Portal talk:Current events

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 Portal:Current events—more specifically, the portal's complex framework—is semi-protected, and has been since September 2006. Please update a day's current events by clicking on "Edit" in the header for that day.
For questions about the "Headlines" section, proceed to Template talk:In the news.
To suggest new items, proceed to Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates.

This page is laid out and designed as part of a set of pages. To discuss the set as a whole, see Portal talk:Contents. For more information on Wikipedia's contents system as a whole, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents.

Contents
Related pages

Important pages • Archiving the Portal | News about Wikipedia | About this Page | Adding a New Date | Suggest a Headline or Main Page In the News Item

Old Current events archives • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 (last archive up to: 1 Jan 2007)

Other old Current events discussions • Vote on tense | Setting the context | Too much analysis | Ongoing events

Portal:Current events archives • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 (last archive: 17 December 2007)

Original Current events GFDL: See October 2003 (history)

Recent changes • 2006 | 2007 | 2008

[edit] Schengen Agreement implemented in 8 EU countries tomorrow

Can someone add it please to the recent events? I think it's important. – Alensha talk 09:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! – Alensha talk 20:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proper dating

What should we do if the local date is different from the UTC date? In specific, I have a tiger attack at Portal:Current_events/2007_December_26, which I put on Wednesday, because the news broken on Wednesday, UTC. But it was 5PM Tuesday PST, where it occurred (San Francisco). The Evil Spartan (talk) 13:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Put it on Tuesday since that was the day on which it happened, even though it was no longer Tuesday UTC.-gadfium 18:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nothing about the Kenyan elections?

Isn't there a heading for the irregularities and riot scare surrounding the Kenyan national elections? Surely there's a Wikipedia article for that. 212.179.71.70 (talk) 10:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I see you've edited the article on Kenyan presidential election, 2007, and there's some coverage at Portal:Current events, so I assume you are asking for it to be included in the Headlines section. Suggestions for that section go at Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates, where there is already a discussion about suitable wording.-gadfium 19:05, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Nobody had updated the main portal to include 30th December until I did, a few minutes ago, so the daily included section wasn't being displayed. It is now, and as you can see includes the Kenyan and Pakistani news. -- Arwel (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Llaima Volcano Eruption

Shouldn't there be something about its eruption (southern chile)? Guchogu (talk) 16:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NFL results

With respect, the US results of a sport practiced and followed only in the US are not global news... 172.206.105.159 (talk) 21:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If the Canadian loonie hitting parity with the US dollar does not warrant a "headline", then neither does a streak in the NFL in the anglophone community OpusDiabolus (talk) 05:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The fact of this item still being among the most important news items at this date serves as evidence of systemic bias to readers within the wider anglophone US. Ghostoroy (talk) 08:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is news to only people in one country, and even then it's only a proportion of it. --Deadly∀ssassin(talk) 10:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Bull, we report on most of the grand slam tennis tournaments as well (for which you could say the same). A week or two ago we reported on the European championship of Handball (or something else vague). This is the most important event in american football (in the only country practicing it seriously), and as such it is on par with a "world tournament", and we always mention world tournaments of the larger sports as well. Don't be "it's an american conspiracy" over nothing. This point comes up every year, and every year the end result is the same. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:14, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
That may be true, but the handball tournament result was removed too! And actually, by stating the U.S-American tournament is on par with the European or World tournaments, you are saying that the U.S. is as important as the rest of the world together! So I think we have every right to be like "it's an american conspiracy", as it obviously isn't over nothing! --Thrane (talk) 13:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm from europe and I see no problem here. Its one of the biggest live sports events in the world and I believe it has the "highest attendance" record. It is also an important event in one of our key audiences (America, UK, Canada, Australia). And last but not least... This is not the place to discuss it :D Template talk:In the news
--TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Ha! I was right a discussion like this will crop up! --Howard the Duck 14:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Issues with Current Events

There are still some issues with the system here. Perhaps it is time that we appointed a "semi-official" editor that takes care of things ?

  • The sidebar is irregularly updated.
  • Improper archiving of months (The sidebar has not been archived since March 2007)
  • Little supervision on archived stories. ideally someone should check the RecentChanges links every week or so.
  • We have "future events" of some importance on "month in year" pages that get removed without the stories being present in archives. Why not check that they are added?
  • bad prose
  • inconsistent reporting on events between 2 or 3 days. Sometimes as an event develops its original story should be revised or more often rewritten.

