Talk:Current events

Previous discussions:

• /Archive 1
• /Vote on tense (archived)

An important reason to put some effort into this section is that people at the search engines will be searching on current events stories. Probably a very significant percentage of searches on Yahoo, Google, etc., on any given day, are on topics that are big at the moment. If we make an effort of adding relevent links to the Current events page, and then make an effort to create good articles for whatever that page is linking to, we will be able to get lots of traffic from the search engines. We will also establish a reputation for being a place where people can come to find information on stuff that is happening right now.

So be bold in adding new topics to Current events, and feel free to improve the organization of the page.

- Tim

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Instructions for archiving this page:

Each month, we archive this by moving the page to a month page (e.g. December 2002), and then create a new "Current events" page. This has the effect of archiving the "Older versions" with the month, and giving us a fresh history every month (and keeps the log of older versions managably small)

Procedure in a nutshell:

1. move this page to "month year" of last month
2. edit this page to copy the header text (and any events from this month)
3. go back to "Current events"
4. edit it to remove the redirect & paste the header text

(feel free to refine these instructions - RobLa 07:13 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC))

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Discussions about naming of the entry regarding to US, fires, journalists, Baghdad moved to Talk:2003_invasion_of_Iraq/April_8_US_fires_on_journalists

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Anyone else think it's time to remove the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster as an ongoing event? -- stewacide 23:17 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

No - NASA just found one of the main data recorders last week and are still looking for more. They are also very much still trying to gather and analyze other data to find out just what happened. --mav

moved
*The Los Angeles, California City Council votes unanimously (14-0) to use the name South Los Angeles, rather than South Central, when referring to the region in all future city documents. [1] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030409/ap_on_re_us/south_central_4)

To where did you move it? Kingturtle 05:40 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Kingturtle. I moved it "here". I had the weird feeling this info was somehow not of major importance enough to be on the current event pages. Don't get me wrong, I am sure it is "very" important for people living in LA, but is it a news of major impact ? I can think of dozens to put there with similar impact on a similar number of people (and the current event page is already quite big). And in fact, reading this line, I don't even see why it is important. I "have to" go to the external article to understand why it is. So...if Wikipedia current events is "just" meant to be a repository of external links, I think it is not very interesting.

So, I just removed it to attract attention on it. If someone else thinks it deserve to be there, he/she will put it back. But...if so...could you maybe "enrich" the information a little bit...explain why it is so important, put some internal links to interesting articles dealing with the topic this vote is supposed to be about ? User:anthere

Other name changes of towns or places may be historically insignificant, but this case has larger implications. It has to do with confronting the image popular culture has on black America. It has to do with breaking away from the associations "South Central" has with black people and black culture. Kingturtle 18:23 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

Well...then...could you explain that briefly and neutrally in the news comment, with maybe one or two relevant wikipedia links ? (black culture...) ant

Why do we have a two column entry at the top of the page? IMHO, it's ugly. -- Zoe

I agree. It looks weird. Where was that change discussed ? Tim

We have right-aligned tables in many different articles. Having this one puts the current events at the top of the page. Without that people with lower res displays only see background articles in their first screen. IMO it looks great - like the Main Page. A very logical and elegant way to display data. --mav 03:49 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

There, is that better? --mav

personally, i liked it better before, when it was all aligned along the top. Kingturtle 21:25 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

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Point of contention: People saying things are rarely newsworthy. Actions are. Lets have less items in Current Events that are simply people saying this, that, and the other. Post stories about genuine events. Kingturtle 17:35 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC) For example, one day Fleischer says "We've won...thanks to the Pentagon." The next day Bush says "Our victory in Iraq is certain, but not complete." We can go on and on with these quotes. Fleischer's entire job is to create quotes for newsstories every day. Neither of these are newsworthy. Find an event instead that supports the claims. For example, find a key battle victory and report that. Or find a key capture. Please stop with quoting sound bites. Kingturtle 17:40 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I agree in general, although in this case announcements relating to a major turning point in a highly visible war would seem important enough for a bullet point or two. I've been thinking about amassing a list of official statements about the 2003 Iraq war -- perhaps organizing them into a sort of timeline. I'm always interested in comparing what politicians and other public figures say versus what historians and journalists determine really happened. --Uncle Ed 17:48 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Statements from statesmen sometimes have relevence. Statements from press secretarties have little use for news stories. Ari Fleischer is not an official. He is a spin doctor. Which has more value? Fleischer say the war is over or Bush saying the war is over. There is no contest. Obviously, Bush's words are emmensely more important than Fleischer's. Maybe my initial reaction was reading an Ari Fleischer comment in a Current Event. Kingturtle 18:46 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

