Talk:Current events/Archive 7

message: I just saw two news here that I cannot see at all meet the criteria needed for mentioning at current events. One was about someone who decided not to run for the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate has lots of members, so have parliaments of many other countries, and if we decide to list every single politician who decides to run or not to run we will be quite busy. The other thing was about a winner of 1 million dollars in a TV show. What kind of global importance has that? Some people win in lotteries all the time - while the overwhelming majority loses - and 1 million is not even an incredibly high amount. Get-back-world-respect 03:46, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Mike Ditka is not a politician, and winning 31 days of Jeopardy! in a row is not the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket. - Nunh-huh 03:53, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. But let me rephrase the events: An American, well-known only in America for his association with a generally American sport, chooses not to run for the American legislature; In an American TV show, broadcast only in America, an American wins a million dollars. I think if I'd posted (hypothetical) events like Trevor Brooking decides not to run for parliament and Random member of British public wins a million pounds on Countdown they'd be deleted, and rightly so. -- Avaragado 10:23, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would expect those deletions also. --Colin Angus Mackay 11:08, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: The justification given for the deletion was not that they were too American, though perhaps you've pinned down an unstated reason for the culling.  The justification was "no local news", but the trimming left intact such global events as the redesign of the  flag of Montenegro, the celebration of Bastille Day in France and David Bowie's angioplasty. - Nunh-huh 21:18, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would justify the redesign of the flag of [Montenegro] as international as it will be seen internationally. The Bastille Day celebrations while local to France are celebrating an event which had an impact that was felt across the world and influenced the political direction of many countries. David Bowie is an international celebrity - although I do think this story is of minor importance and on a personal note, I've had an angioplasty operation and I think a big fuss is being made about nothing. Medical technology has moved on since I had it done and it is probably even less of an issue these days. But this is getting OT. --Colin Angus Mackay 22:28, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I already argued in favour of deleting celebrity "news" before, from wherever they are. Get-back-world-respect 22:31, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: Round-and-round we go having the same tedious discussion about what is important, and more significantly, who decides what is important. If the person posting didn't think it was important, they wouldn't have posted it! I presented a solution to this issue above, and you pooh-poohed it, basically because (it seems) you don't think there should be any current events page at all in an encyclopedia, even one like Wikipedia which is conciously breaking down traditional barriers to creating a complete account of human knowledge and events (like lack of real-time updates, and lack of space). I find it quite exasperating. Pcb21| Pete 11:31, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see the point of this page, actually. Google news does a much better job and has no problem picking out "minor" news if the right search terms are used. Wiki already has "Recent Changes", to see what articles have been updated recently, maybe it just requires better search technology? Goatherd 11:49, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Once upon a time I used to add items here, but I stopped because I felt I was pointlessly duplicating information better covered in the sources I drew it from and and pasting in URLs to send people away from Wikipedia to those same sources. There is a clear difference between an encyclopaedia and a daily newspaper. Bmills 12:05, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: The purpose of the page is to provide an entry point into our articles on "in the news" topics such as Mike Ditka, Jeopardy and Trevor Brooking. Other sources do not provide this entry point. The point is emphatically not to be a poor man's Google News. NB there is little or no correlation between Recent Changes and current events. Pcb21| Pete 12:09, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not go as far as abolishing the whole article given that it is useful when archived to see what important events happened on particular days. But we fail to achieve that if local news and TV-shows are mentioned. Since more users agreed than disagreed I delete them again. Get-back-world-respect 12:12, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Um.. tyranny of the majority? Practice some tolerance! Pcb21| Pete 12:16, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Democracy tends to favor tyranny of the majority over tyranny of the minority. Sorry, but you failed to convince. Get-back-world-respect 12:20, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't want to be rude, but you appear not to understand the concepts you are talking about. Democracies don't ban things because the don't like them. They tolerate them. They ban things if they are harmful to others. These entries only become "harmful" if they are false, not a current event or cause the page to become unmanageablely long. Pcb21| Pete 12:29, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: It's possible to provide an entry point without writing news reports.  cf. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html. Wikipedia can't report news properly because it contains encyclopedia articles, not news articles. I'm not sure about the "archiving events" function, but it doesn't seem to require a page titled "current events". This page as it is now seems to be a distraction from the main purpose. Goatherd 12:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Pete, democracies generally decide to do what the majority regards best. If you as a minority want the jeopardy show to be covered in Australian history books I am sure no Court would grant you to do so. Get-back-world-respect 20:41, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Australian history books? Courts? What are you trying to say? Pcb21| Pete 07:46, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only news here that are important on a global level 

message: Someone familiar with style for this page should merge the two recent New Zealand (re Israel) items, which are at present partly repetitious. Incidentally, National Radio carried the story at and after 6pm UTC, but I don't know whether you can effectively note that. - Robin Patterson 22:29, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplication in New Zealand (re Israel) items 

message: The idea that something is not "murder" unless a court says so is a common fallacy. Murder is a verdict if a particular person or persons are being charged in a court of law. Murder has the common meaning of "unlawful premeditated killing of a human being by a human being." In the case of the 15-year-old boy, unless you can demonstrate that the killers were acting in the capacity of executioners of valid law, the act was murder, and to fudge it is POV (not to mention politically correct). Who the murderer(s) are would be the province of a court to decide. -- Cecropia | Talk 09:42, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless of anyone's views on the bias and oh-so-evil political correctness of the word, it is still unnecessarily vague. Inquiring minds want to know if this is a stabbing, a hanging, or a good old-fashioned defenestration; murder probably shouldn't be used except for describing court sentences.  I gave a try at making it more exact and NPOV. Jxg 17:20, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Murder most foul 

message: Zero0000, Here's a link for you .  one quote from the article "But listening to people, talking to people, they get a different view of Israelis and us of the Palestinians."  Wanna make a wikipedia article about ongoing efforts of this type? Lance6Wins 15:20, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Non "Arab Bashing" News (Zero0000's term)

message: Can someone please correct the vandalism to this page, please? Berek 19:00, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Done - thanks - in the future, place vandal notes at WP:VIP (easy to type shortcut) -SV 19:07, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism

message: An item which I've seen in a number of news sources  is the discovery of a new type of marine worm which feeds on dead whale bones. Interestingly, the males of the species live in large numbers inside the females of the species. This info should probably go into a new article and news item. I'm not sure where the article should go, though: should it be added to giant tube worm, go under the genus name Osedax, or something else? --NeuronExMachina 02:00, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I already created an osedax page. Didn't know  someone wanted to write this ,sorry--Jondel 05:41, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New marine worm species discovered