Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Images?

Is there any policy/consensus about adding images to days of the year pages? I tried it on June 2. What do people think? Ydorb 22:32, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

Not sure. 2nd June doesn't look too bad, but obviously the number of images would have to be restricted to a very small number. Arcturus 22:41, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think if this is limited to one or two images per page it's a great idea. June 2 looks a lot better with the image than without it. Angela. 00:49, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)

Here's an entry from 16th May:

1988 - California v. Greenwood: In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that police officers do not need a search warrant to search through discarded garbage.

Yes, there may be civil liberties issues here, but do we really want this type of 'event' listed? It's hardly earth-shattering. Arcturus 20:15, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This doesn't seem like a notable enough event to be listed there. 16 May doesn't have to include everything that ever happened on May 16. Angela. 00:49, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)
I don't like it. There are many different entries on day pages that could merit an image, yet there is very limited space. --mav 21:43, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Why is there limited space? As long as the pages don't exceed 32kb, I don't see the problem with adding an image. Angela. 17:58, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with this either. I've actually thought about this before and I think it's a great idea except we obviously can't have every possible birth/death/event illustrated on the day of the year page. How do we decide what event/birth/death is worthy of having an illustration? --ScottyBoy900Q∞ 03:48, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Category

Which would be a suitable name for the category for all pages? I thought of adding Category:Days of the Year (still to be created). -- User:Docu

category:Days would be better, IMO. Adding that to template:months would be the easiest thing to do. But what is the point? --mav 21:14, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok, let's use category:Days, as it's shorter, it's preferable. I had chosen a longer version as this might attract unrelated entries, but we can find a solution for those later. Why? Well I came across Special:Uncategorizedpages, which started (and still starts) with many similar entries. -- User:Docu

Ah - OK then. --mav 05:16, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Births and deaths of assorted animals

In trawling through the day entries I've come across several births and deaths concerning animals. These usually relate to race horses but also include 'Dolly the Sheep' (first cloned sheep) and the like. Presumably the original intention - and maybe the current intention - is to have lists of people only. Otherwise where would it stop? Is there a guideline, written or un-written? Arcturus 16:27, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, include them
  1. I don't see any harm in having those in the birth and death sections. --mav
  2. I don't see any reason whatsoever to exclude animals from the list. --141.219.44.182 19:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  3. If there is an article on or about the animal in question, they should be included in the list. --Phil | Talk 09:15, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
  4. notable animals should be listed if they have articles. i see no reason why we should limit it to people. the key is notablility-if people are interested then it will be relevant.--Jiang 09:19, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  5. Animals that are notable and/or famous should be listed.. Dolly, Laika, Bonzo, Balto, and the like. --GaidinBDJ 13:18, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
  6. If Wikipedia's mission truly is to catalog the sum of human knowledge, then how could they be excluded? (The same argument applies to so-called "Vanity" entries; if the event is documented and can be verified, it should be included.)--64.254.131.106 22:07, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No animals allowed
  1. No animals should have their birth listed, it should be for people only. Astrotrain 13:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  2. Birth (or death) announcements in such lists elsewhere (newspapers, etc.) would only include people. It is implied that a birth/death list only include human beings. Entries here should follow that convention. However, if an animal's birth is an important point in history (such as 'Dolly the Sheep') it might be appropriate for the Events section. The historical significance should be quite high to merit such an entry, and that standard should keep the number of those items low. Notary137 03:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Animal births should be limited to the events section, and only if the animal is significant in some way to human society. Otherwise, an animal births subheading under births may be appropriate. Bigbrisco 02:43, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

First Monday in November, etc.

I have just removed Melbourne Cup from November 2, as it is a floating holiday. Is there a particular format for "First Monday in November" etc. listings? -- Chuq 01:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I suppose it would go on November ? -- User:Docu
I've seen some people put the year in parens behind the entry. --mav

Could the next occurrance of a floating holiday be listed on a day's page (with year in parens), in addition to its listing on the month's page? It would require yearly editing to keep the info current, so the quantity of such floating holidays may make it prohibitive to allow their inclusion. Notary137 04:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

These articles are about a specific date. The floating holidays you mention are not about the date but about the holiday. With that in mind, it doesn't seem appropriate to add any floating holidays to date articles. Rklawton 04:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for listing in Births and Deaths

User:05 and I have been engaged in a discussion regarding if there should be criteria to decide whether an event, birth or death should or should not be added to a particular day-of-the-year-article, and if so, what should that criteria be.

