Talk:Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020

Excellent Atlantic Article

Truly an omnibus:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/

kencf0618 (talk)

Request for Comment on table of coronavirus cases

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Please participate in the RfC on a change to the table of coronavirus cases + deaths per country. Xenagoras (talk) 19:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Splitting proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I propose that the article be split into 3 different articles. The articles being named, Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak in February 2020 Chronology, Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak in February Week 2020 in Mainland China, Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak in February 2020 Outside of Mainland China. The content of the current page is long (but not the major issue), but more importantly the page has reached the template limit, which is discussed on the page Help:Template#Template_limits. It's unclear when or where the limit is being reached, however due to the issue, no references are being listed in the References section of the article. The only method of splitting the article that comes to mind is splitting the article into 3, based on the locations. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 00:01, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China, Portal talk:Viruses. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 03:12, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

 Question: What's the point of having "Timeline of the 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak in February 2020 Chronology" when the other 2 articles would cover all bases? --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 05:24, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Tenryuu's question. Bondegezou (talk) 08:43, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

With this question in mind, I think splitting into 2 articles (Mainland and outside) would be the best solution. Right now, the prose size of the article is about 115 KB so unless major cleanup happens soon, the article should almost certainly be split per WP:SIZERULE. Username⁶⁸⁹² 18:48, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Disagree. My preference would be to continue the practice of a monthly page (I understand there where technical limitations which lead to the monthly split), but to put all three sections as an item in the TOC under that date. While this is an encyclopedia, I and others are referencing this site daily. As a user of the page, I would like to get updates for all three sections without scrolling past the "old news" to get to the next section with "today's" updates. Spreading the information across three pages is counter to making the information available to the greatest audience as easily as possible. I will make an account so I can sign properly, until then I am Rudy Rimland. Please excuse my goobered edit a minute ago. 73.121.138.28 (talk) 01:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

{{reply to|Tenryuu}{ and IP user, I do agree that a edit after I brought up the issue has made the page within the template limit. However, around the time I brought the issue up, there were less than 1,000 references. Now there are more than 1,000 references, most of which are using the Template:Cite web. Thus the reference list still seems to be growing. I do not know what is the template limit for the page. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold: Here is a quick and dirty way to estimate how many more citations can fit before the page exceeds the template limit. Go to the edit interface, and add the following code to the top of the textbox:

{{subst:loop|100|<ref>{{cite web|url=https://example.com/|title=Example|publisher=Example|date=1 January 2020|accessdate=1 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101000000/https://example.com/|archive-date=1 January 2020}}</ref>}}

(This code adds 100 dummy references.) Now click "Show preview". You will see that the reference list renders correctly. However, if you change "100" to "200", then the reference list and navbox at the bottom of the page fail to render. So, you can add somewhere between 100 and 200 more references to the article before reaching the limit. 72.209.60.95 (talk) 04:37, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I also agree with Rudy's comment. Removing the {{2019 coronavirus bar data}}, or replacing it with an image that conveys the same info along with a link to the detailed template, would fix the template limit issue. I think that solution is preferable to splitting in such an ad hoc manner. (A different unregistered user) 72.209.60.95 (talk) 03:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold, I have edited the article to fix the issue. Is that satisfactory? (Feel free to revert if my edit was bad. Apologies.) 72.209.60.95 (talk) 03:36, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Did you see if there is a consensus or agreement on the Template talk page, over the edit that you had made? Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand why there needs to be consensus on the Template talk page; the edit concerns this specific article, not the template. Nonetheless, if you think we should ask about it on the Template talk page, feel free to do so. Btw, what I did is the same thing the main 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak article does. It includes an image with a link to the detailed table in the caption. (And as I said before, if you disagree, feel free to revert my edit as per WP:BRD.) 72.209.60.95 (talk) 04:37, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I still think there are better ways of improving this article that would obviate any need for a split. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia. We are not meant to be for daily updates, as per WP:NOT. Let's focus on making this article more encyclopaedic, remove repetitive content, put numbers into tables, and trim out the trivia. Bondegezou (talk) 19:50, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

• I would support either trimming the article or splitting per the guideline of WP:SIZERULE (which I didn't realize existed before). 72.209.60.95 (talk) 19:58, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Split all the content regarding China, including Hong Kong and Macau. No need to split the non-China content to other articles. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:24, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Any objection to splitting out the China section? Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:20, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, keeping all the data in one place is optimal. The article text is not too long, it's the references which lengthen the page. Leaving it as is seems fine. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:29, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support as technical necessity. The number of transcluded citations is breaking display of templates on this page and – more seriously – Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, where the references are only visible in the editing window (at least on my device, neither clicking nor hovering has any effect). I consider this to be a pretty serious accessibility issue.

