Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year/Archive 1

message: 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)
replies: text: Something tells me that the phrase "There are" is written in the present tense. --Spixels 23:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening sentence 

message: 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): 
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
**Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 - At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
**Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
**Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 - Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
**Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
**Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
2. What I was doing a week ago (a bit ugly when displayed but not as confusing in wiki-code): 
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 -  
**While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
**Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 -  
**At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
**Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
**Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 -  
**Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
**Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 -   
**Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
**Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
3a. A little confusing in wiki, looks a bit odd displayed:
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
*   1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 - At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
*   1964 - Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
*   1964 - Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 - Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
*   1968 - Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
*   1973 - Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
3b. A little confusing in wiki, not bad displayed:
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
**  1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 - At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
**  1964 - Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
**  1964 - Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 - Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
**  1968 - Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
**  1973 - Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
4. This version looks the best in wiki-code but it makes it difficult to see where multiple events happended in the same year: 
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
* 1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 - At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
* 1964 - Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
* 1964 - Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 - Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
* 1968 - Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
* 1973 - Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
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:
* 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced  
* 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto  
* 1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.   
* 1964 - At the Washington, DC Coliseum, The Beatles have their 1st live appearance in the United States. 
* 1964 - Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. 
* 1964 - Taiwan drops diplomatic relations with France. 
* 1968 - Israeli-Jordanian border clashes. 
* 1968 - Madison Square Garden III closes and Madison Square Garden IV opens in New York City 
* 1973 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs.   
* 1973 - Vietnam War: The first American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong. 
: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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Day page format, with examples 

message: 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)
thread_title: Formatting Changes

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Unverifiable entries 

message: 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:
* ""
** 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.
* ""
** 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Changes 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Add New Zealand under External Links? 

message: Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. --PuzzledvegetableIs it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  No sources 

message: Perhaps the template should have sources to properly reflect what a DOTY article should look like, per the consensus at WT:DOT. --PuzzledvegetableIs it teatime already? 01:25, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, probably should.  Toddst1 (talk) 13:57, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  No sources