Wikipedia talk:Days of the year/Archive 1

Archive 1

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Archive 4

Guideline

It seems reasonable that this article could be tagged as a guideline. I find no other page that helps to layout what is and is not notable content for WikiCalendar articles. I figured discussion was necessary before tagging it. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 12:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree a guidline to which people posing events of little current let alone lasting notability could be refered would be a help. --Drappel 20:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This could form the basis of a guideline, but it needs a lot of work. There is much between the two extremes that is not covered. JulesH 19:25, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Old discussions that might be helpful in this discussion can be found here and here and here. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 17:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

While I basically concur that a guideline would ne needed (and having been around quite a while: you can be sure that there will be opposition, tagging this as overbureaucratization at least), we need to gather further input before reviving this; so I think we should put up a little message at the village pump...Thoughts? Lectonar 15:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. There's no way to get any movement on this otherwise. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 14:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree something like this is way overdue. I've tagged it as a proposed guideline. I watch one or two of the number articles as well and it might be worth considering expanding the scope to include these articles (e.g. 3 (number)). -- Rick Block (talk) 18:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

That proposed tag made me think of something that probably was clear to everyone else before. This article should contain the actual guideline. The project page isn't really where the rules belong. Am I right? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree the guidelines should be separate from the project page. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Something prompted me to look at WP:POL and I noticed the statement Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that all users should follow. I don't think that it is much of a stretch to say that the Wikicalendar guidelines, as they are, are widely accepted and a standard that all users follow. From that, I would interpret it to mean that the contents of the guideline could be tagged as a policy with some minor organization and rewriting. Everything in there is and has been widely practiced without much dispute. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 04:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Up for discussion

The following items should be discussed to determine what criteria make them globally notable enough for inclusion in Wikicalendar articles. They all happen fairly regularly or in the case of patent dates, how notable was the date that chewing gum was patented? Feel free to add to the list. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 16:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Airplane crashes

These happen a lot and most are definitely not globally notable.

Here I see only the possiblity of going by the number of victims, perhaps with a little sidekick if something had grat impact (I'm thinking of something like a whole national sports team dying in a crash or something like that). Lectonar (talk)

But even if 200 people die in a plane crash in Botswana, will that affect people in Japan except those who had family on the plane? I think your sports team example makes sense. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

How about only listing ones that result in (major?) changes to the design/manufacture, operation/maintenance, or use of a vehicle? I haven't done any research into how many incidence this would include so this may or may not help define notability. There are many airplane crashes that are due to unfortunate circumstances (ie. bad weather, human error etc.) and are not notable, bad things happen and we have to deal with the loss. There are other crashes that are notable because they result in changes that show a deliberate and concentrated effort by the industry to improve safety and usability of a mass-transit system. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 19:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

How about setting the following criteria: The crash killed a head of state, high ranking public official, well known entertainment figure; the crash caused the grounding of a certain type of aircraft; the crash caused a major worldwide change in policy; the crash was a major act of terrorism. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:36, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Earthquakes

Earthquakes happen every day somewhere. What criteria should be used to qualify an earthquake?

He're we should go either by magnitude or number of victims; parameters to be determinded...Lectonar (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

How about highest ever recorded magnitude and/or 1000 deaths? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mufka. However I would put the emphasis on magnitude as earthquakes don't usually kill people, its the human-created objects that kill people when they break during an earthquake. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 19:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Highest recorded magnitude in a region (maybe by continent). -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Games

Frequently added: this or this game came out on this date; same goes for books...Lectonar (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a pretty well established exclusion (although they are often added). Conflict arises when a video game breaks some sort of sales record. I don't think they should be included at all, but there was a lot of conflict over Halo 3 because it broke some record. Many of the additions are just drive by entries that never get argued. Book releases are generally excluded. Argument was made that the latest Harry Potter book demonstrated a cultural phenomenon and therefore should be included. I still think it doesn't belong, but I was overruled. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree: recent games and book release dates are not notable. By recent I mean anything less then 40-50 years. If after 50 years these objects are still being talk about on a large (large being 2 or more continents) scale then they should be included as notible. (I also agree with Mufka; Halo and Harry Potter should be removed from any and all notable lists. 'Cultural phenomenon' is a very fuzzy term and suggests to me a temporary situation.) Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 20:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The Halo and Harry Potter entries would need outside input. Conflict will arise if they are removed. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

School shootings

School shootings happen frequently enough that they are no longer shocking. Which ones merit inclusion?

I dare say (to avoid bias, as they are more frequent in the USA, AFAIK, only those who make worldwide news (like Columbine, e.g.). Lectonar (talk)

I think the criteria should be that a shooting has to be significantly different from the others. Columbine was one of the first. Virginia Tech got a lot of press. Unless something really shocking happens, I think all others should be excluded. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I would be careful about adding these events based on the criteria 'make worldwide news '. Many school shootings make the nightly news in many countries but they really are not notable. Ever have the response 'Gee another one. That's too bad. Someone should do something about that.'? Thats not the response to a notable event. I would suggest the same criteria here as I did for airplane crashes; did the event result in a (major?) change in the way societies identify and handle people that are likely to create this situation. This criteria may be a little too fuzzy to apply consistently or accurately, but it might be a good place to start. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 21:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is some dispute as to whether non-notable school shootings should be included. See discussion at Talk:February 14. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 19:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I dare say that U.S. school shootings make the international news because such events are rare to unimaginable in other industrialized nations. Rachel Maddow recently read out loud a Reuters disclaimer to non-U.S. readers explaining how such shootings are not unusual in the U.S., but remain rare outside the U.S. Kingturtle (talk) 20:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Does that mean that every school shooting should be included or that they shouldn't? Should the shootings that occur outside the US be noted? If they are newsworthy around the world will each individual shooting be notable in 5 years? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 20:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Those are good questions. I suppose a school shooting is only significant if it sets some sort of precedent or sets some sort of record, or triggers legislation, or changes society in some way. Kingturtle (talk) 20:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Patent dates

The date that a patent was granted doesn't seem all that notable except in the case of things like the lightbulb.

I would suggest all patent dates are not notable. The only thing that patent dates say are that person X had an idea, nothing notable about that. What that person does with that idea becomes the subject of notability discussions. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 20:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Births and deaths

The requirement that an entry have a Wikipedia article seems to be a little too lax. Many pages are filled with dates for people that no one knows or will ever care to know. Lately, there are many editors dumping 10 or 15 new names just because they can. Consensus needs to be reaffirmed that that only especially notable names should be listed but enforcement of that is often met with conflict. See this for discussion on what to do with excesses.

Per the linked discussion, I think that if the criteria is only that an article exists the lists should be complete and these should be done mechanically (categories or bot-maintained lists). Assuming we don't want complete lists in each day article the separate lists (or categories) should be linked, but then are there any births/deaths that should also be listed in the by-day articles? I think "no" is a defensible stance and have trouble imagining how any "super notability" criteria wouldn't be nightmarishly subjective. I suppose we could enumerate objective criteria like:

• Leader of a country
• Inducted into a sports hall of fame
• Winner of a Nobel Prize, Oscar, Grammy, etc. (etc is problematic)

but creating such a list that doesn't reflect well established practice will likely be met by severe resistance. We could remove the lists to separate articles and have an unspecified "only the most famous should be listed here" fuzzy guideline and see what develops. Successful guidelines in general reflect prior practice rather than prescribe new constraints. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