Nothing is written in Wikipedia to explain exactly what the protocol is for what should and shouldn't be posted in the date-pages - and we should work together to create such an explanation.

In regards to births and deaths, I feel that we should be discriminating in our choices - that the idea is to list the more/most siginficant names on a day-article, not all possible names, and not even moderately significant names. Recent deaths can be used for a more extensive list, and the more historically important names should be placed on the day-articles. IMHO, an article about a particular day is not meant to be a complete compendium or complete list. It is a summary of the most and more important events of that day.

I'd like to hear other opinions, and I'd like to figure out together some sort of protocol or criteria.

Sincerely, Kingturtle 06:47, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Support. --Wernher 06:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Support very strongly. Only the most notable people should be listed. Things like Category:January 1 births could have everything in it as well as more specific pages such as January 2003. --mav 02:42, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. To me, the days articles are just like List articles. They're a good place to put the names of people that we need article son, but don't have yet. Where else would you put the death of somebody who died 200 years ago? Current deaths isn't the right place. RickK 07:01, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)
RickK is right. There is no harm of listing events. So what if we get long pages. One editor's "solution" to the page I worked on was to simply delete most of the material. And when I attempted to abide by one suggestion on the talk page I was summarily reverted because it didn't fit the rigid model that editor supported. I think it is hubris to endorse such wholesale and unilateral deletionism. PedanticallySpeaking 16:54, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
There is some previous discussion on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Policy_re:_day-of-the-year_articles.3F and User talk:05. Not sure if there is much to add I haven't said there.
Personally I think it's difficulte to select among those whose fame is not stellar today. Maybe Died on February 15 could be a page separate from February 15. --05 12:47, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I have an idea regarding what qualifies. If there is a Wikipedia article about said person, and the article is larger than a stub, then it is allowed as an entry for birth or death on a Day of the year. Unencyclopedic articles that reach such a size will be up to the scrutiny of VfD - we can let VfD be the filter. Kingturtle 01:34, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Something screwy seems to be going on with the number of days remaining, although I've only seen it in January. For example, January 5. Seems slightly impossible that there are 360 days remaining. --Blagh
If you're on the fifth day of the year and there are 365 days in the year, then there are 360 days until the end of the year. Idran 07:15, 22 Jun 2005 UTC
I've been working on the articles for Years in baseball, and had some ideas along these lines with regard to listing births/deaths on the (for example) 2005, 2005 in sports and 2005 in baseball articles. The baseball page would include all relevant deaths in the sport, the sports page would reduce the listings to (on average) the most prominent 8-10 figures from each major sport (in other words, roughly the 1000 most significant figures in a major sport's history), and the main page for the year would list only members of the Baseball Hall of Fame (typically 2-3 per year), along with selected highly prominent figures such as Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Barry Bonds, who are each currently ineligible for some reason. Equivalent standards could be applied to figures in other sports and fields. MisfitToys 23:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for events

I seem to remember that in order for an event to be listed on a day-of-the-year article, that event had to also be listed in the related article(s). Isn't that the case? Please help me remember. Kingturtle 17:32, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That is a requirement for Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries. But it is not a requirement here. At one point I expanded about half the day of the year pages and made sure each event was both checked for accuracy and included in one or more related articles. I encourage people to do that but don't think it would be an up-front requirement. --03:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If were were to put every single event into days-of-the-year pages, it would become excessive. The idea is to give the reader a quick rundown of the major or significant events of that day, not to give a complete list of every known event.

Here is a list I have put together as things to be listed:

  • Firsts, lasts, battles, precedents, truces, assassinations (and attempts), royal weddings, head of state resignations, verdicts?, passages of substantial legislation, terrorist events, milestones?, space exploration, UN Security Council decisions, major natural disasters, creation of new nations, unique scientific events (comets hitting Jupiter)....

