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Has Everyone Gone on Vacation at Once?

Hi. I assume that more than one person covers the news as it occurs and posts it for Wikipedia. There may even be several people who do it. Why would the news not got posted for, what is now 6 days in a row, without having coverage by someone else who is remaining to tend the embers of Wikipedia's daily presentation? Is someone asleep? I don't mean to be impolite at all, but I don't know how else to phrase the obvious question or whom to pose it to. How does this happen in an awake world? Regards to whom it may concern. Stevenmitchell (talk) 10:01, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

One of the best things that could happen to Wikipedia is to stop trying to cover news and current events. EEng 13:05, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
There are numerous stories posted over the last few days. You might be referring to the "topics in the News" panel rather than the items in the main portion of this portal. See WP:ITNC for discussion of what stories should be posted there.-gadfium 23:09, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Mobile-friendly Current Events project

When viewing the Current Events page on a narrow screen (mobile device) the sidebar boxes would be more easily viewed if they were to shift down to the bottom of the layout rather than using a simple float:right. I'm unsure how to go about this myself, even in putting together a sample layout. While WP has a long way to go before incorporating a mobile-first mentality, it would be an easy win to get this layout issue dealt with. If there is an example of a page that supports the mobile layout in this fashion, I would be happy to review it and see how it would apply to the Current Events portal page.

I have deconstructed the page and identified that the layout is HTML table-based. Perhaps a more responsive layout will simply be a mater of using a non-table-based layout technique? I have a sandbox version of the page to work up an alternative now. — RossO (talk) 04:19, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

 Not done This change would need to establish consensus here first. I'm certainly opposed to changing this page to a forced max pixel width. — xaosflux Talk 03:56, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, that would be a bad idea, even for mobile devices, many of which are tablet used in wide mode, and most phones also rotate for a such a view. @RossO: I would raise the question at WP:VPTECH; I don't keep up with the mobile development side, but people have probably worked out such issues before, and there are probably CSS classes for having layouts behave differently in the mobile version.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:06, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: I could not find anything useful in the WP:VPTECH archives. Most of the mobile-friendly layout discussions are years old, or pushed to the developer side of WikiMedia. I think we can put a solution together for this page that can be an example for people in that discussion if it arrises again. — RossO (talk) 00:02, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I have taken another stab at this, using flexbox styles inline. Anyone want to review the sandbox version? — RossO : talk 23:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
    @RossO: there is still a huge gap of white space along the right side of the page, that gets proportionally larger as resolution increases. — xaosflux Talk 20:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: I have updated the layout so that, in the wider desktop view, the central content column stays as wide as possible and keeps the right column to the established 250px width. The right column will now only wrap after the central column has become less that 200px wide. Once this layout is put in place, we can work on making that right column be more flexible rather than assuming the 250px width for all presentations.
  • I am still interested in getting more comments about => this sandbox version <= from everyone. While this page is highly visited, the individual pieces that are impacted by this updated design are limited to just these pages. All other transclusion links are demos, talk pages and non-article metapages about these pages. If this flexbox layout is adopted, we could use it as a pattern for mobile-friendly layout of content, without any template or skin changes. (If there is a better place to put this other than my personal sandbox section, please let me know.) — RossO (talk) 00:02, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I have updated => this sandbox version <= with a better layout of the calendar widget in the right column. It now has a number of updates and flows with the page more smoothly. (Thank you to @Mr. Stradivarius: for his help and guidance.) I have also started an RfC section on the Portal talk:Current events/Sidebar talk page, if anyone would like to view that as the first step towards updating the layout here. — RossO (talk) 18:54, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Disruptive user

Can an administrator please admonish Farolif (talk · contribs) for his disruptive editing at WT:Current-Events-Sidebar. Specifically he seems to take issue with the addition of an Argentine minister of culture and a Chinese provincial party chief (highest office of a province), questioning their "notability" and reverting without discussion. This user has had numerous previous offenses with this type of behavior as evidenced on his talk page. Colipon+(Talk) 04:18, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

More bias on frontpage

I notice after the most recent muslim truck attack it's not on the frontpage despite multiple casualties, yet after the 'white supremacist' car attack which killed only one, it was on the frontpage before you know it. Also don't see the news of the guy getting stabbed by radical leftists for 'not denouncing nazism strongly enough'. Imagine my shock 2A00:23C4:E0AA:4200:E5D1:ECC9:5A96:DDA5 (talk) 16:44, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@2A00:23C4:E0AA:4200:E5D1:ECC9:5A96:DDA5: Its a separate project called Wikinews, all complains derive to them, please. Thank you.--Biografer (talk) 18:46, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

British Columbia wildfires

They should be added to ongoing disasters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex of Canada (talk • contribs) 21:09, 5 August 2017 (UTC) Edit: there is an article on it now. Please insert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_British_Columbia_wildfires — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex of Canada (talk • contribs) 07:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Brazilian boat wrecks (22/08 and 24/08)

There were two big boat wrecks in Brazil this week, at least 39 people died in those wrecks: 1) https://www.shipwrecklog.com/log/2017/08/comandante-ribeiro/

2) http://ghheadlines.com/agency/pulse/20170825/52423516/in-brazil-2-boat-wrecks-in-two-days-leave-39-dead

3) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41042849

PMLF (talk) 07:25, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

You can add these yourself. The individual day subpages are not protected.-gadfium 09:04, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Grammar Error

"In women's golf, the United States win the Solheim Cup" should be "In women's golf, the United States wins the Solheim Cup". HapHaxion (talk / contribs) 21:06, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

The appropriate place to report this is at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors#Errors in In the news-gadfium 09:08, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 23 August 2017

The headline "The Supreme Court of India rules that the practice of instant divorce is unconstitutional." is ambigious in its context. It can be construed that instant divorce is a common practice in India, however this practice is only applicable to a specific religious group and is not a common practice, as can be mistakenly construed.

Please resolve the ambiguity in context.

The suggested change in headline is "The Supreme Court of India rules that the Islamic practice of instant divorce is unconstitutional." Pvpoodle (talk) 07:53, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

The appropriate place to report this is at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors#Errors in In the news.-gadfium 09:11, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 11 August 2017

Mobile-Friendly Current Events project (Final step)

Over the past few weeks I have worked up a set of code changes for the Current Events page that will improve display on mobile devices. The key changes have been to wrap the right column down underneath the primary column and then make sure the content of both columns expand to be full width. The use of the flexbox css styling is perfect for this purpose. (An alternate approach of using columns seems to be un reliable when it comes to column of unequal widths.)

I have created a set of Sandbox pages that show the changes that are necessary to implement this layout update and included links to display the diffs that show the exact changes I'm suggesting.

I would like an admin to make the following changes:

  1. Portal:Current events/Sandbox — Diff
  2. Portal:Current events/Calendar/Sandbox — Diff
  3. Module:Current events calendar/sandbox — Diff

As only the first change requires admin permissions, I am able and happy to make the second two changes if the overall project effort is accepted.

