...in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into World War II. Not that you'd know that from the "On this day" section of the main page. I guess there is an iron rule that nothing mentioned in any other part of the main page makes it into the "On This Day" section (a Today's Featured Picture is an image of lifeboats rescuing sailors from a ship damaged in the attack), but that seems like a strange rule to me.
Nathan
On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 17:05, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
...in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into World War II. Not that you'd know that from the "On this day" section of the main page. I guess there is an iron rule that nothing mentioned in any other part of the main page makes it into the "On This Day" section (a Today's Featured Picture is an image of lifeboats rescuing sailors from a ship damaged in the attack), but that seems like a strange rule to me.
I can see the motivation behind that rule. Would you really want the "On this day" section, featured article, featured image, and DYK to be given over to the Pearl Harbor attack every December 7th? What about devoting the whole Main Page to the creation of the United Nations every October 24th, or to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand every June 28th, or to the Battle of Talikota every January 26th*, or to the founding of Rome every April 21st? All were extremely notable historical events, after all, and adding those would keep us from being too US- or UK-centric.
The rule is arbitrary, and I'd be fine allowing 2 mentions of the same event. But having a fixed limit like that keeps the Main Page from becoming overrun by history-related articles; it spreads the newbie influx around; it lets us catch a wider field of potential editors; and, because our articles are skewed to relatively recent topics in the Anglosphere, it helps reduce our systemic biases by forcing consideration of other topics.
*Yes, I had to look that date up. Article needs work, btw; anybody have good sources on south Indian history?
On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com wrote:
On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 17:05, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
...in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into World War II. Not that you'd know that from the "On this day" section of the main page. I guess there is an iron rule that nothing mentioned in any other part of the main page makes it into the "On This Day" section (a Today's Featured Picture is an image of lifeboats rescuing sailors from a ship damaged in the attack), but that seems like a strange rule to me.
I can see the motivation behind that rule. Would you really want the "On this day" section, featured article, featured image, and DYK to be given over to the Pearl Harbor attack every December 7th? What about devoting the whole Main Page to the creation of the United Nations every October 24th, or to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand every June 28th, or to the Battle of Talikota every January 26th*, or to the founding of Rome every April 21st? All were extremely notable historical events, after all, and adding those would keep us from being too US- or UK-centric.
I can understand not devoting the whole main page to a single topic, and haven't (and wouldn't) argue in favor that. That doesn't necessarily lead to barring anything featured elsewhere from the "On this day" box, however. Perhaps there are folks who are scraping just the On this day section, or people who look there for interesting tidbits on the date. Or expect to look there to find articles on the day's events in history. Excluding Pearl Harbor (or anything similarly notable) from OTD because a related content item is featured elsewhere on the page suggests that the event itself is not notable enough to be listed on OTD. I doubt many readers will realize it was kept out only because, for instance, a DYK ran on the USS Arizona. (There are quite a few articles and images related to Pearl Harbor, where any mention of them would include a reference to Pearl Harbor... Does that mean featuring any of them on Dec 7 excludes the event itself from OTD?).
Nathan
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:55 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
day's events in history. Excluding Pearl Harbor (or anything similarly notable) from OTD because a related content item is featured elsewhere on the page suggests that the event itself is not notable enough to be listed on OTD. I doubt many readers will realize it was kept out only
There is an assumption in this thread that the "On this day" shows the five most notable events that happened on this day, in history. Is that true? If it were, we would see a cycle that repeats every year, with the same five events every year. Is that a good thing?
Personally, I'm very much in favour of "on this day" highlighting less well known events, rather than the bleeding obvious.
Steve
On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 18:55, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps there are folks who are scraping just the On this day section, or people who look there for interesting tidbits on the date. Or expect to look there to find articles on the day's events in history.
True. OTD's contents won't change substantially from year to year, so perhaps the wise and attractive admins who manage the Main Page could let OTD do its own thing. The OTD box could also potentially be restructured a bit to draw more attention to the main article for whichever day.
(There are quite
a few articles and images related to Pearl Harbor, where any mention of them would include a reference to Pearl Harbor... Does that mean featuring any of them on Dec 7 excludes the event itself from OTD?).
Who says we can only feature Pearl Harbor-related articles or images on December 7? The daily FA and FP should reflect our best works, whether or not they're related to some significant anniversary. If that means that the article on the USS Arizona is featured on the Main Page in February, then that's fine by me.
2009/12/8 Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com:
Who says we can only feature Pearl Harbor-related articles or images on December 7? The daily FA and FP should reflect our best works, whether or not they're related to some significant anniversary. If that means that the article on the USS Arizona is featured on the Main Page in February, then that's fine by me.
That said, people like to match articles to dates. I know Raul sometimes takes requests for the Featured Articles, within reason and with planning.
- d.
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 4:03 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/12/8 Jim Redmond jim@scrubnugget.com:
Who says we can only feature Pearl Harbor-related articles or images on December 7? The daily FA and FP should reflect our best works, whether or not they're related to some significant anniversary. If that means that the article on the USS Arizona is featured on the Main Page in February, then that's fine by me.
That said, people like to match articles to dates. I know Raul sometimes takes requests for the Featured Articles, within reason and with planning.
There is a whole process now for requesting a main page featured article slot. Mainly because we have more featured articles being produced than there are available slots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/requests
Carcharoth
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
There is a whole process now for requesting a main page featured article slot. Mainly because we have more featured articles being produced than there are available slots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_article/requests
Wow. Don't these people realise we have an encyclopaedia to write?
Steve