Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year/Archive 3

message: Every Day article I've checked so far has useless trivial information listed.  March 24, 1991 - "The World Wrestling Federation presents the stars and stripes WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles, California, renacting the Gulf War in a wrestling ring."   March 23, 1963 - "In London, United Kingdom, Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann win the eighth Eurovision Song Contest for Denmark singing "Dansevise" (Dancing tune)."   And so on.  
This makes me question the entire purpose of having days of the year articles, since they seem to be nothing but collections of links to wikipedia articles of dubious importance.  March 24, 1986 - "Van Halen releases 5150 (album). This was their first album with Sammy Hagar as lead singer."  Ok, fine, but was that the most important event of that day, worldwide?  Same question for the following: March 24, 1973 - "Kenyan track runner Kip Keino defeats Jim Ryun at the first-ever professional track meet in Los Angeles, sanctioned by the International Track Association."
With no one apparently bothering to check to see if the events listed are really notable, and without clear criteria as to what belongs on the list of notable events, or who does and doesn't belong in the list of births and deaths, how are these articles ever going to be anything but a bunch of trivia links? --Xyzzyplugh 16:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I second that. There are potentially thousands of facts out there in wikiland that can go in each day - some threshold of importance is needed otherwise these pages become pointless. Also, speaking as a non-American, I wonder if there is there really a need for so many baseball facts? --Spondoolicks 15:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another request for Criteria 

message: I made a Wikiproject Days of the Year template that I will replace the plain old text with:
--Weatherman90 15:18, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Template

message: I propose that H&Os only be listed when they fall on the same Gregorian day each year (or a reasonable approximation). There's no use in having a note that Easter or Ramadan (or whatever) fell on this day in 2005, or the day pages will either a) become cluttered up with these dates, or b) become ephemeral, being a pocket-diary rather than an encyclopaedia. Pseudomonas 18:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I propose that the criteria for births and deaths be applied to holidays and observances as well.  If a holiday doesn't have an article it is likely not notable and thus it shouldn't be listed.  -- Mufka (user) (talk) (contribs) 16:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems a reasonable suggestion if a "Day" has no article it has little if any notability. However, there is also a need to avoid making an article the only criteria, there are I suspect some very local days that have articles, so a global (or at least national) notability test is also needed. There is perhaps a difficulty with Liturgical feasts; I am, I hope, free from bias or partiality on the subject, but there are many who might get upset if their favourite saint got removed, although it can easily be said that if you want to see them listed write the article. --Drappel 21:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Having been taking notice of the number of redlinked saints I think they need to pass the "NO article , NO listing" test, the same as births and deaths. --Drappel 15:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Holidays and observances - other calendars 

message: I have just reformatted the moribund Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines so that people who are interested can add themselves to the membership section and co-operate on developing Wikipedia:Timeline standards  and specific timeline articles. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:32, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines

message: I know that there are many events that affected history on every day in history, but perhaps something should be done for those that were even greater than the others. For instance, July 20 had tons of things that happened, but perhaps one of the greatest acomplishments in mankind's history happened, that of Man landing on the moon. Perhpas something such as boldfacing could be done? Tuvas 17:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey Tuvas!  Actually, that sort of thing is already in effect on another Wikipedia project - Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries.  If you click on the Talk Page of any date page, you'll find a small number of the most important events occuring on any given day listed.  These are the events that will appear on Wikipedia's home page that day.  Fabricationary 06:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Major events

message: I notice that November 5 has acquired a section entitled Film References (actually, Film Refrences [sic]) .
I've always staunchly removed the observations that Dr Scott in Back to the Future invented the flux capacitor on November 5, 1955... but obviously it would belong in this section. However, I can't see anything in the WikiProject permitting the addition of "film references" sections to the Days of the Year pages. Should this be deleted? - MykReeve T·C 11:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm similarly disinclined to the inclusion of film references.  How would such a reference ever be considered a candidate for "On this day..."? -- Robocoder (talk | contribs) 22:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Film references" 

message: After spending some time editing these sections, I've identified some issues that we can discuss, if anyone has thoughts on these matters:
* Births - should fictional characters be listed?  One argument against their listing is that they are not born but rather created.
**No Fiction But I would support a "Dates in Fiction" project so long as it's totally separate from this one.  Rklawton 15:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Format/Birth/Death Suggestions

message: 1) The "there are x days remaining" tag is unnecessary, and often wrong. It isn't going to be September 5 in 117 days, and even if it were, I wouldn't care. What's the deal with that, anyway? Does it have to be edited every day?!
2) I think there ought to be a 3-tier hierarchy. We already have 2 tiers: the selected anniversary events and everything else. Why not have:
A) Selected Anniversary
B) "Notable World Events"
C) "Misc."
I know we don't want to inundate users with lame stuff that isn't significant on an international scale. That's a big problem with the internet -- overwhelming people with stupid crap. But at the same time, part of the whole appeal of wikipedia is that you CAN check out stupid crap if you want to. As far as I'm concerned, if a video game has its own wikipedia article, and on that article its release date is listed as June 30, then by all means it deserves a spot on tier "C."
To be able to see a huge list of all kinds of random things that happened on any given day -- that would be really cool. That's something only wikipedia can offer. I understand that we wouldn't wanna drown "important things" in the process, which is why I think there should be three tiers.
The criterion for making tier C would be simple: the event must be internally referred to. 
'--Nick 17:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey Nick, while your proposed category C is interesting, it's something I would oppose at the moment.  I regularly maintain the Wikicalendar pages, and already, it's hard to categorize what is notable on a global scale from what is not.  Attempting to separate major world events from non-major events that are still interesting would require a lot of work, and then it would be very difficult to maintain (as far as stuff like: "Pirates of the Caribbean released on DVD," "Jennifer Aniston and ____ get married," "Mariah Carey gives a concert at some venue," "Local mom and pop shop opens in Cleveland" etc.)  If everything is kept, the pages would get humungously long and disorderly, and otherwise a very detailed critera would have to be written and agreed upon by many editors.  Have you seen this proposal as to what should determine notability?  Let me know what you think.  Fabricationary 17:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The functionality that Nick seeks is already present.  It'll also give you a good idea what a mess we'd have if we implement Nick's plan.  To see this functionality at work, just go to any date article and click on "What links here."  You'll get the list Nick is looking for - and you'll see it's pretty useless.  That's what we're trying to avoid happening to the date article itself.  Rklawton 17:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One additional note: You wrote "The "there are x days remaining" tag is unnecessary, and often wrong. It isn't going to be September 5 in 117 days, and even if it were, I wouldn't care. What's the deal with that, anyway? Does it have to be edited every day?!" Actually, the "there are x days remaining" refers to the number of days until the end of the year, not the number of days from the current date to the future date.  These numbers never have to be updated (as leap year figures are also included) :).  Fabricationary 21:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh! Then I guess I just find that tag unnecessary and ambiguous, not unnecessary and wrong.--Nick 23:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some Gripes with the System As It Is. 

message: Not being aware of this page, and having been asked to find policy about putting video game launches on days of the year, I started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Video_game_launches.-gadfium 02:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Video game launches