Wikinews:Dateline Poll

Regarding:

The current system for article titles has a limited shelf life. At present, there is no way of seperating out of an article when the event actually occured. This will become a problem, for instance, next time "Two bombs hit Baghdad's Green Zone", or "ETA detonates explosives in Madrid", both generic enough titles that they'll probably (unfortunately) crop up again at some point.

Therefore, this poll is to propose a way to make it mandatory for successful peer review, that an article must have the date in the title. For instance, the titles of the two above articles would be something like:

• "ETA detonates explosives in Madrid (December 10, 2004)"
• "(December 10, 2004) Two bombs hit Baghdad's Green Zone"

This poll does not seek to maintain what particular naming scheme we use, such as whether the date goes at the front, back, is abbreviated or not. It simply seeks to ascertain whether there is community support for taking action on this.

The Rules:

• Must be logged onto Wikinews
• One vote per person
• Votes must be signed
• Closing date of 00:00, Saturday December 18th, 2004, UTC.

Result

Proposal was rejected, 6-1.

Question: Should we make it a requirement for successful peer review that an article have a standardised date in the title?

Yes

1. Lankiveil 11:47, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No

1. TalkHard 12:05, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) - Makes title too long, and redundant to have date in both title and article. No huge rush to fix this. Better to come up with a real solution. See talk page.
2. Regebro 15:54, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) - I agree this is not a perfect solution. If two events would end up with the same title, disambiguation can be used for the time being.
3. IlyaHaykinson 18:52, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) - Some news events take days to develop, and a policy in this case is not necessary at this time
4. Lyellin 19:09, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) I agree with Ilya above. I think we can overcome this somewhat using categories, and good documentation in the article itself.
5. Cap'n Refsmmat 00:00, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC) Use categories.
6. Eloquence 03:53, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC) (noble goal, but the wrong approach)

Neutral

1. Tomos 18:02, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC) I had this exact idea, too. Glad to know I wasn't the only one. But I did not propose it for obvious drawbacks and complications. Perhaps we can discuss a bit first and see the scope of this issue.
2. The bellman 11:20, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC) Strongly Neutral I think this is an important issue, buti dont know if this is the way to solve it.