Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries/Archive 1

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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

Format Change Proposal

In the interests of saving space and being sleeker, I propose we change the format at tad to this:

February 22 - February 23 - February 24

More events in history...

Pros: Tighter, does not separate date information
Cons: Per Eloquence, bold is not enough to ID which day we are on.

Counterargument, but the bold and the center location combines to make it clear, IMHO. jengod 20:48, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)
I really dislike that format. I think the bullet points should be very clearly associated with a single date, we don't want to accidentally give casual readers an incorrect impression.—Eloquence 22:57, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with eloquence. Perl 23:43, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Format Query

Why is this date format:

On February 23, ..

being used instead of

On February 23: or On February 23...

The comma-double period combo seems odd. jengod 20:50, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Because that is what was on Main Page/Test. --mav 02:49, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
But, but...what does it mean? A comma alone I could grok, but comma-space-dot-dot is Morse code. Ish. :) jengod 14:25, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Image Size Limits

What is the max width and height for these images? If it gets to big, it'll break the main page? 100px width is a good idea IMHO. jengod 22:41, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Tense

Should the events be described in present tense or past tense? I vote present, but whatever yall think... jengod 23:50, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

March 3 1955 - Elvis Presley appeared on television for the first time. March 3 1955 - Elvis Presley appears on television for the first time.

Whichever one we choose, let's be consistant. Right now the main page of this article uses both interchangably. RickK 01:52, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

They should be in the past tense due to the fact that the Main Page has current events and past ones on the same page (the context of a day page, however, is established at that day and year, so the present tense makes sense there). --mav

Vote:

Umm, I have a problem now at Template:June 8 selected anniversaries. Should the entry for 2004 be in the past tense, even though it's for that day, or should we remove the transit of venus thing and add it after the day has passed, since it's not really an anniverary... I'm all confused. I changed it to past tense, because that's what the guidelines say, but it's gonna look funny. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:54, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Adding a very belated but empassioned "past tense" vote. <rant>The practice of writing about historic events in the present tense is a major peeve of mine. So far as I can see, it is something the History Channel or similar organisations introduced to make their narration seem more "immediate". It's bad grammar, but it at least has some sort of excuse when the speaker is narrating against a re-enactment; we can all imagine that we are back in the past, and that's why it's present tense. But for anything else, and writing in particular, it's just wrong. Worse, as soon as sentence structure gets beyond a simple clause, it becomes quite confusing. How the heck does one express, say, the pluperfect when the principle clause is in the present tense? But put it back into past tense and anyone can understand, even without having been formally taught any grammar.</rant> So, not only should we use the correct tense, but correct the numerous errors that appear on these pages. Securiger 06:59, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Crouded

Two images sometimes seems crouded. Look at my example: Main Page/Test Perl 00:13, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Definitely. It should only be one image, but it's probably better to give people more options than less. The image can be changed throughout the day, not at all, etc. I just foresee tugs-of-war over which image to use... jengod 00:14, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)
I like the idea of changing the image throughout the day. Perl 00:25, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of having images in this section of the Main Page at all. It does crowd the text and makes it hard to read at lower resolutions. Right now the Main Page looks best at 1280px+ (I happen to have a screen width of 1400px so it looks great on my computer), largely due to crowding by images. --mav

Another link

Do ya'll think we should try to fit "list of historical anniversaries" in somewhere? Maybe have it be the link from the main page and then Wikipedia:Events in history from there? jengod 14:52, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

It is linked from every day page and from the top of this page already. --mav

What happened to the images we had for the days in history? they seem to have been lost. Perl 23:42, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Just commented out to save load time, I believe. jengod 23:43, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Merge with Holidays - good or bad?

Now that the obits have been combined with In the news on the Main Page, I think we should do the same for holidays and events in history. The new, longer (5-6 bullets) section would be called "Selected anniversaries" and would have up to three holidays per day. This would have the downside of only having a holiday on the Main Page once each year, but I think reducing the amount of whitespace on the Main Page, giving more room to the 'In the news' section, and being able to coordinate non-date specific holidays here is worth it. "On" would have to be replaced with "For" and this page would have to be moved to Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries to make this work. We would just have to mark Jewish, Islamic, and other holidays that don't happen on the same day every year with the current year. Example:

What does everybody think? --mav 01:56, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

JOLLY GOOD. jengod 02:08, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Problem. It's rather incongruous to have Events in history as a heading and then have the current year showing up as if today's holiday was a historical event. I don't think a holidays section is necessary at all. However, historical events related to various holidays could certainly be listed regularly in this category. A possible listing for March 17:
--Michael Snow 06:19, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That is why the heading would be changed to Selected anniversaries. I like your example of St. Patrick's Day - it is more informative than saying that the holiday is currently being celebrated. But it just won't work for most holidays. --mav
Failure to read on my part. But why do you say it can't work? We need to know something substantive about a holiday to justify listing it. The real problem, not just with holidays but with dating anniversaries in general, is that it's inherently biased in favor of events whose exact dates are historically documented. --Michael Snow 06:47, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Of course it is biased. Other entries whose exact date is not known can be listed on the Main Page in other ways. And yes I do prefer having events over pure holidays. It will however, take some time and research to find appropriate ones for each holiday. Holidays based on a lunar or other non-Gregorian calendar will be most difficult. Thus I would like flexibility in this area so if an appropriate event can't be found in order to introduce a holiday, I would like to fall back on saying that in 2004 the holiday is being celebrated. --mav

Done. --mav

The solution is that when the occasion calls for it, we need to be willing to list at least one event using a non-Gregorian date. An example, coming up on 2 March by the Gregorian calendar:

For 10 Muharram:

--Michael Snow 18:26, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This would be better:

mav

If we're using the Islamic calendar date, and I believe we should, the Islamic year should come first, and the Christian year can be in parentheses. --Michael Snow 21:57, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

With that reasoning we should use the Arabic text first and have the English characters second. --mav
No, because this is the English Wikipedia page. But when including non-Gregorian holidays and anniversaries, it's appropriate to provide enough information for people to find the corresponding calendar. The fact that Aashurah falls on 2 March this year has no relevance for the people observing it. --Michael Snow 22:44, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It has a great deal of relevance to everybody else. The English-speaking world has standarized on the Gregorian calendar so that is what we use as our primary calendar. If and when that changes, we change. --mav
It's the primary calendar we use, but not the only calendar we recognize. It's not like if we list 10 Muharram along with 2 March, people won't be able to figure out that the two dates happen to be the same this year. I'm not suggesting we should go through all of our historical materials and incorporate alternative calendar dates everywhere. But when the date is significant because it comes from a particular calendar, we should refer to that calendar, and provide a translation to Gregorian. --Michael Snow 23:36, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Primary = first, secondary = second. I'm glad we agree. ;) --mav

Actually, I don't think we had thought the implications through completely. If we list this event on 2 March, Gregorian, to recognize Aashurah, we have to identify the date as 10 Muharram, because it didn't happen on 2 March 680 (by Gregorian reckoning, it was 10 October). --Michael Snow 00:32, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Auto updates - yeah baby!