What about not having anything but a link to the births or deaths on this day articles? I'm not saying I really like it, but would it work? Or how about setting the criteria that the listed person must be the subject of a Featured Article? That could be managed. But then, there are probably some dopes with FA status. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 20:01, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Bare links to separate articles would work (that's the defensible "no" answer to the "should any articles be listed in the by-day articles" question), but unless the separate articles are meant to be inclusive with the only criteria being "article exists" and we come up with some automated way to maintain them, I think we've simply shifted (and spread) the maintenance problem from the "by-day" articles to these new articles. In any case, I think the first step is to come up with some automated way to maintain inclusive by-day born/died on lists for anyone with a Wikipedia article. I don't have any bots that work this way, but I think it wouldn't be tremendously difficult to write a bot that would enumerate through all members of the by-year born on and died on categories, read each article to figure out the born on and died on days, and compile the appropriate by-day lists. We'd lose the summary annotations from the current approach, although perhaps the bot could be coded to compile the lists first and then edit the by-day articles, adding a summary-less entry if no entry exists, deleting entries if no article exists, and leaving other entries alone. At a rate of one person per second (the bot has to read the article to figure out the born on and died on days), assuming we have on the order of 200,000 articles on people the bot could regenerate a complete set of by-day lists in less than a week (60 hours or so). This is enough work that it would probably be better done against an offline copy of the database. I could propose this at Wikipedia:Bot requests, but is this the direction we want to go? -- Rick Block (talk) 02:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Could the automated part be done by using a field in an infobox? A bot can pick it up and populate the list. Any article without an infobox would be excluded, but maybe all bio articles should have an infobox (in a perfect world). Separately, what about using WP:COREBIO for criteria for date articles? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 19:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with RickBlock here as regarding to not create something of a supernotability...as far as the technical details go, I'm completely lost. Lectonar (talk) 17:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:COREBIO is interesting - I assume you're thinking High or Top. These aren't exactly objective but might provide an informal criteria to use after yanking the current lists to separate articles. I think the first step is still to decide whether the lists should be yanked into their own articles, and assuming the answer is yes then pursuing an automated way to populate/maintain these lists. I'm not sure I understand what you mean about using a field in an infobox. For example, Albert Einstein uses template: Infobox scientist which has a "birth_date" parameter. This might be a way to figure out his birth date from the article, but figuring out Albert Einstein is an article we should be looking at in the first place is the first order problem the bot needs to solve. Are you suggesting looking at all the "whatlinkshere" to template:Infobox scientist plus however many other infoboxes might be used on any biography sort of article? Just a guess, but I'd expect there to be hundreds of biographical templates (checking - there seem to be 126 in Category:People infobox templates, plus another 49 in Category:Athlete infobox templates) and that they probably don't have a standard parameter name for birth date. The bot could look for some set of templates and and pick up the birth date up based on a parameter, although I think it would probably need to be able to parse free text (two dates separated by a dash, inside parentheses) as well, so looking for certain infobox parameters might not be worth the trouble.

Let's make this a concrete proposal. Is there general agreement that the current lists of by-day births and deaths are too unwieldy for the day articles and should be yanked into their own separate lists? If the answer to this is yes, we can work out the details for how to accomplish this. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:56, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that the current lists are bloated. But what are we thinking for the existing articles? Would there be any births or deaths left there? I'm thinking that there has to be. Otherwise what will make the date articles different from Template:SelectedAnniversary except more events? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I just want to note that according to the existing rules in effect at Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year, "Only the births and deaths of people who are themselves subjects of Wikipedia articles should be listed." In other words, all people with Wikipedia articles should have their births and deaths listed currently. I agree the lists are bloated, and personally I would like to seem them moved into categories so they would be complete. If there is a feeling that those categories themselves would be overly bloated and there needs to be a filtering mechanism so only "important" births and deaths are listed on a Day of the Year page, that should be a separate consideration. (SirBruce (talk) 12:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC))

I think the suggestion that the person have an article is meant as a minimum criteria - the current (bloated) lists adhere to this criteria. If we have complete lists, in whatever form (categories or separate list articles), the question is which births/deaths do we leave in the day articles? Mufka's point above is a good one (without any births/deaths what's the point of the existing articles). It seems like the proposal to excise the existing lists (and find some way to make them inclusive of everyone with a Wikipedia article) has to be linked to a new, more selective, criteria for which births/deaths to leave in the day articles. There are only about 200 WP:COREBIO TOP importance articles, so this seems a little too retrictive. I can't find a list of HIGH importance, so don't know how many there might be. It's interesting to note Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography is tracking almost 500,000 articles (1/4 of Wikipedia's articles are about people - who'd have thunk). Assuming even distribution of birthdays (which is probably not quite the case) if the current lists were complete they'd each have 1500 or so articles (and all these people will eventually die, so the deaths lists will grow to the same size). I think these numbers clearly indicate there's a problem. Maybe we should invite the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography folks to comment? -- Rick Block (talk) 15:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

A few points. There is currently a mechanism being developed which will help rank all articles on a somewhat reasonable standard of importance for the WP:1.0 team. If and when that program or whatever it is in developed and enacted, that would obviously be a useful factor for this discussion. Beyond that, it might be possible to choose only those biographies that are rated at a certain importance level, say high- or top-, by one or more existing WikiProjects. That would still probably have a disproportionate number of entertainment bios, but it would be a possible starting point. From what I've heard, the importance bot is close to being operational, and it may be available within a month or so. I'll make sure to let everyone know when I hear more info myself. John Carter (talk) 15:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Recent changes

The recent changes to the page seem to be mostly in line with existing consensus except the addition of royal weddings. This was covered pretty well here and I think new discussion would need to take place to see if consensus has changed. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 05:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That discussion was about the idea of adding a new section called Weddings. my inclusion of royal weddings on Wikipedia:Notability on a global scale over time is to cover events such as February 3: 1112 - Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona and Douce I of Provence marry, uniting the fortunes of those two states. Kingturtle (talk) 05:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't totally oppose the idea, but I thought one of the good parts of the past discussion was to include only weddings that had articles about the weddings. My concern is also that the list would then include the wedding of some prince of a third world country. Royalty is royalty. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 05:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, we can find the right wording for it. Any suggestions? Kingturtle (talk) 05:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That's tricky. I'm not sure. In reality, it seems like only European royalty gets prolonged worldwide coverage. I've been struggling with trying to find proper wording for this article for months. I've been hoping that other editors would jump in with suggestions. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 06:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Old royal weddings were business arrangements created to insure that power remained within small circles, and those are definitely important to note. Kingturtle (talk) 06:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Did those business arrangements affect people outside the borders of the states that had parties to the marriages? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

(A) Yes, because, as in the example I cited above, it was merged two different power groups. (B) I think we need to move away from the hard line thinking of global effects. Kingturtle (talk) 23:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

RE: (B) - I think that doing so would undermine the spirit and manageability of the project. I also don't think that such a change would gain widespread support. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 02:46, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll work on a proposal. Kingturtle (talk) 03:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Superbowl

copied from Talk:February 3 for more centralized discussion here

The 2008 Superbowl was broadcast in 232 countries. You are terribly mistaken if you think that it is not globally notable. Kingturtle (talk) 16:58, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The Super Bowl happens every year. It is very predictable that it will happen next year. It isn't notable unless it breaks a record. If it were considered notable, every instance of every Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, World Cup, Wimbledon, French Open, US Open, etc. would be listed. Doesn't seem reasonable. The first Super Bowl is notable. Discussed here. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 17:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mufka. This latest super bowl was just another game; nothing significant happened. Broadcasting does not make an event notable, it just means that a contract was signed. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 21:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't personally agree, but it seems a double-standard in light of many other sporting events being listed in similar fashions (I've seen world cup, NASCAR, Tour de France, other cycling, hockey, etc., championships listed). At any rate, if the Super Bowl is (as one user put it) "sports trivia", the others are as well, unless something made them noteworthy in a different manner (i.e., the olympic boycotts in 1980/84, or something like that). In other words, what makes the World Cup or Wimbledon any more significant/noteworthy than the Super Bowl? subsailor (talk) 22:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You're right. The other things shouldn't be there, they just haven't been noticed yet by someone who cares. The reason the Super Bowl came up is that it just happened. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 00:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

In terms of significance, this superbowl is the Second-most-watched TV Show Ever in U.S. history - second only to the final season of MASH. Kingturtle (talk) 03:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that the second-most anything is notable. The number for the Super Bowl seems to go up pretty predictably every year[1]. It was up about 4 million from last year which was up about 3 million from the previous year and so on. In about 2 years, the Super Bowl will surpass MASH and then it will be notable and MASH will no longer be notable. Also, I know that this is just a US number, but it pales in comparison to some of the international numbers. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 20:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Notability or editing guideline?