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regarding 4/14 story of Bush quote. Nothing in the cited reference mentions or surmises "satisfaction," so I removed it. Also, I aligned the quotes in the Current Event with the quotes in the reference. We don't know from the reference that Bush said "our victory." Maybe a better reference can be found for this Current Event. The reference given is quite lengthy and only mentions Bush briefly. Kingturtle 19:05 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

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regarding the 4/13 story of the Fleischer quote. It really is two separate Current Events. One is Fleischer giving kudos to the pentagon. The other is the Washington Times telling us what the next moves are for Operation Iraqi Freedom. So I made two separate Current Events. P.S. When I looked at the reference, the Washington Times article had today's date on it. Maybe their site puts a current date on all pages viewed? Kingturtle 19:23 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

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In the 4/16 story posted about US/North Korea negotiations, the wiki-author wrote "following the completed invasion of Iraq"...but there was nothing in the cited article to support such a claim. So I removed the claim. Please stay true to the references you cite. Kingturtle 00:39 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

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How about including a calendar in the margins for each specific month/year page? Will it take too much memory? Something like the calendars at List_of_historical_anniversaries - Brettz9 00:46 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

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posing nuke as opposed to posing nude is the best freudian slip i've evern seen in the wikiworld. Kingturtle 18:10 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

I was thinking much the same thing, especially considering the latest news about NK hasn't even made it in there yet.... -- John Owens 18:16 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

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minesweeper, you beat me too it. that mercury news item is a nice one. Kingturtle 07:05 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Is this really a current event? And if so, is it NPOV? : In Great Britain it is now time to decide whether to join in use of the euro or not. Supporters and opponents are talking loudly. Financial minister Gordon Brown should decide soon whether to join or to not. -- Zoe

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Re May 11: Is there a reason why 'Stakeknife' 's name is not being published here? Given that it is published on, for instance, BBC News, I can't think of a reason not to. Pcb21 15:04 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

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Heh, I think the U.S. paper currency is starting to look more and more like European, kind of funny given how "we"'ve mocked theirs in the past. ;) -- John Owens 19:01 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. Weren't the old silver certificates rather blue? Or is that meant to mean it's the first paper with colours other than those? -- John Owens 19:05 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Good question -- although most definitely "greenbacks," the old silver certificates did have blue -- and red too, I think! Slrubenstein

This statement needs clairification then. MB 19:18 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

If someone desides to change the information here to make it clearer, or correct, please also do so at United States dollar.

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Point of clarification: we're supposed to put news items under the day they occur, not on the day they first make the news, right?

In general yes. But sometimes the mere discovery of something is an event in and of itself and should be noted on the day the discovery was made (like when the body of Chandra Levy was found or the day that a huge conspiracy is uncovered). --mav 23:13 21 May 2003 (UTC)

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I would just like to point out the irony in the statement "In Britain, the child-killer Mary Bell has won her High Court[?] battle for anonymity", in case it isn't immediately apparent. ;) We didn't even post Stakeknife's real name. -- John Owens 16:27 21 May 2003 (UTC)

Nor have we published Mary Bell's current name. :P Evercat 02:20 27 May 2003 (UTC)

Well, in my defense, I'd like to point out that at the time of my comment (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&oldid=946918), that wasn't made clear here, and I throw myself on the mercy of this court. ;p -- John Owens 05:02 27 May 2003 (UTC)

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Regarding the Yale story, there are still conficting reports...

• An explosive device went off [2] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_re_us/yale_explosion_35)
• An explosion rocked an empty classroom [3] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030522/ts_nm/blast_yale_dc_6)
• A bomb exploded in an empty classroom [4] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030522/ap_on_re_us/yale_explosion_29)
• A explosion of unknown cause rocked a classroom [5] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030521/ts_alt_afp/us_explosion_030521231651)

Until there is confirmation that there was a device, lets leave it out of the Current Events article. Kingturtle 05:55 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Vagueness is always good when initial reports are confused. Another site to check for updates is Yale's site (http:www.yale.edu): click on News and go from there. (Basically though, as far as this talk page is concerned, and donning my Amazing Kreskin hat, there's nothing in that building that would blow up all by itself). -- Someone else 06:19 22 May 2003 (UTC)

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I believe the tax plan was passed on the 22nd not the 23rd, could someone confirm this? MB 20:25 23 May 2003 (UTC)

