Categories
[edit]
- "Events in countryname" categories result in two ridiculous phenomena:
- 1) Calendar month pages like February will end up being a member of hundreds of categories
- 2) Each category will be just a giant, undifferentiated, alphabetical list of every city in the country which has any type of event at any time.
- "Events in monthname" categories also set up two rather useless phenomena:
- 1) Every medium- or larger-sized town article will be a member of several if not all 12 of the categories.
- 2) Each category will just be a giant, undifferentiated, alphabetical list of every city, big and small, in the whole world which has any type of event listed in that month.
- "Eventtype events in monthname" - a slightly restricted version of the above, but which still results in long, undifferentiated, alphabetical lists of cities the world over.
If this system was fully implemented, these categories would be basically useless for anyone looking for an event, and categories are hidden anyway. Hundreds of such categories are implied by the current setup, and a number of them have already been created, and probably should not have been since the template is just experimental. Can we disable this categorization thing for now and concentrate on a workable template that suitably formats the data we have and simply alerts us when an event is out of date, if necessary (I presume these are the main reasons for this template's creation). Then if we discuss and come up with other useful ways of categorization or other useful aspects, we can always add them in later. What do we think? Texugo (talk) 16:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Support removal of the categories for now.
- To resolve the question of using this template for event listings probably requires looking at a few different use cases - off the top of my head, are we talking about all events (4th of July holiday, Burning Man Festival, annual craft fair, weekly farmer's market)? If not, can we define the limited subset of uses?
- Additionally, I suspect we want to rethink the "type" and "importance" parameters - the idea is good, but without some standardization I suspect those may not be very useful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:12, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- The type and importance parameters would be part of the proposed removal as they only serve to determine categories. Currently the only template we have for listing events is {{do}}, whose fields are inappropriate for containing the dates, days of the week, periodicity, and other data needed for event listings. I would think what we need is a template we can use for any event listing in any article where we've otherwise had to use the do template or an untemplated listing. Texugo (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've never had a problem with Template:Do for events. The dates and periodicity can go in the Hours field without a problem. Powers (talk) 18:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes that is how we've had to do it, but if we make a slightly different version with unique fields, specific dates could be flagged when they get out of date, which is something at the very least worth experimenting with. Texugo (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Template:Do could potentially be modified to include that functionality, while simultaneously making it easier to make the switchover. Powers (talk) 19:20, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- An excellent point, and very likely the best way to go, but of course it's probably better to experiment here first than to experiment live across the whole site. Texugo (talk) 19:37, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Template:Do could potentially be modified to include that functionality, while simultaneously making it easier to make the switchover. Powers (talk) 19:20, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Yes that is how we've had to do it, but if we make a slightly different version with unique fields, specific dates could be flagged when they get out of date, which is something at the very least worth experimenting with. Texugo (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- I've never had a problem with Template:Do for events. The dates and periodicity can go in the Hours field without a problem. Powers (talk) 18:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- The type and importance parameters would be part of the proposed removal as they only serve to determine categories. Currently the only template we have for listing events is {{do}}, whose fields are inappropriate for containing the dates, days of the week, periodicity, and other data needed for event listings. I would think what we need is a template we can use for any event listing in any article where we've otherwise had to use the do template or an untemplated listing. Texugo (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Background to template. As noted above, one of the main reasons for this template was to create a date check on the event. There are a lot of events in articles that no longer exist or are just referencing a date from years ago. I also agree should be merged into the standard listing format but think the name event should be kept. The categories as is pointed out not perfect. I did not however intend it to be used by readers, just as an administrative tool to sort out the current entries. Some of the objections will vanish once entries are cleaned up.--Traveler100 (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- I would like to question the existence of the current event month pages. The initial entries are random, some important events missing and some very obscure events listed. The only person that has edited these pages in the last couple of years is myself, just starting to clean them up. I propose moving all the events in the pages below Calendar of events and festivals to the destination pages; or after changing all events in destination pages to the event template and having a list of event by month using the categories to rewrite these pages properly and fully. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- Do you not recognize the uselessness of having, for example, an alphabetical list of thousands of cities around the world which have any kind of event in May? Or an alphabetical list of every US city with any event anytime? It would be a considerable deal of administrative work just to get all those categories created and organized, and (for those of us who can see the categories) clutter the footers of every destination article with up to 12 more categories. To what end? Even as "administrative tools" I don't see what good a few hundred of those categories could possibly do - what would be the purpose?