Jdforrester had a great idea that I was able to make reality. I created Template:February 26 and referenced it via {{msg:{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}_{{CURRENTDAY}}}} to get:

Template:June 12
Is that cool or what? --mav 06:45, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Very nice! So each day gets its own? MediaWiki:March 2 and MediaWiki:July 25 and so on? jengod 06:47, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

Yep - I plan to still coordinate everything pretty much like the current setup, except each day entry will be referenced by a msg and have an edit link by it. I'm working on something along those lines right now. --mav 07:01, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Caps

Hi! I think that on the "More" link it either needs to be:

More selected anniversaries or More Selected Anniversaries

Just to be consistent...

jengod 23:14, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't that already the case? --mav 05:30, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Image layout

I think we need to discuss ways to more clearly associate the displayed image with a particular image. Take this:

On March 1:

Bison in Yellowstone

Recent days: February 29 - February 28

More selected anniversaries...

as an example. Now, I like the fact that we rotate the images, but I don't like that it's not clear which entry the image belongs to until you hover over it with your mouse. Captions are tricky at this width, so how about highlighting the entry which happened on a particular day, like this:

Bison in Yellowstone

On March 1, 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established. It is the first and oldest national park in the world. Other things which happened on this day:

This also allows us some more space for the entry with the picture. Any other suggestions?—Eloquence 14:50, Mar 1, 2004 (UTC)

I would prefer small captions. See my message at meta:Talk:Image Box. --mav

On March 1:

Bison in Yellowstone
Bison in Yellowstone



I agree that something is needed. As it is laid out on the main page, the picture for 27 August could mislead the uninformed into thinking the image is of Venus, rather than Mars. --zandperl 03:11, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

August 27: Independence Day for Moldova (1991)

Mars

Bolding

I just wanted to clear something up. Which is the proper formatting for an entry?

  1. 44 BC - Julius Caesar assassinated in Rome by Senators.
  2. 44 BC - Julius Caesar assassinated in Rome by Senators.

It was my understanding that the first is correct, per the standards established by the other elements of the main page, but there are many future entries with willy-nilly bolding. Comments? jengod 23:19, Mar 23, 2004 (UTC)

The first is wrong - only the article which has info on the selected event with the corresponding date linked is bolded. Read this meta page for details and look at the /February and /March pages for correct examples. The others will be fixed in time. --mav 07:49, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Duh, that's what I meant. First wrong; second right. *sigh* typing hard. :) jengod

Just a quibble. I'm seeing this in a lot of the entries and I've been fixing them, but I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement here. In the example above, the action is given as the past participle, but the instructions are please write each "selected anniversary listing" in the past tense. For example:

So... shouldn't it be:

Any opinions on this? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:58, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

Where is the end of the queue?

This set of pages serve as a queue it says. I naively added some carefully thought out anniversaries to April 8 which were reverted. Where's the queue? This set of pages serve as a queue is mysterious. I generally only get one page at a time? Wetman 01:10, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Each sel anniv MediaWiki page is automatically displayed when its day arrives - they all wait in line until that day comes. --mav 09:33, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

"History" link on Selected anniveraries/month?

Do you guys think it would be a good idea to have a "history" link, in addition to the view, talk, and edit links for each day? - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:50, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, it would be useful. I should have added one when I created each entry. Oh well. Have at it if you like. :) --mav 08:18, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
It'll go on my weekend todo list. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:46, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)
I've modified Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/July. If this goes over well, I'll modify the rest before the end of the month. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:51, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

Getting rid of "On"

Public notice: Unless there is opposition to it, I'm going to get rid of "On" from every Selected anniversaries entry. Stuff like;

On June 17: Independence Day in Iceland (1944)

doesn't make much sense and isn't needed for the bullet list either. --mav

I agree. All the "on"s have been removed now. Angela.

Revisions

Well, from a glance at the Page histories Selected anniversaries first appeared in March of this year. To provide one & all enough time to adequately discuss this idea, shall we try to keep listed as many of these events as possible, or try to replace as many events with new ones? Frankly, I can envision good arguments for either side. -- llywrch 03:35, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Try to find the best mix per the guidelines listed on this page. Those same events will be displayed each year. --mav 07:23, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Equinox

I was looking forward to knowing the exact date of the equinox. Why wasn't it mentioned on the front page? [[User:Nichalp|¶ ɳȉčḩåḽṗ | ✉]] 18:56, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Pompey's Triumph

Was it a generic triumph, or a specific Roman Triumph? If the former, I suggest avoiding the word "triumph" to make things more clear. Oberiko 12:41, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Football

Isn't there some kind of WiKonvention to label association football as soccer and not football? In today's specific case, it might make the FA's founding more meaningful.

Link to tomorrow

My first wikipedia edit: a link on the Selected Anniversaries section of the main page to the following day. Someone deleted it - any particular reason why?

Wikipedia currently offers links to the last 3 days as well as the 'current' day. I added a 'tomorrow' because the Today information isn't current from my point of view down here in Oceania. (I expect most of Asia feels the same way.) This isn't Wikipedia's fault: it's our species' fault for spreading over so many timezones. Nevertheless, it would be nice if we eastern hemisphereans could be just one click away from our Today-In-History information. It gives us something to do while we wait for the sun to get to Greenwich and wake up the dynamic cultures.

Zac (www.ortholog.com)

The day used here is a UTC day; the standard international day. --mav 18:29, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
How about including the next day's link for people in the East by replacing:
More events on this day...
Recent days: November 10 – November 9 – November 8
with
November 10 · More November 11 events · November 12
? -- Jeandré, 2007-11-11t12:43z

Protecting the selected anniversaries pages

Much talk of late about protecting all transcluded pages on the Main Page. The recent discussion was due to a very unfortunate sequence of events; somebody added the infamous shock Goatse.cx photo at Template:WikipediaSister and then for some probably unrelated reason the site slowed down just enough to allow many reads but hardly any writes at all.

Thus for over 20 minutes this hideous image was on the Main Page for those unlucky few that were able to still read (See Talk:Main_Page#Front_page_hacked.3F). One teacher later complained to the board and Jimbo that at that very time she was showing Wikipedia to her class. This is the worst Main Page vandalism we have had since at least the first year of the project (somebody replaced the content of the Main Page with a link to very large image of a an erect penis; but very few people were visiting us then and and erect penis is nothing compared to goatse.cx).