this is just a list for brainstorming. please help work this out. Kingturtle 18:23, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Day of the year articles should only have the most important events, yes. But I see no reason why there can't eventually be 'main article' links to things like events of December 3 that have more inclusive lists. This would not be something that all day of the year articles would have. Instead it would be a way to cut down the size of the larger ones without deleting content. At the same time, things like this should be avoided at all costs. Simply moving the whole section's list to another page is not at all acceptable. --mav 03:16, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There is no harm in a long list. So what if we get long pages. One editor's "solution" to the page I worked on was to simply delete most of the material. And when I attempted to abide by one suggestion on the talk page I was summarily reverted because it didn't fit the rigid model that editor supported. I think it is hubris to endorse such wholesale and unilateral deletionism. I disagree most strongly with the two comments above.PedanticallySpeaking 16:54, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
November 22 - less notable deaths removed from the events area. This is obviously subjective but I feel the death of C. S. Lewis is important enough to be retained. We still have for example, Greek troops advance into Albanian soil and liberate Korytsa, Vaudeville actress Lillian Ruell makes her debut - both events of such little general interest that they contain red links. Does anyone have thoughts on notability criteria for inclusion/removal? Dlyons493 Talk 20:18, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

C.S. Lewis IS listed where it belongs -- under "Deaths". The fact and manner of his death did not have historical import the way, say, an assassination or accident (John F. Kennedy or Richie Valens, say) did, so obviously doesn't belong under Notable Events. --Calton | Talk 01:16, 24 January 2006 (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.

External links to various "thisday/birthday" sites

What is the policy about links to various this day in history/birthdays etc sites?

I just reverted a bunch of entries User:Webgeek added to a site called thisdaythatyear.com. Links like link removed - see comment.

It looked like a simple "no commercial links" case to me, and especially since that site was rather empty. But I see that some such sites could have usefull additions to our listings (ways to sort the info and so on), and also I see that we do have links to BBC's "onthisday" on many (all?) dates. So I'm not sure about the policy here, and thought I'd ask you people on this very fine project. Thanks. Shanes 09:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to avoid these links, if they're useful and accurate. Generally, pages to worry about are those that sell things, or push a particular point of view. ThisDayThatYear does neither. See the Wikipedia:External links policy page. --Spudtater 16:04, 19 September 2005 (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 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.

avoid subcategories

Some day articles have contained subcategories, for example Births will be divided into Before 1900 and 1900 to 1950 and 1950 to 2900.

Such subcategorization is NOT the approved format, and I remove such subcats every time I see them.

  1. The subcats are not on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year sample page.
  2. The subcats are completely arbitrary and have no consistancy. Some might say Before 1900, others might say Prior to 1900. Some might say 19th Century, others 1500 to 1900 and others 1600 to 1900
  3. The subcats ruin the continuity. I use these day-articles with my high school students - and the subcats really are an unnecessary distraction.

Kingturtle 02:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand this. If it's a long list, why not break it up? So what if the model doesn't have them? Not every page is alike. This is imposing a top-down solution on everyone. PedanticallySpeaking 16:51, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
It makes it messy when I use it in my classroom. Students want consistancy. Kingturtle 02:06, 6 January 2006 (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.


Linking dates in lead paragraphs

All the Days of the Year articles start out pretty much the same way:

  • September 21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...

Now, if you turn that date into a link ([[September 21]]), date display preference kicks in:

  • September 21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...
  • 21 September is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...
  • 09/21 is the 264th day of the year (265th in leap years)...

How it's displayed will, of course, depend on how each user has his/her date preferences set. It allows users to see dates the way they want. And, because the linked date was already bolded, it doesn't display as a self-link. Transparent rendering of user prefs.

So for a while I've been linking the dates in the days-of-the-year articles' introductory paragraphs whenever I open up a day-of-the-year article. I'd have thought it was an uncontroversial change, but recently another editor has taken to reverting, arguing that:

  • self links are bad
  • an article entitled "September 21" shouldn't start "21 September"
  • starting a sentence with a number violates standard sentence style