From Wikipedia:Notability: "Notability guidelines do not directly limit article content". Since the intent of this proposed guideline seems to be to regulate what articles are linked to on date and year pages (e.g. February 18 and 2008) rather than to guide decision on the inclusion or deletion of articles, this seems to be more of an editing guideline than a notability guideline. If this impression is accurate, then this page would be more appropriate as a part of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• I agree that this is not about notability and should be renamed per BF's suggestion. --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The intent of this guideline is not to "regulate what articles are linked to on date and year pages". The intent of this guideline is to layout what criteria should be used to decide what events should be listed in the Events section of the date articles. This guideline is absolutely about notability and it is an attempt to establish a "super-notability", for lack of a better term, for date articles. Additionally, this project has nothing to do with the year articles (right now). -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 03:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Notability: "Notability guidelines do not directly limit article content". Try to fit this into the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Your purpose is too obscure and the title is confusing. --Kevin Murray (talk) 04:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Notability: "article content is governed by other policies and guidelines, such as the policy requiring Verifiability". This guideline will be one of those "other" policies and guidelines. It specifically applies to the date articles and those articles need their own guidelines. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 04:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with the content of the guideline, but since it is one of the "other" guidelines, it should not be presented as a "notability" guideline. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, but it really is about notability (just a higher level). Do you suggest a simple name change? What do you suggest? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 04:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Renown? Significance? Importance? Éclat? Noteworthiness? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I think a name change and use of the word "significance" (or similar) in place of "notability", which has a specific meaning in the context of Wikipedia articles, would be enough. As for a page title, perhaps Wikipedia:Manual of Style (days of the year) or Wikipedia:Days of the year could work? Black Falcon ^(Talk) 06:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:Global significance? Although the shortcut is already taken by Gender Studies (and I like shortcuts). Could use WP:GLOBAL. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 16:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I think moving to Wikipedia:Days of the year would be good. The title would indicate that the guideline is specifically for the days of the year project. We are constantly arguing that the date pages are special pages within WP so lets have a special guideline specifically for the Days of the Year project. Our desire for this project seems to be at odds with the other WP:Guidelines. We are excluding based on notibility, but as Black Falcon pointed out Wikipedia:Notability doesn't exclude. Lets create a clear guideline that clearly sets the Days of the Year project pages apart from the rest of WP. Grouf^{(talk • contribs)} 17:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and No

I understand the effort to create notability criteria like these, but perhaps too much will be thrown away as a result. What would be wrong with having the top of each days page follow these guidelines, while having less notable events or regionally significant events listed in separate sections below. Many of the things specifically slated for removal are of interest to a great many people. The beauty of Wikipedia is (or should be) that it can be a "big tent" where many varieties of information can coexist. The alternative, determining what is "significant to a global audience" or "notable for everyone" is fraught with difficulties. The alternative approach I am suggesting is to replace significance and notability with transparancy. It would then be up to the user to decide which events were interesting, significant or notable. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 04:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

For the most part, everything that has been proposed is already practiced. The goal now is to codify most of what is already practiced. Many of the events that would be excluded can still be added to the month and year articles. Adding more sections adds another layer of management and makes the pages (which in some cases are already long) longer. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 05:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Move this page?

Since this proposed guideline will apply only to the Wikicalendar articles, it seems reasonable that it should be clear what the guideline refers to. As it was mentioned briefly above, I propose that the guideline be moved to Wikipedia:Days of the year. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 17:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I've moved all of the guideline type info from the WP:DAYS article. It seems more important now that the article be moved to Wikipedia:Days of the year because the birth and death stuff is in there. Otherwise, it might be confusing. I am going to move it. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 20:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

 Done -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 19:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Notability guideline missing?

Section 'Births and deaths' says: Also, being the subject of a Wikipedia article is only a minimum requirement for inclusion in a Wiki-calendar article. Not all people meet the more stringent notability requirements for Wiki-calendar articles. However, it does not specify these 'more stringent' requirements, nor does it link to them. Where can I find them? Are they similar to WP:RYB? Thanks, Gap9551 (talk) 17:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, if not all people with a Wikipedia article are to be included, perhaps it would be good to have other (complete) lists or categories collecting all people with the same birth date. Probably categories would be easiest, as those could be automatically generated using wikidata birth dates. Gap9551 (talk) 17:14, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

There have got to be limits or the Wiki-calendar will overflow with every new addition. There are millions of bios on English language Wikipedia. I see @Gap9551's point, however -- I would suggest that porn actors, actors/musicians below the age of 22 (I would prefer 25 but Justin Bieber, et al), individuals noted primarily for connection to other individuals rather than for accomplishments in their own right, centenarians/supercentenarians (solely if notable only for longevity), and non-notable sportspersons be considered superfluous for purposes of "Wiki-calendar articles". I trimmed January 1-5, so give me your opinion(s). What say you, @Deb?? Quis separabit? 01:30, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I've been looking at this for ages. We've been experimenting by removing anyone with fewer than 5 entries in non-English language wikipedias. Personally I'd immediately get rid of any tennis player who's lower than no 100 in the world rankings but in other sports it's more difficult to assess international importance. I agree on the porn actors and centenarians but not sure about the youngsters. You could hardly have excluded Daniel Radcliffe even when he began his Harry Potter career. Unfortunately, several attempts to discuss this at the project page have not come up with any definite consensus on how these lists should be pruned, although there is certainly general agreement that they should be. Deb (talk) 08:28, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you, for your insights. Five entries seems like a decent rule of thumb. I'm not sure if profession (or more general, which notability guidelines for having their own biography article someone meets) should matter. That would mean that we have to judge which notability guidelines are more relevant, which is not the job of this WikiProject, but of the wider community. Gap9551 (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, true. I'm sure many would disagree. Deb (talk) 19:04, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

SO -- what are we to do? Do we open an RFC on this matter and try to resolve it so at least some trimming can be done w/o being reverted. Quis separabit? 19:32, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Thought we had an RFC before about this... personally I like the idea of some criteria like those used on the year pages. 4 or 5 non-English non-stub wiki articles would work for me. Perhaps special criteria for athletes or something where that's tons of articles. I think the recent year pages require 10 non-English articles. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:22, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I think making separate lists is a really good idea because it's important to have all that together in an easily browsable format. Have something similar to WP:RY for the main date article, and then separate out a list of people born on that date. -- Irn (talk) 20:01, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Completely agree: as far as I remember there an overwhelming consensus at getting these complete sub-pages made; if we went ahead with this, an RFC for a discussion about criteria for the main DOY pages should generate more than enough ideas and opinions for a strong consensus to emerge! :D ‑‑Yodin^T 20:38, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Having reverted one of these cleanups, I dug to see why the edit was made since a rational of "non-notable" was not a valid reason, everyone in Wikipedia is notable and the list has no other criteria explaining how the members of the list were selected (suggested by MOS:SAL but missing in this case). I see two possible solutions. Per WP:SAL a lead def could be added to each section giving selection criteria, good luck there, even with some kind of further criteria this may be a case of a lists that is too general or too broad in scope (and also to WP:OR) to have any value (and I can't see how some of the above suggested criteria could be explained to the average reader). The other solution would be to delete births and deaths and simply link the respective categories. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 01:18, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Please don't simply revert things without due consideration; the edit summary may have been badly-worded but that does not negate Quis separabit?'s action. This subject has been discussed at length and, although there is not a consensus as to how to do it, there is a definite consensus that it should be done. Lots of solutions have been discussed - see the history of this page for further detail. I think the discussion was archived too soon.Deb (talk) 11:19, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

err... my edit did have due consideration, it followed the consensus at WP:SAL, the list criteria was unambiguously clear, there was no indication that there was discussion or an attempt to override the community consensus found at WP:SAL, and "non-notable" is not badly-worded; it is strictly incorrect. And WP:SAL negates Quis separabit?'s action, the edit did not following the list's definition --> born on January 4th with a Wikipedia article.