Thank you to Mr. Stradivarius, xaosflux, and SMcCandlish for comments already made. — RossO (talk) 18:49, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see any problems with this. If it makes it easier to view on mobile devices, it's a good thing, considering the high percentage of viewing we get from them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:11, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
I'm willing to make this change provided I get a few (1-3) more peer reviews that this code change will not break anything. Please let me know when a few more people have reviewed and signed off on this update. Thanks, Nakon 04:25, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: The general idea of this is great, and it's going to make things much better on mobile. There were a couple of things I noticed, though. On Firefox on desktop, the calendar looks a little too wide, and it's making the margin between the calendar and the content too small. Also, in Module:Current events calendar/sandbox, you have the following code:
		:css{
			width = '100%',
			float = 'initial', 
			-- Next 2 lines are temporary until release
			float = 'right', 
			width = 'calc(100% - 15px)',
			-- Previous 2 lines are temporary until release
			...
		}
When you define the second float and width keys, they overwrite the contents of the first ones. Is this what you intended? Also, what does "temporary until release" mean? Isn't the release what we are proposing to do now? Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:01, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
Also, in both Firefox and Chrome on Android, you have to scroll horizontally inside the calendar to be able to see all of the dates. It looks like that might be the "- 15px" in the calc CSS rule, but I didn't check with the developer tools. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:08, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: The CSS duplicity that you noted is intentional and it is an artifact of the table-to-flexbox conversion process. In order to get the existing two-column table layout to work well with the upgraded flexbox-based Sidebar and Calendar components, I needed to leave in the the 15px calculated value and the float command. (This is largely due to the way the current page's table layout assumes the 15px gutter.) I may have jumped the gun in updating the code for those components, but I did it so that the final deployment steps would be as small as possible. Once each of the three changes I noted are made, those lines (the -- Next 2 lines... and -- Previous 2..., inclusive) can be removed. They will no longer be needed as the primary layout will use flexbox styling to control the gutters. That should resolve the Firefox and Chrome issues. Thank you, again, for your time. — RossO (talk) 06:54, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nakon: I'm not seeing any objections to the change. I would appreciate it if you could apply the changes I've outlined. Or, if you can do the first one, I'm happy to apply the 2nd and 3rd. Thanks! — RossO (talk) 17:20, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@RossO:, I've updated the protected page. Please go ahead and make the other updates. Let me know if there's anything else you need. Thanks, Nakon 01:22, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Restore two correct categories for a main page, Category:Current events and "current year" category, which was accidentally removed in this edit [1]. 194.50.51.252 (talk) 21:13, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for tableless replacement for Template:Current events header

Even with recent improvements to this page and to Template:Current events header by User:RossO, the layout tables are still causing minor visual problems with mobile skin, especially at tablet widths, 720 px and up. See Template:Current events header/testcases. I've sketched out Template:Current events/sandbox as a possible tableless replacement going forward. But it would change the syntax, something along these lines:

From:

{{Current events header|2017|08|30}}

<!-- All news items below this line -->
'''News'''

* Something happened today, making it a current event.
<!-- All news items above this line -->|}

To:

{{Current events|2017|08|30|content=

<!-- All news items below this line -->
'''News'''

* Something happened today, making it a current event.
<!-- All news items above this line -->}}

Would this be acceptable? Pinging Cyberpower678 since this affects his bot. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:56, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I am all for this idea, as removing TABLES from being the primary method of a page layout has been a web-wide effort, over a decade in the making. — RossO (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I'm in principle not against this, but we should probably do it in a way that doesn't break all the archives. That can be done by having two versions of the output, one that is the old version and one that is effective after a certain date. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:19, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
And Cyberbot, which creates the pages might have to be adopted. I'm not sure where the template is being kept for how it creates those pages. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Ah, you actually are proposing a separate version I now notice. Awesome ! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:01, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
I thought it'd be weird calling it a "header" if it's a fully enclosed element. Not breaking the archives is also good! I'm guessing Cyberbot uses User:Cyberbot I/Templates/Current Events to start each new day. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:39, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Forgot to mention, this would clobber the mostly-unused redirect currently at Template:Current events. Started a discussion at RfD to ask if rewriting it, without deletion, is okay. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 September newsletter

Round 4 of the WikiCup has ended and we move forward into the final round. In round 4, a total of 12 FAs, 3 FLs, 44 GAs, 3 FLs, 79 DYKs, 1 ITN and 42 GARs was achieved, with no FPs or FTs this time. Congratulations to Peacemaker67 on the Royal Yugoslav Navy Good Topic of 36 items, and the 12 featured articles achieved by Cas Liber (5), Vanamonde93 (3), Peacemaker67 (2), Adityavagarwal (1) and 12george1 (1). With a FA scoring 200 points, and bonus points available on top of this, FAs are likely to feature heavily in the final round. Meanwhile Yellow Evan, a typhoon specialist, was contributing 12 DYKs and 10 GAs, while Adityavagarwal and Freikorp topped the GAR list with 8 reviews each. As we enter the final round, we are down to eight contestants, and we would like to thank those of you who have been eliminated for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. The lowest score needed to reach round 5 was 305, and I think we can expect a highly competitive final round.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to reduce the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck, and let the best man (or woman) win! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 06:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 27 August 2017

Mobile-Friendly Current Events project (Clean up)

The portal now renders in a single column for mobile devices. There will be additional updates to various components to improve the display on narrow-width devices. There is one additional set of changes that need to happen in order for the desktop layout to return to a proper proportion in some instances.

I would like an admin to make the following changes (after line 6):

  1. Portal:Current events/Sandbox — Diff

This change will take care of some margin issues and deal with the category issue noted by 194.50.51.252. It will NOT resolve the mobile layout issue. (@Mr. Stradivarius: the issue you found was not fixed by removing the calc() func.) I will deal with that over the next week or so. @Nakon: I hope you (or another admin) will see fit to make this change for me when you have a moment.

Thank you to Mr. Stradivarius, xaosflux, SMcCandlish, 日本穣, and Nakon for comments and assistance. — RossO (talk) 08:39, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done. Two more things.. Whenever you use borders and width: 100%, please also set box-sizing:border-box; because otherwise your dimensions will be 100%+bordersize. And whenever using tables for layout, use role="presentation" though it seems you are phasing those out, which is AWESOME. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:28, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: Now that the sidebar is not necessarily a sidebar, should we reword the "edit sidebar" links in Portal:Current events/Sidebar? Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 20:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: I think they should remain the same for now as the links will be seen 99.999% of the time in the context of the Current events page, not as a standalone page. However if you decide go down that road, I would recommend liberal use of <noinclude> and <includeonly> tags. — RossO (talk) 21:30, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
True, it's usually transcluded, but on mobile, it isn't displayed on the side anymore. Wording that doesn't refer to visual position might prevent confusion on mobile — non-visual contexts like screen readers and search engine results too. Maybe "edit section" or "edit list"? Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 00:24, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
The changes aren't being propagated to new archive subpages. I'll update Portal:Current events/How to archive the portal with the new format, so at least from September 2017 on it'll match your design. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 00:40, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC about Current sporting seasons > Football (soccer) 2017

There doesn't appear to be clear consensus, and the arguments are largely over subjective issues (e.g., how many is too many and whether gender should be weighted in a cutoff point). Perhaps consider iterating more RFCs on the finer points of those arguments(?) --slakr\ talk / 01:19, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I recently added additional top-division leagues to the sidebar under Current sporting seasons > Football (soccer) 2017, which were removed. After initiating a related discussion on the deleting editor's talk page, I'd like to open the discussion to others for input.