The Senate definitely did its passing on the 23rd, around 2 A.M. [6] (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/23/tax.cuts.ap/index)-- John Owens 20:28 23 May 2003 (UTC)

On second thought, of course, while that's the 23rd in Washington, and even later in the day UTC, it was the 22nd where the Wikipedia server is located. Do we use local date of events, UTC date, or Wikipedia local date at time of events? This must've been established at some point.... -- John Owens 20:32 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Good point... I went by the source article that I used. Reuters said that Congress passed the bill on Friday. That being said, I think we probably cannot have a generalized time frame that is in use. Sometimes a UTC will be more appropriate, and sometimes local time will be the only one that makes sense. --Dante Alighieri 20:37 23 May 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Should we just assume that any time or date is either UTC or local time? Should there be a policy that it be one, or both? Slrubenstein

I think, in the interest of NPOV, the only fair thing would be to use the date at the time at the point on the Earth directly under the Moon. It's the only way I can think of that doesn't favour one country or time zone over another. Except the Loonies, and they don't count. -- John Owens 20:49 23 May 2003 (UTC)

You've clearly lost it. The only fair thing to do is always use 11:05 4 May 1989 (UTC) for ALL dates and times. That will finally standardize things. ;) --Dante Alighieri 20:53 23 May 2003 (UTC)

alright, I just thought I heard this on the news yesterday after work, in fact, I am almost certain I did. I'll check. MB 20:50 23 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that it was passed yesterday, but today President Bush said he will quickly sign the $350-billion tax-cut package. I'm going to chck the congressional record http://thomas.loc.gov. MB 20:54 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Alright, I was wrong, it was today, here is the vote info if anyone is interested: http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2003&rollnumber=226 MB 21:03 23 May 2003 (UTC)

While that agrees well with the time I quoted, I was talking about a Senate vote, and that's a House vote you've got there, on adjourning. What's the exact connection? Did the House have to vote again right after the Senate passed theirs to approve changes made in the Senate version? -- John Owens 21:09 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Yes, The House voted to ajourn, b/c the Senate voted the bill into law. It pretty much went like this:

Yesterday house voted for bill.

today Senate voted for bill.

then house voted to go home and party, and senate agreed. MB 21:22 23 May 2003 (UTC)

OK, I get it now. So it was a House Party, then, eh? -- John Owens 21:26 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Can someone find the vote results and link them to the current event? Kingturtle 21:45 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Done. -- John Owens 22:08 23 May 2003 (UTC)

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could someone add [7] (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=33&u=/nm/20030524/ts_nm/life_town_dc)? thanks! Kingturtle 19:42 24 May 2003 (UTC)

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Is that Mike Tyson story really news? Now, if one day he would shut up for a second, THAT would be news. The fact that he's still spouting off nonsense is not worthy of a news headline, is gossip, and is merely docmenting the rantings of a rather sad mental midget. Jordan Langelier

Agreed, it's stupid. -- stewacide

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'Monkeypox' (which wiki has no article for) has crept into the US. Is this newsworthy? It has spread from African rats to prairie dogs in American pet stores where a few individuals have been affected. Usedbook 12:49 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It certainly is. Stick it in: someone will make an article. The Anome 12:54 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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What was wrong with having the death of Richard Cusack[?] on this page Mavric?

It is not an event so I moved it to recent deaths. Now if he was killed then that would warrent listing here because the act of murder would be an event. --mav

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Mav, that may be ugly in your browser, and hopefully there's a different way we can do it; but right now it's horrible. The text won't scan; I'm getting lines like:

record and lend support to the "out of Africa" single origin War in Iraq

people. A helicopter attack in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Afghanistan timeline

announces that his government will conform to yesterday's Related Pages

- Hephaestos 03:22 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What browser are you using? It sounds like your browser is not able to view vertical lines. That is bad. Perhaps more spacing between the box and the text will help? --mav 20:13 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'm using Omniweb (probably explains the vertical lines, one of the reasons I chose it is because Explorer et al. put lines between CSS divisions here, which also looks bad).

Does this (/w/wiki.phtml?title=Current_events&oldid=1028426) look good in your browser? It looks good in mine. --mav

That looks great in mine. - Hephaestos 21:30 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. I'm glad we are both happy now. :) --mav

What the hell are you people doing to that poor box? In case you didn't notice I copied that formatting DIRECTLY from the front page. Also, it rendered exactly the same in IE and Mozilla. Having lines all the way around is ugly and pointless: what are you seperating it from on the other sides? -- stewacide 06:26 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I slightly favor the single vertical line too but appently Hephaestos' browser can't see a single vertical line and thus the words form the events and the items in the box are only separated from each other by a larger than normal space. So we have to balance the way it looks. --mav

If his broswer can't render something are basic as vertical lines perhapse he should pick a better browser. IE and Mozilla both render them exactly the same (I'm going to assume Opera does as well), which together account for ~99.987% of all users. I'm betting there are LOTS of perfectly correct pages on this site that OmniWeb cab't render correctly as well.

