Talk:Current events/Archive 5

Iraqi context

I'm not quite sure where the previous tradition of...

• Iraqi Occupation and Insurgency

...came from. It links to the Iraqi resistance page under the title 'Insurgency', which on an Iraqi insurgency page is criticised as a 'carefully chosen' and NPOV word to legitimise the occupation. Furthermore, it sports a superfluous capital. I have changed the previous few days this month to...

• Iraqi Occupation and resistance

...where the less subjective 'resistance' is used to link to the similarly titled page, Iraqi resistance.

Austrian election

67.100.122.101 22:11, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC): On another election topic, I see Austrian presidential election, 2004 has appeared for probably the third or fourth time, still without an actual article behind it. User:Wernher is the latest one to add it. I would contend it is worthless to put a link in the sidebar without a decent and up-to-date article to link to. If it isn't worth writing something long-lived about the subject, it doesn't belong in the Current events sidebar.

Presumably Austrian politics are very boring and no one wanted to write an article on it. It's not a contest I've been following, but I've just hacked out an ultrastub to fill the gap. On the wider point: yes, it probably is useless to list an election without a page behind it. And, in the weeks running up to the election, how hard can it be to scribble down a page with the date and main candidates? "Could Do Better". –Hajor 22:39, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know about the others, but my reason for adding the link was that I quite simply felt it should be there along the other election result articles -- and from my admittedly not very long Wikipedia experience I had a hunch, right or wrong, that once the link was in place, someone with a firmer grip of Austrian politics than myself would feel the 'duty' to contribute a snippet of info in the article. Then, as the wiki-ball gets rolling... (and so forth). The very least would be a non-link text marker in the style of the other election result links, to notify about the election.

As for the 'entertainment value' of Austrian politics, I actually think it's a relatively interesting country to follow wrt the fuss about Haider, Austria and the EU, etc, plus I feel that exactly because internationally we usually do not get that much news from Austria ('international' here denoting the non-German-speaking world) all the more reason for us to encourage the spreading of knowledge about that country and its internal affairs. Phew. --Wernher 23:50, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Getting the ball rolling" -- fair enough. And, of course, it worked. –Hajor 00:47, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

67.100.125.106 01:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC): I disagree; what got it rolling was an entry on this talk page. For weeks leading up to the election people have added that link to the elections sidebar. We'd all wait, sometimes a day, sometimes longer, no one ever wrote the article so someone would eventually delete the worthless link. Now that the election is over, we did finally get you and User:Adam Carr to start something, and that is certainly commendable.

Well, it's inclusion on the sidebar gave you the impetus to comment here, which gave me the impetus to start the stub, but yes, you're right. And has it been coming and going from the sidebar over the past few weeks? If so, it totally slipped under my radar. –Hajor 01:25, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

67.100.125.106 01:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC): IMHO however the best role that the current events page plays is as an excuse to use recent world events as a way to highlight a well-written article, ideally one you've just created. I've been watching the Current events page for maybe a year, and I've concluded that it is a lousy source of news for its readers. I also think it can be a really good way to expose wikipedians to topics they might not already care about. The attributes that make wikipedia strong are its open editing policies and the unusual and evolving mix of sub-cultural affiliations among its contributors. These are weaknesses for a current events blog. What I want for a news blog is a characterizable point-of-view, not a NPOV. But current events here end up being a random and yet boring collection; random for the painted iceberg stories that slip in, boring because the contributors feel

compelled, in a cod liver oil kind of way, to note the events of war, international politics, and death covered much more gracefully elsewhere. And the grace I'm referring to is not in the wording of the blog items here, but in the selection of what makes it to the blog in the first place.

Let me end this unsolicited tirade by emphasizing my first point: don't add something to current events hoping that someone else will write the background article--write the article first, then add the event here.

67.100.123.21 00:08, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC): As an example, the new U.S. fifty dollar bill prompted an update to that article, followed by a new current events item.