The section title in the sidebar is Current sporting seasons. Should all current sporting seasons for football/soccer (including top women's leagues) be included in the sidebar? My edit was done to optimize space and keep each country's listing on one line, where possible. For some countries, there is more than one men's league listed. Hmlarson (talk) 21:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Survey

  • No Even having all top divisions listed would be too much (there would be well over 300 if both mens and women's were included) yet this proposal apparently suggests "all current sporting seasons for football/soccer", which would take it into the thousands once lower divisions were added, so there clearly needs to be a cut-off point. Something based on attendances would be the most sensible as it would reflect interest in the leagues and therefore their notability – the Estonian top division average is less than 250, which suggests little interest in football there. The 10,000 figure mentioned seems reasonable - in Europe that limits it to 13 leagues. Number 57 22:14, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. Hmlarson (talk) 22:33, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. Women are included in other sports, why not in soccer? The argument relating to attendance does not seem appropriate.--Ipigott (talk) 06:25, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. If there are a lot of leagues, maybe some of the minor mens leagues could be trimmed so that more national women's leagues will fit. Attendance is not a very good criterion; I'd say that the criterion should probably be the levels at which teams could directly qualify for the highest championships in a given nation or international competition. For example, both men's and women's soccer in Estonia at the national level should make the cut, but probably not smaller regional leagues in larger countries. Montanabw(talk) 19:20, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This is impractical due to the huge amount of soccer leagues that would end up getting covered. Other sports would get dwarfed by comparison. – PeeJay 20:50, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per Number 57 and PeeJay2K3. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:26, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Why only soccer leagues? Why not every pro league? Why not every semi-pro league? Why not every amateur league? Where exactly do YOU draw the line? LordAtlas (talk) 01:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This section would become unwieldy if every top division were included. Khan_singh (talk) 03:43, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Seems odd to drop out sizable leagues just because there are lots. Top saying average over 10,000 attendance as a minimum would seem false if not all such are present. Might adjust up if there are too many leagues. Markbassett (talk) 00:09, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Support in theory, along the lines Montanabw and Markbasset suggest (though with the caveat the "maybe some of the minor mens leagues could be trimmed" idea doesn't work if it means dropping men's leagues of an equal level as the women's ones to be added. We do have a WP:Systemic bias in our sports coverage, heavily toward all-male material. However, we also don't need to add "(men's)" anywhere this is already understood, e.g. in any sport dominated by men's play; it's just clutter that impedes readability. Agreed with the implications of what Number 57 said above: that we can make room and deal with the "if every top division were included ..." problem (stated by Khan_singh) by cutting ones that are meaningless to most readers, e.g. Estonia, where even the locals don't bother showing up. Also noted Number 57's comments below, and have to answer that if adding women would make the football coverage overwhelm non-football material, the rather obvious solution is to add women in other sports, too (and perhaps also, as others suggested, have some kind of attendance-based cap, though ticket sales of 10,000 seems a bit of a high bar, which the men's leagues often don't reach, either). TL;DR version: It's more important to include top women't competition that low- and mid-range men's. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:45, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