As to the problem the original poster noted here, the "more stringent notability requirements for Wiki-calendar articles" is empty boilerplate at this point - no standards are enumerated. A "5 entries in non-English language" is a possible solution, but its far from the "explicit standard" in text suggested by WP:SAL that a reader and editor can understand, and is too inside baseball to be useful to a reader. Following WP:V, reference to a source such as a published "This Day in History", may be better. The each article section itself definitely needs a descriptive sentence describing that these are, for example, "Notable births". Although that type of wording is frowned upon it is exactly how editors want to limit the list... "more" notable people. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

SAL is not intended to nor does it address the logistical problems that editors must deal with, such as what we are dealing with here. Does citing abstract policy guidelines allow me to cite IAR to get a free pass to trim the chaff? We need to establish a system to control the DOY lists. IMO, ridding the lists of stub articles, centenarians/supercentenarians (if notable only for longevity), porn stars, sportspeople who do not meet a set minimum standards (for example, "any tennis player who's lower than no 100 in the world rankings", as @Deb put it), and those in general with fewer than five (5) entries in non-English language articles, would be a very good start. Quis separabit? 21:08, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:SAL does deal with these logistical problems specifically re: Don't have these lists, limit the lists to reference, or limit the lists to some logical consensus criteria you can explain to an editor and reader in text in the article. Ignoring a consensus guideline and making edits counter to its consensus or where there is no consensus will tend to give you the feeling you are pushing a river. Centenarians/supercentenarians/fewer than five (5) entries/tennis player lower than no 100/etc/etc.... that will be hard to explain in an article (although could be in a hidden note) but it does boil down to a description of "more notable". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, how about this for lede instructions:

ALL ENTRIES MUST CONFORM TO THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION

(NOTE: This would put the onus on the adder of the name as it should do, rather than on others trying to keep order. Of course, there are those who will not get it or refuse to abide but ...)

1. FOO: non-notable actors/media personalities/musicians/sportspeople (will require serious discussion and consensus, especially in re sportspeople)
2. FOO: spouses/relations of notables, not otherwise notable in their own right.
3. FOO: centenarians/supercentenarians, unless otherwise notable in their own right.
4. FOO: royals (other than monarchs), unless notable in their own right
5. FOO: criminals/victims, unless notable in their own right
6. FOO: oddities (conjoined twins, etc.)
7. FOO: sex workers, unless notable in own right for reasons other than occupation
8. FOO: Animals (of any kind, from Seabiscuit to Scooby-doo, if the latter ever ODs on "Scoobie snacks") Quis separabit? 22:18, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
   Updated most recently: Quis separabit? 18:11, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Re: The other solution would be to delete births and deaths and simply link the respective categories. But there are no categories for births or deaths per day of the year, such as Category: January 1 births. Or did you mean something else? Gap9551 (talk) 23:42, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

The idea of mixing categories and mainspace is also a pretty bad practice (though some fan-wikis do do this...): categories are for navigation not content. The sorting by name rather than year of birth would be very unhelpful, as would the lack of descriptions of the person (e.g. Antarctican Astronaut, etc.). The only argument I can see in its favour is that we wouldn't need to bother to create/curate these lists, though as you say Gap9551 we would still need to create and add all the relevant articles to the categories. Bots on other wikis (e.g. it.wikipedia: check out the archived discussion) automate this task, meaning a similar amount of work for a useable, rather than a pretty much useless, list. ‑‑Yodin^T 00:10, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Therefore the only viable solution is to open up a conversation/RFC to gain consensus for some kind of agreement on what constitutes a more stringent degree of notability for inclusion on DOY pages, otherwise they will be overrun. What's more, it's not particularly encyclopaedic to include little known sportsplayers, reality TV stars, porn actors and stub articles, for example, with those who occupy an ontologically higher degree of notability, such as statesmen, military and world leaders, scientists, for example, and adjudge them all equally notable. It's intellectually and enyclopaedically disingenuous. The ability to draw distinctions among notable people (some of whom may yet be found insufficiently notable in future AFDs, nothing is static) as to which are more consequential to our past and present is not a cruelly unfair form of classism, it is an act of discriminating (in the best sense of that word, which you know has more than one meaning) discretion of which we should and must avail ourselves when necessary. Quis separabit? 02:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and tightened up the language per what the nutshell already said, in spirit.[2] I don't know if an RfC really helps here because I would expect a lot of arguing at the margins which would just have to be taken on a case by case basis. (I'm already on the record as saying that Wikipedia's policy that anyone who has ever been paid money to touch a ball is automatically notable is something future generations will look back and laugh at.) I hope this edit moves the ball forward (heh). -- Kendrick7^talk 02:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You callin' me a "nutshell", @Kendrick7?? :) :) Quis separabit? 03:02, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I generally agree your most recent conclusion, as I understand it, has the right idea @Quis separabit? :p -- Kendrick7^talk 03:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kendrick7: I am kidding, Ken. Didn't you see the smiley face emoticons? It was just funny because right after my thread, you state "I've gone ahead and tightened up the language per what the nutshell already said". Timing, I guess, combined with malleable wording. Again, just joking. (P.S. I know the more apt term is "nutjob", at least in my neck of the woods, which I have been called btw by some, but I didn't want to be guilty of cultural chauvinism.) Quis separabit? 03:58, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Did you not see the :p ? I'm on top of it, LOL :) -- Kendrick7^talk 04:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw, dude. But I'm 51 and kind of a Luddite. I am ashamed to say I don't know what that symbol means. I know what LOL is, of course. Quis separabit? 04:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It's an emoticon sticking out its tongue. (FWIW, I tried to Google ":p", and somehow now Google thinks I want track the stock price of a company with ticker symbol "P"; it's showing up on my Google Now page on my Android smartphone for example. Ugh, bad Google! Perhaps there is something to be said for this whole Luddite thing....) -- Kendrick7^talk 02:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kendrick7: Yeah, I had figured it out with the help of this cool site. Thanks, Quis separabit? 15:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

In their own right

Semi-arbitrary break, re: [email protected]'s updated list above. I'm liking the "in their own right" thing, and struggling to think of an example where this doesn't hold (politicians, scientists, etc.). Perhaps this could be the only criterion, with no difference for profession, as most WP:N "notable" people are not notable "in their own right", but only written about in reliable secondary sources for their work, not the rest of their lives. ‑‑Yodin^T 14:42, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. The other "editorial discrimination" thing I've looked at recently is WP:ITN (thinking initially about which obituaries they display, but it applies more generally), which sets out purpose, and then criteria (especially re Significance). This structure could perhaps form the basis of any updated policy (i.e. a short explanation of why having everyone is unsustainable, followed by any guidelines we decide, with consensus as the final principle). ‑‑Yodin^T 14:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Bold edits

I've reverted Kendrick7's bold edits, which have had no editors agreeing. We can discuss what the guidelines for inclusion should be, but not change guidelines which have had little disagreement for others which have little agreement. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:15, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Are there any editors, in the discussion above, who think we should list on calendar pages the birth and death days of every single person and animal who has their own page on the Wiki? (Furthermore, are there any editors, aside from a few who just fell off the turnip truck, who in 2016 are confused that a bio page and a user page are not the same thing?) That's the language you've restored, @Arthur Rubin. I also don't recall the "R" in WP:BRD meaning to automatically revert everything; you're supposed to have some personal view (for lack of a better term) behind the reversion. Otherwise, what is there to "D" (discuss)? -- Kendrick7^talk 02:22, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, my bad. I didn't realize you reverted all the way back to October of last year. The "ongoing discussions" you mentioned in your edit summary have long since been archived. -- Kendrick7^talk 03:00, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

