User talk:Rochelimit/Guidelines

Ordering of entries

Am I correct in assuming entries should be listed in alphabetical order? Winston365 (talk) 00:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh my, I missed that one. --Rochelimit (talk) 15:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Sections

The "Holidays and observances guideline" section name seems unnecessary to me. Why have a section that encompasses the entire page? If this gets moved into project space I think that could make a good title of the page, and the paragraph under it could be moved into the intro section. This would involve adjusting all of the subsection headings, but would make the table of contents neater. Winston365 (talk) 00:15, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought of this while editing this guideline, that I might end up editing the entire WP:DAYS#Style and WP:DOY articles, combining them into one page, together with the new H&O guideline.

My plan B is, to avoid doing this article merging. Instead, I will make a link from the current WP:DOY#Holidays_and_observances section to my H&O guideline (as a sub-page of the WP:DOY page), if that is possible. But this option will make the entire guideline more 'weighed' toward my H&O guideline, since it has far more contents than the current WP:DOY, and I don't really want this to happen. Then maybe in the mean time I will also try to merge the current WP:DAYS#Style and WP:DOY with some contents from my H&O guideline, especially those which overlapped (read my comments in -Style vs Notability-).

Tell me what you think? --Rochelimit (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

My feelings are that we should probably leave WP:DAYS alone, and strive to make sure these new guidelines are compatible with everything there. The only little exception I see where these new guidelines don't follow WP:DAYS 100% is the handling of old style dates, but I think the new guidelines are in the spirit of what WP:DAYS intends.

As for the guidelines at WP:DOY, I think they need improvement, and we should probably be looking to replace them entirely. I'm pretty sure religious feasts are not the only observances on these pages that don't have their own articles to themselves. Also I find These entries should also be limited to those events that occur on the same date annually and to observances that are currently celebrated (not the date it was once celebrated or will be celebrated). slightly ambiguous. You can read that as implying holidays that are no longer celebrated should not be included, or you could read it as just implying the most recent date an event was celebrated should be the one listed, with no restriction against adding events that are no longer celebrated. I think the ancient holidays section in the new guidelines may be a little controversial. When I first saw it I wasn't convinced ancient holidays should be included, but I have since come around, and support their inclusion. I think we should be prepared to be flexible about this though.

My current thinking is that the best plan may be to replace the current guidelines on WP:DOY with something similar to what is currently in the Basic rule section (I think General guidelines is a better section name, but with what I am proposing right now it doesn't matter anyway). The rest of the new guidelines can be moved to a subpage of WP:DOY, and a link to it added on WP:DOY.

As for the style vs notability thing, I think that despite the fact that there is an imperfect division right now, in this case it is going to be more straight forward to allow them to be combined in this circumstance, even if that means some style guidelines end up on WP:DOY. Practicality beats purity here, and separating the two might be impractical. Winston365 (talk) 20:31, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I am so agree with your opinion on These entries should also be limited to those events that occur on the same date annually and to observances that are currently celebrated (not the date it was once celebrated or will be celebrated). I think it becomes too restricting, and it's a dilemma for a very notable ancient holiday (e.g. those of the Romans) vs an almost minor official modern observance (e.g. those of the United Nations).

I have to tell you though, there are 2 guidelines that is not compatible with the previous WP:DAYS. As I told you before, I don't agree with These entries should also be limited to those events that occur on the same date annually and to observances that are currently celebrated (not the date it was once celebrated or will be celebrated). which means that I don't agree that an observance should be celebrated now (for the purpose of including notable ancient/neopagan observances; and a silly thought of if birth, death, and anniversary can be all years, why can't H&O be all years :)?), and I don't agree that a "moving days" like Easter should be excluded from H&O page (although I do agree that lunar calendar should be excluded, more of this in the subsection Moving days you will check later).

I have talked with Mufka about this. He prefers not to include this days, however he told me that being an administrator doesn't mean that he is the absolute decision-maker. I respect him for letting me complete the 366 days of the year with these "movable days" without any intervention. If you check the days of the year page now, particularly on the date of 1, 8, 15, and 22 of each months, you will probably see these holidays started with the word "earliest", as well as on other dates. This is something new that I introduced in DOY, with a subsection in the new guideline covering about it. I discussed this thoroughly with Mufka as I strongly belief that the idea of including these 'movable' holidays are beneficent for the information that is given, especially regarding the earliest and latest possible date of the particular observance, which is some knowledge for me and of course for others.