- I'm not sure what to do with the month pages either, but I'd see that as a separate issue for later. I am just suggesting for now that we do this one step at a time, starting with a basic template that we can use for all event listings, with basic functionality to notify when an event's date has passed. Once we are satisfied with that, then we can think about adding additional useful categories or move on to the calendar page issue. Texugo (talk) 11:11, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- I would like to question the existence of the current event month pages. The initial entries are random, some important events missing and some very obscure events listed. The only person that has edited these pages in the last couple of years is myself, just starting to clean them up. I propose moving all the events in the pages below Calendar of events and festivals to the destination pages; or after changing all events in destination pages to the event template and having a list of event by month using the categories to rewrite these pages properly and fully. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
When this was originally discussed in the pub, I suggested having an importance field so that events could be filtered, and only those with the highest importance would end up on a global list. A village cricket match might get an importance of 1, and would only appear in the city article. Something with an importance of 2 would be listed at the next level up as well (county). The Olympics and the Soccer World Cup would get an importance of 5, but the Rugby World Cup might only get 4. Events in February would only list those with an importance of 5, Sporting events would list those with an importance of 4 and 5. If this could be implemented, then no list should have more than 10-20 entries. AlasdairW (talk) 23:05, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
- That's a really good idea, Alasdair. My only hesitation about it is that I am uncertain we have enough editors to maintain this kind of list effectively and in real time. But I wouldn't discourage anyone who is really committed to working on such a list. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:54, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation. It does make more sense than I originally thought, but I still share Ikan's concern - if we don't have the manpower or motivation to maintain the 12 existing month pages, I pretty sure we don't have the manpower or motivation to assign a 5-step importance rating for all event in all articles. If the only intended benefit is to come up with a list of 10-20 events for each month, it seems to me that it would be a lot less work to just redesign the month pages manually. Texugo (talk) 02:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- The first step of redesigning the month pages would be to get a list of events in the articles by importance, hence the categories sorted by importance. Can scan for entries in first by looking for sub-section events then I guess do and see listings with a month in the text. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- I would think it would be much, much less effort to create twelve lists of 10-20 events each by simply aggregating things we think of than it would be to go through and assign a rank to each of the thousands of events we have listed all across the site. But anyway, could we please at least divorce that effort from this one for now, and focus on the basic template format and alert functionality before we get involved in this business about categories and calendar pages? Texugo (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- If there are no serious objections, I'm going to go ahead and strip out the category stuff... Texugo (talk) 14:08, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
- Done. Texugo (talk) 14:25, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
- If there are no serious objections, I'm going to go ahead and strip out the category stuff... Texugo (talk) 14:08, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
- I would think it would be much, much less effort to create twelve lists of 10-20 events each by simply aggregating things we think of than it would be to go through and assign a rank to each of the thousands of events we have listed all across the site. But anyway, could we please at least divorce that effort from this one for now, and focus on the basic template format and alert functionality before we get involved in this business about categories and calendar pages? Texugo (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- The first step of redesigning the month pages would be to get a list of events in the articles by importance, hence the categories sorted by importance. Can scan for entries in first by looking for sub-section events then I guess do and see listings with a month in the text. --Traveler100 (talk) 05:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation. It does make more sense than I originally thought, but I still share Ikan's concern - if we don't have the manpower or motivation to maintain the 12 existing month pages, I pretty sure we don't have the manpower or motivation to assign a 5-step importance rating for all event in all articles. If the only intended benefit is to come up with a list of 10-20 events for each month, it seems to me that it would be a lot less work to just redesign the month pages manually. Texugo (talk) 02:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Recurring events
[edit]I see that "year" is still a required parameter. What about events that happen at the same time every year? Do we really need to bother looking up what day New Year's Day will fall on in 2015? It might be the same as last year. K7L (talk) 14:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Haha.. Exactly. I already left a message for User:Traveler100 about this a few minutes ago. I suppose we need to change it to apply the out-of-date maintenance category only when a year has been specified. Texugo (talk) 14:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- I implemented a fix that seems to work. Please let me know if you spot any issues. Texugo (talk) 16:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