For guidelines, even project guidelines, the D needs to come before the B. There had been no consensus for any of the changes. There might now be a consensus that some change needs to be made, but I see no discussion here, or in the last two archives, about removing the stable requirement that for births/deaths, there must be an article about the person, not just a section of an article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:52, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

All the edits I reverted were Kendrick7's, and all without consensus. I concede there is no evidence for consensus on the list of examples, except for stability, so perhaps the list should go. However, it shouldn't have been removed without discussion at least one editor other than the proposer agreeing, as there were at least two or three editors who actually edit this articles who disagreed. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Were there really two or three dissenters? Redsky was found to be using a sock and was blocked accordingly. Deb (talk) 10:42, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Excellent point, @Deb. Quis separabit? 15:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to briefly reiterate what concerned me about the old language: in my opinion, the language re-enforced both WP:RECENTISM (can you call 1492 "recent"? — I can) and, essentially, a form of eurocentrism. Our project, being written after all by living English speakers, tends to have a natural bias towards all that anyway — not that there's anything wrong with that — but I thought it was bone-headed to lock such biases in via policy.

So, after some discussion, keenly met, I made the language a just a tad more hippy-dippy; and I figured, too, if we could get the language right, we could clean out, and at worst get a fresh start on, a bunch of ad hoc examples. I didn't expect the discussion to more or less peter out afterwards. After the newer language stuck around for a while, I also updated the date notification template, and that change has also stuck. (Admittedly, does anyone but me read, or re-read, page notices? I have my doubts.)

I only ended up down this particular policy rabbit hole because I went to add a notable event in the history of the Mayan Civilization to the date upon which it occurred, and the edit notice at the time essentially suggested doing such a thing was forbidden. (Unlike many pre-Columbian non-European civilizations, the Mayans actually had, famously, an accurate solar calendar.) To be fair, I added it, and no one complained, but it stuck in my craw.

In any case, @Arthur Rubin, I'm happy to pick up where things left off in October and discuss any of that. Or just sit back and see where things could go from here.

As for the birthdays/deathdays stuff, and the changes which I made two days ago: I can take it or leave it. Having been focused on events, I never touched this other subsection before then; this page was still on my watch list, and so I was just trying to help. Per the tag I added, the wording still points to something which does not exist, and didn't exist immediately before my events-conscious changes, AFAICT. -- Kendrick7^talk 04:46, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Kendrick7, I would like to have a complete list of births and deaths in the calendar articles. But I'm totally fine with keeping the lists in these articles limited to very notable people, as long as complete lists are available elsewhere. Gap9551 (talk) 22:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Question: As mentioned before I'm all for this as an overflow for people who just want their particular person listed, as much as anything else. Does anyone think it would muddy the waters if we started boldly making these separate complete lists at the same time as the proposed RfC, or instead that it would placate the people who are annoyed/concerned by the cullings? ‑‑Yodin^T 22:45, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey, Gap9551, now that I get where you are coming from, and given that you were the user who started the above discussion in the first place, I may have been suggesting a solution in search of a problem. If there's not a problem with over-listing which currently exists (although, if we went about generating the listings systematically, there soon could be) we can probably just let future generations figure this out. After all, my main problem with the older language, from the perspective of notable events, was that it was too exclusionary of other times and/or cultures; I'm a WP:Inclusionist by nature! -- Kendrick7^talk 05:13, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Kendrick7, I first started the topic because I wasn't sure what pending changes additions to approve in protected calendar articles. I'm happy to and inclined to simply accept any addition with a bio article unless guidelines say otherwise. But I think that most guidelines will only result in endless discussions (similar to which events qualify for the general RY articles, like 2015), and that may not be worth the effort of everyone involved. A minimum number of languages would at least be simple, but has its own biases, as mentioned. Gap9551 (talk) 17:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Though I wouldn't claim to be an inclusionist, I do see that there would be a problem with simply adopting the standard for Wikipedia:Recent years, i.e. Wikipedia articles in at least ten languages about the individual in question. Obviously it is more likely that an American politician (just as an example) will have articles in ten languages than a Chinese politician, so there is a disadvantage for non-English speaking countries and I'm keen to see these lists become less western-centric. But no one ever said it was going to be easy. :-) Deb (talk) 10:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Counting languages is an unacceptable standard as far as I am concerned. China writes in one language (written in two scripts), and speaks in a mere handful (not sure how many have their own wikis). Europe having ~30 languages all on their own puts every non-Western society at a disadvantage by that standard. (Even the Americas have, what, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish... are there creoles with their own wikis?) -- Kendrick7^talk 03:21, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Examples of what needs to be stopped

The recent edits by User:180.190.78.242 are a good illustration of bad practice. The anon has added people born in the 1990s who are notable within the wikipedia guidelines (mostly) but are not internationally known and don't even have Year in Topic entries. Deb (talk) 11:37, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Just clicking on a few of the IP's changes... they seem to be adding mostly sports players? Could we, perhaps, cut this out by just excepting this group from this guideline in general? "Internationally known" is a lousy standard since (arguably) no one pre-1492 was internationally known; including half the monarchs of England. At the same time, there have been, what, less than 150 English monarchs? Meanwhile, there are 1,700 NFL players alone on any given year, with about a ~15% churn each year, all of whom are automatically notable per the WP:NSPORTS guideline.

Wikipedia should be an almanac; but us trying to be a sports almanac (which, although currently redlined, is a thing!) seems like a really niche cause which would just overwhelm everything else.

(Is every actor who is a member of SAG automatically notable? I'm scared to look.)

But more generally, rather than making case-by-case exceptions, this is why I would support something along the lines of a "meaningful contribution to their society" standard; no matter how low we were to keep the bar as to what "meaningful" meant. We could thus keep the pre-Columbian British monarchs, and some schmuck who warmed a bench for the Detroit Lions for six months... well, they likely both have lions on their coats of arms, but one of these things is not like the other. :)

I believe that we should find a reasonable balance between WP:PAPER and WP:ALMANAC, and that doing so is within our grasp. -- Kendrick7^talk 18:12, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think I disagree with anything you say above, but we're still some distance from a solution. My main bugbear is the recentist approach (for example, the anon in question only included entries for people born around 1995, with the result that most entries were for singers, actors or sportspeople).

Another, comparable, type of edit is where an individual takes it upon themselves to include everyone from their native country, and I've seen this happening recently with Estonia and the Philippines, to name but two. Most of these are entertainers or sportspeople as well.Deb (talk) 15:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Somewhere in my head when I was rewriting the nutshell, I had in mind the language: "made notable contributions to their societies over a reasonable amount of time". That's just a rough draft, but does it seem like a reasonable starting point? -- Kendrick7^talk 04:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm very grateful for your efforts, but I don't think that wording would be exact enough. I don't think you would accept that wording as NPOV or clear if it were in a wikipedia article. But variations on it may be suitable. Deb (talk) 11:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that's a good starting point, just to get us thinking about how to define notability for these articles. But what kind of contributions are we looking for? Is providing entertainment a notable contribution? I don't know, but I would think, for example, that someone like Pele or Maradona would be notable enough, being regarded by many people whose opinions are worth noting as the greatest ever. But I don't know that they've made notable contributions to society. On the other hand, lots of politicians make notable contributions over time, and I don't think they should all be included.