The bottom line is that I want to protect each selected anniversaries page now before this happens again - and before it happens on our turf. I originally wanted to wait on proposing this until the one year anniversary of this section's existence later this month (meaning each individual page would be more-or-less complete by then - thus having everything wide open for everybody to edit is no longer really needed ; admins can do any additional maintenance). So if 24 hours pass without opposition to this plan, I'll go ahead and implement it. If there is opposition, then we need to form a consensus on what to do. --mav 22:27, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sigh ... This is indeed unfortunate. Please implement the protection as suggested. Or at least remove "edit" from the "view - talk - edit - history" links on Wikipedia:Selected_anniversaries/February. I think the current setup makes the templates too accessible from the MainPage. -- PFHLai 07:50, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
I've protected February and March. At the start of each month I'll protect another month until the whole year is protected. No real need to do this all at once. Instead of removing the edit links, I added 'admins only' to them. These links are useful for people maintaining these pages. --mav 05:14, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page needs to be updated to tell laymen how to suggest items for selected anniversaries now. I'm assuming the best way is to just post on the relevant talk page, but it's up to the people who actually do the editing. – flamurai (t) 02:47, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

I guess I'm a bit late for this discussion, but ... If it isn't too much work, it would be better to only have today's and tomorrow's anniversaries protected. It's overkill to have pages protected a month in advance, and un-wiki. I take it the reason is that everything else about the selected anniversaries is automated. I wonder if we could get the "Today's featured article" people to protect today's anniversaries when they do their thing. dbenbenn | talk 02:52, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Please unprotect all of those which are not actively (within a day or two) being used on the main page. -- Netoholic @ 16:06, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)
I've looked into it more. Images used by the anniversaries are not protected, so the process isn't totally automatic anyway. Protecting two pages every day is not much harder than protecting one. I went ahead and unprotected Feb 1 through 14. dbenbenn | talk 14:59, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Expansion plan

[NOTE: also read my second response to Netoholic -- mav]

Before the end of the year I plan to create 7 new pages for each selected anniversaries day ; one for each day of the week. At first, each will be a carbon copy of all the others, but in time I'd like to see different mixes of topics and images in each version. Major events will be duplicated a lot across each set of day pages [event bullet lists], but many other events will not be (allowing for a larger mix of topics to be covered). In practical terms this means that only one version of each new day page will be displayed on the Main Page every 7 years and each day of the week a different set of day pages will be displayed in the month archives. This is all possible by adding a {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} variable to the current display code after all the new pages are created. Current day pages, such as Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/June 12 will no longer be transcluded. Instead they will display all seven variants (with names such as Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/Thursday June 12). An important side benefit is that we can easily deal with lunar-based holidays way in advance. --mav 23:24, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't seem at all worthwhile. What is so significant about the day of the week? Really, adding almost 2200 extra pages to the wikipedia just to do this seems off. How much lead time do you need to deal with lunar-based holidays anywhy? Why do you need more than one year? -- Netoholic @ 15:33, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
Read again. The main point is to increase the number of items that go on selected anniversary pages. Otherwise the same old events will likely be recycled year after year (granted, the most important ones should but most are not that important). --mav 09:13, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I read it. I am sure there are people willing to refresh any "stale" items, and they don't need 7 years lead time to do it. Also why is there concern about re-using items anyway? When today's item rolled out, did you really think "Ugh, those anniversaries were up there last June 12."? Your proposal doesn't make any real improvement, and actually makes it 7x harder to implement any improvements or format changes, if suggested in the future. -- Netoholic @ 16:44, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
Because there are other events at February 21 which would also be valid things to mention. You did point out some problems with my plan, and I now think it would be best to just have the event bullet lists at pages like Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/June 12/Thursday. This would prevent holiday date confusion and keep potential format changes from being 7 times harder to implement. :) Either way, I don't plan on implementing this for some time, so there is still plenty of time to refine things. --mav 21:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid I disagree with this idea. I agree with Netoholic that it would be multiplying the maintenance work of these pages with no appreciable gain.
I agree that variation in topics from year to year is a desirable goal. However, I don't think we have any real need to automate it; in any given year, there will be enough topics moved around and added simply due to the personal whim of editors.
You argue that more events will be covered. Perhaps, but this proposal doesn't make it too much easier to look for them. If I wanted to find out what other cool stuff happened on March 7, without resorting to reading the full-blown March 7 page, I'm not going to want to read through seven pages, especially ones with significant overlap (because of shared important events). --Saforrest 03:19, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah it does. Read the bolded area in my first para (the master selected anniversaries pages for each day will be linked from the sel anniv month box and from below the final trancluded entry for that day - just as the edit links, history page, and talk pages are now displayed; pages such as Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March will look almost the same as they do now and the final result on the Main Page will look exactly the same). Also, unlike the main day article for each day, all the bolded articles for each selected anniversary should be updated to reflect the event mentioned.
Only the event lists will be moved to day of the week transcluded subpages. Another good point of my now-revised plan is that images will automatically change each day (along with the day’s event mix). All these changes will be seamless to the people viewing the end result on the Main Page. Setting this up will be easy for a wikiholic who has bot-like speed (like myself :). Providing a good mix of topics to cover will take time - my first pass will mainly move images around (unless commented-out events are already in the wikitext). Thanks for your comments - they have helped me fix other issues with my original plan. :) --mav 18:51, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

At first, I was quite happy with mav's expansion plan to get 7 Wikipages for each day, one for each day of the week. This should take care of all those holidays that are always on the same day of a particular week of a month, e.g. Father's Day and Mother's Day in most countries, always a Sunday. However, I have to say that it may not be economical -- byte-wise -- to have hundreds of Wikipages standing by, unused, for 5, 6 or 7 years. I also don't understand how the plan would help in dealing "with lunar-based holidays way in advance." ..... In my opinion, Selected Anniversaries (SA) require yearly attention. No, it's not because "those anniversaries were up there last year" and appear to be "stale" after a year. Items listed in SA should reflect the wealth of information we have in Wikipedia, and the availability of good pages worthy of an appearance on the MainPage may change as the contents of Wikipedia gets enriched after a year's time. Sometimes, Wikipages get moved around, or merged, or deleted due to copyvio... what not ? Also, many holidays are VERY 'moveable', e.g. Easter (the calculation is intimidating), Eid ul-Adha (See NOTES 1 & 2) or many holidays on the Islamic, Jewish or Chinese calendars. An annual review a few days before an SA template re-appears on the Main Page is highly recommended. ..... In order to have several variants for each day of a year and feature a different mix of articles and a different picture, I would rather expand in such a way that each day has 2 or 3 SA variants that get rotated in on the same day. Maybe a different variant every 2 hours. Maybe a different variant each time MainPage is loaded on screen. Not every day has enough items to fill up two variants, but the variants need not be completely different. And I hope we will get more items to showcase in the MainPage over time. However, I don't know if this is feasible. I know nothing about programming. -- PFHLai 02:43, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Again I have failed to communicate. I have already abandoned the idea of having complete copies - only the event bullet lists and photos will be on the individual day of the week pages. This will not affect the part of the sel anniv page where the holidays go or other elements go. Each day of the week there would be a different set of events and photos at pages like Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March. This will make those type of pages more useful and interesting to readers. It is not possible to have this type of thing work within a day and that type of thing would not be useful to people who get the daily-article-l since they would always just get the first version. --mav 18:13, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Additional info in this coloumn(sp?)