Bangkok fire

Are the Australian and German embassies in the slum area? RickK 00:12, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No. The australian one says it's in "Bangkok's central business district." [1], and indeed the AP article quoted wrt the fire says it was in "a slum in downtown Bangkok". I guess Bangkok has slum buildings near to fancy ones. I changed the line to read "downtown" not "slum". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:06, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Changing the month

Can we wait until the last day of the month is completed around the world before moving the page? It's still April here in the U.S. (and even UTC, according to my timestamp) —Mulad 23:19, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

May 3 Deletion

Why was the news entries and headline for May 3 Deleted? By my watch it's actually May 3 across the world... Vanguard 23:57, May 3rd, 2004 (UTC)

Because those were just copied headlines. --Wik 13:09, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Wanted: women UK soldiers

I notice Hajor has removed the equivalent GB£ amount in the May 7 item regarding the 'call to action' to capture women UK soldiers. The reason why I included the GB$£ amount was just as a courtesy to the UK -- it is, after all, their soldiers who are supposed to be captured. Oh well... --Wernher 01:59, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

It seemed a little too crowded with three currencies there. No offence meant to the Britons, their currency, or anyone. The untold story is why the sheikh specified British women -- is it just because he's down in UK-held Basra? And, now that I've read around the story a bit, it seems he announced various other bounties for male soldiers, living or dead, Coalition leaders, etc., etc., so it's not quite the "Wacky Sheikh" story it might have seemed at first. –Hajor 02:29, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

April US jobs report? Maybe should be included

Links to British front pages

These links might be useful to gauge what sort of coverage a particular news item gets in the UK, it was was mentioned some time back (maybe in the Pump), but there was no link then, and the BBC only seems to provide a gateway on Mondays, even though most days are available via deep-linking.

• Daily Telegraph 2004 May 11 front page plus links to the others

Each of the following links will pop-up a window for May 10 showing the front pages of selected British newspapers.

• Daily Mail Daily Mirror Guardian Independent Times

-Wikibob | Talk 10:12, 2004 May 10 (UTC) (added May 11 and tidied)

Thanks for the links Wikibob. It would be great if we could somehow make the Daily Mirror one "go away" though :-). It's pretty embarassing displaying to the world that we have newspapers with the top half of the page on "finding your perfect bikini size" whilst the PoW abuse scandal is relegated to the second half. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:19, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Just be grateful there's not a link to the Daily Star or Daily Sport front pages. -- The Anome 16:26, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Stockline Plastics factory explosion

Barnstar

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

68.167.252.6 19:21, 12 May 2004 (UTC): It didn't take too long for another wordy counter-example to be added, this time about the Mexican Air Force, Campeche and the renowned UFO guy Jaime Maussan. Our contributor, JohnCrawford, couldn't even be bothered to discover that an article for Campeche already exists. Is there such a thing as an anti-barnstar? perhaps our contributor deserves one, for setting a bad example and failing to recognize the role of the current events page in highlighting relevant existing articles and linking to new articles you've just created.

---

Technology Event?

Could we add a technology event or calendar like Java One , Electronica (Germany), CTIA, CEBITT ?

Would like to announce: [QUALCOMM to Host Fourth Annual BREW Developers Conference, June 7-9 in San Diego ] (For deletion after June 9)Jondel 00:45, 13 May 2004 (UTC)~~

Nick Berg

The United States administration pledges to catch Nick Berg's killers - wow. Didn't they also pledge to catch the killers and mutilators of the four American contractors in Fallujah? RickK 01:19, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes they did. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 08:24, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Chalabi

Our listed source (MSNBC) claims an unknown number were arrested. An article on CNN [2] today specifically claims no one was arrested. Which is right? Rmhermen 12:56, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

Ship carrying 4,000 Hyundai cars

"A ship carrying 4,000 Hyundai cars sinks south of Singapore after colliding with an oil tanker. All crew are safe, there is no oil spill, and the cars were insured. (ABC AU)" Happy end ;) I don't believe it will be remembered in 20 years ? Ericd 00:46, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I contributed this item, so I suppose I better try to justify it. Taking "remembered in 20 years" as the measure of inclusion for argument's sake, I believe that it tells future readers various things about our time, such as that cars and oil were transported by ships in a manner that did not always assure delivery, and that major transport mishaps did not always end in sensational human or environmental tragedy. Shipwrecks are of interest for many years afterwards to divers and navigators. Also, some readers of the linked articles will be interested in what links to those and may find relevance. Although I admire your standards, being remembered in 20 years would probably exclude many of the sporting events, and you'll find a lively community at WP:VFD if you take your criteria there :-). --Zigger 19:38, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