In my experience Portal:Current events is lacking in many of these. I see two ways to deal with it.

  1. Name a group of editors that take care of this. (revive Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events.
  2. Name an editor that has seniority and responsibility to look after these issues much as with a newspaper or website.

Does anyone have preferences on either of these, or any other comments ? --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:07, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Since part of the portal shows up on the Main Page, I think there is precedent for some ownership here. I think three or four active editors would be easier to find than to revive a WikiProject with all its associations (and uncertainties). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:35, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I'm wrong on that: Template:In the news is transcluded onto this portal as well as the Main Page. And that template requires an admin to update. Still, this portal is just one click away from the Main Page, so it is important. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated vandalism

The headlines has recently vandalised by an unnamed editor at 82.114.160.32. She has repeatedly redirected the external news article links to a page that contains, I'm guessing, some great message. (It's non-Unicode and unreadable by my browser.) Isn't there something that could be done to stop this nonsense? o (talk) 02:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

User:82.114.160.32 has been blocked for 31 hours. If he/she vandalizes again, report it at WP:AIV; the next block will be even longer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] US presidential caucuses and primaries

Just a note I would like to mention, but I think we should only put the events surrounding the bigger primaries and caucuses such as New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, California and Michigan and not to mention all such as the Mitt Romney win in Wyoming today or other less significant caucus results in the coming weeks.--JForget 03:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] bud

--66.114.22.103 (talk) 13:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)po io[j erpiu v iiugt

[edit] Suggestion: Add section with regular updates from Wikinews

Suggestion: Add a section with regular updates from Wikinews, using the new bot, User:Wikinews Importer Bot. Check this out Portal:Current events/Wikinews, which updates items from the Current Day of the Main Page of Wikinews, and brings them over to a Wikipedia page. All that would be required would be to have a section like "Today's latest articles from Wikinews", and then just transclude {{Portal:Current events/Wikinews}} in the section itself. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 11:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC).