Also, how big do we want these lists to be? I would think something like maybe ten or twenty people per day. -- Irn (talk) 13:14, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

At one time, fifty births and fifty deaths was discussed as a rule of thumb. Deb (talk) 13:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

This approach "the x most notable people born or who died on that day" could work, as it's directly related to the concern we have of endless lists. Discussions would then go along the lines of "so-and-so is more notable than other currently listed person", one for one... more manageable than than the current situation of random addings and mass cullings. ‑‑Yodin^T 13:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Very true. However, we need wider agreement. For one thing, we need to share this discussion with Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Days_of_the_year, I think. Deb (talk) 16:08, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

this is ridiculous just do it as the category system that was mentioned in the past that way everyone is listed and no one has to fight over who is and isn't notable. and if we do that just have it listed by names in alphabetical order that way we don't have to edit anything in the births and deaths sections and we can focus on the events on the date pages. Redsky89 (talk) 05:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

There are many problems with using categories (see the discussion above). I can understand why you don't want to create complete lists yourself, but why don't you want other people to, if they want to? ‑‑Yodin^T 14:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with a complete list it's other editors that don't want it. I just feel like it would be easier as the category system because then no one will fight over what is and isn't notable. Redsky89 (talk) 05:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Just some bythoughts: I appreciate the effort that is going on, really, but.....make lenghty lists to follow: people will ignore them. Try to implement thresholds: people will ignore them. Hell, trying to gain consensus just on what is to be included or excluded in the Days of the year articles is gonna be difficult. Deb does a real effort at the moment to clean the articles up one by one...look what happens afterwards: articles begin to fill in again with the stuff that was removed shortly before. Finding some policy that is easily understood and will stick might prove a problem. Cheers. Lectonar (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose It is a bit ridiculous to only have a certain amount of people for each yeah (births/deaths) based on their notability. What I really don't understand is who decides their notability. This would also make it a pain, seeing as we would have to constantly update the lists, with the ebb and flow of one's popularity. In my opinion, we should just allow the addition of those who have a Wikipedia article related to them, so long as their birth/death date related to the date article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a popularity contest. Boomer Vial^Holla 03:48, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that that's just not feasible. There are already over a million biographies on Wikipedia. If we had the date of birth and death for every person, that would be about 6,000 people listed for each date. If you look at Category:1980s births, you'll see that there are about 13,000 people per year. That's more than 350 people per day per year. Assuming that growth rate for the future, that's 10,000 more entries per date every 15 years. If people want to see an article about a date of the year, I don't think they want to see a list of thousands upon thousands of people that were born or died on that day, not to mention problems caused by the size of the article. It makes a lot more sense to create separate lists for that information, keeping only those most notable on the page for that date. -- Irn (talk) 11:18, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Again, who decides notability? It would be an equal pain to figure that out, as well as keep the pages up-to-date with the ebb and flow of popularity. Boomer Vial^Holla 13:49, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Who decides isn't the question; Wikipedia operates on consensus, and anyone can participate. However, what mechanism will be used to decide? That's what we're trying to figure out here. As for the ebb and tide of popularity, notability is not popularity, and I don't see any reason to believe that a list of the 50 or so most notable figures for whatever day would not be relatively stable.

While these questions are legitimate, they don't negate the fact that we cannot possibly include everyone, and we have to find a better solution than adding every single person with an article. -- Irn (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia's not a piece of paper with limited space, and the days of the years articles are already massive lists. The most important information pertaining to the articles (i.e. events in history), are at the top of the page. So readers, and editors don't have to look at any lists not pertaining to their search if they don't want to. Also, the Ctrl + F command bypasses the pain of actually having to look through the list. Boomer Vial^Holla 07:26, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

What exactly is it you are "oppose"ing? You're sounding very opinionated for such a new user, and it seems like you also have an agenda of adding as many American showbiz celebrities as you can, which is very much adding to this project's systemic bias. Deb (talk) 12:15, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I made it perfectly clear above what I oppose and why. My opinion is not any less valuable than any other Wikipedia because I am new, so there is no need to treat me as such. Also, there is no need to accuse me of "systematic bias" because I started to update days of the years article contrary to what you are suggesting. Just because I started with one group (American actors) does not mean I will work to add other groups (such as actresses, musicians, etc). Please assume good faith. Boomer Vial^Holla 09:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Please assume good faith? It's hard to understand your solution of using "Ctrl + F" as anything other than trolling. -- Irn (talk) 11:32, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh, brother. Please tell me you are kidding. I use Control + F all the time while editing Wikipedia. Honestly, like a user with probably over 2,000 edits in anti-vandalism is really going to spend their time suddenly "trolling". Nowhere does in the policy for article size does it state that removing from articles based on notability is appropriate. The only mention the policy makes is towards editing, it states that removing content from articles will not fix the long load time editors experience when editing an entire page. I am about to admit defeat on this one, seeing as I'm outnumbered, and there are other editors out there that feel that days of the years articles should be trimmed based on notability. Boomer Vial^Holla 15:07, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

The guideline states that articles above 100kb should "almost certainly" be split. With the numbers I cited above, these articles would easily far exceed 100kb. Searching isn't going to make the page load faster or use less data or be more readable. A solution that so fundamentally misses the central points, yes, strikes me as trolling. I apologize if you were sincere in that suggestion, but in that case, you are seriously misunderstanding the problem.

We're not talking about straight-up removing content; we're talking about splitting it off to a separate page. The question is which people are to be included on the DOY page and which ones are only to be found in the "People born on DOY" page. -- Irn (talk) 11:04, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Slight Support I'm changing my tune on this, seeing as I'm mainly outnumbered here as far as consensus. I don't think only fifty per DOY article is enough though. I'll change to full support under the condition that we find a larger number (say 100 - 150) per DOY article. Boomer Vial^Holla 07:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Are you changing your stance solely because you're outnumbered? I ask because I don't think there's really been a proposal yet; we're more just having a discussion at this point, so it's not necessary to give your support or opposition.

As for the number, why do you agree with an arbitrary number as opposed to a set of requirements? And why do you want the number to be so large? -- Irn (talk) 11:04, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Basically yes, and I can see how it can be a pain to go through long lists, even though I myself bypass this with ctrl + f. Judging by your response to my first mention of the ctrl + f command, I'm guessing this isn't a feasible option for all editors. As for your last question, basically the I feel that page only having 50 births and deaths per DOY based on notability is too small. I feel something more like 75 - 100 would be a better quality sized DOY article. I also a question myself. Mainly my concerns are whom is going to decide notability? Boomer Vial^Holla 14:57, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Deb, Boomer Vial, Kendrick7, Yodin, Redsky89, Lectonar I missed that this discussion had been started, so I just wanted to ping you all. Cheers, -- irn (talk) 14:24, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Citations for birth and death dates

I see lots of biographies that do not have any citation for the birth and death date. I think the absolute minimum should be that a citation be present in the person's article if the person is to be added to one of the days of the year page. My personal preference would be that not only should the citation be present, but the editor adding the person to the day of the year page read the source and verify the correctness of the date. Ideally the editor adding a name to a day of the year page would not only verify the date, but put the citation in the day of the year page.

Whatever degree of care is agreed to should be documented on the project page. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:38, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support Seeing as notability would take care of articles of those who have been long since passed, and have no significant citations towards births or deaths. No arguments here. Boomer Vial^Holla 16:03, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support: Liking this! Essentially making the birth/death itself pass WP:N. This would make it simple to watchlist-patrol and revert, and with discussion on the other suggestions stalled, seems a good way forward. ‑‑Yodin^T 18:32, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

• I suppose it would help make sure the person is notable enough to put in a day of the year list, but that is not my goal. My goal is to supress the spread of inaccurate information through gossip. I view a birth or death date in most articles as gossip, because they are not usually easy enough to look up to qualify for the "Paris is the capital of France" exception to the verifiability policy. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:11, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

"holidays and observances"

Hello, I've noticed that "holidays and observances" often has an entry like "the first day that X holiday can occur, when Y holiday is on March 21", or such. I wonder if anyone finds those "dateless" holidays useful. It seems to me it would be more useful to have some program that automatically pegs movable holidays to the actual date of whatever it is they are pegged to, that year. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 19:10, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

It's useful as by mentioning the first day of the X holiday, it anticipates the X holiday that would come. There are other format such as the closest day to a certain date if there is a strong meaning for that certain date, and others. It would be nice to have a program that moves the date for different year, but realize that the wiki article for the mentioned-date is for the date in general, not a date which is affixed to a certain year (e.g. 2017, or 2018, etc.).--Rochelimit (talk) 15:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I see its usefulness, although if you miss the first and last date, you might not get the info - you would have to be looking at every day.

