Portal talk:Current events/April 2003

Discussions about naming of the entry regarding to US, fires, journalists, Baghdad moved to Talk:2003_invasion_of_Iraq/April_8_US_fires_on_journalists

Anyone else think it's time to remove the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster as an ongoing event? -- stewacide 23:17 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)


 * No - NASA just found one of the main data recorders last week and are still looking for more. They are also very much still trying to gather and analyze other data to find out just what happened. --mav

moved ''*The Los Angeles, California City Council votes unanimously (14-0) to use the name South Los Angeles, rather than South Central, when referring to the region in all future city documents. ''


 * To where did you move it? Kingturtle 05:40 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hi Kingturtle. I moved it "here". I had the weird feeling this info was somehow not of major importance enough to be on the current event pages. Don't get me wrong, I am sure it is "very" important for people living in LA, but is it a news of major impact ? I can think of dozens to put there with similar impact on a similar number of people (and the current event page is already quite big). And in fact, reading this line, I don't even see why it is important. I "have to" go to the external article to understand why it is. So...if Wikipedia current events is "just" meant to be a repository of external links, I think it is not very interesting.

So, I just removed it to attract attention on it. If someone else thinks it deserve to be there, he/she will put it back. But...if so...could you maybe "enrich" the information a little bit...explain why it is so important, put some internal links to interesting articles dealing with the topic this vote is supposed to be about ? User:anthere
 * Other name changes of towns or places may be historically insignificant, but this case has larger implications. It has to do with confronting the image popular culture has on black America. It has to do with breaking away from the associations "South Central" has with black people and black culture. Kingturtle 18:23 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)


 * Well...then...could you explain that briefly and neutrally in the news comment, with maybe one or two relevant wikipedia links ? (black culture...) ant

Why do we have a two column entry at the top of the page? IMHO, it's ugly. -- Zoe


 * I agree. It looks weird. Where was that change discussed ? Tim


 * We have right-aligned tables in many different articles. Having this one puts the current events at the top of the page. Without that people with lower res displays only see background articles in their first screen. IMO it looks great - like the Main Page. A very logical and elegant way to display data.  --mav 03:49 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)


 * There, is that better? --mav


 * personally, i liked it better before, when it was all aligned along the top. Kingturtle 21:25 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

Point of contention: People saying things are rarely newsworthy. Actions are. Lets have less items in Current Events that are simply people saying this, that, and the other. Post stories about genuine events. Kingturtle 17:35 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC) For example, one day Fleischer says "We've won...thanks to the Pentagon." The next day Bush says "Our victory in Iraq is certain, but not complete." We can go on and on with these quotes. Fleischer's entire job is to create quotes for newsstories every day. Neither of these are newsworthy. Find an event instead that supports the claims. For example, find a key battle victory and report that. Or find a key capture. Please stop with quoting sound bites. Kingturtle 17:40 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)


 * I agree in general, although in this case announcements relating to a major turning point in a highly visible war would seem important enough for a bullet point or two. I've been thinking about amassing a list of official statements about the 2003 Iraq war -- perhaps organizing them into a sort of timeline. I'm always interested in comparing what politicians and other public figures say versus what historians and journalists determine really happened. --Uncle Ed 17:48 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * Statements from statesmen sometimes have relevence. Statements from press secretarties have little use for news stories. Ari Fleischer is not an official. He is a spin doctor. Which has more value? Fleischer say the war is over or Bush saying the war is over. There is no contest. Obviously, Bush's words are emmensely more important than Fleischer's. Maybe my initial reaction was reading an Ari Fleischer comment in a Current Event. Kingturtle 18:46 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

regarding 4/14 story of Bush quote. Nothing in the cited reference mentions or surmises "satisfaction," so I removed it. Also, I aligned the quotes in the Current Event with the quotes in the reference. We don't know from the reference that Bush said "our victory." Maybe a better reference can be found for this Current Event. The reference given is quite lengthy and only mentions Bush briefly. Kingturtle 19:05 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

regarding the 4/13 story of the Fleischer quote. It really is two separate Current Events. One is Fleischer giving kudos to the pentagon. The other is the Washington Times telling us what the next moves are for Operation Iraqi Freedom. So I made two separate Current Events. P.S. When I looked at the reference, the Washington Times article had today's date on it. Maybe their site puts a current date on all pages viewed? Kingturtle 19:23 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

In the 4/16 story posted about US/North Korea negotiations, the wiki-author wrote "following the completed invasion of Iraq"...but there was nothing in the cited article to support such a claim. So I removed the claim. Please stay true to the references you cite. Kingturtle 00:39 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

How about including a calendar in the margins for each specific month/year page? Will it take too much memory? Something like the calendars at List_of_historical_anniversaries - Brettz9 00:46 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

posing nuke as opposed to posing nude is the best freudian slip i've evern seen in the wikiworld. Kingturtle 18:10 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)


 * I was thinking much the same thing, especially considering the latest news about NK hasn't even made it in there yet.... -- John Owens 18:16 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 4 one external links on April 2003. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20030601124205/http://story.news.yahoo.com:80/news?tmpl=story2 to http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&e=4&u=/nm/20030402/ts_nm/iraq_jazeera_dc_3
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20030604071346/http://abcnews.go.com:80/sections/world/Primetime/iraq_main030407.html to http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/Primetime/iraq_main030407.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20031212060336/http://www.asahi.com:80/international/update/0408/024.html to http://www.asahi.com/international/update/0408/024.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20030601121341/http://story.news.yahoo.com:80/news?tmpl=story to http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030410/ap_on_en_mo/bbo_hall_bull_durham_cancellation_1

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 07:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)