than the Tour de France. Therefore I favor a new image - maybe this time not a sports image. --Abdull 10:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

You may want to post a comment here. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 13:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Additions

I added a table at the top with a few related pages, including the archives from the old Talk:Current events. I also created some instructions for archiving the portal (it's in the table at the top of this page). Since no one offered to write the instructions, I decided to do it (no, I'm not bitter; I'm just saying that in case someone asked why I didn't let someone else do it). Go ahead and look over the instructions and revise it, etc, etc. Add to it, etc, etc. I didn't really bring this up beforehand because a) I actually did mention the instructions before and b) they should come as no surprise as the redesign from earlier this month included many of the features described in the instructions and it was quite obvious that this was the way things have been working. But nevertheless, feel free to change it, especially those who want to archive in the article space. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 15:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Current events/Events by month

What should be done about Portal:Current events/Events by month? Right now, I made the links for July 2006 - December 2006 go to current event subpages (many of which don't exist). Is that okay? Or should they go to the mainspace articles (September 2006, October 2006, etc)? -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 00:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Calendar broken

I seems the calendar on the other currents events pages is broken. How does it work? Can I fix it? What do I need to do? I'm a frequent contributor on Current events in Southeast Asia. I understand that it should probably be moved to the portal space and redesigned as a portal. I don't fully understand the logistics of doing this or the maintenance and upkeep that will be required in doing so. My experimentations in the sandbox with setting up and editing a portal was a disaster. So help will be needed on that front, and I don't want to do it alone. Anyway, right now I'm hoping to resolve the calender issue. Thanks. --Wisekwai 18:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by "it's broken"? Are you referring to the fact that it shows July instead of August? -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 18:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes. It's stuck on July. How do I get it unstuck? -Wisekwai 18:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
You have to manually change the calendar (because it's not transcluded from the main calendar). Take a look at Portal:Current events/August 2006/Calendar for basically what you'll need. Copy that and then go to the Current events in Southeast Asia article, click edit box by the calendar, and paste it there. You'll need to make a few changes to the <<, August 2006, >>, and edit box links so it works w/ the Southeast Asia article. Lastly, you'll need to go back to Current events in Southeast Asia and put <div id="2006 August 1" />, <div id="2006 August 2" />, <div id="2006 August 3" />, etc. above each date section as the date arrives. If you need any more help, feel free to ask me. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 23:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The calendars now appear to be working, and I can't tell that anyone had to do any manual editing on them. So now I'm even more confused. But as long as it's working, eh? There has been confusion about the placement of div id lines. I understand they should be above each entry and that their purpose has something to do with the way the calendar works. Should they be placed as such:
<div id="2006 August 2" />
===1 August, 2006 (Tuesday)===/></nowiki>

Or

<div id="2006 August 1" />
===1 August, 2006 (Tuesday)===/></nowiki>
Still really confused about all this, almost to the point where I want to throw up my hands and stop contributing to the page. Wisekwai 04:09, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
There was an edit to the calendar (it's here). The calendar is on a separate page, Template:Current events box, that can be accessed by clicking the edit link. The
tags should be placed above the corresponding date, like the second option. Also, I have a correction to my instructions. Since some of the sub-pages are different from the main portal page, the date format should be 1 August 2006 instead of 2006 August 1. So...
<div id="1 August 2006" />
===[[August 1]], [[2006]] (Tuesday)===
...is perfect. Note that you are free to change the layout of the page at any time to make it easier, if it's too complicated (although you may want to get a few second, third, etc opinions); that's the great thing about Wikipedia being a wiki. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 04:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Okay. That helps. If the calendar box can be edited in a central location and the changes reflected on all the pages it's used on, then that's much better. I imaged I was going to have to get the coding and manually update each specific page every month. It's better if someone else makes this change each month, because I'm liable to screw it up. The redesign to template format for Current events in Southeast Asia was brought up on the talk page some time ago, but there have been few responses so far. Until there's a greater movement afoot, I plan on doing nothing other than soldiering on with submitting notable current events items on the page. Thanks again. --Wisekwai 05:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio problems