I think this is a great idea. Wikinews has increasingly taken more focus that originally was on Current events. Giving it more prominence seems only logical. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Great! Thanks for this good positive feedback, this is good to hear. Also it's great to foster more interconnectedness between the two projects. Cirt (talk) 22:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
  • There have been previous discussions about WikiNews' connection to Wikipedia. Current Events contains significant items referenced from news outlets, resulting in an ongoing log or historical diary about what happened on what day. WikiNews is a news outlet, and therefore is available as a reference. However references to WikiNews from Current Events are rare, since most WN articles do not have such wide broad significance that anyone would think of adding them to Current Events.
  • Please consider the lower-impact change of automatically importing WN items to the main Current Events daily sub-articles so they can be filtered. As it is, WN headlines are being given "higher significance" despite linking to uniformly lower quality and less significant articles than the ones WP volunteers manually bring over and reference from the major networks and papers. This change is unfair to WP users, and I don't see any reason for it besides politically promoting WN. Potatoswatter (talk) 23:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Two other users disagree with you. The Wikinews articles that appear on their Main Page are vetted, perhaps as much or more so than those at the Wikipedia Headlines section. For the most part, in order for something to appear at Wikinews it must also contain references from news outlets or secondary sources, and thus that is available as a reference as well, on those article pages. The top articles at Wikinews usually do have broad significance. As it is, WN headlines are being given "higher significance" despite linking to uniformly lower quality and less significant articles than the ones WP volunteers manually bring over and reference from the major networks and papers. This change is unfair to WP users, and I don't see any reason for it besides politically promoting WN. -- Who is to say that it is not the other way around, and that the Wikinews articles are better sourced and of a better quality than those at Wikipedia on similar topics? It's best to present both. Cirt (talk) 23:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Are you trying to outvote me? Currently the first headline is "KDE 4 desktop environment released." Yes it's referenced, of course. A totally unreferenced article wouldn't exactly be journalism. But it simply echoes a press release of no general interest. The sad thing is that there are totally unreferenced articles on WN. Anyone can write anything and put it on the front page. (Your "vetting" process consists of taking down inappropriate articles.) WN at its best presents local news from around the world. wikinews:"No treaty withdrawal", says Lakota elder is a really really nice, interesting article with good original reporting. But Current Events has a decidedly international bent and WikiNews is the exact opposite.
  • As for my assertions on quality, WP articles tend to be better because they have been around longer. WP works because experts on a particular topic put the article on their watchlist and maintain it. That's not possible with WN. But we're not arguing over ITN, which references updated articles. This debate is over Current Events, which references major news networks (usually AP members), which is professional reporting, versus WikiNews which is amateur. Potatoswatter (talk) 00:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • My apologies, no, I was most certainly not trying to "outvote" you, just making a note that two other editors feel it is appropriate. But I am curious, what do you mean by Please consider the lower-impact change of automatically importing WN items to the main Current Events daily sub-articles so they can be filtered. -- Which Current Events daily sub-articles do you mean? Cirt (talk) 00:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC).
  • How about now? I moved it so that it is below all of the Current Events daily sub-articles. Cirt (talk) 00:40, 12 January 2008 (UTC).
  • Every day's current events are in a new article, for example Portal:Current events/2008 January 12. If you add WN headlines directly to these pages, no modifications to the master Current Events page are necessary, and the bot is simply an "angel" for WN within the existing framework. Potatoswatter (talk) 04:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, but that would have to be done manually for every single entry. The current version is updated automatically by a bot, imported with items from Wikinews. Is it okay now that I moved it to the bottom below all of the Current Events daily sub-articles ? Cirt (talk) 04:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC).
  • I don't know what my stamp of approval is worth :vP . It's unobtrusive now, but on the other hand people won't notice it. Can the bot be adjusted to add items in Current Events format to the top of the day's events, and not remove anything from the bottom? Given the prominence of the usage, maybe the bot owner wouldn't mind making a few minor changes... Potatoswatter (talk) 12:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Hrm, it seems quite difficult to come to an agreement that you appreciate. I moved the location of the display specifically with your words in mind from above, which was to have the Current Events daily sub-articles appear first. Now, after I have done exactly that, you change your mind and say that "people won't notice it" ? I'm very confused. And what do you mean by "Can the bot be adjusted to add items in Current Events format to the top of the day's events, and not remove anything from the bottom?" The bot grabs the latest items and lists them, so we can them put that list in a table or format wherever we want to. I think it's fine now the way it is. All of the "Current Events daily sub-articles" are given prominence over anything from Wikinews, as you wished. Cirt (talk) 18:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC).
  • I don't object to putting WN on the bottom. I'm just saying if you want to restore more prominence to it, you might try using the bot to contribute as any other user to the main daily lists of current events. Those changes would be: 1. Use Current Events format (* Headline. ([wikinews])), 2. Add to Portal:Current Events/(date), and 3. Don't remove items from the bottom of the list. Anyhow don't get upset, I'm not actually contributing anything anyway besides criticism. It seemed obvious that WN now has second-class status, so I pointed that out and suggested a solution, whether you see it as a problem or not. Potatoswatter (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) This is also something to be careful with of course. There are many editors that are still not happy with the sourcing of WikiNews. It is something that I might support to run a one week test with. See what the reactions of people are, see what problems are encountered. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Any chance the wikinews banner under in the new could be removed? There are three links that all go to wikinews now, which is more than enough. Narayanese (talk) 23:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I removed it, because had similar feelings. I have also been playing a little bit with alternate ideas on the inclusion of the Wikinews headlines. User:TheDJ/Sandbox2 shows several ways in which we could group wikinews and CE items by day, but i'm not really sure I like any of them. I feel it makes the page too messy and I fear people won't be so diligent in keeping CE up to date once this is implemented. The BEST solution in my eyes is something like what Potatoswatter proposed. It would be ideal, if the bot could add the newest items since it last visit, to the top of todays CE subpage. Then users should be free to edit or remove the bot-added headline as they see fit (wikilinking, better or additional sourcing etc, titles that read less like newsheadlines and more like CE newsitems [generally a bit longer]). It has the benefit of fully keeping in line with the idea behind the CE portal (wikilinking to Wikipedia articles that are currently newstopics), while also giving a lot of visibility to Wikinews and as an extra benefit of reminding editors which topics still need to be covered for today. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:50, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] proposal for subportals