- Quick thought: What about things like "first weekend in July, every year" or "third Tuesday each month"? Recurring events often work like this … --El Grafo (talk) 13:02, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Experimental
[edit]I wasn't aware of this template, but it appears to be in use in more than fifty articles. Given its widespread use and the fact that it's been around for more than a year I've removed the "experimental" tag. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
- Are you sure you weren't aware? You have a comment in the first section of this page. Anyway, given that this adds a new listing type to our standard list, I would prefer to see a wider discussion about officially adopting it before we declare it non-experimental. Were the fifty articles all part of the original experiments, or have they been gradually added over time? Powers (talk) 18:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Brainstorm
[edit]Just throwing an idea out there, no idea as to how feasible it is. What if every Event bubbled up one level to its parent container? If the Event is important enough it would be mentioned again in the parent (I am thinking), which would in turn bubble it up to its parent and so on. There would have to be an auto-generated template (or some mechanism), placed on parent pages to display events belonging to their child pages. Not sure if that makes any sense. It's trying to solve the same problem the "1-5 importance rank" idea mentioned above is.
In practice, it seems like there are a lot of mostly empty Sub-Region pages which would block Events from bubbling up, and not sure how to solve that. I happen to be thinking about Boston currently, so the St. Patrick's Day parade would go in its District page, and is mentioned again on the Huge City page. That seems helpful so far, there would be a little section on the Boston page that mentions all the Events in the Districts. No mention of the parade on Greater Boston, Massachusetts, or New England pages, you have to wait until USA to see it again. So you would see the little Events section on Greater Boston, but not Massachusetts (the way the articles are written today). You would also see it on North America, due to being mentioned on USA page.
So, problem #1, wikivoyagers would have to add the parade Events to three sub-region pages in order to get it to bubble up to USA page (assuming you wanted it there in the first place), where you would encounter problem #2: multiple St. Patrick's Day parades. Problem 2 could be solved by a template like <date> <eventname>: celebrated in <district>, <region>, <district>. But maybe problem #1 creates too much duplication?
Maybe the solve for #1 is to, when creating an Event, have a checkbox for each page in its parental hierarchy? So South Boston would have checkboxes for: North America, United States of America, New England, Massachusetts, Greater Boston, Boston. This could solve the duplication issue at the cost of being less elegant.
MAYBE the template accepts PARAMETERS for which events to include!!! I am blowing my own mind right now. You can ignore everything else I typed. So you would wind up with two templates like:
{{event|name=Fun Event|date=January 1st|periodic=quarterly|bubble=true|etc...}}
{{eventcalendar|place1=South_Boston|place2=South_End|place3=Downtown|etc...}}
--ButteBag (talk) 21:37, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- The intention of the the additional parameters of location and country are two fold. Currently they are used to create links when the event is on a different page from the location. The second reason is a plan to create a calendar of events. Should address your idea to some extent, idea was to be able to filter a calendar by dates and country. Should I guess be possible to do by region.
- I was initially thinking of some calendar page but another method would be to add the event to a category that mirrors the hierarchy of places--Traveler100 (talk) 08:29, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- Do you have a link to the "category" idea you're talking about? It's hard for me to visualize.
- In my head the above idea would be (for example) when you go to February there is basically only one template on that page. Maybe it looks like:
- {{eventcalendar|South_Boston|Pristina|Papua_New_Guinea|Lyon}}
- The eventcalendar pulls in any {{event}} templates from the referenced pages. Why type them up all over again on the February page the way it is now? This would be cool for not only month pages, but a wide variety of pages like New England, Seoul, and Rajasthan. I think this idea is basically moving your location and country parameters to a second template? --ButteBag (talk) 15:27, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- Just out of curiosity, is this technically even possible? I'm not too knowledgable about wikis. --ButteBag (talk) 02:05, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
Regular event
[edit]Currently this template supports events with a specific date and annual recurring events. Key to the template is that it checks if date is in the past. There have been requests to add function to support frequent events that reoccur weekly, bi-weekly, fortnightly and monthly. Question is would it be better to create a new, similar regular event template or expand this existing one? --Traveler100 (talk) 08:41, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- I'd prefer a single template unless there is a compelling reason to use multiple, perhaps with a flag to disable the flagging of past events for things like "New Years Day" where we know it will never become outdated. Two additional changes I'd suggest:
- Add a "frequency" option that would be left unused for annual events, but could be used for things like "bi-weekly", "first Monday of the month", "every Friday during the summer", or whatever makes sense.