An increasing number of entries here are just the first sentence or paragraph copied from the news source. This is not ok and needs stamping on. Whilst I can spot a few, we need to get a culture here which will notice these and get rid of them... any ideas? As an example, the first two Israel entries under Portal:Current_events/2006_August_2 are just copied from the BBC. Morwen - Talk 13:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

IP POV problems with Israeli conflict

In particular this edit summary, IP addresses seem to be violating WP:NPOV. Chacor 15:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ituri Conflict

This should be updated, I've posted a link to a BBC report on the article's talk page, but I know too little about the conflict to adequately integrate the information into the article. Help? —Nightstallion (?) 09:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Natural disasters?

This edit is quite obviously uncivil, and there is no point to it. Chacor 13:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Why is it uncivil? I was not aware that "effing" was considered uncivil by any standards. I just meant that if it's important enough to constitute between a third and half of the links about current events, it might just as well get its own section, and I see no good reason against it, and many in favour... —Nightstallion (?) 16:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
How about including the storms as sub-points of the main season points? Chacor 16:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Also a good idea, but I still think the sheer amount of natural disaster articles of concern warrants them having their own section, doesn't it? —Nightstallion (?) 17:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, it isn't really article links, they're only sectional links, as most ongoing storms normally don't get articles. Chacor 17:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's uncivil either. It's like saying fricking; we know what word is being alluded to, but it's not actually said out of courtesy. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 16:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Chacor 16:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, is there a better title for the section? A heatwave isn't a disaster... Chacor 17:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

With 225 people dying, that most certainly qualifies as a disaster. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 17:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, you get what I'm trying to say (I hope), heatwaves are not necessarily a "natural disaster", per se, as compared to a tsunami. Chacor 17:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Mh. I see what you mean, but it's still some sort of natural disaster, isn't it? I wouldn't be opposed to a more descriptive name, however. —Nightstallion (?) 05:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Natural hazards is mentioned prominently in Natural disaster, though that may be erring too much on the other side. Natural crises? Natural perils? I know I have that http://www.thesaurus.com around here somewhere. :) (There's the legal term Acts of God, but I know there'll be POV objections to the God part. Ooh, events outside of human control. TransUtopian 07:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Conflicts...

Now, I've only seen what's gone by in past days, but it seems that the parties responsible for the Achilioland conflict and Ituri conflict have signed/agreed to peace terms. Should those two entries then be moved to "Recent" as opposed to "Ongoing" ? Is there a set standard for when to do this? 68.39.174.238 18:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Acholiland only has a ceasefire, I'm currently trying to find someone knowledgeable who will edit the Ituri Conflict article to reflect the latest agreement -- it may well be that the Ituri Conflict is now officially over, but I'm not quite sure. —Nightstallion (?) 05:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Old news on the front page

If we are to have "In the news" on the start page of Wikipedia, all the news items must be current. Right now the top item states "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert orders the army to prepare for an extended ground offensive in Lebanon as the Israel-Lebanon conflict continues." However, this was news on 7 August, five days ago, and since then much has happened in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The Portal:Current events lists new developments every day since then, but nothing of it seems to end up in the "In the news" box. As the editing of that box is the privilege of a few trusted administrators, the rest of us unfortunately can't touch it. The single most important news item in the conflict for a number of days, the final adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, is now almost 20 hours old, but there is still nothing about it in that box. Perhaps it's time to review how the box is managed? Thomas Blomberg 18:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

It isn't supposed to be breaking news. It is to highlight new and updated encyclopaedia articles reflecting recent news. How up to date it is varies, and it's probably nicer to have it as fresh as possible - but that isn't the point of it. The main point is that articles in the encyclopaedia have been updated/created due to recent events, and the box serves to showcase major examples.
For everything else, there's Wikinews. zoney ♣ talk 21:42, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect arrested - breaking news

Sources: Arrest made in JonBenet Ramsey case

This appears to merit placing on the "In the news" section on the Main Page. --24.255.155.100 22:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed Vint 02:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Maintaining the "Current events in the middle east" portal