I think we can conclude that at the moment, especially the regional subportals have sort of failed... They are edited so little that they confuse people more than that they help editors with current events or history track keeping. I'm considering running an MfD for these subportals and then putting them in "cold-storage". Sports (and at times Technology) seems to be properly maintained and so is the Southeast Asia news portal (at least for a while now) and they can happily stay. But most of the other sub portals are simply unusable now and have been for months (most at least since last summer). --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Well, we could fill these "Current events subportals" in (at least the major topics with active categories at Wikinews) with the automatically updating bot, User:Wikinews Importer Bot. Then, they would all be updated regularly with new stories from Wikinews, assuming the Wikinewsians make sure to plop the articles into the relevant associated categories. Cirt (talk) 22:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC).
A discussing about several of the Current events subportals has been opened at Miscellany for deletion. You are invited to participate in discussing the fate of these subportals --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikinews Picture of the Year

Hi all,

please consider spreading the word on and voting for:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Picture_of_the_Year

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 00:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Day of the Week

I noticed that the way the day of the week on each day's events is displayed has been changed. Since (in my opinion) it looks much worse, I assume it was some sort of vandalism, but I can't figure out how it was changed. Instead of appearing pretty much as
January 24, 2008 (Thursday)
it is now roughly
January 24, 2008

(Thursday)

This is an important difference, and if anyone knows how to fix it, or can tell me what happened, I'd be very appreciative. -Platypus Man | Talk 13:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's fixed again, but the weird thing is that I have no idea what was causing it. I looked trough all the templates that this header uses and none of them were changed. Possible remaining causes are a bug in some of the CSS that the tables/divs use, or a bug in a parserfunction. Really weird. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The new mediawiki parser was on for a little while. The page probably got cached on time that was smack in the middle of this switch between old and new parser, which caused a faulty copy to be cached. Purging the page solved the issue. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Ah Special:ParserDiffTest/Portal:Current_events there we are. A difference between old an new parser behaviour. I'll track this down. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
It's in Portal:Current events/DateHeader2 or something it transcludes. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
There we are: a stray newline in {{Start date}} was at fault. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I had forgotten to crosspost this. I had already figured it ou :( Wikipedia:Village_Pump_(technical)#New_preprocessor_issue.28s.29 I was just waiting on a response by Tim or Brion on wether this was "expected" behaviour or not. Apparently it is expected, so the fix did need to be applied. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Australian News

Out of interest, why is Australia and NZ no where to be found in the Current Events Portal? According to the "Countries and other territories in Southeast Asia" at the bottom of SE Asia page, Australia is not part of it, so what is Australia part of? This being, while Pakistan has its own Sub-Portal with no stories this year... 210.49.30.22 (talk) 11:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Because no one maintains one. See also Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Current events subportals. For Aussie news, you might turn to WikiNews or the news section of our Australian portal. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Taiwan-China conflict

Why isnt taiwan-china conflict ever mentioned in the "ongoing events" section?

This conflict has been undergoing for decades now, and tensions has been steadily escalating with now over 1000 missles from china aimed at taiwan, and taiwan's persistance in not yielding to china's and the china-led world's suppression.

The yearly battles of taiwan against china and china-led world to get into UN, WHO and the constant struggle to get recognized and protected by the international world goverments before it gets eleminated by china.

I believe this controversial issue/conflict deserves to get highlighted, and to raise awareness on how this phrase "might is right" proves sadly to be true in this taiwan-china issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.185.120.96 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that isn't as important as a proper conflict where people get killed, China/Taiwan is more of a territory/border dispute, of which there are hundreds around the world. --Joowwww (talk) 19:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "17 to 14" is incorrect

It's always displayed as 17–14 in any report by the Associated Press,[1] or any other American News publication. Such as The New York Times,[2], Chicago Tribune,[3] the Los Angeles Times,[4] or any other American publication in existence. Please fix this grammatical error. Thanks in advance. Trevor GH5 (talk) 05:59, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Damages to several undersea cables"

"Damages" is bad English (unless one is talking about monetary damages, which we are not); the headline should be:


Damage to several undersea cables disrupts internet services in parts of Asia and Africa.

Rob Cranfill (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Please use WP:ERRORS for faster responses. --Howard the Duck 07:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "STS-122"

You may wish to add the current shuttle mission to the ongoing events section.--logger (talk) 20:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Grammys

Why are the grammys mentioned and no the baftas? --Chickenfeed9 (talk) 12:28, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

See WP:ITN/C#February 9 then press page up. --Howard the Duck 04:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
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