Talk:Current events/Archive 5

message: Are the Australian and German embassies in the slum area?  RickK 00:12, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  The australian one says it's in "Bangkok's central business district." , and indeed the AP article quoted wrt the fire says it was in "a slum in downtown Bangkok".  I guess Bangkok has slum buildings near to fancy ones.  I changed the line to read "downtown" not "slum". -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 01:06, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Bangkok fire

message: I notice Hajor has removed the equivalent GB£ amount in the May 7 item regarding the 'call to action' to capture women UK soldiers. The reason why I included the GB$£ amount was just as a courtesy to the UK -- it is, after all, their soldiers who are supposed to be captured. Oh well... --Wernher 01:59, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It seemed a little too crowded with three currencies there. No offence meant to the Britons, their currency, or anyone. The untold story is why the sheikh specified British women -- is it just because he's down in UK-held Basra? And, now that I've read around the story a bit, it seems he announced various other bounties for male soldiers, living or dead, Coalition leaders, etc., etc., so it's not quite the "Wacky Sheikh" story it might have seemed at first. –Hajor 02:29, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Wanted: women UK soldiers

message: These links might be useful to gauge what sort of coverage a particular news item gets in the UK, it was was mentioned some time back (maybe in the Pump), but there was no link then, and the BBC only seems to provide a gateway on Mondays, even though most days are available via deep-linking.
*Daily Telegraph 2004 May 11 front page plus links to the others
Each of the following links will pop-up a window for May 10 showing the front pages of
selected British newspapers.
*Daily Mail Daily Mirror Guardian Independent Times
-Wikibob | Talk 10:12, 2004 May 10 (UTC) (added May 11 and tidied)
:Thanks for the links Wikibob. It would be great if we could somehow make the Daily Mirror one "go away" though :-). It's pretty embarassing displaying to the world that we have newspapers with the top half of the page on "finding your perfect bikini size" whilst the PoW abuse scandal is relegated to the second half. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just be grateful there's not a link to the Daily Star or Daily Sport front pages. -- The Anome 16:26, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to British front pages 

message: Finlay McWalter and Fabiform deserve commendation (or even a barnstar) for going to the effort of writing a detailed article to accompany the posting of the current event about the Stockline Plastics factory explosion.  It would be nice to see more people follow that example, instead of either cramming in lots of detail on the current event page or leaving it to others to fill in the background about Jean Brault and GroupeAction when they post the latest exciting turn of events in the Liberal Party of Canada sponsorship scandal — (67.100.125.156 06:56, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 68.167.252.6 19:21, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stockline Plastics factory explosion 

message: Could we add a technology event or calendar like Java One , Electronica (Germany), CTIA, CEBITT ?
Would like to announce:
[QUALCOMM to Host Fourth Annual BREW Developers Conference, June 7-9 in San Diego ] (For deletion after June 9)Jondel 00:45, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Technology Event?

message: The United States administration pledges to catch Nick Berg's killers - wow.  Didn't they also pledge to catch the killers and mutilators of the four American contractors in Fallujah?  RickK 01:19, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes they did. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:24, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Nick Berg

message: A few hours ago JohnCrawford added a calendar to the sidebar. I must admit I'm in two minds about it: if the links are only page-internal, then perhaps there isn't much point, and the clutter and overhead it adds aren't worthwhile. But the idea of having a calendar isn't necessarily a bad one; it just needs to be made more useful. Thoughts? –Hajor 21:45, 25 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I restored it cuz the links do work and well, I find it very useful.  —John | Talk 20:46, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