I have been maintining the portal and updating it on a constant basis. However, its a hard task and all I'm doing is copying Current Events that concern the middle east from this portal. Is anyone interested in helping? --Eshcorp 09:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Southeast Asia/Current events

An attempt is being made to move the old Current events in Southeast Asia page to Portal:Southeast Asia/Current events, and assistance is needed to finesse some of the coding on the page. Instruction on the maintenance of a portal is also needed. How are the past months archived? Is is possible for the SE Asia current events portral to have its own "highlight"? I have tried experimenting with portal coding in the past and the results were disastrous. Help is needed, please. -Wisekwai 12:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Based on this portal, it appears that monthly pages are created in the format similar to Portal:Current events/August 2006, where the links for each day are listed in chronological order. I will be creating Portal:Southeast Asia/August 2006 soon for this purpose, such that Portal:Southeast Asia/Current events need no longer list all dates of the month as per the format in this portal. Meanwhile, regional highlights are possible, given the ones already existing in the Oceanian and American portals. The only reason why the global one appears is cause I copied it from here! :D I asked for help in changing it for the SEA region in Portal talk:Southeast Asia/Current events, so will greatly appreciate any help in this regard. ;) --Huaiwei 12:39, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm willing to help out where needed. -- tariqabjotu 14:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I cracked my head to produce Portal:Southeast Asia/MonthHeader just so that we can have a highlights section which is easier to edit for folks who hate codes (including myself). I hope there are no coding errors? Anyway, any reason why the world section dosent use something similar?--Huaiwei 14:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikinews

Hello,

reading current events on Wikipedia doesn't give me the impression that the sister project WikiNews is highly regarded. On the main page the stories aren't linked to wikinews, and even here there are links to BBC etc. but not to the related stories on WikiNews.

Is there a reason for this? I think WikiNews should be a priviliged partner of Wikipedia, and links to full stories should be preferentially to WikiNews. Maybe that's provided they are good quality, but even then, this will allow more people to edit over there.

--Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 15:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point. It would be neat to try to see if the devs could hack some sort of automated process together that would allow more our Current Events page to be more interwoven with the Wikinews latest articles list. After all, why reinvent the wheel when their entire project is about identifying the most important happenings and writing about them? — GT 07:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem I've always had with wikinews is that focusses on "new news", if you pardon the pun. That is, an article on an election that took place two weeks ago doesn't appear to be welcome on wikinews, even if no article was done two weeks ago when it was current. That said, I think the above idea would be good. AndrewRT - Talk 15:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Highlights

Is "Highlights" really the right word to describe major events of the day, when those events could be horrendous? For example, today's first 'Highlight' reads: "Comair Flight 191, a Canadair CRJ-100 aircraft, crashes upon take-off from Lexington, Kentucky's Blue Grass Airport killing 49 of 50 passengers and crew on board." --Mister Six 21:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Good point :-s .--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
We could simply go for In the News, like on the Main Page. -- tariqabjotu 01:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
"Headlines" maybe? doktorb wordsdeeds 13:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Headlines sounds good to me.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I have put the question on the talk pages of the Highlights portal page, so if someone wants to talk there...? I think "Highlights" is faily distastful in some cases, so Headlines would moe more suitable. doktorb wordsdeeds 15:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Although this topic has seemed to die down due to apathy, for further reference you can go to Template talk:In the news for a July 2006 discussion along these same lines and to Portal talk:Current events/Highlights for the (as of now, unused) thread about the portal's wrapper around {{In the news}}. 69.3.70.50 22:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC).

Regional - Europe?

Currently I see:

Regional - World • Africa | China | India | Middle East | Oceania | Southeast Asia | United States

But no "Europe" or similar. Has this been moved/deleted, or can it really be that Europe has no Regional Portal of its own designated??? - 82.153.129.223 05:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

While there is a Portal:Europe, it doesn't appear to have a news section. I agree that it would be desirable to have one. There are other areas of the world missing as well; Portal:Latin America does have a news section, which is archived to Portal:Latin_America/In_the_news/2006. This could be converted to the same format as the other regional/national news portal pages, and would take little extra work to maintain once set up. Portal:Canada has no news section. Portal:Russia has a news section but it has not been updated for many months. There are parts of Asia not covered by existing portal news pages. I suspect that if anyone wanted to help out with a news section for any of these areas, they'd be most welcome.-gadfium 08:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Opinion vs. Fact

Isn't this article just an opinion?