I simply don't understand the logic of picking a browser BECAUSE it doesn't render something it should, and then complaining... that it doesn't? I'd point out that the main page uses a line made in the same way - so I'm guessing he can't view that either... I guess we should draw an ugly box around it then just for him! :)

Just on principle alone, I don't think we (at Wiki) should start designing around the faults of non-compliant browsers. -- stewacide

Ahem. Whenever possible we should make sure our pages at least work in whatever browser a person is using. Sometimes that means we have to do things that are not as elegant or as pretty as the most recent browser can handle. Navigator 4.x, for example, sometimes has trouble with relative links (messing up which directory to look into for files). So to combat this I have had to copy the same files into many different directories for a website at work in order for Navigator 4.x to find the files it is looking for (it is looking in the subdirectory instead of the directory where the file is supposed to be). So I hacked a solution instead of being a prick and telling my users that they should upgrade their browser. From the user's point of view if the page doesn't work in their browser then the page is broken, not their browser. No amount of holier-than-now statements will change that - it will just make your users go away. --mav

Am I not typing loudly enough?

"How do folks feel about just using the smaller text size?"

Hephaestos 07:00 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If the smaller text alone is good enough to differentiate things for you then we can kill the slightly-ugly box and reinstate the more elegant vertical line. --mav

Hm. Perhaps a png of the previous line would work? On second thought then there would be problems with text-only browsers. --mav

Besides being an ugly hack, and possibly messing with text browsers/screen readers, a one-size bar simply can't fit all. In many cases it will be to short or too long depending on the users browser, resolution, font, etc. The way it was was nice looking, elegant (in that it would re-size itself to fit the user), and AFAIK 100% correct and valid html/css. -- stewacide 06:56 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

How do folks feel about just using the smaller text size? - Hephaestos 06:50 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That could work, but I don't think Wiki allows it (can you imagine how messed up looking this site would be if it did? :) -- stewacide

I'm hoping I reached a point with that last tweak where everybody's happy... :) -- Hephaestos 07:20 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Actually, Mozilla for some reason won't recognize the small tag on Wiki, so it looks the same as before (all the same sized text). It is smaller on IE though. I don't know if this is a deal-breaker (it's not like it's the first such bug: IE akready creates a grey line and Mozilla a black line for some reason).

Not a deal-breaker for me; looks fine. (As an aside, I might mention I picked this browser not because it doesn't show explicitly-placed lines, that's a rather annoying side-effect. I picked it because it doesn't render large bars between divs on all the wiki pages. Example screenshot at [8] (http://www.najakito.com/~john/etc/Explorer001.jpg)]; what I see in my usual browser is at [9] (http://www.najakito.com/~john/etc/OmniWeb001.jpg). I checked on my friend's Windows box and it does the same thing in Explorer.) - Hephaestos 07:51 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Those lines aren't some 'weird' thing that IE does - they're part of that "theme". If you don't like them you can go to preferences and pick, for instance, "Cologne Blue", and they'll be gone.

Rather than re-design Wiki, I think you should write to the makers of OmniWeb and ask them to add that very basic feature ASAP. If OmniWeb can't render the basic interface elements of the default theme correctly that's an issue for Wiki as a whole (not to mention Omni) - I only want to keep the style consistent. -- stewacide

Maybe there's some way to use CSS to make the text slightly smaller that will work on all browsers? (although all that REALLY matters, I guess, is that it works on OmniWeb or whatever flaky browser this whole thing started over). -- stewacide

Best Solution: I remember that when I first implimented the one-line style, I messed around with offsetting the box from the top to see how it would look (I ended up not using it).

