This is the first edition of the WikiProject Eurovision newsletter in a bimonthly format. Following a discussion on the project talk page this may now become the regular format for the newsletter during the months that the project is less active.
A proposal was made to change Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) to discourage the use of numeric dates, primarily YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2009-08-12 for 12 August 2009), in footnotes as at present it is only discouraged in the main article body. The proposal now seems unlikely to pass due to large levels of opposition, though it could have had a large impact on this project as the date format YYYY-MM-DD is frequently used in Eurovision for reference publication and access dates. Further discussion can be found on the project talk page.
Eurovision News
31 countries have confirmed their participation in the 2010 Contest. ESCToday has suggested that the Eurovision Song Contest may be entering a crisis due to the possibility of a large drop in the number of participants next year with the ongoing international recession hitting the budgets of many broadcasters in Europe.
Luxembourg and Monaco have both ruled out a return to the Eurovision Song Contest for 2010. A decision by San Marino on if to return or not has not yet been made.
Hungary declared it is pulling out of the Eurovision Song Contest due to the financial difficulties of the national broadcaster Magyar Televízió (MTV).
National selection details for the 2010 Contest are now available for sixteen countries. Despite the contest being over six months away, Bulgaria has already announced that the artist that will represent the country in 2010 will be Miroslav Kostadinov (who is frequently referred to as Miro).
It has been announced that the voting system used for the Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals will change in 2010. The previous system was introduced in 2008 along with the first use of two semi-finals; it involved nine out of ten final places per semi-final being determined exclusively by televote, with the tenth place being determined by juries. This will be replaced by a more balanced 50% jury voting, 50% televoting system.
Javine Hylton was also nominated for GA status but was quickly failed due to a large number of concerns. The nominator, Judo112 (talk·contribs), was later found to be a sock puppet of a previously blocked user.
Welcome to the fourteenth edition of the WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter!
There have been quite a few updates to the 2010 Contest article since 1 September. Nine countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia) have confirmed their participation, and the article in general has seen many changes. Sadly, whilst some editors have been working hard to provide reliable sources, others have been less thorough and the article has had to be semi-protected again to prevent further disruption. This is a shame, as ideally anyone should be able to edit; however, the talk page is always available to bring new information to light.
The participating countries' section has also been updated to allow the inclusion of information about the language, artist and song (with an English translation as appropriate), although to date this is very much a work in progress. As news comes in, we look forward to enriching this section in the coming months—backed-up of course with sources!
No new country-specific articles have been written these past two months. If you want to add more detailed information about a country's participation in the 2010 Contest, this is the ideal way to do it, and they are very much appreciated by our readers.