If we could have holidays and awareness days (weeks, months), it would contribute alot to this section of the main page.

Um, holidays are already listed on several of the days. If we missed one, please suggest on this page or the particular day's page that it should be added. Gentgeen 01:41, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tomorrow?

An anon posted the suggestion that we change it to Yesterday, the day before yesterday, and tommorrow, instead of the three previous days. I like it. -- user:zanimum

Today, yesterday, the day before yesterday and tomorrow are all going to be different based on what timezone you are in. That is why this section is called selected anniversaries instead of This day in history. --mav 18:11, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Ah, touche. -- user:zanimum

Selected births and deaths

The current guidelines say

births and deaths can only be used when there are not enough qualifying events

I would say this needs updating now. I would guess that every date now has sufficient qualifying events that all bio anniversaries are effectively ruled out. I can see why we don't want to routinely feature bio anniversaries, but we should consider featuring particularly significant anniversaries, say the 50th, 100th and 200th years since...xxx.

For example we completely ignored the 50th anniversary of the death of Albert Einstein earlier this month. And on September 30 it would probably be more significant to feature the 50th anniversary of the death of James Dean in place of say the Tylenol scare incident (assuming that was featured last year).

In fact, preferentially selecting round number anniversaries could be a good way of ensuring a rotation of selected anniversaries without introducing much bias. -- Solipsist 12:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

    • Particularly significant anniversaries and their associated celebrations are a matter for current events and the ITN section of the Main Page. Unless the person is Jesus, their birth was not a significant event in itself. If that person really did something great, then the date they did that great thing should be included as an event. And dropping dead is usually not the most notable thing about most people. But associated events, such as the Kennedy assassination are valid (in that case the assassination article, not the article on the man, would be bolded, but both would be linked). --mav

margin -1em

Can I persuade you to remove this div. It is unnecessary and ugly and is at odds with how "In the news" has its bullets. -MarSch 18:20, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

It also prevents correct layout on other pages that use this template such as Main Page (table free), so please remove it. -MarSch 16:21, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Somebody change this or explain why it is such a great idea, please. --MarSch 10:04, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Okay, this seems to be gone, but there is still a superfluous div closure --MarSch 17:40, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
And it is back again and unclosed now. I guess there are far too few admins :( --MarSch 15:38, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see that these pages already all exist. Wouldn't it be usefull then to use a template to do their layout?--MarSch 15:50, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Idea

I'm lousy at CSS, but if there was a way to very easily highlight the listing which corresponded to the picture (by putting it in one of those nice pastel table boxes), that would be very useful. As it is, it is hard to tell which entry the picture corresponds to at a glance, which, while it can be somewhat humorous, seems like a flaw, especially when it only corresponds with the last entry on the list. --Fastfission 17:22, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Preemptive Israeli Air Force attack

Please change 'an Israeli Air Force attack' to 'a preemptive Israeli Air Force atttack'. Thanks. --Ezra Wax 16:08, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

June 13

It's not Queen's Birthday on New Zealand today (actually yesterday for us) New Zealand celebrates Queen's Birthday on the first Monday in June. Please change thanks Lisiate 23:27, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Why wiki space

How come the individual day subarticles are still in the Wikipedia namespace instead of the template namespace? Is there some reason for this? Fawcett5 15:57, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

What benefit would this bring? -- user:zanimum
Edits would automatically purge the cache of the pages that transclude it, I think. --fvw* 01:15, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Painting of the whitehouse

I've removed the painting of the whitehouse as, as User:Filur pointed out, it's a myth (even our article on the topic says that). I assume we don't want an anniversary of the myth? That might be pushing it a little too far.

Should a different anniversary be added to the list? I've just removed the incorrect one, if someone familiar with the SA system could add a fresh one if necessary it'd be much appreciated. --fvw* 01:15, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

The anniversary was about the burning, not the painting. I fixed it. -- PFHLai 03:05, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

Labour/Labor Day

The holiday is Labour Day in Canada, not Labor Day as the template today suggests. Could some one please fix it? --Madison Gray 01:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. -- PFHLai 10:56, 2005 September 5 (UTC)
Thank you.--Madison Gray 17:17, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

BBC Television Service

I was going to add the launch of the BBC Television Service to the selected anniversaries for November 2, but it's already full-up - is there some process for deciding whether one event can be removed and another put in its place? I think the launch of the channel is worth noting - it was the first regular high-definition service (in those days 'high definition' being at least 200 lines), and is the oldest television channel in the world still operating, albeit being renamed 'BBC1' in 1964. Angmering 22:21, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion. I wonder how I missed this last year. I've just posted this anniversary on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/November 2. To propose an anniversary for the MainPage, please add it to the talk page of "Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/Month Day#" for that day. I usually check the talk page when I update each day's template. Thanks. -- PFHLai 01:17, 2005 September 13 (UTC)
Mentioned this also on the BBC One talk page as it's in the article too, but: This mentions that BBC One launched as a high-definition service in 1936. While I realize (now, after being educated about historic uses of the term over the last half hour) that this is technically accurate, the term "high-definition television" has a completely different meaning now. While I don't necessarily think that pointing out that it was the first of what was then termed high-definition is a bad idea, I think that care ought to be taken so that the article is not taken to mean (as I first thought it meant) a claim that BBC One launched a Digital HDTV service in 1936! (I realize that, towards the bottom of the High-Definition Television article, this historic use of the term is described). —70.187.171.21 05:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing this ambiguity out. I've re-wikified the line to link to Analog high-definition television system instead. Hope this will clear things up. --PFHLai 08:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

page protection changed?

