Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year/Archive 1

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Archive 1
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Note about use of 'this day in history'-type data sources:

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

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

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

Contents

Opening sentence

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

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

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

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

Event ordering

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

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

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

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

Day page format, with examples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Formatting Changes

I've noticed that there have been some attempts to change the format on some of the articles (see here and here). Since this changes the layout in a dramatic way I suggest that this discussion be reopened and that any format changes without discussion be immediately reverted.

In my opinion, the currently used format is sufficient and orderly and no change is needed. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 16:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Date format

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

Should I delete the month and day info:

or fix the date format used?

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

Idea to add table to day page articles

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Neutral born/died symbols?

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

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

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

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

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

Year of birth/death

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

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

New layout proposal

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

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

Unverifiable entries

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

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

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

Tense

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

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

Changes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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