Calendar

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

It wouldn't be very useful at the beginning of the month, since only the first would be linked. And the next month isn't linked either, so the arrow to there isn't functional. If we wanted to make a month calendar that only contained valid links, I suppose it could be useful, but as of right now, somebody is going to have to fix it every day to add a link to the new day. RickK 22:12, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

The purpose of the calendar is to serve as a table of content of the page. I fuckin hate to scroll down to a certain date cuz we are using the __NOTOC__ option. —John | Talk 23:27, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

John, I'm going to delete it. Nothing personal, but I'm not convinced that it's useful and, anyway, the links don't work. –Hajor 18:02, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I restored it cuz the links do work and well, I find it very useful. —John | Talk 20:46, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm in favour of it. The links work fine for me. This late in the month the page is 40 pages high on an 800x600 display, and remember that not all browsers have scrollbars (or equivalent) - the calendar is a very nice addition when I'm browsing with lynx. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:58, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm for it, too. Even if one does not use it, can it do any harm? David Cannon 21:31, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Ok, enjoy! Dunno why the in-page links don't work for me, though. –Hajor 22:32, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I seem to remember older versions of Mozilla having a bug regarding setting the scroll position properly when going to a specific #ed anchor. I tried it with Mozilla Firefox 0.8, Mozilla 1.6, Konqueror 3.1-13, Opera 7.23, MSIE 6.0.2800(xp), netscape 4.8, lynx 2.8.3, and even the excrable Amaya 8.3, and it works on all. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:09, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for checking, Finlay. I'd assumed it was a problem with my Opera (7.23) -- obviously not the case in light of your tests. It seems it was my date display preference: with "15 January 2001" chosen it doesn't work, but if I have "No preference" or "January 15, 2001" selected then it does. A minor bug: not one that bothers me in particular, but perhaps worth noting for future reference. –Hajor 00:03, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

We should see if we can fix that, as we don't want a useless calendar for a good portion of the userbase. I dunno if there's a way to put a non date-dependant link target in using wikimarkup? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:04, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Darfur Genocide in the Sudan

The link in the ongoing events section for "Darfur Genocide in the Sudan" links to Ethnic cleansing which might be an acceptable stop-gap measure, but the activities warrant their own article. I might get started on one ten hours hence, but if someone else wants to get started, I welcome the help. (BBC) -- Ke4roh 14:12, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Cryptfiend64 started Darfur Genocide. Thanks! -- Ke4roh 23:32, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Now rewritten and expanded at the new (and hopefully more NPOV) title of Darfur conflict. -- ChrisO 00:17, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Editorial decisions

It is with some trepadation I remove this story from May 26, 2004:

American horror film actor Scott Reiniger (Dawn of the Dead, 1978) is found to be Prince of Ghor, a province in western Afghanistan, as he is the great-great-great-grandson of adventurer Josiah Harlan, who obtained the title for himself and his heirs in perpetuity. (BBC)

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out why anyone (other than fans of the actor or residents of Ghor provence) would be interested. Unless I grossly underestimate the popularity of Reiniger, I don't think the item belongs on current events. I agree that it should be mentioned on Scott Reiniger's page and the Ghor province page.

Which brings me to the big question: What belongs on CE anyhow? We've discussed it before, and I've been generally pleased with the editorial decisions of Wikipedians as a whole. I've seen more sporting events lately, which we discussed earlier. Perhaps we should move those items to a page of their own: Current sports, for example, and we could archive those as we do CE.

I'd think some sporting events belong on CE - like the next Triple Crown winner, but since that hasn't happened since 1978, I don't think it will clutter CE.