The only one of those that gives me a degree of cause for concern is the third one but I'm not sure how hard that taboo holds in varieties of English that use the dd MMMM format. And does the convenience of having one's chosen date format displayed override that? I think so. But rather than prosecute 366 separate (and, ultimately, very minor) edit wars, I'd like to hear thoughts and opinions from the broader community: the consensus thing. Thanks. –Hajor 01:06, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about this at all. My date setting is set to "No preference". But if someone do like the date written 21 September and have gone to the trouble to adjust their settings acordingly, it would be most consistant if they could see the dates on these pages written that way too. So I'm with you on this. Regarding his objections. Self links aren't bad if you don't see them as links. Self links to pages that redirect to the same page are bad, because then you see them. But when you don't see them, what's the problem? I don't know, maybe some well-meaning bots are or will be removing self-links (since they aparently are useless), and that could be a slight problem here, but a minor one if at all. That an article has a different bolded title than the article-name, is not unusual. Lot's of bios have a differen't title than the full name usually bolded in the intro. I'v never known this is bad. And, finally, if a sentence starts with a date, are you then supposed to change the way you write dates just to avoid a sentence like "11 September 2001 was a tuesday." I don't see anything wrong with that sentence. But I'm not a native english speaker. In Norwegian it's normal to write 21 September, and I've never heard it's bad to start a sentence with a date. Shanes 02:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. The analogy with biographical articles, where the article title doesn't necessarily coincide with the wording in the lead, is a good one, and one that hadn't occurred to me. –Hajor 13:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Also worth noting, self links should show as bold rather than links in the current version of media-wiki, so they're less "harmful" : see June 12.
  • With dates, "wikifying" is not for the sake of the link, but for the formatting, 99% of the time.
  • By coincidence I've just done the remaining days (I think). Thanks to Hajor for drawing my attention to this talk page.
  • I have never heard the suggestion that sentences should not begin with a numeral, perhaps it's the difficulty of finding a capital 2 on the keyboard? If it does violate house style, and we care, we can add "The date " at the beginning of each page.
Rich Farmbrough 14:22, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Not beginning a sentence with numerals is an absolutely standard rule: if you've never seen it, then you must not looked in any writing style guidebook.
  • Microsoft Manual of Style, 3rd Edition, page 131: "Avoid starting a sentence with a numeral. If necessary, add a modifier before a number. If starting a sentence with a number cannot be avoided, spell out the number."
  • Read Me First, 2nd Edition, page 7: "Spell out numbers in the following situations:...Any number that begins a sentence."
  • Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, page 380: "9.5 Number beginning a sentence. When a number begins a sentence, it is always spelled out. To avoid awkwardness, a sentence should be recast."
Any questions? --Calton | Talk 00:55, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The 12 June trick (this diff) is nice: seems that the bold-and-brackets combination is not necessary, and we get the same result using brackets only. Does that work for all combinations of date preferences, skins, etc? Re violating style guidelines (gray area?), caring about that (no, not particularly), and the possibility of rewording to avoid numerals at start of paras: I don't know. How does the U.S. military handle sentences starting with a date? –Hajor 16:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have run its course. Thanks for the input. Any objections to my linking January 1 on the project-page template so that preferences kick in there as well and to close the matter? –Hajor 19:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
There weren't so I have done it. Rich Farmbrough 23:11 14 March 2006 (UTC).

July 20

Looks like PedanticallySpeaking has gone on a bit of bloating campaign on July 20, adding dozens of minor events, minor (i.e.; red-linked) birth/death entries, AND 29 images. A sampling of his additions:

File:Obrien.gif
Lawrence F. O'Brien (1972)

See this diff for the complete list. This is, to put it bluntly, overkill. --Calton | Talk 01:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

new template for talk page + link updating

Currently, the talk page of each date-related article (January 1, February 14, for example) includes the "Selected anniversaries" template. The templates, which are now in the Wikipedia namespace, were once in the Template namespace (and some were once in the MediaWiki namespace). The links on the articles' talk pages, however, still link to the old locations (some link to the Template namespace, and some older pages link to the MediaWiki namespace). Anyone up to the task of fixing them?

I've made a template for fixing the talk pages: {{SelectedAnniversary}}

However, if you use this template, please be sure to use underscores instead of spaces (for instance, "March_3" instead of "March 3"). Otherwise, the above template won't work properly. --Ixfd64 06:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I've spent the last few hours fixing them using cut and paste - I made a few mistakes which should be corrected now. I used {{subst:PAGENAMEE}} as the template parameter for most of them, and they all seemed to work out fine. My impetus for this was finding a comment on MediaWiki talk:December 16 selected anniversaries which would have been hard to find, as the MediaWiki page does not exist. Graham talk 12:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

New "This Day in History" link

One good thing about cleaning up July 20 is that I found another external link to go with the BBC one, this one from the New York Times for July 20:

  • [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050720.html ''The New York Times'': On This Day]

Note the form of the end of the URL, being "2005MMDD.html"