Mufka also suggested me to ask for third opinion. So I'm still finger-crossing. --Rochelimit (talk) 21:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

When I was talking about exceptions to WP:DAYS, I was referring only to the style guidelines on that page, not to the contents of WP:DOY as well. Yes, the moving days thing is an innovation, and WP:DOY is quite clear that they shouldn't be included. I was gonna come around to this section, but have been putting it off. It has to be dealt with eventually though, so here we go. Personally I'm not convinced moving days do belong on these pages. I'd rather the H&O section describe things that will happen, not things that could potentially happen. I don't feel strongly either way though. Allowing these days has certainly been de facto policy on these pages for some time, and I haven't seen any complaints, but I'm still a bit uncomfortable with them. Do you mind if we take this up over at WT:DOY? I think it would be better to have this discussion somewhere a little more visible in the hope that someone else might notice and chime in. Winston365 (talk) 22:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind, in the end it will always be the Wiki community decision. Do inform me if you feel that this is the time to bring this up to WT:DOY. --Rochelimit (talk) 12:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I ran an automated script to find the earliest/latest day entries currently on DOY pages. The raw data is here. I don't yet have any idea what to make of it, but I thought I'd put it out there. Winston365 (talk) 04:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow that automated script seems to make things a lot more easier, and I'm sure it will be useful, thanks. I'm sorry if I seem a little 'passive' these days, I'm a little busier than usual. Worst case scenario, I will only bring this up to the community in December. If things go well, it will be by the end of October. --Rochelimit (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Style vs Notability

There is a distinction between style (how entries should be formatted) and notability (whether an entry is notable enough to be included). For the most part the style guidelines are at WP:DAYS#Style, while the notability guidelines are at WP:DOY. There is some overlap though. I think it may be possible to split these new guidelines into three major sections: one for formatting guidelines, one for general notability guidelines, and one for the specific guidelines currently in the Category of Holidays and observances section. Winston365 (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I like this, thanks for pointing me the style and notability. What do you think about the fact that some of the H&O guides overlap with the current guideline for the Birth, Death, Event, etc? --Rochelimit (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's probably fine as long as the new guidelines basically support the spirit of the old ones. The overlap mostly seems to be because the new guidelines are being more specific, and the H&O sections need to be handled slightly differently than the Births, Events, and Deaths sections do. Winston365 (talk) 20:35, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

English name subsection

Can you give any examples of a holiday where the local name is more notable than the English name? I'm not 100% clear on what is meant by this. At least for holidays that have their own article, I would think they should be referred to by whatever name the article has. For others I'd think we should just follow whatever the common usage on Wikipedia is. Winston365 (talk) 03:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

There are many H&O with more notable local names, e.g. Gion Matsuri (instead of Gion Festival), Prinsjesdag (instead of "little princes' day", which sounds really weird :D), etc. Some holidays has more or less notable English AND local names, e.g. Araw ng Kagitingan (with "Bataan Day"), Walpurgisnacht, and perhaps El Día de los Muertos.

One of the reason why this 'English name' subsection is made, is because I saw this tendency of many Malaysian wiki articles to use local names instead of English name, including their holidays, landmarks, etc. Many of these articles were already "translated" into English, but it seems that there are still some users who believe to prioritize the local name, which I don't think this is true for English Wikipedia. Many Malaysian observances were placed with their Malay name in H&O before my interference. One of these are Hari Merdeka (instead of "Independence Day") and Hari Malaysia (instead of "Malaysia Day"). But somebody is taking care of this, so this is not really a problem. Even just now I noticed that they already changed Hari Malaysia into Malaysia Day.

I'm also considering the local names that used non-Latin script, e.g. the Russian and Chinese. So in order to make everything consistent, I put value on making sure that English should be prioritized.--Rochelimit (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I see now. I took a shot at tightening up the wording of this section. I'm still not thrilled with the wording, and perhaps the last sentence should start out with "In certain circumstances" or something like that, but I'm not sure. I can't really think of a good way to phrase which circumstances though. I'll think about it a bit more.

When you mention non-Latin script, are you referring to the difficulty of alphabetizing the entries when there are non-Latin characters? Winston365 (talk) 23:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

No actually not, because english is prioritized anyway. One sample is in October 10, the Taiwanese double ten day. The english name is written first, so there really is no difficulties of alphabetizing with that rule keep in mind.