I have a different question about this section. People mentioned here have to have a Wiki article. Does it have to be in English? And related, would it be within the spirit of this restriction to have a separate list of saints/etc who do not have a Wiki article, but do have a reference? I have noticed that some people think it worthwhile to have red-inked names so that we know that is something that needs to be done. I realize Wiki is not the place to put everything that is known, but listing these names would indicate at least a direction to go.Richardson mcphillips (talk) 14:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Holidays or observances need to have an English wiki article. This is to ensure of the notability of the article. If no English article for the holiday yet you feel that it is a notable holiday, then create the English article first before adding the holiday into the H&O section. Also, English names should be prioritized, unless the local name is particularly notable (e.g. the Japanese Gion Matsuri instead of Gion Festival).

Avoid red links. Again, H&O section is based on notability. Minor saints should really not be added. Again, if you feel the saint deserves an article, then create the article first before adding the saint's name into the H&O. A characteristic of minor saints is usually multiple historic person attributed to one name; or a saint with as many as four different feast days (Anglican version, Episcopal, Canadian Episcopal, etc.), if this occurred, avoid placing all the versions, only choose the most notable one (usually Roman Catholic). Also avoid placing an Old style/Julian calendar version of the feast day, unless it is a notable feast day or a National Day (e.g. Julian Calendar Assumption of Mary is a public holiday in Macedonia, Georgia, and Serbia).--Rochelimit (talk) 15:25, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Animals

After a recent dustup at November 10, I found WP:BIRTHDOY which says "Animals with their own article can be listed as well." This is directly contradicted by the first bullet at Template:DOY page notice, which says "The births and deaths listed on this page are only for people for whom there is a Wikipedia article." I was unable to find the first editor who typed that out and added it; it was restored in January by User:Arthur Rubin as part of a bigger revert of an edit by User:Kendrick7. I tried combing through the other discussions on this page and I couldn't even begin to figure out if consensus leaned one way or another on listing animals' births and deaths. I'm pinging the unofficial regulator of these pages because he seems to be the most aware of what should and should not be added. @[email protected]: your thoughts? CityOfSilver 19:44, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I checked the history; animals were added in April 2014, with discussion at /Archive 4#Non-human births and deaths. I still think it was a bad idea, but there may be consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:48, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

My changes were mostly concerned about tilting the earlier language away from a degree of WP:Recentism and Euro-centrism, in light of fleshing out a few articles about the Maya, who somewhat uniquely in the ancient non-European world have known dates for certain events thanks to their (in)famous calendar. Much of my change seems to have stuck here, but anything I changed around on the animals birthdays thing was purely in the interest of not upending any other apple-carts, and perhaps in making the guideline more concise in the process.

Like: the date of the death of the last passenger pigeon would be arguable, but that seems like more of an event (end of a species) than a biographical issue. Perhaps language to that effect could be an agreeable compromise? OTOH, I wouldn't think the birth of a famous Japanese dog rises to the level of being an "event". -- Kendrick7^talk 18:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Latest status of notability guidelines discussion?

Hi all, I came here looking for clarification of the statement in the Days of the Year guidelines "Also, being the subject of a Wikipedia article is only a minimum requirement for inclusion in a Wiki-calendar article. Not all people meet the more stringent notability requirements for Wiki-calendar articles." However on reading the discussion above I see that this has been an ongoing discussion for a couple of years now at least! Is there a current RfC active on this topic, or is it in the "too-hard basket"? TIA MurielMary (talk) 21:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• FWIW, over at "In the News - Recent Deaths" there used to be a notability requirement for inclusion on the main page, however editors spent so much time discussing whether a given article was notable enough or not (and what that meant) that eventually the notability requirement was removed and any person/animal with a WP article and whose death was reported in a news sources and whose article met a certain standard (i.e. above stub class, fully referenced) could be included on the main page. If the discussion is still ongong here, my recommendation would be something similar - to set a minumum standard of article for inclusion e.g. start class and above, or C class and above. Any subjective criteria which exclude articles based on the person's profession or ranking are going to be extrememly difficult to police and agree on, whereas the WP standards are already well established and reasonably objective. Also it would encourage editors to improve the quality of articles to get them listed on these pages, which can only be good for WP.MurielMary (talk) 21:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

• I can't imagine that anyone will ever come up with a usable definition of "super-notability" for inclusion on a date page and win acceptance for it. We have enough trouble drawing the boundaries of simple notability. Pending changes reviewers are constantly meeting additions of births and deaths to these date pages by well-meaning editors and have no basis for declining any, provided there is an article dedicated to the person. Although these efforts will result in the date pages becoming too long for comfort, the problem does not sit with the date pages but with WP in general accepting such a wide concept of "notability" for sports players, film actors, minor authors and artists and so on. Bear in mind MurielMary that with the majority of WikiProjects having become inactive, many articles are remaining unassessed, so the "X class and above" suggestion would unfortunately not always work: Noyster (talk), 14:08, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Births and deaths sections being too-Anglophone and/or Euro-centric?

I remember a discussion here a year or two ago suggesting that people listed at births and deaths sections should ideally have several (around five or seven IIRC) interwiki winks, particularly for articles about people from Europe or the Anglosphere. Have those standards changed since then? I just looked at February 4 and not only are the recent births once again primarily composed of Europeans or Anglosphere people, but a random check showed that some don't even have any interwiki links or only have one or two (one example I checked only had a link to the French Wikipedia). Could something be clarified here? It doesn't seem right that our births and deaths section are too-Anglophone and/or European-centric. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 05:56, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to that discussion? From what I know, the linked person should at least have a decent article in the English Wikipedia, and if the (English) article does not exist, it would probably be deleted by other maintenance-user. In my opinion, I would encourage people to create the English article of the non-Anglophone people instead of using interwiki links. However, I'm not very focused on the births and deaths section, so this is just my opinion.--Rochelimit (talk) 07:36, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Rochelimit: The discussion was at Wikipedia talk:Days of the year/Archive 4#June 11 and removal of entries by Deb. Although no consensus was reached as to what the guidelines for item inclusion in birth and death sections were, it was suggested that articles on people with less than five interwiki links should be removed from the sections. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 07:43, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I suggest that the criteria for inclusion is the quality of the article (e.g. Good article or higher, B-class or higher etc) as this would remove any time consuming and entirely subjective decision-making over who is "important enough" for inclusion. This would also have the helpful side effect of motivating editors to improve the quality of articles on their favourite people in order for them to be included, thus improving the encyclopedia as a whole. MurielMary (talk) 08:18, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: I think the proposal to create a new rule is quite reasonable, but a bit complicated because you have to establish something first. But then again, I'm not really that active on the Birth and Death section, so... I really don't know. For me, there should be a balance between too many names in B&D section and the attempt to regulate this (shouldn't be too harsh). For me, the only way to avoid deletion by other user is to create at least a notable 300 words English wikipedia article for that person, shouldn't be that hard right? If you really want to revive the 2015 discussion on the 3 or 5 interwiki links, I think you should contact User:Deb or User:EvergreenFir, but tbh I felt that discussion has died out. You should be very active, probably my suggestion is to contact an admin that would be willing to guide you through? probably User:Mufka. But then again this strategy is probably too complicated, so I think the solution is to create at least a 300 words article for that person.--Rochelimit (talk) 08:22, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I tried to establish a rule for the Holidays & Observance section. I was quite encouraged by a user, but the discussion has died out years ago.--Rochelimit (talk) 08:24, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Likewise. I tried for ages to get the births and deaths tidied up, but since then User:Toddst1 has managed to get a new guideline/rule/whatever agreed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year whereby all the births and deaths in year articles must be accompanied by a reference; I think it's a bit unclear whether this is a reference for the person or for the date. As far as I can see, no one is making any attempt to enforce this "rule". So Anglocentricity and US-centricity still rule. Deb (talk) 13:57, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment While I agree we should avoid being too Eurocentric or Anglocentric with these things, we also need to be careful of including people whose Wikipedia articles are incorrectly formatted to accord with non-Gregorian calendars. I've found this is a significant problem with articles on pre-modern Japanese figures, and (though to an apparently lesser extent) Chinese figures; I see no reason to assume it's not similarly a problem with every other culture with their own traditional calendar. It's not a problem with, say, William Shakespeare, who lived at a time when England still used the Julian calendar, as this fact is well known among editors of English Wikipedia and discussed in the article. Most articles on Japanese people either clumsily list their dates in the Gregorian calendar without noting that they themselves used a different calendar (which means Wikipedians could port said dates over to the Days of the Year articles, but would only be right by accident) or clumsily list their dates in the Japanese calendar without noting said dates in the Gregorian calendar (which would lead to a big mess if we tried to port said dates over to these articles). So, yeah, I support Narutolovehinata's proposal, but also think this page should note the different calendars problem. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:09, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Time for a Village Pump proposal?