A $450 million slush fund for the Republican Bush White House will be created by the prospective deal to resolve the United States-Canada softwood lumber dispute. (The Tyee)

Why is it listed as a fact? user:mnw2000 12:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed that two or three times. It's not a news story, it's an analysis of an ongoing deal. Ya ya ya ya ya ya 20:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Steve irwins connection to terrorism

I recently viwed this article to find this "Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter", is assassinated by terrorist stingrays, believed to have ties to al Qaeda, near Australia's Great Barrier Reef." which i find very hard to believe.

It's called vandalism, and has now been reverted. It is a problem for Wikipedia, but we like to think we are on top of it. Batmanand | Talk 15:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Priorities?

I see a lot of problems with how Current events are run here. There're countless wars and other armed conflicts going on around the globe, people starving, dying, being torn from their farms, houses, endless state affairs to document. But instead of mentioning any of these, Wikipedia's Current events chooses to highlight the death of Steve Irwin, and the retirement of a sports star. Whenever I've had the motivation to actually try getting something up on the front page, I'm simply shot down by some random admin, because I don't have the same status. Instead of hundreds of folks being illegally evicted from the South Central Farm, or ongoing death in Palestine and Lebanon, we get sports scores. What the hell? Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png Canæn Image:Icons-flag-scotland.png 02:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The other side of that coin, Canaen, are the admins who "shoot down" user requests to put the lastest rugby/football/basketball/etc., championship on the Main Page under In the News. And to justify their refusal, they used language nearly identical to yours.

-Fsotrain09 03:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Removal of White House statement

Yesterday, twice, someone removed a news story about White House criticism of U.S. Democratic Party policy, merely on the grounds that Drudge is not a good source. Are we really saying that Matt Drudge would invent a letter from Bolten? What if he's the only source? --Uncle Ed 11:53, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Japan - better wording?

Japan's Princess Kiko gives birth to a son by caesarean section. The as-yet unnamed boy is the first male heir born into the Japanese Imperial Family for more than 40 years, and will ultimately become Emperor if the current succession laws are unchanged. The child's father, Prince Akishino is the second son of Emperor Akihito.

Is there a better way to word this? While I understand what's it's trying to say, currently, it seems to suggest that this heir becoming emperor is a forgone conclusion without a law change. This is of course incorrect, since he could die before then or perhaps Japan could lose their monarchy or whatever (obviously a law change will be necessary and technically the removal of the monarchy means there would be a change in the succession law but I hope people can understand the point I'm making). Various other scenarios such as the heir turning out to be such an idiot and/or prick that the Japanese people don't wat him and come up with some way to ensure he doesn't become emperor (which could be a change in succession law, a removal of the monarchy or something else). Nil Einne 13:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Singaporean Economy

"The Singaporean economy tops a list of 175 economies as the most business-friendly economy in the world in a survey conducted by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (CNA). "

I checked the source, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/228876/1/.html, let me just post what the title of the source was and you can come to your own conclusions whether it backs up this news tidbit:

Design teams chosen for two Gardens by the Bay

The source has nothing to do with it as far as I've read. Fephisto 14:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a new, sneaky type of vandalism. The vandal adds an authentic story from an authentic source but then posts a source that has nothing to do with the actual story. I removed the story but it was re-added by the vandal. The link is still incorrect. Ya ya ya ya ya ya 21:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
How an obvious case of posting a wrong link has suddenly been termed as a "new sneaky type of vandalism" is beyond me. I have corrected the link accordingly to [1], and if that is too POVed in your view, I hope [2] would perhaps demonstrate to you what this vandal based his post on. The last time I checked, WP:FAITH is still official wikipolicy.--Huaiwei 13:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)