I'd guess sporting events are of interest to people by sport, by region, and by date. Is there a good presentation for that information, or will any sporting coverage always be horribly spotty? -- Ke4roh 20:11, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Correct call on the actor, IMHO -- cute, quirky story, but the guy is far from being famous. Re sports: yes, let's start Current Sporting Events on 1 June. The Olympics are just round the corner, and it'd be a shame to restrict our coverage of them because of space constraints (or rampant deletionism) on this page. –Hajor 21:49, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Counting back, I reckon there are 14 sporting stories listed so far for the month of May, including sports politics (awarding of Olympics/Football World Cup). Is a "current sporting events" page really necessary? A disadvantage of a second page is that it opens up duplication issues (see also the several pages recording people's deaths). At what point does a "current sporting event" become a "current event"? The Champions League final, for instance, is news across Europe. In fact you could make a case for almost every one of the 14 sporting stories for May remaining on this page. (If the awarding of the Abel Prize for Maths makes current events, then surely the longest tennis match in history does too.) Having said that, a current sporting events page would be good for news a little lower down the sporting ladder. However, I wouldn't want to open the floodgates to a torrent of minor league baseball results :-) (or non-league football results, for that matter). Euro 2004 starts in June: I'd expect to see

all results from that on a current sporting events page, and the final result promoted to be a current event. Ramble over... --Avaragado 00:03, May 29, 2004 (UTC)

Actually I'd expect all the Euro 2004 scores to appear on 2004 UEFA European Championship, where we've already got spaces set up for all of them! Arwel 22:04, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Fair point. But isn't that also an argument for not having a current events page, since everything on that page should also be recorded elsewhere? --Avaragado 22:15, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Then I'm convinced it's not bad with those 14 stories on the page. Yes, the top events should be included, and link to the appropriate stories. I'll leave it to the sports fans to decide which sports are worthy of CE and which aren't. ;-) -- ke4roh 00:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Ronald Reagan

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

Not to mention it's fairly significant. Tomorrow needs to see the D-Day anniversary on top, however. When Reagan's body lies in state in the Capitol, that should be at the top of the front page, and also the day of the funeral. (All future page-toppers barring more momentous news, of course.) orthogonal 00:05, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This month's deaths

I have noticed a practice over the last couple of months of removing deaths after a couple of weeks. I think this rather strange, and would prefer to preserve the deaths section listing of especially prominent individuals who died the current month regardless of whether they died at the beginning or end of the month. Consider it this way: if you go to the June 2004 page ten years from now, you'd expect to see Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles listed under the heading "Deaths in June". Does this seem reasonable? -- ke4roh 02:24, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

OK. Knocking them off after a week or so was originally my suggestion to keep that section of the sidebar nice and unobtrusive (and dynamic) while it was still a new feature and under threat of removal; and that phase belongs in the past now. So let's do what you suggest -- leave them up there for the duration of the month. We've been doing a very good job of selecting the important ones and ignoring the B-list, so I think we can allow ourselves another couple of cm of column space. As long as we stop well short – well short – of duplicating the Recent Deaths page. –Hajor 04:18, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

China

Is there any reference for the Wikipedia story from China. I can see no mention of it on Google News or the BBC - or is this 'inside information'? Agendum 10:49, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Inside information, i.e. Chinese contributors report on the mailing list it's blocked. It most certainly hasn't hit the news yet - David Gerard 11:10, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Brilliant, now we are banned in China! May I request a link to the mailing list message at the Current events entry? Cheers. -- Kaihsu 13:53, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Report from user, suggestion to wait for confirmation, ideas on what to do. I'm removing this from the Current Events as not confirmed yet - David Gerard 14:11, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I used a Chinese proxy and got "this page cannot be displayed". That means it is banned, according to me. More commmentary at internet censorship in China.--Jiang 22:26, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Current suggested action on wikipedia-l is not to make a big fuss yet until we know just why it's banned - e.g. wikimedia specifically, or an IP block we're a side-effect of, or whatever - the idea being to allow them to unban it without an untoward fuss. i.e., this is politics now, and massive publicity may not be the most effective move - David Gerard 22:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

And in the meantime we should de-list the entry on this page which refers to it. Otherwise somebody is likely to pick up the story. The listing is also a bad idea since it is journalism and not just stating what third party news services have reported. The link to a Wikipedian's "news page" is a laughable attempt to make the entry look legit. I suggest immediate removal of the item until a real news agency picks it up (even Slashdot will do). I will do this myself in an hour. --mav 23:45, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's made the tech press [3] and that link's being added to CE already - David Gerard 16:33, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yep - it's real news now. Disregard my message. --mav

Me prepares to offer database dumps over freenet.