I've noticed that the selected anniversary pages now seem to be protected about one week before being placed on the main page, rather than one day before. Has there been a change in policies? Thanks. --Ixfd64 11:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The page appears to be currently unprotected. I should note that it's Nov 1 local time, but nearly Nov 2 UTC where I am. --EngineerScotty 23:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

All templates for the MainPage should be protected -- all the time, in case the admins forget / sign in too late. Non-admins can propose changes on the respective talk pages. Thanks. -- PFHLai 21:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
No they shouldn't. The featured article templates for 1 year from now are not protected, because they don't exist yet. The images used by selected anniversaries are not protected all year round, so that all users can edit them. The selected anniversary day templates should be unprotected most of the time for the same reason: so that people can improve them. "Non-admins can propose changes on the talk pages" isn't really workable; the objective fact is that most changes simply don't get suggested in that case, and improvements happen much more slowly. dbenbenn | talk 03:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

December 2, 2005 - important anniversary missing

(moved to Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries/December 2)

A Question

Just a question, which has probably already been asked, but if a user sees "an event mentioned in this article is an..." notice on the talk page of an article, but that event is not listed on the Selected Anniversaries pages, is it okay for her to remove it from the talk page of that article? I ask this because I found a page with a selected anniversary notice that wasn't listed on the pages. I thought that there might be several alternate Selected Anniversary events as they might be only be used every other year so if it was missing in the current page for that day it might simply be part of a set of anniversaries that alternate with another one. Thank you for answering. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline

Yes, please remove that notice. We don't place those anymore. --mav 13:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Konrad Zuse

Today, December 18, marks the tenth anniversary of Konrad Zuse's death. Shouldn't this have been featured on the selected anniversaries on the main page? The man was more important than the release of Perl. 83.135.93.147

His death was not noteworthy. Better to feature Zuse on May 12 for the completion and successful demo of his Z3 in 1941. -- 199.71.174.100 06:16, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart

This event is coming up on the 27 January - the press is already covering it (BBC at least) and I expect things will be happening all around the world. Anyone object to me adding it to Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 27? --Oldak Quill 18:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Celebrations/Commemorations in the news ? ITN may be more appropriate. --199.71.174.100 06:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I've added it to Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates. Melchoir 05:40, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day

Hey, what about mentioning Wikipedia Day today? GeorgeStepanek\talk 01:01, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Charles Darwin born on February 12 - same day and year as Lincoln

Perhaps this should be noted:

  • Charles Darwin, renowned naturalist and evolution theorist, was also born.

Interesting tidbit: 450 Christian Churches To Commemorate Charles Darwin http://www.playfuls.com/news_00222_450_Christian_Churches_To_Commemorate_Charles_Darwin.html

fair use images

Since as a general rule we discourage fair use images on DYK and ITN, I was thinking of going through all of the selected anniversaries and replacing all of the fair use images too. Any objections? Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

"present-day Free State Province"

I thought Free State had been renamed? AndrewRT 10:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

"Malcom X"

The link between the assassination of Malcom X and the Nation of Islam is the subject of much debate and speculation but has not been proven. Therefore the sentence "by members of the Nation of Islam" should be removed from the featured anniversary text.

Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23

It does not include Baltic Way - an event when 2 million people formed a human chain from Tallinn to Vilnius (about 600 km). I think it's important and deserves the spot. Renata 06:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

New pic needed

We have an unsourced image on our hands here, and I got a message from the uploader to delete it (assuming since he doens't rember the source.) I would find a dif pic, but am at work... Admrb♉ltz (T | C) 01:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Never mind Admrb♉ltz (T | C) 01:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Prior / Next Day

A suggestion was made on Main page talk to include a way to show tomorrow's Selected anniversaries. This was requested particularly in reference to users who are in time zones well off GMT that often find themselves receiving results for what is actually 'yesterday' for them. One method of doing so would be to replace the current 'Recent days: March 24 – March 23 – March 22' section with something like;

Prior day - Complete list for this day - Next day

Since those links would then be on each page this would have the 'side benefit' of allowing a user to 'browse' backwards or forwards through the Selected anniversary pages. Optionally, we could also put a calendar on each page within 'noinclude' tags to allow jumping directly to a particular date while browsing. An example of this can be seen at User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox5.

Thoughts? --CBDunkerson 02:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

16 April: death of Marla Ruzicka

I almost said "martyrdom" but that might have been too strong a term. But the death one year ago of Marla Ruzicka shouldn't go unnoted. 207.69.139.156 19:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


April 19th

The burning of the Waco Branch Davidian compound should definitely be listed as an April 19th event, since the Oklahoma City bombing is - and it was done as revenge for the former Sherurcij (talk) (Terrorist Wikiproject) 03:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Already two American events are listed. Not a good idea to add a third one. Let's diversify and avoid US-centrism. Furthermore, Waco Siege currently carries {{TotallyDisputed}} and {{Unreferenced}} tags, and should definitely not be featured on MainPage till the problems are resolved. -- PFHLai 07:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

USA bias in Selected Anniverary

One bias which I have noticed over many months is on the Main Page, particularly the "Selected Anniversaries" section. Pretty much every day - I would say 9 days out of 10 - it has an item from the USA. Now don't get me wrong - I am not a USA-basher by any stretch of the imagination. However, given that there are basically infinite numbers of things that have happened on every day of the year, it seems a little silly to always have at least one USA-related item. Has anyone else noticed this, and what do others think about it? Batmanand | Talk 15:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's hard to avoid those US-related articles. It's part of the systemic bias that people naturally contribute what they are familiar with, and the many Americans in English Wikipedia have been doing a good job with what they know best. Lucky Americans. Paper has become cheap when their country was born, and their whole history has been recorded in details. This has translated into good wikipages about their history. Good wikiarticles will get featured, while dinky stubs won't. Actually, getting just one every day is an improvement. It was much worse in 2004. (Example})
To make things worse, many historic events were not properly dated, or at least the date cannot be found in the relevant wikiarticles, making them ineligible for Selected Anniversaries. There is also a problem with events that took place outside "Western/Christian Europe". The Gregorian date is too hard to confirm for events in Persia, India, China or Japan, for instance. For events in "Eastern Europe" where the Julian calendar was used for a longer time, it's hard to figure out if the date in the wikiarticle is Julian or Gregorian. Events with iffy dates can't be featured. (Many pages have been fixed now.)
Hence, we're often stuck with US events. To "get rid of" US events, please help write up more wikiarticles about historic events in other countries. See WP:CSB. -- PFHLai 00:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

the day Shakespear was born and died

Not sure if I'm putting this in the right format, but another thing I thought we should say for April 23rd was that its the day Shakespear was born and died.--64.229.19.133 14:51, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, we usually don't do birthdays and deaths. The date of this birth is questionable, anyway. -- 64.229.204.28 13:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

Hello all. I was wondering if there is any chance to move the article on Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp from August 8 to May 5, the date of the liberation of most sub-camps of that camp complex. After all the August 8 seems like a random date, while May 5th (or May 6th) is a date tied to the history of that camp. //Halibutt 12:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

August 8 isn't a random date at all. The article says "On 1938 August 8, prisoners from Dachau concentration camp were sent to the town of Mauthausen near Linz, Austria, to begin the construction of a new camp..." Starting the camp is a significant event. Let's keep this on August 8 and avoid crowding late April and early May with events in 1945 -- Hitler's suicide, the fall of Berlin, the SS Cap Arcona tragedy, the signing of the capitulation documents and the official ending of the European theatre of WW2, all happened within 2 weeks and can't be moved to another date. The May 5th template is full, anyway, with several hidden backup items waiting to be used (click 'edit' to view them). -- PFHLai 15:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

May 12th: Konrad Zuse presented the Z3

I'd like to suggest to include the following event on the main page: 1941 - Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer in Berlin. MikeZ 11:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Wish I had seen this earlier. Thanks for the good suggestion. I've re-posted this on Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries/May 12. Whoever doing the update/refreshing in 2007 should see this then. -- PFHLai 05:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

July 9

really should have:

As it is the twentieth anniversary of a very important law change

Sorry, didn't see this request early enough. -- PFHLai 13:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

July 11

Today, we have to include the Srebrenica massacre in the "on this day". We should never forget what happened. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gpiantoni (talk • contribs) 10:21, 2006 July 11 (UTC).