Not to beat a dead horse, but would it be alright if I start a discussion on this over at the Village Pump? Maybe this kind of discussion would be more active if more eyes could see it. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 11:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good! ‑‑Yodin^T 15:39, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, you don't need consensus to start a discussion, there or anywhere. Alternatively if you have formulated a definite proposal you could keep it here and make it an RfC. I wish you luck! The way it's going, we may as well write a bot to extract birth & death dates for every article about a person on Wikipedia and add them to these lists, making them several miles long for every day of the year. But the difficulties in getting agreement on ways to limit this are legion: Noyster (talk), 15:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I've started a discussion over at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Criteria for inclusion in Births and Deaths sections on Wikipedia date articles. Discussion can continue over there. Thanks. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 03:19, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Rochelimit, MurielMary, Hijiri88, Noyster I missed that this discussion had been started, so I just wanted to ping you all. Cheers, -- irn (talk) 14:28, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Removing weekday-count text

The lede-section text for counting 58 Mondays, Tuesdays (etc.) was removed on 19 April 2018 in Template:Day for each of 365 day-of-year pages ("January 2" to "December 31"), see edit: [3]. About 7 editors at wp:ANI had discussed the weekday-count text, added in 2007, as likely violating current policies of 2018, regarding wp:OR original research, or possibly wp:LEDE content for details not covered later in each page (see "Where to discuss 366 day pages" in wp:ANI permalink of 20 April 2018). The concern also includes cluttering the lede with mathematical factoids, rather than specific major issues about each particular day of the year, such as July 4 being ingrained into U.S. culture as "Independence Day" or December 25 being synonymous with Christmas Day in many nations of the world. The overall concept would be to reserve the lede to highlight major issues about each day, rather than so much about unusual mathematical day counts. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:03, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I support removal of these obscure facts from the lead (and indeed the whole article). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:09, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Since 2007? Or only since 2016?[4] Anyway, thanks. 92.19.26.167 (talk) 21:13, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Sports figures

On the project page, where there is a "specify" request for inclusion in the births and deaths, I've added: "For example, sports figures should only be included if they have accomplished something exceptional in their sport, such as breaking a world record or winning multiple Olympic gold medals".

This is a suggestion at this stage and if consensus is against me, I will remove it, but I believe we do need to take drastic action with the excessive number of run-of-the mill sportspeople who are thrown into the lists by their fans. I recently came across three international cricketers in one list. Two of them I had heard of, one I had not. I looked at their articles and two of them, albeit undoubtedly good international players, were nothing out of the ordinary. The other, Frank Tyson, was exceptional and I thought he should stay and the other two should go, so I sourced Tyson and removed the others.

I think this is a good approach for people in the sporting and entertainment industries, especially for dates in the last hundered years. Will be glad to see what other members think of this. Thank you. No Great Shaker (talk) 12:35, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you in general, but not with this edit. Viswanath was a prominent cricketer in his day. This makes it difficult to decide. For team sports, we need to look at things like the number of international caps. For other sports, we might come up with alternative criteria such as number of Formula One wins or world tennis rankings. However, DOTY is not as overcrowded as the Year articles, where we have barely started adding references to the backlog, so I've been tended to concentrate on that. Deb (talk) 17:54, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I think we also need to decide which are the prominent sports or events. I've seen large numbers of rugby league players in the lists and that is most certainly a minor sport in comparison with football, baseball, gridiron, cricket, tennis, golf, boxing, F1 and the main Olympic activities. I agree about international caps for footballers and cricketers but there is also being a key player in a highly successful club team because some very good players have effectively been sidelined from the international scene because of an outstanding incumbent. A good example of this is Norman Hunter, who died of covid recently, because he was Bobby Moore's understudy for England. I've seen the situation at Year and I'll try to help there too when time allows. Thanks for your reply, Deb. All the best and stay safe. No Great Shaker (talk) 18:14, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

The other main source of problems is the media/drama industry, especially people who have been bit-part players in some obscure TV programme. I've added a bit to the project page about this for approval which says these people must have achieved prominence within the industry. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:38, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Sports figures

On the project page, where there is a "specify" request for inclusion in the births and deaths, I've added: "For example, sports figures should only be included if they have accomplished something exceptional in their sport, such as breaking a world record or winning multiple Olympic gold medals".

This is a suggestion at this stage and if consensus is against me, I will remove it, but I believe we do need to take drastic action with the excessive number of run-of-the mill sportspeople who are thrown into the lists by their fans. I recently came across three international cricketers in one list. Two of them I had heard of, one I had not. I looked at their articles and two of them, albeit undoubtedly good international players, were nothing out of the ordinary. The other, Frank Tyson, was exceptional and I thought he should stay and the other two should go, so I sourced Tyson and removed the others.

I think this is a good approach for people in the sporting and entertainment industries, especially for dates in the last hundered years. Will be glad to see what other members think of this. Thank you. No Great Shaker (talk) 12:35, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you in general, but not with this edit. Viswanath was a prominent cricketer in his day. This makes it difficult to decide. For team sports, we need to look at things like the number of international caps. For other sports, we might come up with alternative criteria such as number of Formula One wins or world tennis rankings. However, DOTY is not as overcrowded as the Year articles, where we have barely started adding references to the backlog, so I've been tended to concentrate on that. Deb (talk) 17:54, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I think we also need to decide which are the prominent sports or events. I've seen large numbers of rugby league players in the lists and that is most certainly a minor sport in comparison with football, baseball, gridiron, cricket, tennis, golf, boxing, F1 and the main Olympic activities. I agree about international caps for footballers and cricketers but there is also being a key player in a highly successful club team because some very good players have effectively been sidelined from the international scene because of an outstanding incumbent. A good example of this is Norman Hunter, who died of covid recently, because he was Bobby Moore's understudy for England. I've seen the situation at Year and I'll try to help there too when time allows. Thanks for your reply, Deb. All the best and stay safe. No Great Shaker (talk) 18:14, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

The other main source of problems is the media/drama industry, especially people who have been bit-part players in some obscure TV programme. I've added a bit to the project page about this for approval which says these people must have achieved prominence within the industry. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:38, 2 September 2020 (UTC)