  • None of the responses so far seem to have considered the implication of actually putting this into practice. Currently there are 141 current seasons listed across all sports. If we went ahead with the proposal as worded and added all football leagues, it would increase it tenfold, meaning at least 90% of events listed would be football. Even if it was restricted to top divisions only, it's still at least a 200% increase. It would be hugely disproportionate compared to other sports, presumably hence why a decision has been made to limit the number of leagues. Number 57 20:38, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
That is not a problem if a new page is created to house the list. A link to the full list can be added to Portal:Current events/Sports. This is not a popularity contest - it's an encyclopedia. Excluding top-division leagues based on attendance only of an arbitrary 10,000+ (set and "enforced" without consensus) does not reflect the header "Current sporting seasons" and purpose of the page. Hmlarson (talk) 21:27, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
It IS a popularity contest. Some leagues are considered important. Some aren't. That's just how it is. Let's post every ice hockey league too. And basketball league. And baseball league. Everyone's special, right? LordAtlas (talk) 23:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Not in an encyclopedia. Top-division leagues, yes. Hmlarson (talk) 17:00, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
  • I see that despite this RfC not having finished, nor it looking like there is consensus to add more leagues, Hmlarson has done it anyway and then reverted an attempt to remove most of them. Poor show. Is @Khan singh: even aware of this RfC? They are more than within their rights to remove attempts to add these leagues at the moment. I hope admin action will not be required. Number 57 20:58, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
    • There is no consensus to limit to men only either. Hmlarson (talk) 21:40, 2 July 2017 (UTC) Nor to limit based on an arbitrary attendance figure that is noted nowhere except one editor's edit summaries. But while we're waiting, here's some good reading material: 1 2 3. Hmlarson (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
      • The presumed consensus is the current version, which you are attempting to change via this discussion. If if results in no consensus, or a consensus against, then the previous situation is retained. Not sure why I need to read #3 as I was at the game. Bit one sided for my liking as a neutral. Number 57 21:54, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Where's the consensus other than Khan's edit summary? and why is the US MNT included? "In 2016, every single friendly for the US Men’s National Team was attended by less than 10,000 people." Hmlarson (talk) 22:05, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
          • As I said, I only came up with "D1 & 10,000/match" because I had to think of some limit for the number of leagues to include in the sidebar. I never intended to exclude women's leagues, it just worked out that none of them met that standard. I could see relaxing it to include important women's leagues like the NWSL and the Champions League, but honestly, Iceland, Scotland? Khan_singh (talk) 23:33, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
            • I found it out to pretend the level of notability is being met by lowering standards. LordAtlas (talk) 23:38, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
            • Thanks for providing more information Khan. It's clear 10,000 is not any kind of consensus, but an arbitrary number you alone chose for listing (men's) football leagues in a section that states "Current sports seasons". Rather than change your listing of (men's) football/soccer leagues to incorporate the countries' D1 women's leagues, I've created a separate subheader for women's leagues and will update there. Hmlarson (talk) 00:13, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @SMcCandlish: Just wondering how you define the top/mid-low ranges you mentioned? In terms of attendances, for example the English women's top division would be 37th out of 49 if it was included in the men's rankings and is on a par with the 5-6th men's level in England. There is a danger here of creating some kind of false equivalence. Number 57 12:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I don't have an answer for this yet, which is why "Support, in theory". I.e., devilish details need to worked out. I also don't know enough about this specific sport to intuit an "obvious" solution. It just doesn't seem right to marginalize almost all women's competition in favor of dwelling on low-rung male events. Perhaps attendance really has nothing to do with it, and level within league systems should be what we care more about? In thinking on pool (pocket billiards), the women's events would definitely be included (if we had enough editors focused on the sport to ensure inclusion of any events in this and other articles, like the year in sports ones); the WPBA is actually more successful than the main men's leagues at getting TV coverage and such; on average, the top women players are more notable than the current top male ones (though not more so than top males of a generation or two ago). Surely nothing like this in football, but a "the women don't matter" stance being taken or being perceived to be taken at this article isn't a good outcome.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:14, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
      • @SMcCandlish: The primary objective when deciding which leagues to show should be their inherent notability and attendances are probably the best barometer of that – realistically a lower division with an average attendance of 10,000 is going to be more notable than a top division with an average of 1,000. This isn't an issue of women's leagues not mattering, it's simply reflecting the reality that women's leagues are generally not as notable as men's equivalents because far fewer people are going to watch them play – Wikipedia should not be used to artificially promote the place of women's football in society (I believe this falls under WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS), and I say this as someone who watches women's football and has been mocked for doing so. This isn't a criticism, but I think editors who are not entirely au fait with football can fall into the trap of assuming there is some kind of bias in play when the notability of women's football is not considered exactly equal to men's football (this isn't helped by some editors who are familiar with the situation throwing around accusations of misogyny on a regular basis when the topic is discussed). However, rules like the 10,000 cutoff being discussed here or WP:NFOOTY do not discriminate against the women's game – they apply equally to both men's and women's football; the failure of women's leagues to cross this threshold is due to the real-world level of interest in the respective genders' leagues. It's like saying WP:NPOLITICIAN discriminates against women because there are fewer women eligible for articles than men, despite the fact that this simply reflects the fact that there are fewer women in politics for whatever societal reasons. Number 57 21:25, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
        • I have been, am now, and will be, ready to consider any other standard of notability that someone cares to propose, so long as it doesn't result in 300+ leagues in the sidebar. This isn't rugby league, wherein I think that reasonable people can agree that the NRL and Super League are far and away more notable than any other competitions. This isn't cricket, wherein a fairly logical standard, in my opinion, presents itself, i.e. the First class, List A, & Twenty20 competitions of the test status countries, where available. And for that matter, this isn't handball, wherein the women's competitions are at or near parity with their men's counterparts. Some football leagues are obviously notable, like the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, & Serie A. Some are obviously not notable, like the Estonian Meistriliiga, Tahiti Ligue 1, Bhutan National League, & Campeonato Nacional da Guiné-Bissau. The difficulty is in deciding which of the less obvious leagues are and are not notable enough to be included. When I examined the list of football leagues that average 10,000/match every season, I found that it gave 24 leagues in 23 countries (India has a unique situation.) across five confederations. I was surprised by some of the leagues it included, like the Swiss Super League and Ukrainian Premier League. I was surprised by some of the leagues it excluded, like the K League Classic and Superleague Greece. I found that it only included one league from CAF and two from CONCACAF. Above all, I felt that it represented a reasonable cross section of the sport, which I consider the rightful purpose of the sidebar. Including every league is unnecessary, since there's already a page for that: Category: Current association football seasons. Khan_singh (talk) 21:30, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Protected edit request on 9 September 2017

On Thursday, Lyft announced a new self-driving car partnership with the Mountain View-based startup Drive.ai 72.95.104.248 (talk) 23:28, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

You can add this yourself, so long as you have a reliable and independent source. Just click the edit link for the appropriate day.-gadfium 02:51, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing maintenance of the Archive pages

I have surveyed the Archive pages and found that the years 2003 and 2004 were not migrated to the one-page-per-day-included format that most all other years have followed. I have begun migrating them, starting with Portal:Current events/January 2003. I will continue to update the remaining ~23 pages over the next few weeks. This work falls under my efforts to make the Current Events portal have a mobile-friendly layout. Anyone who is interested in the work I'm doing can see my notes here: User:RossO/sandbox. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. — RossO (talk) 22:12, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Noprint edit request

From
<span id="coordinates">[[Portal:Current events/Edit instructions|Edit instructions]]</span>
To
<span id="coordinates" class="noprint">[[Portal:Current events/Edit instructions|Edit instructions]]</span>

This link, like section edit, purge, and other non-content convenience links, should be noprint. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 03:45, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:49, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"Khoramshahr missile"

Please unlink Khoramshahr missile, it goes to the city with the name, not to anything the viewer would seek from news.--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 11:55, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kintetsubuffalo: Thank you, I've adjusted the link. Note that although the Portal:Current events page is fully protected, the day-by-day boxes are not - each can be edited using the "edit" link at the top right of each box. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:04, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
@John of Reading: Thanks for the tip, have a nice evening!--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Current Events Portal Archive Cleanup

I have continued my efforts to cleanup the portal archives in support of making the pages mobile-friendly. I have just completed day 3 of my second survey of the month pages. I would appreciate comments here on changes and progress I've made.

I'm working on a prototype to replace the hand-coded Month pages with a small Lua script that will generate all of the necessary content for the Month pages in an automated fashion. With such a tool in place it will be easy to migrate the archives to a mobile friendly layout today and support archive-wide changes in the future as well. — RossO (talk) 19:23, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Survey completed: I finished my survey of the archives for code issues and inconsistencies. See my Day 3 report for details.

Module created: I have created the module and it comprises the following pages:

Currently this module will only fill in the initial paragraph, but I expect to add arguments that will allow it to express the parts needed to support the layout of the page contents. Comments and questions are greatly appreciated. If there are no significant concerns noted in the next 4 days, I will begin replacing the intro paragraphs on the archive pages with this module call. — RossO (talk) 20:09, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 2 October 2017

In the Nobel Prize news, change "Americans" for "United States scientists". The United States of America is not the whole of America, and it's a very common mistake for U.S. citizens to use this word to refer to their country, when obviously it refers to the whole of the Continent. 201.224.130.142 (talk) 15:36, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

The individual day pages are not protected, so you could make this change yourself. However, please read our article Americans first. I think you have a valid point that the term should apply to the entire continent, but in practice, in English, it does usually just mean people from the United States.-gadfium 19:35, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

White space between boxes

I'm seeing a lot of white space between the empty "Wednesday 11th" box and yesterday's "Tuesday 10th" box. Usually I can fix this by removing white space from one of the boxes and then purging, but I'm stuck this time. I'm using Firefox 56.0.1. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this has been going on for days. It seems to trace back to a change in the template (coding?). Anyone know how to fix this?... If we don't get an answer here, the next stop is probably WP:AN... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:13, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
@John of Reading and IJBall: I removed some extra newlines from Portal:Current events/Inclusion, and that seems to have done the trick. Apparently, it was like that since 2013. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:27, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
Actually, after a closer look at the page history, I see the extra whitespace was added after Wikinews was added in 2008, and it just wasn't removed when Wikinews was removed in 2013. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:31, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: Thanks! That whitespace has been in the "Inclusion" page for ages, but it's only been visible to readers for the last few days. -- John of Reading (talk) 05:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Mobile-friendly layout via HTML constructed in a Module

Module extended: I have updated the Monthly Archive module module to produce the structural code for the flexible layout.

All: Take a look at the source code to compare the sandbox versus the Original. Nearly all of the content is generated and no longer needs to be manually maintained. I would really like to get feedback from anyone familiar with the technical aspects of modules (cough, Mr. Stradivarius‎, cough) specifically the workload that they add to the system and whether the approach I'm prototyping is reasonable, rational, and responsible. — RossO (talk) 18:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@RossO: I had a look at the module, and I thought it might be clearer to have it pass values to a template, and then let the template be in charge of what the final page looks like. That's the opposite way round to how templates and modules usually work on Wikipedia, but templates in other web frameworks are usually used in this way, and in this case I think it works well. By putting the template in charge of the view, you can put all the HTML markup in one place, and you can avoid doing things like splitting opening and closing div tags between different module function calls. I decided to make the template myself to show you what I mean, and the result is at Template:Current events monthly archive/display. To make the template work I also created a sandbox version of the module at Module:Current events monthly archive/sandbox. At first I just changed the module enough to get it working, but then I got carried away and basically rewrote the whole thing. :P Please have a look at it, and take the parts that you like. :) Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
And of course, if you have any questions about why I did any of the things I did, please feel free to ask, and I'll be happy to explain. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
One thing to watch out for when transcluding a lot of content via a template is that the page doesn't exceed the post-expand include size, but when I checked on Portal:Current events/September 2011/Sandbox2 it is using 477155/2097152 bytes, which is still quite a lot of room. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:24, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: Man, you really did run with it. Once you start on something, it's tough to let it go. I can see that. : ) I think your code looks great and I'm happy to have it supercede my code. (I had tried to find an example of how to make a Module bring in and display a template, but had failed. I didn't think to look in the FRAME object.) Do you have a handle on how the testcases would be built for this? As this is going to be displayed on (12 months * 21 years) of pages, I think we should have a single page to make sure all the pieces look good in the variety of months that it will hit. — RossO (talk) 17:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
If you want to test it component by component, probably the easiest way is to add a template parameter to the module, to make it render using a different template than Template:Current events monthly archive/display. Then you can make one template that just displays the calendar, one that displays the intro blurb, etc. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:20, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: I added tests for the date data at Module:Current events monthly archive/testcases. This doesn't test any of the other code in the module, but I figured the date data is the thing most likely to go wrong. (And indeed, I had to fix a couple of bugs in the sandbox module after I wrote the tests.) Let me know what you think of this approach, and feel free to add more test data and/or more tests if you want. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:45, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
And one more thing - how about a feature where the module auto-detects the date from the page title? That should be pretty easy to do, and should make things a lot more convenient. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:25, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius: Anything that reduces the possibility of manual entry and manual entry error is a very good thing. As I noted with Modules displaying Templates, I don't have a pattern to follow; if you point me to an example I can probably get it in there. If we can get the template/module call down to a single line that is identical from month to month, we will have simplified everything a great deal. — RossO (talk) 17:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: Ok, I implemented it in the sandbox module. It only works on pages where the subpage is a well-formed date, though, so it won't work on the portal sandbox pages. If it needs to work on sandboxes too, though, that can be added. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:20, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: It now works on sandbox pages as well. (It was just a change of a couple of lines in the end.) And I updated the main module from the sandbox to boot. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:48, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Catalonian issue

If wikipedia is truly an encyclopaedia, it is paramount that the growing and ongoing tension between Catalonia and Madrid in Spain are given consideration in the current events news. You do not need a Phd in History to appreciate that this could be the prelude a civil war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.187.169.251 (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

The individual daily summaries are unprotected, so if there is something you feel would be worthy of being added, you should be able to do so yourself. Buttons0603 (talk) 00:35, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017 November newsletter: Final results

The final round of the 2017 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2017 WikiCup top three finalists:

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

  • Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a two-way tie with themselves for an astonishing five FAs in R2 and R4).
  • Good Article – Adityavagarwal had 14 GAs promoted in R5.
  • Featured List – Canada Bloom6132 (submissions) and Japan 1989 (submissions) both produced 2 FLs in R2
  • Featured Pictures – Cascadia SounderBruce (submissions) improved an image to FP status in R5, the only FP this year.
  • Featured Topic – Denmark MPJ-DK (submissions) has the only FT of the Cup in R3.
  • Good Topic – Four different editors created a GT in R2, R3 and R4.
  • Did You Know – Adityavagarwal had 22 DYKs on the main page in R5.
  • In The News – India MBlaze Lightning (submissions) had 14 ITN on the main page in R2.
  • Good Article Review – India Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (submissions) completed 31 GARs in R1.

Over the course of the 2017 WikiCup the following content was added or improved on Wikipedia: 51 Featured Articles, 292 Good Articles, 18 Featured Lists, 1 Featured Picture, 1 Featured Topics, 4 Good Topics, around 400 Did You Knows, 75 In The News, and 442 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.

Regarding the prize vouchers - @Adityavagarwal, Vanamonde93, Casliber, Bloom6132, 1989, and SounderBruce: please send Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) an email from the email address to which you would like your Amazon voucher sent. Please include your preference of global Amazon marketplace as well. We hope to have the electronic gift cards processed and sent within a week.

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2018 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Day Pages Template Overhaul

This branch/thread was broken off of the previous starting paragraph. — RossO (talk)

Things are moving along on the daily page layout template as well. See Template:Current events, which would replace Template:Current events header. Still working on your suggestion to show previous-day, next-day, month navigation on the daily page itself while hiding the same when transcluded. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 19:43, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I had a thought. If you're working on a module to do the monthly page, maybe it'd be better to have that module format the daily entries. Then, the daily pages themselves could be more or less just raw text, and easy to maintain. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 20:05, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: The idea that I had is that the individual day pages would be able to link to each other, bypassing the month page entirely. It is a nice to have, but my priority is the mobile-friendly layout, which relies on your table-to-div conversions. I would encourage your efforts (near term) in that direction. — RossO (talk) 21:08, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: The tableless replacement {{Current events}} seems to be ready to go, other than the navigation links, if you want to start using it. New version might look nicer than the old version in mobile, based on what I see in the testcases. Meanwhile, I'll keep working on the navigation links in Template:Current events/sandbox. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:49, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
I boldly switched October 1, 2, 3, and 4 to the new template. The before-and-after differences between the September and October entries on the portal page look promising on mobile. I'll keep looking for potential bugs, though. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 19:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: I think that this looks great and it produces exactly the kind of output that it needed. I am concerned about the sheer amount of effort that will be required to move all of the day pages to the new format. Is there any way that the code can be restructured to work in the {{Current events header|2017|10|01}} and {{Current events footer}} two tag system? There are literally [5600] pages that will need to be edited to migrate the tags. While that will really boost someone's edit count, I'm thinking that there must be some way to reuse the existing template tags. I'm thinking of this in terms of the next time that some WP editor will think, "We should update these day pages to support all these new VR/AR displays." And they'll have 5600*2 pages to update. The two-tag configuration would seem to be more robust (totally IMHO). — RossO (talk) 23:20, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Probably a good job for a bot, once the dust starts to settle and no serious errors appear. The old and new template parameters are similar enough, that a single regex replacement should do the job. A header and footer two-template system would be okay for stuff at the beginning and end. The fully enclosed template is also able to do that, though — and tweak the inside as well, and wouldn't require synchronized edits to two templates to maintain. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 04:05, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick:(A) I am hesitant to assign a bot to this as these day pages have been written by hand and there will likely be subtle differences and wide variations that the bot may not handle gracefully. I have NO experience with the Bot process or tooling, so my POV here is cautious ignorance. In your comment on Oct 4, you said it was ready "if you want to start using it." but this Bot would be the way that this conversion would be put into motion, correct? — RossO (talk) 06:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
(B) I like the idea that of the template being able to modify the content of the pages, though I wonder if YAGNI. Do you have a viable use case to suggest? — RossO (talk) 06:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
(A) Caution might be good. I saw some differences in old archives that I didn't notice before. If a bot does it, it should use a strict pattern, even if that means only a portion of the archives gets edited in a run. (B) Already using it! I put in a regex replacement for the ubiquitous ; MOS:PSEUDOHEADs in the content, to improve screen reader output and keyboard navigation. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 07:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick:(B) Interesting use case. I'm glad to see that; it does sound like something useful. In this particular case it makes sense to clean up the ';' usages in the source code at a later date, but until then this improves the display. Rock on. — RossO (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: I got partway to adding day-to-day navigation; you might be able to adapt Special:Diff/691672020 to the new scheme. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@John of Reading: Nice work on that. I just noticed it was from 2015. Things do take while to come around don't they. — RossO (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
Synced to Template:Current events/sandbox. Seems to show up only on the single day page correctly. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 07:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: Do you have an example page that shows this in action, or is good to preview this against? I was hoping to see it on Portal:Current events/2017 October 1 but perhaps you've got it visible on a different Sandbox page? — RossO (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: Got the bugs worked out. It's now live at the bottom of all October 2017 pages. Sorry about the ugly layout, but I was just trying to get the functionality. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 08:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: Nice work. I think it can be smaller, but it's looking good. Does it handle month, year and century changes? — RossO (talk) 17:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
@RossO: Yup, leap years too. {{Extract}} does a great job with date calculations. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 23:46, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: What are your next steps? (A) I'm hoping that you might add some more testcases so that we can easily see the range of impacts any updates might make to the 5600 day pages. (B) After that, do you want to work on the design? I think you might be able to do something that mirrors the top colored bar, or even integrate the nav links into that top colored bar. (C) Do you have a plan for rolling out the changed markup? Do you have the Bot's code in mind to apply? — RossO (talk) 16:59, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
For now, bug fixing. There's some weird word wrapping going on at mobile screen sizes. As for testcases, I think the current test is sufficient — I've seen no major variations on the day page content sections, aside from newer ones having ; pseudoheads and older ones not. I'll work on the regex for the bot once I've looked through older pages and checked their format, but it shouldn't be hard. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 18:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: Have you had any progress on the bot to update the historic day pages to use the new template? I'm looking forward to see the bot in action. — RossO (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
@Matt Fitzpatrick: I wanted to note that the updated daily header is not able to collapse its width below 380px, unlike the rest of the sections which can get down to 300px wide. Could you remove the width:12em from the editlink div (and the white-space:nowrap) to make the headers more responsive? — RossO (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018

So the 2017 WikiCup has come to an end. Congratulations to the winner, to the other finalists and to all those who took part. 177 contestants signed up, more than usual, but not all of them submitted entries in the first round. Were editors attracted by the cash prizes offered for the first time this year, or were these irrelevant? Do the rules and scoring need changing for the 2018 WikiCup? If you have a view on these or other matters, why not join in the WikiCup discussion about next year's contest? Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

White space between boxes are back...

Looks like the same issue that hit us back in October, as per this archived Talk page topic, is back again. I'm going to go ahead and ping Mr. Stradivarius and John of Reading as they seemed to figure out the problem last time. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@IJBall: This one was easier: I've tweaked the "pp-vandalism" notice at the top of three daily subpages. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Description of the older archives

All the monthly archives currently begin with the text "This is an archived version of Wikipedia's Current events Portal from <month> <year>". The page Portal:Current events was created in June 2006, so from that month onwards the text is fine. From, I think, January 2002, the content was compiled day by day, as the events unfolded, but on some other page - the logs and history are rather complex, but see the edit summary here. Those archives need a different heading, perhaps "This is an archived version of Wikipedia's coverage of current events from <month> <year>". All the pages before that aren't really archives at all; they were compiled months or years after the events listed in them, and are still being created today. Questions:

  • Have I got the dates right?
Tough call. I haven't done any research into Changelogs to know if the dates are right, and I doubt anyone else here knows without doing the research (which you've obviously started). — RossO (talk)
  • What heading should be shown on the pages from January 2002 [or thereabouts] to May 2006?
I like your "This is an archived version of Wikipedia's coverage…" verbiage. — RossO (talk)
  • What heading should be shown on the pages before January 2002?
Since the other messages are actually disclaimers of the sourcing, perhaps there doesn't need to be a message? I'm not sure the messages even mean much in their own right since they basically say 'These CE pages are compilations of facts gathered by Wikipedia editors..." which is assumed. — RossO (talk)

@RossO and Malmcp85: -- John of Reading (talk) 10:26, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Answers provided inline. — RossO (talk) 21:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
If you want the oldest "surviving" versions, they are 44 deleted edits from Nov-Dec 2001 at Current events/Temp. They should probably be restored and stored somewhere. Rmhermen (talk) 06:12, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Is Sputnik News A Valid Source?

Under the heading Syrian Civil War, there is a link to a story from Sputnik News. Does Wikipedia consider that organization to be a valid news source? 159.83.54.2 (talk) 17:26, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

An answer may include Russia–United States relations as in Portal:Current_events/2017_December_5. Also what about journalistic integrity? The ultimate source is a faithful description of the mere facts. Wakari07 (talk) 08:39, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
You may be interested in this. Wakari07 (talk) 00:19, 9 December 2017 (UTC) I guess this is PoV. Wakari07 (talk) 09:17, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
Rossiya Segodnya is a government-controlled press agency, of which there are many examples around the world. 09:26, 9 December 2017 (UTC) Wakari07 (talk) 12:56, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Should we start a page valid source? Wakari07 (talk) 17:56, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
There's a LOT of government supported news sources on Wikipedia. C-SPAN, PBS, Voice of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Deutsche Welle, Al-Jazeera, etc. The same policy should hold for those others too. CaribDigita (talk) 03:49, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
You say "government supported". The WP article on Rossiya Segodnia currently writes that it is "wholly owned and operated" by government. Would here be a clue? Is this not (simply, basically) political difference, the existence of a plural number of "cities" on one planet? Wakari07 (talk) 13:03, 14 December 2017 (UTC) Otherwise we'd maybe end up with only one source. I think that's not preferable, for now. Wakari07 (talk) 13:08, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
Did you check Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources? Wakari07 (talk) 14:08, 14 December 2017 (UTC) Also Wikipedia:POLCON, the WP policy & guideline on conflicts between advice pages. Wakari07 (talk) 14:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
Four basic criteria for staying power: WP:PRIMARY, WP:AGENDA, WP:SPECULATION, WP:CLUTTER. But that may be my WP:POV. Wakari07 (talk) 15:11, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
For instance, I consider it a valid, reliable source in the Iran-US bit on the January 13's current events, in order to answer exactly who said what (in this case, the MoFA, in a now twice-sourced statement translation). Wakari07 (talk) 12:25, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Extension to before 1997

A user named Malmcp85 decided to extend the portal backward all the way to Portal:Current events/December 1994. That user, however, put many events in the text of the pages themselves rather than in transcluded daily subpages. Also, on some of the pages, such as Portal:Current events/January 1996, the user did not even put any events on the pages at all. All of the necessary subpages have now been created, with some copying events added on the month page itself, but most just copying events from the corresponding section of the year article. We cannot extend the portal backward forever, however, since December 1981 and many earlier months since January 1900 are well-sourced articles. Perhaps an RfC is needed to determine where we should set a cut-off point for this portal. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:20, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Iranian protests?

Why are Iranian protests on the main page as "ongoing", but not the 2018 Tunisian protests? Smells a bit biased, "Iran is the bad guy to the US, so let's cover their problems, but we don't care about Tunisia". FunkMonk (talk) 00:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

FunkMonk It's a little confusing, but this isn't the right talk page for that. The place to discuss the "Topics in the news" template is Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates or Wikipedia talk:In the news. Cheers, -- irn (talk) 04:36, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
Alright, I'll go there. FunkMonk (talk) 07:05, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Re: Tsunamis

I think we should be very careful as to whether to mention a tsunami in Wikipedia's current events section. We need to understand that not every tsunami is on the scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. Tsunami statements actually happen more than most people think. Most of them get cancelled pretty quickly. Nevertheless, if a tsunami warning, advisory, watch, or threat is issued. PLEASE take it seriously. Get to high ground if you are by the coast. Tsunamis can move up to 500 miles per hour. And yes, a tsunami warning was issued in this instance.

What I am concerned about is the use of Wikipedia as a hazard warning system as it is operated by amateurs who are not tsunami experts. With tsunamis, warnings can be issued and cancelled within hours. On Wikipedia and on Current Events, citing sources is important, but we need to remember that newspaper articles are timebound and limited to the time of publication. Currently, something is written on there in present tense in a warn-the-masses kind of thing. If we do wish to use Wikipedia to be an alert relay system, perhaps Wikipedia should collaborate with tsunami warning centers. I think the warning has been cancelled, but I'm not an expert* on this, so I don't have the wisdom as to whether it should be taken down. I don't want to remove it if I shouldn't, but I don't think it should have been up there in the first place.

Regarding different tsunamis: Whenever there is an earthquake underwater, there is a risk of a tsunami. This happens relatively frequently. An issue arises when the earthquake is very strong. The Alaska earthquake was 8.2 according to one source, and that is a level of intensity we need to pay close attention to, as that magnitude creates great potential for an enormous tsunami. Yet the type of fault and amount of plate motion involved is what truly makes tsunamis giant (ie. the Indian Ocean one 2004.) This Alaskan earthquake was at a strike-slip fault which means that things move side to side (with very little up and down vertical action), which has the least danger for a giant tsunami. The Indian Ocean tsunami was an underwater Megathrust earthquake at a subduction zone (meaning where an oceanic plate is colliding and sinking beneath another plate, which involves vertical action ). These kinds of earthquakes are extremely dangerous for tsunamis at megathrust earthquakes because the plates move a considerable bit and tsunamis happen because of displacement of water. Strike-slip earthquakes don't displace much water. But a seismologist was surprised that this was a strike-slip earthquake as typically earthquakes in this area are thrust earthquakes[1]

To give you an idea of the contrast between this earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, In the Indian Ocean earthquake, 1000 miles of fault moved 50 feet. This created 100 foot waves in some places. I do not have data on how much the fault moved in Alaska, but the waves created were maximum 0.7 feet.

Because tsunamis travel at 500 miles per hour (800-some kilometers per hour), there is very little time to evaluate if there will be a significant wave, so the priority is taking action right away.

David Hale, a lead decision maker at the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska said this, "We don't have the luxury of time to be able to gather the data necessary to determine whether there is or is not a wave," Hale said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.[2]

Note: I am NOT trying to undermine the authority of tsunami warning centers. LISTEN to them. Follow their instructions. Get to higher ground. If the sea recedes, do NOT go into the area to collect seashells. That means the wave is about to inundate.

My concern is that using Wikipedia for tsunami alerts is that it is not run by professionals, usually, information changes by the minute, and without proper constant, up-to-the-minute updating, it could be wrong, only serve to cause panic, and other implications. At least people know tsunamis are dangerous and should be cause for concern and action; however, in a disaster, communication matters. Not only are lives at stake, trust is at stake, and this trust can save lives at other times. I don't think most Wikipedians are qualified to properly convey a tsunami threat. Even though I have a considerable amount of knowledge and insight on this, I do not consider myself qualified to be an emergency communications manager for when there is a tsunami. I would like to hand that over to the professionals. I'm also concerned that if one tsunami gets into Wikipedia's current events section, then there is a potential for every single tiny and cancelled tsunami to make it onto the page. Are there exceptions where we should put things about an ongoing tsunami on Wikipedia Current Events? Sure. If we had another incident like the 2004 event, where there is immediate damage and is going to spread globally with devastation, we need to go right ahead and put something on there. But we need to use proper discretion. Anyways, I'm not an expert on this or the warning process system. I have studied plate tectonics in depth, but I have not worked in a tsunami warning center control room, so take this with a grain of salt, I guess. Bottom line is to listen to tsunami warnings if they are issued and get to higher ground.


I think all warnings have been cancelled, but if we get to a point where we are sure, we should change the text from

2018 Alaska earthquake A 7.9 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. A tsunami warning is issued for coastal Alaska and British Columbia, and the entire U.S. West Coast is placed under a tsunami watch. Areas of Alaska remain under a tsunami advisory. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities.

to

2018 Alaska earthquake A 7.9 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. A tsunami warning was issued for coastal Alaska and British Columbia, and the entire U.S. West Coast was placed under a tsunami watch. A tsunami advisory was issued for parts of Alaska. All warnings, watches, and advisories have been cancelled. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities.

So I think at some point we should clarify this, but in the future, I think we should be more careful before putting tsunami information down.

Thanks, -TenorTwelve (talk) 09:07, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Kizlyar church shooting

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43105171 there doesn't seem to be an article on this, or am I missing it?--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 09:50, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

See February 18 – Nixinova ⟨T|C⟩ 04:39, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

WikiCup 2018 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. With 53 contestants qualifying, the groups for round 2 are slightly smaller than usual, with the two leaders from each group due to qualify for round 3 as well as the top sixteen remaining users.

Our top scorers in round 1 were:

  • United States Aoba47 led the field with a featured article, 8 good articles and 42 GARs, giving a total of 666 points.
  • Germany FrB.TG , a WikiCup newcomer, came next with 600 points, gained from a featured article and masses of bonus points.
  • India Ssven2, another WikiCup newcomer, was in third place with 403 points, garnered from a featured article, a featured list, a good article and twelve GARs.
  • United States Ceranthor, India Numerounovedant, Minnesota Carbrera, Netherlands Farang Rak Tham and Romania Cartoon network freak all had over 200 points, but like all the other contestants, now have to start again from scratch. A good achievement was the 193 GARs performed by WikiCup contestants, comparing very favourably with the 54 GAs they achieved.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) and Vanamonde (talk) 15:27, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Month archive template

I have added a template for creating month archive pages: {{Current events portal month archive}}. – Nixinova ⟨T|C⟩ 19:34, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Nixinova: I already made something like this a while back: Template:Current events monthly archive. It hasn't been rolled out yet, though. You can see a demo of it at Portal:Current events/September 2011/Sandbox. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:04, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 2 April 2018

Please change the info about Tiangong. It has re-entered over the South Pacific at aprox. 00:16 GMT JustAnotherWikiUser0816 (talk) 01:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source to cite for that? —C.Fred (talk) 02:10, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Current events categories

What are all the categories for news items? Alex of Canada (talk) 18:46, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

From what I can see—Arts and culture, Armed conflicts and attacks, Business and economy, Disasters and accidents, International relations, Law and crime, Politics and elections, Science and technology, and Sports. – Nixinova ⟨T|C⟩ 04:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
And Health and environment. – Nixinova ⟨T|C⟩ 23:39, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. That should probably be put somewhere so people can know. EDIT: Nevermind, someone added it at the top. Alex of Canada (talk) 18:38, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Edit request on 7 April 2018

I corrected the reference to what's going on in Gaza on April 7th from "protests" to "riots" because the "protesters" have been throwing stones and firebombs and burning tires. The edit was reverted back by someone with a slanted view of what's going on.

I changed it to have both, considering there are protests and riots involved. Alex of Canada (talk) 23:53, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

MOS

There is no MOS for Current events, but I think moving headlines with subject pages (format "* ARTICLE: \n ** HEADLINE") to the start of the subheadings.

For example, instead of:

It would be written as:

(This was just an example; if the topic article was "reactions to [the previous]" then it would stay the same as 2001/9/11, but in any other circumstances the above should be the format.)

Thoughts?  Nixinova  T  C  08:04, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Ideally, all events listed will have a category to place them in broader context, it's just we don't always think of them. So while I'm opposed I'm game for an agreement a category should be found if at all possible for everything. I'm also open to developing some ideas for style on the portal in general. -- BobTheIP editing as 2.28.13.227 (talk) 17:36, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

What's the point of the time purge?

No other pages have something like that, so is it really necessary? Alex of Canada (talk) 23:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

The page used to not automatically purge when a subpage was edited but it does now so there' no point for the 'purge' button.  Nixinova  T  C  04:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Per the above, I'm making a request for the obsolete code to be removed. --BobTheIP editing as 92.29.28.146 (talk) 15:16, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:19, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Current Events First Heading

We have to remove the Rif Dimashq offensive from the list of things going on, since it ended 2 weeks ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AbhiramKapaganty (talk • contribs) 22:00, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposed Move

Most Portals may be eliminated but this page is useful and high traffic and no one wants to delete it. Current events is just a redirect to News and would be a suitable place to host this page. Or put it at Wikipedia:Current events which is a redirect to this page. Legacypac (talk) 17:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Many users have supported moving this page to Wikipedia space in the RfC. Removing this one from the discussion would make things much clearer. Legacypac (talk) 18:44, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

As noted at AN, there are multiple templates that would be broken or otherwise impacted by such a move. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
In addition, there are probably a lot of other sites and tools that pull from this page, although it really isn't our job to maintain those (aside from the Wikipedia mobile app). FallingGravity 04:20, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
This page seems to work fine as it is, and could potentially break things or lose information if moved. That would seem to be a course of action only to be taken as a last resort to avoid
Wikipedia:Current events could work maybe but clearly News is not the place to move this to.ShadessKB (talk) 09:42, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

a reckless deletion policy. 37.228.247.83 (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Support move to Wikipedia:Current events if all portals are deleted Nice4What (talk) 23:39, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
No need for a proposal: Portals are obviously not going to be deleted: they are used by many editors, and even far more readers. A great deal of support has come forward to revitalize them. However, Current events will be retained, regardless, because it has so much traffic. You don't need to worry, even the proposer of the RfC stated that he didn't properly consider Current Events and certain other high-traffic portals when making the proposal to delete. Closing admins would take that into account, as well as the many posters who expressed their concern for Current events. The Wikipedia namespace looks like the most appropriate place to move Current events if the portal namespace disappears. There really isn't anywhere else they could move it. I hope this alleviates any stress you may be feeling.    — The Transhumanist   01:04, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
No opinionI don't mind it being moved either way, so long as the new name isn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events (as some have suggested on the RfC) because I see great potential for a revival of that project. --BobTheIP editing as 2.28.13.227 (talk) 02:45, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
It's not a WikiProject. It's end product (content).    — The Transhumanist   06:10, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I know that; read the RfC and you'll find many others who don't. -- BobTheIP editing as 2.28.13.227 (talk) 12:06, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 22 April 2018

Regarding the Nashville Waffle House Shooting where the bullet says: "A naked man, Travis Reinking of Illinois ...", please change it to "A partially naked man, Travis Reinking of Illinois ...", read the included sources and they say clearly that he was wearing a green jacket.--John Cline (talk) 19:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC) --John Cline (talk) 19:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: Page you want to edit/needs to be edited is Portal:Current_events/2018_April_22 which isn't protected. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:20, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Matt Campbell MasterChef semi-finalist

In the sports section of 23 April, Matt Campbell was a semi-finalist of MasterChef: The Professionals, according to the source cited.

Also shouldn't the birth of the British royal baby be on there? —Gyaro–Maguus— 00:15, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please use the page linked by Nixinova which is not protected. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:51, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
  1. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/23/latest-official-seek-high-ground-amid-tsunami-warning.html
  2. ^ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-bc-us--alaska-earthquake-tsunami-science-20180123-story.html
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