I've started adding them whenever I edit a day page -- and I went on a bit of a blitz and added them to all of February. So far, the links have been good, but I'm a little worried what will happen on January 1 2006, given that the year is part of the URL. --Calton | Talk 00:49, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

given that putting 2004 in the url gives an almost identical page i doubt that much will happen ;) maybe if we keep such links we should have a bot to update them to point at the current years version. Plugwash 16:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

don't you think

the major events on a day should be nearer to the start. i find it crazy that i can go to say december 25 and not see a single mention of christmas until the 6th page after long lists of births and deaths? Plugwash 16:09, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It looks to me like this whole project needs a bit of dusting, as the template does not match any of the articles. Lets have opinions on the following topics, feel free to add more. — PhilHibbs | talk 17:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. Gregorian calendar or Gregorian Calendar (the former is the article name, so I've used that)
  2. ...the Xth (in leap years the Xth) day... or ...the Xth day (the Xth in leap years)...
  3. X days (X in leap years) remain in the year after this day or There are X days remaining (X in leap years) (and please don't put a comma before the parentheses!)
  4. in leap years or on leap years or in a leap year or on a leap year
  5. Order of categories - I propose Observances, Events, Births, Deaths

As Plugwash points out, observances are more likely to be interesting to the reader than anniversaries or births & deaths. — PhilHibbs | talk 17:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Marriages or weddings

I propose we add another category beside Events, Births and Deaths - the category of Marriages (or Weddings). It could be placed after the Deaths categories - maybe just for marriages that entail two notable persons. for example under the year March 28, we could add:

Weddings

Just an idea - something of interest to married peoples. Kingturtle 02:15, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I must object - for I wonder what would be the criteria for that... important people? I guess the importance of someone comes for what that someones does to contribute to human history, rather than marrying someone. Besides, imagine how many times some people may have married... Qasid 11:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I think only if it's noteworthy enough to include as an event, under events. -- Jeandré, 2006-04-20t18:08z
Qasid, the same criteria for judging noteworthy births and deaths could be used for judging noteworthy wedding anniversaries. Jeandre, i am suggesting that weddings be listed separately so they are easier to find when reading or scanning. it might be fun for people to see who else was married on their wedding day. Kingturtle 13:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
The criteria for notworthy birth or death is that the person already has an article in Wikipedia. I suspect Wikipedia has very few articles about a specific wedding. Even Charles & Diana don't have a separate wedding article. If that wedding isn't notable enough for an article, then a wedding that is notable enough is probably notable enough to fall under the events category under its own merits. At any rate, I think a separate wedding section is a terrible idea for date articles. Maybe you could find a place for such information in some other wedding-related article. Rklawton 17:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I would also say that adding weddings isn't a good idea. Like Rklawton pointed out, very few weddings have specific articles devoted to them. I would also point out that many marriages by "notable" people end in divorce (even Charles and Diana), so by having weddings listed, there would be no good argument as to why divorces, annulments, funerals, etc. could not be listed as well. Births and deaths are concrete - a person can only be born and die once - while many celebrities go through series of weddings, divorces, annulments, etc. (though hopefully they only have one funeral! :) )
...speaking of funerals, it looks like Whitney Cerak[1] will get (at least) two. Rklawton 23:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
those are valid arguments. i can see your point. but i am still interested in seeing a calendar of wedding dates of notable people. maybe i'll start a separate article. Kingturtle 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Kingturtle, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you said "it might be fun for people to see who else was married on their wedding day," it gave me the impression that these pages are just collections of trivia rather than a record of notable global events and notable births/deaths that happened on a given day of the year. I'm sure that some visitors do just click on their birthday to see what else happened that day, but I'm sure that's not the reason why all visitors read these pages. Fabricationary 18:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Fab, what is debated often in wikipedia is whether a particular article is useful or trivial. what might be trivial to me is thought by others to be useful. i can live with that, because some things i find valuable seem trivial to others. i don't think it is trivial to look up your birthday and see who else was born on that day. it can be educational. i also don't think it would be trivial for someone to look up their anniversary to see who else got married that day. Kingturtle 23:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a huge amount of life, death, history, and other human stuff associated with dates. Given the volume, I think we should keep date articles as non-trivial as possible. However, I would fully support separate articles for world events, deaths, births, marriages, sports, and perhaps others. The main date article could then define the date and provides links to these other areas of interest. So August 6 (Births), August 6, (History), etc. would be fine with me. Rklawton 23:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

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