Talk:October 17

Selected anniversaries for the "On this day" section of the Main Page

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October 17 Lake Burley Griffin 1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler began observations of an exceptionally bright object, now known as Kepler's Supernova, that had appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British general John Burgoyne's Saratoga campaign ended with his surrender to the Americans, later convincing France to enter the war in alliance with the United States. 1814 – A wooden beer-fermenting vat in London burst, destroying a second vat and causing a large flood of at least 128,000 imperial gallons (580,000 l; 154,000 US gal) of porter that killed eight people. 1914 – Off the coast of the Dutch island of Texel, a British naval squadron sank the German 7th Half Flotilla of torpedo boats in the Battle off Texel. 1964 – Prime Minister Robert Menzies inaugurated the artificial Lake Burley Griffin (pictured) in the centre of the Australian capital Canberra. Edward Hawke, 1st Baron Hawke (d. 1781) Haritina Korotkevich (b. 1882) Don Coryell (b. 1924) James Scott (b. 1947) More anniversaries: October 16 October 17 October 18

See Also section for the ordinal and spacing

The reverting of the article was too fast and caused an edit conflict when I corrected my redlink to a live link and the spacing for non-four-digit years. The page the reverter's summary linked to does not mention either the See Also section or a special spacing rule. The See Also section is analogous to that in a disambiguation page. List items are supposed to get one space after the asterisk/s, multiple spaces are interpreted as single spaces unless nonbreaking spaces are used, and section headings are supposed to be spaced between the equals signs and the section titles. What is the objection on either issue? Nick Levinson (talk) 17:41, 4 September 2013 (UTC) (Expanded: 17:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC))

Date articles are a little different. The pages are kept consistent by following the template at Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year/Template. The sections are considered static and any change must be discussed at WT:DAYS. The Style section of WP:DAYS explains this. The list items (after the *) are spaced to be consistent in the edit window. Since it does not affect display, it is preferred to allow for easy reading in the edit window. Spaces between equal signs are optional per MOS:HEAD and WP:BODY and there is never a need to change existing spacing. If you have further questions on this, the better place to discuss is at WT:DAYS so it becomes part of the project record, not just on one article talk page. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:03, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay; I shouldn't have rushed and missed that there's a guideline on it (WP:DOY). I'll follow up. A notation: Spacing of list items is not consistent in the source code in the template or this page and for ease of reading in the edit window there should be spacing. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:58, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't follow. The spacing is consistent. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 16:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not. Here's an example from Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year/Template:

* 1864 – [[Qi Baishi]], Chinese painter (d. 1957)

*[[1867]] – [[Lew Fields]], American vaudeville performer (d. 1941)

However, it appears that the inconsistency is intentional, in that it causes the en-dash strings to line up vertically in the edit window. I hadn't noticed that before this visit and that kind of alignment is not important to me but I can see why some editors might prefer it. I'll think about whether every list item therefore should have at least one space after the asterisk/s, adding one to pre-existing padding, in order to keep the alignment.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC) (Corrected formatting: 16:55, 5 September 2013 (UTC)) (Corrected a format where nowiki doesn't work: 17:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC))