On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Jim Redmond <j...@scrubnugget.com> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 17:05, Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> ...in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into >> World War II. Not that you'd know that from the "On this day" section >> of the main page. I guess there is an iron rule that nothing mentioned >> in any other part of the main page makes it into the "On This Day" >> section (a Today's Featured Picture is an image of lifeboats rescuing >> sailors from a ship damaged in the attack), but that seems like a >> strange rule to me. >> > > I can see the motivation behind that rule. Would you really want the "On > this day" section, featured article, featured image, and DYK to be given > over to the Pearl Harbor attack every December 7th? What about devoting the > whole Main Page to the creation of the United Nations every October 24th, or > to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand every June 28th, or to the > Battle of Talikota every January 26th*, or to the founding of Rome every > April 21st? All were extremely notable historical events, after all, and > adding those would keep us from being too US- or UK-centric.
I can understand not devoting the whole main page to a single topic, and haven't (and wouldn't) argue in favor that. That doesn't necessarily lead to barring anything featured elsewhere from the "On this day" box, however. Perhaps there are folks who are scraping just the On this day section, or people who look there for interesting tidbits on the date. Or expect to look there to find articles on the day's events in history. Excluding Pearl Harbor (or anything similarly notable) from OTD because a related content item is featured elsewhere on the page suggests that the event itself is not notable enough to be listed on OTD. I doubt many readers will realize it was kept out only because, for instance, a DYK ran on the USS Arizona. (There are quite a few articles and images related to Pearl Harbor, where any mention of them would include a reference to Pearl Harbor... Does that mean featuring any of them on Dec 7 excludes the event itself from OTD?). Nathan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
