Talk:Timeline of World War II (1939)

Ordinals for dates

The first time I read this page I had read a full screen's worth of text before I realised that the numbers that prefix paragraphs are dates. I was reading times, but couldn't work out at first which dates those times related to. For the sake of clarity, may I suggest using ordinals? (e.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) NostinAdrek (talk) 12:59, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Confusion!

For 2nd September 1939 it says this "The National Service (Armed Forces) Act (1939) was enacted immediately and enforced full conscription on all males between 18 and 41 resident in the UK." Then at the 2nd December 1939 it says this "British conscription is increased to cover men from 19 to 41." So basically saying that conscription covered all males from 18 to 41, and then was later increased to cover males from 19 to 41. What is wrong here? -OOPSIE- (talk) 02:28, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

And what's even crazier is that the page for 1940 says this under 9th of May "Conscription in Britain extended to age 36." So we've expanded from 18-41 to 19-41, and now to 19-36. We're expanding backwards! -OOPSIE- (talk) 02:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I came back and decided to check more years. For 3rd of December 1941 it says "3: Conscription in the United Kingdom now includes all men between 18 and 50. Women will not be neglected since they will serve in fire brigades and in women's auxiliary groups." Got that? Finally the age range has increased, but this time it neglects to say it HAS increased. It just gives the new age range. But then...! 5th of March 1942 it says "New conscription laws in the United Kingdom include women and men up to the age of 45." So we've just increased the conscription age of men from 50 to 45. Yes, we're raising it downwards again. Can this get any worse? You bet! 22nd Octobober 1942 it says "22: Conscription age in Britain reduced to 18." So this actually might be true with it saying 19 earlier, but who knows what is true any more?! It's a total mess -OOPSIE- (talk) 05:28, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Pius XII

You state that "(october) 27: Pope Pius XII's encyclical condemns racism and dictatorships." Normally you should quote the name of the encyclical. I'm afraid you are referring to Pius XI's famous encyclical "mit Brennender Sorge", which dates from 1937. For the record, Pius XII has been largely acknowledged as pro german, and pro nazI.Alexandre Rongellion (talk) 20:43, 24 May 2010 (UTC) ON Wikipedia's Pius XII's page, on the contrary, it is stated that Pius XII refused to condemn the Poland invasion, which was considered as a betrayal by Polish catholics. If there is no further remark or opposition, I propose to cancel that entry, and change it with a quotation from Wikipedia's Pius XII page : " Pius XII's refusal to censure the German invasion and annexation of Poland was regarded as a "betrayal" by many Polish Catholics and clergy " Alexandre Rongellion (talk) 20:53, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

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Quick suggestion

Here:

Within hours of the British declaration of War, SS Athenia, a British cruise ship en route from Glasgow, Scotland to Montreal, Quebec, Canada is torpedoed by the German submarine U-30 250 miles (400 km) Northwest of Ireland. 112 passengers and crew members are killed.

I think it's important to note that this was widely regarded as a war crime. Maybe a short sentence saying that. I propose:

Within hours of the British declaration of War, SS Athenia, a British cruise ship en route from Glasgow, Scotland to Montreal, Quebec, Canada is torpedoed by the German submarine U-30 250 miles (400 km) Northwest of Ireland. 112 passengers and crew members are killed in what was widely conceived as a war crime.

And perhaps hyperlink "war crime" to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime

2601:645:C000:AE10:9C7C:23FD:B029:3F26 (talk) 11:49, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

'French Forces retreat' Confusion

30th of September 1939, it reads, citing the article "French forces on the French-German border fall back to the Maginot Line in anticipation of a German invasion", and then, 4th of October 1939 "The French forces retreat from the Saarland in Germany, and return behind the Maginot Line.". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.114.34.19 (talk) 21:41, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Formatting changes

Back in May 2023, these changes were made to the format of the month of September. The revised format was considerably less compact and is different from the format used for all the other Timeline of WWII pages. Today, an effort was made to extend that format to all the months of 1939. There may be an issue with text-to-speech conversion, but I reverted back to the original format for consistency. Please discuss if there is a desire to change all the timeline pages to that kind of revised format. Tarl N. (discuss) 08:23, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

@Graham87:, I have a request if you have the time. Can you check which version for the month of September in the article is better for text-to-speech conversion? At the time of this writing there is version 1. The revert is version 2. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: Version 1 is much better. See the guideline on list gaps and accessibility. Graham87 01:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm checking the code, they both have listgap issues. It's just that in JAWS, my primary screen reader, the indents aren't read out, whereas in NVDA they are. So they're both problematic. Actually the one that uses colons for indentation abuses definition list markup. Graham87 01:07, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I've read through the timeline a bit more (after trying to fix it myself), but the formatting probably needs more discussion. Subheadings for each day make sense for September because there are so many events, but don't seem to work for other months. Might I suggest a format something like the one at 1972#Births? That would work well with screen readers. Graham87 01:30, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Graham87, thank you for checking things out. Your suggestion looks fine with me. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78:, @Graham87: The issue which needs to be considered is the large number of timeline pages which should be roughly the same format. The new format is considerably less compact, which isn't critical, but having some pages in one format and some in another will be problematic. The formatting almost certainly dates to a time before text-to-speech readers existed, and likely was not inappropriate at the time. Modernizing the format is probably a good idea, but it's something that should be considered for the entire group of Timelines together. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 04:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

We need to have whichever format is better. A thousand miles journey starts with one step. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 04:46, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

STRONGLY disagree. If you have an entire grouping of pages in a related format, changing one section of one page to make it "a better format", leaving the rest of the pages to go hang is a net negative. If the format must change, it should be considered for all related pages making sure we don't cause problems elsewhere. Having a bunch of unrelated formats (some good, some bad) scattered across related pages is worse than having a common suboptimal format. A format like Graham87 proposes is probably good, but don't just do it to one section of one page, expecting someone else to come by later and clean up any messiness (and potentially find problems which can't be fixed).

In particular, I'm worried about overloading section headers to the point where the text gets lost in the noise because all the headers and indexes of headers in the way - the timeline pages are supposed to be text-heavy, showing a progression of events. The more meta-content in the way of the text (like bolded big-text date headers between every line), the worse. Tarl N. (discuss) 05:18, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I went to change the page to my suggested format before the message above was written. You can all have at it now. Note that it makes it harder to add images mid-list (see what I did between 5 and 6 November). I wrote the dates out in full because I thought that for the multiple-item lists writing something like "5" as a header would be ridiculous. Any accessibility-related questions can go to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility. Graham87 05:36, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

That looks reasonable. I was worried about seeing bold large section header lines ( and table of content indexes to them ) for every single day. Spelling out the month on each date is reasonable, and having bullet lists for multiple events in a day makes it easier to read. I still think there needs to be a common format for all the timeline articles. Tarl N. (discuss) 09:35, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I get a feeling of your position and there is actually a common format for timelines. Checking MOS:TIMELINE directs to the essay Wikipedia:Timeline standards, which advises to use the format

• January 3
  • Mikhail Saakashvili wins the presidential elections in Georgia.
  • NASA's MER-A (Spirit) lands on Mars

Which reflects the edits that Graham87 did. I have to mention that I left after September and forgot to come back to edit the other months. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:54, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Wow I'd forgotten about that page ... Graham87 03:00, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

*Chuckles*. (Smiley emoticon). Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:17, 6 September 2023 (UTC)