Wikipedia talk: Selected anniversaries

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To make sure articles are not selected (bolded item) more than once, search for the article's name at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/All.

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

Do be careful when adding entries to the selected anniversary page and their corresponding day, year and subject articles. Many of the events listed on the day pages come from data obtained from other similar lists on the Internet. I have found that most of those lists contain many inaccurate and flat-out wrong data. Last year I was able to expand and fix about half of all the day pages and found that my major data source (OnThisDay.com) was at least subtly wrong or had spurious events that could not be confirmed 1/5 - 1/3 of the time. I therefore spent a few hours on every day page I worked on checking facts 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 dates to Gregorian for dates 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 (most 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. --mav 03:49, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Format Change Proposal 2 Format Query 3 Image Size Limits 4 Tense 5 Crouded 6 Another link 7 Merge with Holidays - good or bad? 8 Auto updates - yeah baby! 9 Caps 10 Image layout 11 Bolding 12 Where is the end of the queue? 13 "History" link on Selected anniveraries/month? 14 Getting rid of "On" 15 Revisions 16 Equinox 17 Pompey's Triumph 18 Football 19 Link to tomorrow

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

---

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:

• Past tense: mav, —Eloquence, RickK, Jengod
• Present tense:

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:

• 2004 - Christians around the world celebrate Easter.

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:

• 1737 - In Boston, the first public celebration of St. Patrick's Day.

--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:

• 61 AH - Death of Husayn at Karbala, commemorated as Aashurah.

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

This would be better:

• 680 (61 AH) - Death of Husayn at Karbala, commemorated as Aashurah.

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:August 29

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:

Recent days: February 29 - February 28

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:

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:

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)

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:

• 44 BC - Julius Caesar assassinated in Rome by Senators.
• 1999 - Blah blah ate his weight in cheeseburgers

So... shouldn't it be:

• 44 BC - Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome by Senators.
• 1999 - Blah blah ate his weight in cheeseburgers

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? ¶ 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)