Thanks for the suggestion. Wikipedia indeed has good pages on this tragedy. Relevant links are now on MainPage. -- PFHLai 13:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, here's the talk page

Finally found the talk page for this. Constitution Day for South Korea can now be changed to Constitution Day (South Korea). Mithridates 01:58, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Conflict with article in July 18th Burning of Rome?

Should the bit about the Great Fire of Rome state "while Roman Emperor Nero reportedly played his lyre and sang as he watched the blaze from a safe distance" when the article contradicts that? While "reportedly" is used, the report in question is, well, questionable, as the article explains. PoptartKing 02:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

August 13- Battle of Warsaw

1920 - The Battle of Warsaw (1920), the decisive engagement of the Polish-Soviet War, began.

Such a battle deserves mentioning. Pawel z Niepolomic 19:54, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course it does. This will be featured in 2 weeks. Please see Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 25. -- PFHLai 20:41, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

fix the firefox bug

when using bullet points the text doesn't wrap around the image in firefox. you should probably use the template: {{*mp}} around the bullet point sign *. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 17:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

August 16

  • 1777 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Bennington - British forces are defeated by American troops.
  • 1780 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Camden - The British defeat the Americans near Camden, South Carolina.

Quite funny that only 1777 is mentioned on today's OTD section. However, judging by the number of soldiers and casualties, neither battle is worth mentioning on the main page. Most other events from this day seem much more interesting to me, and we have way too many American battles in the OTD section. Piet 15:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

It's hard to completely get rid of US items. Please see above #USA bias in Selected Anniverary. Bennington was chosen over Camden because today is 'Bennington Battle Day' in Vermont, because the article has a nice image (not great, but makes the page looks good) and because the involvement of the Germans seems interesting (I didn't know). Most importantly, I desperately need a new free image for MainPage and John Stark's pic was not used in other Sel. Anniv. templates. Any suggestions for next year ? Please add that on the template's talkpage. Thanks. -- PFHLai 17:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer. I do not want to get rid of U.S. items at all, I don't like people whining about U.S. bias. It's just that this particular battle seemed hardly relevant (even for Americans). If we would include battles of this size as a rule, there would be a hundred battles every day. But you have a good point, it's better to link to a decent article with a good picture.
Is there a page somewhere that describes the selection process for Selected Anniversaries? I've been looking for it for a while now. Piet 07:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
A page on the selection process ? Well, you may want to ask User:Maveric149, the Father of Wikipedia: Selected anniversaries, or User:Ancheta Wis, who followed Mav and did most of the early selections in many of the Sel.Anniv templates. Without any set rules from them besides Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries, I refresh/update the templates with what I can find in the Wikicalendar. I go for diversity in topic, era and geographical location, while good wikipages have priority and articles carrying problem tags such as {cleanup} or {NPOV} get hidden till they are fixed. And I try not to feature the same article within the same year. And, again for the sake of diversity, recent and upcoming FAs and recent DYK features are avoided, ditto for those on ITN. Some days have more than 5 qualifying items, then I would cycle the less significant events in and out. Some days, well, I don't have much choice. These days, I also pay attention to special anniversaries like the 10th, 25th, 75th anniversaries, and of course centenaries. So that's my selection process, just off my head. I hope I didn't miss anything. If you are looking for a voting page as with FA, sorry, we don't have one. If you are looking for a candidates' page as with ITN & DYK, well, please use the talkpage of each day's template. Most of the 366 Sel. Anniv. templates are on my watchlist. Hope this helps. -- PFHLai 13:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It does, thank you very much. Maybe you can clean this up a bit and put it on your user page or something for the next person who asks. Or anywhere else of course. But thanks. Piet 15:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
You are welcome, Piet. Thanks for the suggestion. I might add that to my userpage the next time I 'renovate' it. -- PFHLai 17:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Anniversary of Diana, Princess of Wales' death

Why has the anniversary of Princess Diana's death not been noted in "on this day". I am aware that is a somewhat unpleasant "anniversary", but she was (and is) dear to the British and many other hundreds of thousands world wide. Will there be any guarantee that the tenth anniversary of her death will be marked on this date next year? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.64.216.131 (talk • contribs) 21:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC).

Her death was simply not chosen for the MainPage (we usualy don't do deaths, unless it's large scale or an assassination, etc.), but it can still be found on August 31#Deaths. There is no guarantee anything will or will not be chosen next year. --PFHLai 20:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

September 3

Why isn't the start of the Second World War in 1939 listed for September 3's selected anniversaries? — Wereon 23:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/September 1. --PFHLai 20:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

September 8 - Today - International Literacy Day

Please add add as anniversary. It is today.--Michkalas 17:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Already there. -- PFHLai 14:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Please add reference about Satyagraha movement by Gandhi started on 11th September

Mahatma Gandhi started his Satyagraha movement on 11th September 1906. This was an extremely important event which eventually lead the independence of an entire country (India). I think this must be mentioed on the main page. Thanks. --APandey 10:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Wish I'd seen this earlier. Now we have almost a year to take care the {cleanup} tag before the 101st anniversary. --PFHLai 14:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Reverse chronological order

I think the selected anniversaries would be more useful if listed in reverse-chronological order, especially because we're much more likely to have a picture or illustration for the more recent events. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Anyone? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 13:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I think it's okay as is. Sometimes the image goes with the middle item.... -- PFHLai 14:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's been exactly a year since my first comment above. Apparently either no one else agrees with me, or no one who does reads this page. I really believe that it's easier to read:
... than it is to read:
One reason that it's easier is because we're more likely to read 2006 as a year instead of a number; conversely, 1390, if listed first, gets read (by my brain anyway) as "1,390". If the list order is switched, I subconsciously process it as a year instead of a number, saving my brain a few thoughts.
Also, reverse-chronological order gives us a better frame of reference with which to compare the listed events. If we read 2006 first, we can then instantly know that 2002 is four years prior, and 1976 is a few decades before that, etc. The way it is now, we have to do some harder math in our heads ("Okay, let's see. 2007 to 1390 is about 400 ... no 500, ... no 600 years ago. What else do I know that happened in the 1300s? Is that the 13th century or the 14th century? When was the Renaissance?"). In reverse chronological order, our brain is already in "subtraction" mode.
History is a tunnel; we are looking back through it. The most recent events are what we see first. Do I have any support votes to switch to reverse-chronological order? — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 20:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes! I'd support the reverse chronology method of listing :) Abbeybufo (talk) • (contribs) 14:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Venda Independence Day