If the problem is that without the vertical black line the lines of text are running into each other, Hephaestos could offset the box from the top untill the text in the box and the main text are staggered on his system (I don't think it should take more than ~3 pixles). It's still a hack, but at least the other 99.99% of us won't notice any difference. -- stewacide 08:50 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Does the latest US sporting events really count as news? I don't think anybody would be impressed if I posted the results of last night's NSW v. QLD rugby league match ... Tarka 06:07 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• This particular baseball event is news worthy because it is unprecidented. Nothing of its kind has ever occurred in 127 years of Major League Baseball. Kingturtle 07:05 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Please, people, be careful with how you phrase things. All too often what has happened, is happening and is going to happen are being mixed up, giving completely false impressions. For example, someone put in the Lord Chancellor is replaced by a new Department for Constitutional Affairs. Wrong! The Lord Chancellor is going to be replaced by the new Department of Constitutional Affairs. The new department has been created. The Lord Chancellor has not yet been abolished and probably won't be until the next parliamentary session at the earliest (Oct/Nov 2003-June 2004) when the legislation to do that is passed by both Houses and receives the Royal Assent. And should the House of Lords try to block it and Blair have to resort to the Parliament Act it might be delayed for over a year, possibly longer, conceivably not happening before the next general election. Far from the Lord Chancellor being abolished as our story suggested, the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, was on the Woolsack today chairing the Lords, then as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs back in his office. Please be careful about language. FearÉIREANN 03:25 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, that was my fault. I got a bit carried away while the news was still filtering in. --rbrwr

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"Joan Laporta is elected as the new president of FC Barcelona."

Maybe it's because I'm an ignorant North American, but is this really important news? Anywhere? There are X-thousand professional sports teams in the world; are we going to start reporting every time one gets a new president/general manager? -- stewacide 05:50 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please no. --mav

I imagine someone was just following the general example being set; it's getting so it's a live sports broadcast here :) Seriously though, shouldn't this page be for news items with potentially international or future ramifications, not every item that comes up, especially ones that make no sense outside of a single country? Tarka

By that logic, the following items should not be on the Current Events page:

• Cabin Fever
• Abud Sarhan (which I think personally is POV anyway)
• Mainline Airways
• Monkeypox
• Tony Blair
• Ulan Bator
• Orthodox Jew
• Same-sex marriage
• Donald Regan
• Silvio Berlusconi
• Maaouiya Ould Taya
• Erkki Tuomioja
• Space shuttle Columbia
• Martha Stewart
• Dow Jones
• Zimbabwe
• Federal Communicatons Commission
• Three Gorges Dam
  • And that's just for June. -- Zoe
    • Most of these are of have international ramifications or are of international interest. Think of it this way: would the story appear on the news in another country? Tony Blair, monkeypox, Columbia and Abud Sarhan (to pick a few) all do or did. But a baseball player having cork in his bat? Tarka

I'm a little surprised that Abud Sarhan's 200 dead sheep weren't added to the Iraqi death toll pages... Tweak[?]

I think this soccer manager thing is a new level of pointless tho'. I can understand noteing if a very important player (e.g. David Beckham) was traded or something, and the Sosa thing was pretty big news, but who seriously gives a f**k about a management change at some Spanish soccer team? -- stewacide

There's a simple solution, of course -- create a separate Current events in sports[?] page. --Eloquence 14:24 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Well, that'd mean we'd have to create another front page section too :) -- ilyanep 14:35 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not necessarily; it's harly important enough to warrant a link from here, let alone the main page. It's only sport, FFS! ;-) James F. 18:42 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the English edition of the fifth installment to the Harry Potter series, starts selling worldwide. - does this mean that editions in other languages appeared earlier? RickK

No, it means that other editions of this volume in other languages haven't yet appeared, but the English version is selling all over the world (the French edition is due out December 3 according a piece in The Guardian yesterday). --Camembert

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Which Real fired its manager? I would think it's Real Sociedad, given the context, but it ought to be clarified. -- John Owens 04:39 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Moved here, just in case the baby's non-fatal plummet turns out to be of international importance:

• In Peekskill, New York, a 10 month old baby girl survives a seven story fall. Her father, Willie Williams, takes her to the hospital, where she was treated for bruises and cuts, but Mr. Williams is later arrested on charges of attempted murder. [10] (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/06/23/baby.tossed.ap/index)

James F. 16:43 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Oh no... Can we please not have that pink box thing on this page? Are these things going to spread like a disease throughout the entire Wikipedia? What other pages - apart from the Main Page and this page - contain these ghastly constructions? -- Oliver P. 07:33 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Agreed (what a surprise :-)) -- James F. 12:47 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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What can we do to rename the HK 'ongoing event'? "Hong Kong Basic Law" doesn't mean anything to anyone not already familiar with the situation; "Hong Kongese constitutional law" does, but is far too long. I can't think of a suitable line. Can you? -- James F. 12:47 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oh, please. Why would the Americans attack their own puppet police force? Are the people who blame the Americans the same ones who claim that Americans dropped a missile on the mosque that was being used to train bombers? RickK 00:37 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)