- Simplify the data fields so that it is no longer necessary to enter three separate fields. It should be possible to parse a standard date format like "2016-01-20" - that type of date processing is done already for templates like Template:Warningbox.
- I'm sure that there are more enhancements that would be useful, but those two would be hugely useful. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:47, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- I would prefer a single template too. When entering info for Boston I found this to be an interesting edge case. (scroll down a little for the 2016 schedule.) This example is more of a Do, but if it were an Event, how would you deal with weird things that occur twice in the summer and once in the fall? Or seasonal Events? Capture that with "frequency"?
- Seems like the challenge here is making it easy enough to enter all the data, while being robust enough to potentially generate some kind of events calendar. "Frequency" is a great idea. Simplifying 6 date data fields is also a great idea. Here is my go which is probably wrong but maybe it will spark better ideas. Man dates are a pain.
- required
- name
- date (datepicker widget for month and day only)
- recommended
- url
- content
- brief (short version of 'content', used in 'eventcalendar' template)
- year (defined for one time events)
- frequency (textfield, how often does this Event occur? eg.. "First Friday in September")
- enddate (datepicker widget for month and day only)
- --ButteBag (talk) 16:06, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- I have updated the test area of this template {{Event/sandbox}} has the following enhancements:
- frequency - will take free format text (such as "every Friday") and suppress the date output
- Date parameters can be input as currently or using new parameters yymmdd and endyymmdd which accepts the formats like 2016-11-17.
- @Wrh2: Ryan, I have change the template so it calls a second {{eventlisting}}, which is only temporary until merged into {{listing}}. Only the 3 sections starting with {{#ifeq: {{{type|}}} | event should be needed.
- All, please check out new sandbox script, if no issues we can update the existing event template. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:34, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
- Updates are now live. Next step merge {{eventlisting}} into {{listing}}, and update of listing editor (that I do not have the knowledge to do. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
- Looking good! I just added two of these templates at Boston/South_End#Events. Looks like there is a space between the "date" and the comma. Only issue I notice. I'm guessing once the template is added to the listing editor the "(updated Nov 2016 | edit)" thing will start appearing?
- Oh also the "Do" and "Event" icons are slightly different, but I guess that is by design? I might keep them that same grey color if "Events" are still meant to be subordinate to "Do".
- Again, these look really great, thanks to all for the hard work! --ButteBag (talk) 02:04, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
- Hmmmm, we might want to move the date and time closer together too. It might read a little better. Right now "address" and "directions" separate the two. --ButteBag (talk) 15:01, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
- Updates are now live. Next step merge {{eventlisting}} into {{listing}}, and update of listing editor (that I do not have the knowledge to do. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
- All, please check out new sandbox script, if no issues we can update the existing event template. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:34, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Event template not liking paramaters
[edit]Before I get annoyed what's gone wrong ? Halloween#United_Kingdom
I tried adding 2 events, and they refuse to display the location data. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:22, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
- If the event location is a destination page it will display as a link (as long as it is not on that page). The Country does not display. Intention is once we have a good number of event templates across the site we can create an intelligent calendar of events with the data. --Traveler100 (talk) 04:51, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
Event Templates
[edit]Template:Event Are these cool to use by now? They make sense to me, and I'd like to use them, but the talk page and "Add New Listing" modal window make them feel experimental still. If I could click "add listing" and choose "Event" from the "Type" dropdown it would feel (to me) like these templates are first class citizens. The "Add New Listing" modal is different for "sleep" than other listings, so I imagine this change is possible. I could type everything in by hand, but I don't want to, and am extra unmotivated by thinking this template might be deleted in the future. --ButteBag (talk) 17:29, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- Also, how often should an "event" occur before it becomes a "do"? I would guess annually is an "event" and daily is a "do", but where should we draw the line? Weekly? Bi-weekly? --ButteBag (talk) 17:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- You are correct that the event template isn't really a "first class citizen" yet. It's used in a fairly large number of articles, but it has some rough edges - events that repeat more than once a year, for example, are not well supported, and there has been no push yet to try and convert existing event listings to use the event template. Also, as you've noted, listing editor support for the event template will be limited (at best) if it works at all. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:07, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, so still experimental, that's fine. The more I think about it, I really hope wikivoyagers come to consensus on this sooner rather than later. I feel like with shifting demographics "the kids today" are more interested in "experience based travel", whatever that means. Events could be a great way to capitalize on our "long tail" of local knowledge and really offer value commercial guidebooks can't. Anyway, if we could figure out a way to resolve some of the grey areas in Events, they could be come a powerful asset. Thank you for the response! --ButteBag (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- My sense of things with the event template is that it's close to where it needs to be, but someone knowledgeable has to take ownership of it and commit to working out the remaining kinks. I've been the main point of contact for listing editor updates, so at some point I can add listing editor support for event templates, but before that happens I'd like to see the implementation cleaned up to handle more use cases, (ideally) to simplify the inputs, etc. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:48, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah it still needs a little more tweaking to handle all the edge cases. I posted a crazy idea. Thank you for the feedback! --ButteBag (talk) 21:42, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- So possibly weekly, monthly options. What other rough edges need smoothing? Suggest adding requests for improvement at Template talk:Event. --Traveler100 (talk) 08:33, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah it still needs a little more tweaking to handle all the edge cases. I posted a crazy idea. Thank you for the feedback! --ButteBag (talk) 21:42, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- My sense of things with the event template is that it's close to where it needs to be, but someone knowledgeable has to take ownership of it and commit to working out the remaining kinks. I've been the main point of contact for listing editor updates, so at some point I can add listing editor support for event templates, but before that happens I'd like to see the implementation cleaned up to handle more use cases, (ideally) to simplify the inputs, etc. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:48, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, so still experimental, that's fine. The more I think about it, I really hope wikivoyagers come to consensus on this sooner rather than later. I feel like with shifting demographics "the kids today" are more interested in "experience based travel", whatever that means. Events could be a great way to capitalize on our "long tail" of local knowledge and really offer value commercial guidebooks can't. Anyway, if we could figure out a way to resolve some of the grey areas in Events, they could be come a powerful asset. Thank you for the response! --ButteBag (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
- You are correct that the event template isn't really a "first class citizen" yet. It's used in a fairly large number of articles, but it has some rough edges - events that repeat more than once a year, for example, are not well supported, and there has been no push yet to try and convert existing event listings to use the event template. Also, as you've noted, listing editor support for the event template will be limited (at best) if it works at all. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:07, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Problem with Template:Event
[edit]The formatting produced by Template:Event has a problem—the date is right next to the location, without a space or punctuation in between. See Oost Gelre#See, for example, where the first listing currently says "12–15 July 2018Lichtenvoorde". I think it should say "12–15 July 2018, Lichtenvoorde" instead. Can this be fixed? —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- added space --Traveler100 (talk) 05:39, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, but unfortunately there's still a problem. The space still shows up even when there's no location listed. So, for instance, the third listing in Oost Gelre#See currently says "26th March 2016 .", with a space before the period. I think some kind of code is needed to add a comma and space only when there's a location listed. —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- try again. Amazing how spaces can take more time that more complicated topics :-) . --Traveler100 (talk) 05:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks! —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:41, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Also, I'm not sure if Event templates have opportunity for coordinates — do they? I think the lack of coordinates and the listing issue mentioned above were the reason I used the "Do" template instead of Event for Jazz#Jazz festivals. Selfie City (talk) 14:40, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- it is basically an extension of the listing template so has all the same parameters. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Also, I'm not sure if Event templates have opportunity for coordinates — do they? I think the lack of coordinates and the listing issue mentioned above were the reason I used the "Do" template instead of Event for Jazz#Jazz festivals. Selfie City (talk) 14:40, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks! —Granger (talk · contribs) 06:41, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- try again. Amazing how spaces can take more time that more complicated topics :-) . --Traveler100 (talk) 05:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, but unfortunately there's still a problem. The space still shows up even when there's no location listed. So, for instance, the third listing in Oost Gelre#See currently says "26th March 2016 .", with a space before the period. I think some kind of code is needed to add a comma and space only when there's a location listed. —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:44, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Maybe, but if you go to Classical music, and you try editing one of the templates in edit mode, you'll see that the latitude/longitude parameters don't show up. Selfie City (talk) 15:12, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- That just means that nobody ever typed the blank template parameters into that page. It doesn't mean that they won't work. Just type the code in yourself, if you want to add them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Oh, okay, thanks. Selfie City (talk) 16:35, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