I have removed Venda Independence Day from September 13th's anniversaries. Venda is no longer a country (if a Bantustan could be considered to have been a country), and I doubt that anyone ever celebrated its independence. As there don't seem to be any holidays to replace it with, September 13 now has no holiday at the top. —Cuiviénen 03:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Please add European Day of Languages - 26 September

Please add European Day of Languages - 26 September, a day sponsored by the Council of Europe and European Union, at Wikipedia:Selected_anniversaries/September_26.--Michkalas 13:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Already there. -- PFHLai 14:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

See You at the Pole is today

Any chance it could be added? [1] Its an event in several countries including Canada, Australia, the U.S.(where it originated, Hong Kong, etc. 74.137.230.39 01:34, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Would be more supportive if this is more notable / has a higher profile. The article could use more mainstream news source, btw. -- PFHLai 14:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Dussera

Today, (2nd Oct) is Dussehra in Hinduism. It is a very big festival in India. Please add. --Anon 00:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Wish I'd seen this earlier. When is the next big Hindu festival ? Please keep us (at least, me) informed by adding it to the 'Holidays & Observances' section on the sidebar on Current events. Thanks. --PFHLai 14:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Please also add the Gregorian date to the article, at least for the current year. This is a must before it goes on MainPage. Thanks. -- PFHLai 14:23, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Sunset-to-Sunset Holidays

The following discussion has been copied from WP:ERRORS. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

An omission rather than a pure "error," but it should certainly be mentioned in this section that today (until sundown) is Yom Kippur. Newyorkbrad 02:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It was posted on yesterday's: "Yom Kippur in Judaism (begins at sunset, 2006)". To my knowledge, it has never been posted on both days. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 02:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Noted, but that's not a reason it shouldn't be. It's a very important observance to a large group of people and the bulk of it takes place today. It's not as if including it would push out something else, either. Newyorkbrad 02:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Of course, the guidelines say that there should be only a maximum of 3 holidays/observances... Zzyzx11 (Talk) 02:59, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad, I posted a suggestion to Talk:Main Page.
P.S. Given your "large group of people" statement, I must point out that only about 0.2% of the world is Jewish (I know as an urban USAmerican it often seems like more, but that is the truth). Regardless, the number of adherents is irrelevant here; I agree these types of holidays should be mentioned on the second day. -- tariqabjotu 03:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I've responded at Talk:Main page. Regards, Newyorkbrad 04:16, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
The following discussion has been copied from Talk:Main page. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I know this probably belongs on Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries, but no one ever looks at that page. So...

Someone mentioned on WP:ERRORS the fact that Yom Kippur was selected as an anniversary for October 1 (beginning at sundown), but not on October 2 even though the bulk of the holiday was on October 2. In some ways, I agree with his sentiment. I suggest that from now on holidays that run from sunset-to-sunset (or something close to that), like Yom Kippur and Eid ul-Fitr, be mentioned on the primary day (e.g. Yom Kippur (Judaism, concludes at nightfall) for October 2 and Eid ul-Fitr (Islam, concludes at sunset) for October 24). Any thoughts? -- tariqabjotu 03:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

One advantage to a sundown-to-sundown accounting is that observant people can then use Wikipedia as a reminder. Otherwise it's 'darn', I forgot that xxx is yyy. So if the observance is timely, it's more useful to the observant. And if the bulk of the day is on yyy+1, then Selected Anniversaries might conclude the observance with an annotation 'until yyy+1, sundown'. --Ancheta Wis 03:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If the choice is listing on the first day (begins at sundown) only or the second day (ends at sundown) only, I'm not sure I'd change the current convention; a case can be made either way. But my instinct was that in the case of Yom Kippur, the day could be listed on both dates. I understand this couldn't be done for every sundown-to-sundown holiday, but the omission that Monday was Yom Kippur just seemed incongruous to me. Newyorkbrad 03:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


If it's not too crowded on MainPage, mentioning on the second day should be okay. -- PFHLai 14:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I don't think mentioning the end of Sukkot next week is necessary. Right ? -- PFHLai 14:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I've just added Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah to templates for October 13 ~ 15. --PFHLai 02:49, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just added "Eid ul-Fitr in Islam begins at sunset" to the October 23 SA template, and "Eid ul-Fitr in Islam concludes at sunset" to the October 24 SA template, following User:Tariqabjotu's post above posted at 03:06, 3 October 2006. I hope I got the dates right. -- PFHLai 00:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

October 9 holiday

Don't know if the template can bear one more holiday today, but Monday, October 9, is Health and Sports Day in Japan. — Amcaja 01:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wish I had seen this earlier. I've added this to Portal:Current events/October 2006/Sidebar for now. Any more holidays ? Please add to "Upcoming holidays and observances" on the sidebar on Portal: Current events. -- PFHLai 02:46, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

December 8

Can we add the murder of Heavy Metal guitarist Dimebag Darrell in 2004? He was one of the greatest musicians to have ever lived in the metal-era, and I think it would be acceptable. Stonesour025 01:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but the article Dimebag Darrell currently is tagged with {{unreferenced}}. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

change in protection policy?

I was under the impression that non-permanent main page templates were supposed to be unprotected as soon as they're off the main page. Therefore, I've been unprotecting inactive templates that won't be on the main page soon. However, another administrator told me that they weren't supposed to be unprotected at all. Did I miss a change in policy? Until I get further input, I'll hold off on unprotecting the templates for now. --Ixfd64 23:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The usual process has been to leave such templates unprotected. In light of recent events, I would think it wise to protect all templates meant to ever go on the Main Page and add a note about requesting an edit via the talk page to each. —Cuiviénen 16:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

January 16, 2007

Today is the 300th anniversary of the Treaty Of Union of Scotland and England. This is a major anniversary, especially in light of the current separatist movement in Scotland. Ahseaton 19:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Acts of Union 1707 is scheduled to appear on May 1, the day it first took effect. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Prayer for Christian Unity

Quite a stretch here! We're digging for holidays today, huh? Arthurian Legend 14:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Some important Assyrian dates

I was wondering if we could add Assyrian new year and Assyrian mardyrs day in their respective dates, if its possible. Chaldean 17:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

February 12 - missing event

Abraham Lincoln's birthday is missing from the February 12 anniversaries. - Patricknoddy 23:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Birthdays are only added on 100th anniversaries. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

April 17

Canada gained full independence from the UK on April 17, 1982. Since this year is the 25th anniversary, I think that it should be included in the selected anniversaries on the main page, but I can't figure out the nomination process for bumping one of the existing five anniversaries off the list. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:34, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Added. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