text: I'm in favour of it.  The links work fine for me.  This late in the month the page is 40 pages high on an 800x600 display, and remember that not all browsers have scrollbars (or equivalent) - the calendar is a very nice addition when I'm browsing with lynx. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 20:58, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm for it, too.  Even if one does not use it, can it do any harm? David Cannon 21:31, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, enjoy! Dunno why the in-page links don't work for me, though. –Hajor 22:32, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I seem to remember older versions of Mozilla having a bug regarding setting the scroll position properly when going to a specific #ed anchor.  I tried it with Mozilla Firefox 0.8, Mozilla 1.6, Konqueror 3.1-13, Opera 7.23, MSIE 6.0.2800(xp), netscape 4.8, lynx 2.8.3, and even the excrable Amaya 8.3, and it works on all. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 23:09, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Thanks for checking, Finlay. I'd assumed it was a problem with my Opera (7.23) -- obviously not the case in light of your tests. It seems it was my date display preference: with "15 January 2001" chosen it doesn't work, but if I have "No preference" or "January 15, 2001" selected then it does. A minor bug: not one that bothers me in particular, but perhaps worth noting for future reference. –Hajor 00:03, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We should see if we can fix that, as we don't want a useless calendar for a good portion of the userbase. I dunno if there's a way to put a non date-dependant link target in using wikimarkup? -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 01:04, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Calendar

message: The link in the ongoing events section for "Darfur Genocide in the Sudan" links to Ethnic cleansing which might be an acceptable stop-gap measure, but the activities warrant their own article.  I might get started on one ten hours hence, but if someone else wants to get started, I welcome the help.  (BBC) -- Ke4roh 14:12, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Now rewritten and expanded at the new (and hopefully more NPOV) title of Darfur conflict. -- ChrisO 00:17, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darfur Genocide in the Sudan 

message: I suggest this death is newsworthy (catches people's interest) itself to stay on Current Events, at least for a while. (And I'm not a Reagan fanboy) - David Gerard 22:19, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ronald Reagan

message: I have noticed a practice over the last couple of months of removing deaths after a couple of weeks.  I think this rather strange, and would prefer to preserve the deaths section listing of especially prominent individuals who died the current month regardless of whether they died at the beginning or end of the month.  Consider it this way: if you go to the June 2004 page ten years from now, you'd expect to see Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles listed under the heading "Deaths in June".  Does this seem reasonable? -- ke4roh 02:24, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. Knocking them off after a week or so was originally my suggestion to keep that section of the sidebar nice and unobtrusive (and dynamic) while it was still a new feature and under threat of removal; and that phase belongs in the past now. So let's do what you suggest -- leave them up there for the duration of the month. We've been doing a very good job of selecting the important ones and ignoring the B-list, so I think we can allow ourselves another couple of cm of column space. As long as we stop well short – well short – of duplicating the Recent Deaths page. –Hajor 04:18, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: This month's deaths

message: Jiang Yanyong's wife, Hua Zhongwei, is reported to been freed from detention incommunicado in China and returned to the couple's Beijing home.
This story needs a news link. KirbyMeister 16:18, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jiang Yanyong 

message: Please make sure to bold the link most relevant to the news story, especially if it has been updated. It makes it much easier to see what stories are good for the front page, and it is important for quickly getting to the relevant information about a news article. There are lots of random links that may be appropriate for linkage but have nothing to do with the news item. - Centrx 05:21, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bolding important link 

message: Does Paul Johnson warrant a link on "Deaths in June"?  Yes, because he was brutally murdered, purportedly by al-Qaida. No, because many other people have died lately, and because we don't want to further highlight the misdeeds (he's already in the June 18 entry). -- ke4roh 02:14, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Any opinions?  I don't know the answer. -- ke4roh 00:19, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paul Johnson 

message: Re: the SpaceShipOne item of 21 June someone has reverted my earlier fix (airship-->aircraft) back to airship. I thought airships were lighter-than-air aircraft. Could somebody enlighten me here, or correct the item if I'm right? --Wernher 00:44, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: some anon pasted in a whole version, undoing a bunch of things. You're quite right - aircraft (or the american equivalent, airplane) is correct, and airship is wrong.  Perhaps spaceplane is best, however. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 00:47, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: SpaceShipOne an airship?

message: Our Current events page makes for a good diary, and the sidebar helps us to get a summary of deaths, ongoing events, etc.  How about we add a section (to the sidebar?) to highlight the big events of the month?  That would make for much easier and more interesting scanning through pages of (recent) history. -- ke4roh 01:15, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Intriguing. Be bold; float an idea out on the page (sidebar?); let's see how it looks. –Hajor 13:26, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Percolating the big events to the top