- Even when correct coordinates are assigned, a map marker doesn't show up for events on the dynamic map. Is that a bug or an intentional feature? ArticCynda (talk) 08:32, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Short-term information
[edit]I wonder if there is any general way to improve our handling or information that is valid only for short while or at a specific time, Examples include:
- the festivals discussed just above
- periodic events like the Olympics or World Cup
- almost every town in the Philippines has an annual festival, usually for its patron saint
- in China, many regions have their own festivals
- most religions have festivals & we cover them in articles on the religions or in separate articles like Ramadan. Some, like Easter, are "movable feasts", on a different date each year. Others, like various Chinese or Islamic festivals, use a whole different calendar.
- governments issue travel advisories that change over time. We mention them in some articles. WT has a list of current ones on the main page. Should we copy that idea? Create an article on advisories with links to all the main government sites?
I have no answers here, just a feeling that this is a general problem & worth some thought. Pashley (talk) 09:46, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, I was thinking about these types of events. We already have articles for some major sporting events, like the Olympics, but I was wondering about smaller events. Maybe some articles should have an "Events" section? MSG17 (talk) 11:13, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Articles do have an Events section - it's located under Do. See, for example, York#Events and festivals. We even have an event listing template (which I personally hate - it doesn't work properly). --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:19, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- ...and we do have an article on travel advisories with links to all the main government sites. A "lastedit=" field was added to {{warningbox}} (but not to {{cautionbox}}, an unfortunate omission as the typhoon/cyclone/hurricane damage info is usually downgraded from warningbox→cautionbox before finally being dropped once the community rebuilds and {{listing}}s for destroyed venues are removed). Every warningbox over six months old is added to a maintenance category. Annual festivals are fine – list them in the "Events" subsection of "Do" with a date vague enough to remain perennially valid ("Thanksgiving is the second Monday in October" and not "Thanksgiving is Oct 10, 1966"). Easter travel has an article, as does Halloween and Christmas. If individual government warnings are copied here, they'll be cautionbox/warningboxes on the destination's article; occasionally they are removed if the originating government is generating content which is more politically-motivated than actually useful to the voyager. There might be a place for a new template {{datedinfo|content=Cassandra has advised all voyagers to Troy to beware of Greeks bearing gifts.|lastedit=1250 BCE|expiry=1249 BCE-01-01}} which hides itself (and adds the article to a maintenance category) once the expiry date is reached. That would remove last year's typhoon damage from this year's articles. K7L (talk) 12:22, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Oh, thank you for correcting me. MSG17 (talk) 13:56, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
- Articles do have an Events section - it's located under Do. See, for example, York#Events and festivals. We even have an event listing template (which I personally hate - it doesn't work properly). --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:19, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, I was thinking about these types of events. We already have articles for some major sporting events, like the Olympics, but I was wondering about smaller events. Maybe some articles should have an "Events" section? MSG17 (talk) 11:13, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Don't event listings have some code to put a (Date needs updating) under expired entries? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:16, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- It is possible to set an expiry date with the {{event}} template, but not for ordinary {{listing}}s or {{cautionbox}}es. K7L (talk) 03:39, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
- Yes event listings do have a code to put a (Date needs updating)... I have been looking at grabbing event templates from an article page and checking multiple events out as to status as a tool to use in a Sandbox - experimental but works fairly well so far. Difficult to do with the variety and inconsistencies of parameter data entry. Output so far looks like:
- It is possible to set an expiry date with the {{event}} template, but not for ordinary {{listing}}s or {{cautionbox}}es. K7L (talk) 03:39, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
- Page: Bad Honnef Event: Rhein in Flammen Results: Event appears to be still a go! Event end date: 20190504 Check date: 20181005 date: 4 month: May year 2019 enddate: 04 endmonth: 05 endyear: 2019
- Rhein in Flammen (Rhine in Flames): 4 May 2019. Between Linz am Rhein and Bonn (date needs updating)
- name=Rhein in Flammen | alt=Rhine in Flames | url=http://www.rhein-in-flammen.com/de/bonn.html | email= | year=2019 | month=May | date=4 | location= | country= | address= | lat= | long= | directions= | phone= | tollfree= | fax= | hours= | price= | content=Between Linz am Rhein and Bonn
- Verify all parameter formats & useage requirements!