September 17

I would like to add the Soviet invasion of Poland (1939) to the list at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/September 17, it is an important event and a good article. I am not sure which event is least notable to make space, however?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  03:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Re-added. Although I did not remove another entry, so there are currently six on there. We will have to see which ones are still decent (i.e. do not have any dispute or cleanup tags) when 17 Sep gets closer. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

March 28

I suggest removing Duchy of Courland and Semigallia entry from Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 28 pending the answer to my question at Talk:Duchy of Courland and Semigallia - unless it is clarified, the event reffered with that data (Third Partition of Poland) is commonly accepted as taking place on October 24, not March 28.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  01:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 01:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

June 28

Proposal to add the Poznań 1956 protests events. That day is a national holiday in Poland in their memory.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  19:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

April 14th

You guys don't think that the Sinking of the Titanic (April 14, 1912) should be remembered on the front page?--mo-- (Talk | #info | ) 18:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

So you rather not have it on the 15th, as requested by another user two years agog, when it actually sunk? Thanks. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
you do have a point, it hit at around 11:30PM on April 14 local time,, took about two and a half hours,, so it sunk about 2:00 after mid-night,,, I don't know,, if you plan to put it tomorrow than I guess it's fine,,, what about the featured picture of the day... its the Titanic's wreckage,, do you think they chose this day or is it just a big coincident?--mo-- (Talk | #info | ) 19:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it was requested. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

MOS

Why does this page use hyphens rather than mdashes to separate the date from the description of the anniversary? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The short answer that it has historically been that way since these 365 pages were first created around 2003-04, way before the current version of WP:DASH, and nobody has bothered to change them. If you have the time, feel free to make the modifications. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 21:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Brighterorange (talk · contribs) is testing a script; perhaps someone will ping him later, when he's got it ready to go, and/or someone can put together a bot. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:59, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Increase the max number of events?

Because the DYK guidelines currently say that the maximum number of items there is eight, I think the maximum number of items here should be increased to at least six or seven in order to maintain some sort of main page balance. Comments? Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I would not, however, go all the way to eight here because the holidays/observances line would take care of that. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

June 10

There is something wrong with the formatting of the first item, isn't there ? Surely less should be in bold ? -- Beardo 15:38, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually it would be more if I used the entire "Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor" title instead of "Frederick I Barbarossa". Zzyzx11 (Talk) 15:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

On this day... July 4, 2007

I noticed that on the main page said that "1776 – The Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies in British North America approved a Declaration of Independence" which is wrong, technically the Declaration of Independence was 'approved' on July 2, 1776 not July 4, 1776 (which is independence day). Also the word 'approved' should be ratified. Thank you, -- (Cocoaguy ここがいい contribstalk) 22:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Adding a "More events" link

Based on various comments on Talk:Main page and WP:ERRORS throughout the past year, I get a sense that a number of newbies do not realise that these templates list selected anniversaries because they only see the "On this day" label on the main page, and it is not obvious that we also keep a list of many other events on the date pages. Therefore, I will be testing a "More events" link at the bottom of this week's templates, linking to the specified date page. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 07:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

International Non-violence day

If i am not wrong Gandhi Jayanti is declared to be Internatinal non-violence day and there is no mention of it in the main page. Any replys? Luxurious.gaurav 07:16, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh! Have a look at this for proof. International Day of Non-Violence. Luxurious.gaurav 07:20, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Probably just an oversight because, after all, the UN just established it only a few months ago back in June of this year. It has been added now. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

John Lennon and (UTC)

Copied from Talk:Main Page permanent link Nil Einne (talk) 10:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC) Since the attack occurred at 10:50pm EST, wouldn't that make the death December 9, UTC? It always feels like I'm a bit into tomorrow when I log in during the evening, so I want to be sure that local time is the protocol for the event. What if an event occurs over several time zones? MMetro (talk) 07:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I do believe local time zones are used. As for events occurring over multiple time zones, I can't really think of any. Can you? ~Sasha Callahan (Talk) 07:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes local time is used. When there is no local time, such as events occuring over multiple timezones without one being the clear cut centre, then we may use UTC but otherwise it's always UTClocal time. John Lennon died on December 8th just as he was born on 9th October Nil Einne (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 09:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Virtually anything that happens accross Russia happens across at least 4 time zones.GowsiPowsi (talk) 11:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm mistaken but I would presume most events in Russia are localised to one area. For example a demonstration in Moscow will be in Moscow. A terrorist attack in Beslan is in Beslan. A murder in St Petersburg... An earthquake with its epicentre in Vladisvostok... Of course there will be some events without a clear centre but I guess even when it comes to Russia or the United States, most events occur only in one timezone. In any case, provided the events aren't close to midnight, it's unlikely to affect what day we choose although it may make it difficult to decide what time to choose Nil Einne (talk) 15:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
An example of an event happening on multiple time zones: The Hong Kong handover ceremony, the internationally televised event of the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong, occurred at 16:00 UTC, so it was posted on the June 30 template. Of course, iirc, one day later there was someone here posting why it was not on the July 1 template... And it does not help when the Transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong article predominately says "July 1" while the Hong Kong handover ceremony article predominately says "June 30"... Zzyzx11 (Talk) 07:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
But the basic rule of thumb, like any other thing on these templates, is that if the UTC date and time is specified and verified in the article, that day is where it will be posted. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 07:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I actually remember the case now. However looking at it, I don't think this is really a different timezones issue but more of a when did it happen issue? The ceremony began on the night of 30th June which is what the article Hong Kong handover ceremony mentions. The handover occured at midnight on the 1st July which is what the article Hong Kong handover ceremony and Transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong both mention. Neither article suggests the handover occured on the 30th June. Both articles seem to use HK time primarily which seems the correct thing to do to me (also supported by WP:MOSNUM#Time zones). The key thing IMHO is when do the people of Hong Kong celebrate/commerate/commensurate the handover? It seems to me that if they do this on 1st July, we should actually mention it on 1st July, similar to the way then Malaysian Merdeka Day is on the 31st August even if the handover occured on August 30th in UTC & GMT. If it helps, we can come back to the birthday issue. If I was born on 23:59 in Samoa (UTC-11) on 25th December, I would still celebrate my birthday on 25th December in Kiritimati. It doesn't matter if it was 26th according to UTC or 27th according to Kiritimati time UTC+14). If it turns out I'm the anti-Christ, some people might remember the specific time but on the whole, most people including those who do something special for the actual time are going to remember 25th December as the birthday of the anti-Christ whereever they are. Nil Einne (talk) 10:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect

800 – Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, a title that had been out of use in the West since the abdication of Romulus Augustus in 476.

The last western emperor was Julius Nepos until 480 --Dojarca (talk) 03:45, 25 December 2007 (UTC)