Jiang Yanyong

Jiang Yanyong's wife, Hua Zhongwei, is reported to been freed from detention incommunicado in China and returned to the couple's Beijing home.

This story needs a news link. KirbyMeister 16:18, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Bolding important link

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

Paul Johnson

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

Any opinions? I don't know the answer. -- ke4roh 00:19, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

SpaceShipOne an airship?

Re: the SpaceShipOne item of 21 June someone has reverted my earlier fix (airship-->aircraft) back to airship. I thought airships were lighter-than-air aircraft. Could somebody enlighten me here, or correct the item if I'm right? --Wernher 00:44, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

some anon pasted in a whole version, undoing a bunch of things. You're quite right - aircraft (or the american equivalent, airplane) is correct, and airship is wrong. Perhaps spaceplane is best, however. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:47, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Percolating the big events to the top

Our Current events page makes for a good diary, and the sidebar helps us to get a summary of deaths, ongoing events, etc. How about we add a section (to the sidebar?) to highlight the big events of the month? That would make for much easier and more interesting scanning through pages of (recent) history. -- ke4roh 01:15, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Intriguing. Be bold; float an idea out on the page (sidebar?); let's see how it looks. –Hajor 13:26, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Major Microsoft crack

I changed "Computer criminals place malicious software on major bank and corporate websites, infecting those using Windows Internet Explorer to view the pages. Microsoft has no patch. Security experts advise against any use of Windows Internet Explorer." to "It is revealed that computer criminals have broken into thousands of Web servers and possibly millions of user computers using security holes in Microsoft Internet Information Server and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Security experts advise against any use of Internet Explorer." but David Gerard reverted it saying it was not concise enough.

The old headline is not as informative and is also partially inaccurate. None of the articles I read suggested bank web sites were particularly targetted. In fact here's a [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22217.107.218.147%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N&filter=0 list of one-time hijacked web sites recorded by Google] and none were financial institutions at a glance. Also, the new headline is smaller, takes into account that this has been happening for a while, explains that Internet Information Server is part of the problem, and does a better job of showing the scale of the attack by using the word "millions". It's also smaller. The mechanics of the attack are missing but I don't think they belong in a headline anyways.

I think the new headline is much better. Tom 00:29, 2004 Jun 26 (UTC)

A bank site (specifically a credit union) was the FIRST site targeted, as per the first link - David Gerard 00:38, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Microsoft has no patch. Security experts advise against any use of Internet Explorer on Windows - are those two statements both factual and NPoV ? Andy Mabbett 08:06, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Alarming! But, in reference to that last comment, Id say, if it's factual then it's NPoV. --bodnotbod 08:33, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

If you read the links (possibly useful when questioning a report), the first is true and the second is what they are in fact advising - David Gerard 09:40, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Let's see:

ZEDNET: Besides choosing the highest security settings for Internet Explorer, Windows users could download an alternate browser, such as Mozilla or Opera.

14850: They should perform day-to-day operations from an account with no administrator privileges, and configure Internet Explorer [Microsoft's web browser] to restrict which web sites can run scripts and which can't

USCERT: US-CERT recommends that end-users disable JavaScript unless it is absolutely necessary.

SANS ISC: if possible turn off javascript, or use a browser other then MSIE until the current vulnerabilities in MSIE are patched.

Which of thsoe advises against any use of Internet Explorer on Windows? Andy Mabbett 16:37, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

ZDNet: NetSec's Houlahan advocated drastic action. "I told my wife, unless it is absolutely necessary and unless you are going to a site like our banking site, stay off the Internet right now," he said. Evidently you didn't scroll down that far. - David Gerard 17:17, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

And for the plural, Miami Herald (just added to the page): Security experts noted that users can avoid this particular problem by using alternative browsers such as Netscape, Mozilla or Opera. Will that do, or should that text be added to the story as well? - David Gerard 17:32, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In your first example, stay off the Internet right now != Security experts advise against any use of Internet Explorer on Windows; in your second, can avoid this particular problem by using X != Never do Y. Andy Mabbett 17:58, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Today's story: attack blunted (Russian server containing Trojan shut down), IE holes still unpatched. Someone needs to write Download.ject - David Gerard 17:50, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)