What I meant when I'm mentioning non-latin is because originally I thought the original name should be used instead of the english name, but then I encounter this problem with non-Latin script. So I have decided that english name will be used. BUT This will actually be another problem, because some holiday is translated as, for example, "foundation day" while others are translated, "day of foundation" (usually a direct translation of spanish el dia de ... or russian den ...). So it is a bit of a dilemma when you are trying to alphabetized which translation, but I think I'm worrying too much, so I just used the translation that is more notable.--Rochelimit (talk) 21:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

General Feast Days

In the Christian Observances section there is an entry about General Feast Day. Could you explain what you mean by this? As far as I can tell Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross isn't listed on any DOY page, judging by the dates given in the article. Also what do you think about removing the mention of Julian vs Gregorian calendar dates in this section? This is already covered in the Basic Rule section. Winston365 (talk) 00:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

What I meant by general is actually other holidays that is not an apparation of Mary's day or a Saints' day, I think I'm using the wrong wording there sorry. It should be "other Christian observances that does not fall into the previous category" or something like that.

Exaltation of the Cross is on September 14. I don't remember but a user put the simpler name "Feast of the Cross", I think because this days has many names like Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross (Roman Catholic); or Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross or Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Creating Cross (Orthodox).

I thought that by placing the Julian-Gregorian rule again and again, this will make people aware, especially for those who only saw one particular guideline in the whole guideline page. If you think this is redundant, then perhaps it should be removed (there's other mention of this in the later subsection, Saint's Day).--Rochelimit (talk) 21:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, there it is on September 14. I missed it for some reason. I see what you mean now, I think just "Other Christian observances" might be enough, but I'm still pondering the best wording. I'll try and spend some more time on this over the next few days.

I do think it is redundant to mention Julian calendar days again. If the note in the general section didn't cover Christian holidays explicitly then mentioning it again would probably be a good idea, but as the first note does cover them (even using the same example) it's probably not worth a second mention. One advantage to only mentioning things once is that if changes are made to the guideline they would have to be made in two different places, or the two might get out of synch and the guideline could start to disagree with itself. It's not a big deal either way really, but I'd be inclined not to repeat it.

On a related note, what do you think about changing the "Christian Feast Day" to "Calendar of Saints" on all of the DOY pages? I know it's a rather bold suggestion, but I kinda like the idea... Winston365 (talk) 23:02, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it is not a bold suggestion, I have anticipated this... one wiki user already asked me whether to use 'Calendar of Saints' as the title (I forgot his/her name). Personally, I don't really know whether to use "Christian Feast Day" or "Calendar of Saints". Calendar of Saints refer to the whole set of feast days, while Christian Feast Days refer to the individual feast day. Based on this definition, which one do you prefer? --Rochelimit (talk) 17:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I prefer Calendar of Saints. I think it concisely refers the the whole set of feast days, which is what a section heading (I know it's not a real section heading, but it's similar enough) should do. I also prefer it on aesthetic grounds, it just seems to flow a little better, and looks a little bit more formal. This should be brought up over at WT:DAYS before anything goes ahead though. Winston365 (talk) 23:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok will arrange that. I'm sure people will choose Calendar of saints.--Rochelimit (talk) 12:49, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I beat you to it: WT:DAYS#Christian Feast Day Winston365 (talk) 03:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Hallmark holidays

I'm wondering if the Hallmark or unofficial holidays section should be renamed to Commercial holidays. I think the labeling of a holiday as a "Hallmark Holiday" is subjective. I'm also not sure Talk Like a Pirate Day really qualifies as a Hallmark holiday. Perhaps a section on Parodic Holidays could cover this, but I think maybe it should simply be judged by the general notability guidelines. What do you think? Winston365 (talk) 01:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you're right. I rather use 'Unofficial holidays' as the title of the subsection, with a mention of "parodic holiday", "hallmark day", etc in . in the content. But I personally prefer to still mention the "general notability" in the hallmark/unofficial subsection, because I think people are more interested to read the categorized guideline than the introductory basic guideline. That is my personal opinion though? --Rochelimit (talk) 21:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I like the way you have it now [1], with Unofficial holidays as the section name. Winston365 (talk) 23:07, 30 September 2010 (UTC)