-- Matroc (talk) 07:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Template talk:Event meaningfulness
[edit]I just stumbled upon the Template:Event in the Cologne#Events article and wondered whether this is really such a good thing to have. Taking into account the general up-to-date-ness of our articles I doubt a reasonable amount of events can actually kept up-to-date as intended with this template. On the contrary I feel due to the poor design we now have many "events" lying around where there is a weird": , " lying around after the event name due to the missing date information.
Could someone evaluate how many of the used "events" actually have a valid date (in the future)?
Either way, I would vote to move away from this template. We need content not templates. 🤷
Cheers Ceever (talk) 18:15, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- In my editing, I have come across this template used to advise readers of events that took place in 2018 or even earlier. The idea is that the event information would be updated annually. The reality is that this is not happening. I think it is better to provide general information about when an event takes place (third weekend in May, first week of July, late September), than to post fixed dates that will go out of date. I agree with Ceever's proposal. Ground Zero (talk) 18:39, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- The template can definitely be fixed to now print that extra ": , " when the fields are missing, so I'd fix+keep it. But I support not specifying exact dates, it's not possible to keep up-to-date. Unless there's wikidata field for it - that could be in reasonable state (if the related wikipedia article uses wikidata date)... -- andree.sk(talk) 19:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- If memory serves, de-wv uses a template that can be given data like "next event first Monday in June" or some such... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:45, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- The template can definitely be fixed to now print that extra ": , " when the fields are missing, so I'd fix+keep it. But I support not specifying exact dates, it's not possible to keep up-to-date. Unless there's wikidata field for it - that could be in reasonable state (if the related wikipedia article uses wikidata date)... -- andree.sk(talk) 19:52, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
- The documentation says "date fields [...] are used to provide tracking of out of date event". I think the event is useful as intended, but should perhaps be fixed to actually work as intended. There is a free text field for approximate dates, and the year could be used to mark or hide the exact dates or the entry as whole, as seen appropriate. –LPfi (talk) 07:11, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- I agree with you. I don't want to do anything that discourages people from updating dates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- Why would a do listing discourage potential editors to add information about the timing? If someone wants to add this stuff, he will find a way. I have seen worse loosely provided information.
- On the other side, a not practical or functioning template is worse for our readers, because it looks amateurish.
- Either way, may main point was that the template itself just does not fit with WV's up-to-date reality. Cheers Ceever (talk) 20:35, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
- A listing with a hidden fields for exact dates when they are not up to date makes it easier to update than a listing with no such fields, right? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:52, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
- Can the listing automatically hide the event dates after those dates have passed? That would be cool. I only rarely see event dates that are in the future. These templates usually show historical information, which I don't think is appropriate for a travel guide. Ground Zero (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
- A listing with a hidden fields for exact dates when they are not up to date makes it easier to update than a listing with no such fields, right? Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:52, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
- I agree with you. I don't want to do anything that discourages people from updating dates. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- The documentation says "date fields [...] are used to provide tracking of out of date event". I think the event is useful as intended, but should perhaps be fixed to actually work as intended. There is a free text field for approximate dates, and the year could be used to mark or hide the exact dates or the entry as whole, as seen appropriate. –LPfi (talk) 07:11, 3 December 2020 (UTC)