![]() | 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. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
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.
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
Do we really want to begin each anniversary page with something like:
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
Looking at the historical anniversary pages for days I think it would be more logical to order them like this:
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
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)
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
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.
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.
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?
The result of the debate was b./d. -- Robocoder ( talk | contribs) 22:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
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)
I moved this page (back) because it is not an encyclopedia article. The main namespace is reserved for encyclopedia articles. -- Jia ng 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)
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)
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
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'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)
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)
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:
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
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)
What are the criteria for external links on this template? Could
NZHistory's Timeline be added? The URL syntax is
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/timeline/[d]/[m]
, where d
is the day, and m
is the month as digits. For example:
today, September 25. —
Hugh
00:01, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
![]() | 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. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
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.
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
Do we really want to begin each anniversary page with something like:
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
Looking at the historical anniversary pages for days I think it would be more logical to order them like this:
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
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)
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
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.
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.
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?
The result of the debate was b./d. -- Robocoder ( talk | contribs) 22:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
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)
I moved this page (back) because it is not an encyclopedia article. The main namespace is reserved for encyclopedia articles. -- Jia ng 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)
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)
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
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'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)
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)
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:
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
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)
What are the criteria for external links on this template? Could
NZHistory's Timeline be added? The URL syntax is
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/timeline/[d]/[m]
, where d
is the day, and m
is the month as digits. For example:
today, September 25. —
Hugh
00:01, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)