My first preference would be to split out individual weeks, for this article and Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 and all future timelines by month. Given the exponential growth of the pandemic splitting articles in half (case progression chronology and related events: second choice) may leave us with this same problem of too many transcluded citation templates in each half article by the end of the month, and almost certainly for April. This generates a problem of how we would name the individual week articles, which I don't think we have represented anywhere else on the project, but all calendric subdivisions are fundamentally arbitrary anyway.

@Randy Kryn: I agree consolidation of data is ideal, and have no objection to the prose length of the article, but how would you suggest we deal with the issue of references not appearing? If we rewrite the citations manually instead of transcluding a template the reflist should display again, but that seems like a lot more labour and not really in keeping with standard editing practice.

See also Talk:Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020#Templates not showing up and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19#COVID-19 pages with template issues. Not sure where the best place to have this conversation is. Folly Mox (talk) 17:14, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support: I'm not really sure how the articles should be split, but I for sure believe that they need to be split. Currently the March 2020 Timeline article has so many sources that the reflist template doesn't work.  Bait30  ^{Talk 2 me pls?} 22:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

This proposal is currently being discussed on the COVID-19 project talk page. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19#Hastily split Timeline articles so references display again. Username⁶⁸⁹² 01:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Reviving this discussion as Timeline of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 has been split recently. While we aren't going to get any new material for February, should we for consistency's sake split this page into Chronology of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in February 2020 and Responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in February 2020? --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 02:37, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Pinging Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold, Bait30, QueerFilmNerd, and Bondegezou. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 02:39, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I forgot to ping Onetwothreeip, Folly Mox, Randy Kryn, and Username6892 as well. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 04:01, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Support, definitely agree with a split. My thought process is, if it's larger than the page on the actual pandemic too much, we should consider splitting. Splitting will allow for better readability for the readers, and also prevent possible issues occurring in the future incase something in added. QueerFilmNerd^talk 03:55, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I still support splitting this article into 2 separate articles. The Readable Prose Size is currently 76 kB, and that's excluding the bulleted lists. I don't see this article as having a large enough scope that it would make sense to keep an article this long. Username⁶⁸⁹² 04:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping. I have no view on that proposal. I think much more radical change is required. The Chronology of... article is unusable in its current form. I think most of it can be better summarised with a table of cases per day per country. The Responses to... article needs a lot of WP:NOTNEWS clean-up. If we make these articles more encyclopaedic as per WP:NOT, they won't be so long and they will be more useful. Bondegezou (talk) 08:46, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Support' It worked fine there so it should work here. — RealFakeKimT 07:31, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Support: Should be done as soon as possible. I hate these broken templates.  Bait30  ^{Talk 2 me pls?} 15:38, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I suggest from Jan 2020 onward, all chronology articles on the main subject should split into "reaction from China", "reaction from USA" and "reaction from other countries". Reason being that US now has the highest number of cases, and actions and events leading to this outcome are with multiple dimensions. Need to have clear chronology order for future reference and learning.Dihorse (talk) 10:40, 14 April 2020 (UTC)§

Dihorse, I'm going to stay neutral on that for now. Currently we're able to hold a page together with responses from all nations on one page per Responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. It's likely given how dissatisfied the US is with the WHO's response there may be more material devoted to that issue, but I don't want to crystal ball it. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 05:35, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

If nobody has any objections, I'll split the article into two: Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in February 2020 and Responses to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in February 2020 to maintain consistency with the March, April, and May articles. It's been way overdue now that we are in early May. Andykatib 07:30, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WikiProject COVID-19

I've created WikiProject COVID-19 as a temporary or permanent WikiProject and invite editors to use this space for discussing ways to improve coverage of the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Please bring your ideas to the project/talk page. Stay safe, ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Another Believer, thanks for creating this project. Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 06:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

One of my ideas is that we should have a dedicated Covid/science TV channel for cases, policies, and scientific issues. If people understood these things better ... well, that should be beneficial. As an Australian I was thinking of changing one of the ABC's channels to such programming. They will have to repeat things, no problems.

The next idea is, is to have something else than these QR codes through the mobile phone. Not everybody has one or does apps. They are too easily faked and you need to pay for a data connection, configure stuff, etc. This is not appropriate for old people and children, or first nations people. A better idea would be to have our medicare card with a photo (and chip?). You could adapt the software of the EFTPOS machines instead of dumping it all on the users, something of that kind anyway. The failure of the expensive covid-safe app has shown us that the tech solutions which consultants recommend (because they generate revenue for foreign software companies month after month) can turn out to be an expensive flop.

Last not least! The COVID pandemic has influenced world politics more than what we have taken notice of. The Doha Agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban was signed on the 29th February 2020. It is online, pdf. At that time, despite what he said, Trump would have been aware what was to come and wanted to get the Afghanistan burden out of the way. Today is 3 days after that terror act at the airport gate.

Good idea this project and also the article, i.e. timeline for checking what else happened. 2001:8003:A070:7F00:C515:62F3:1113:59C5 (talk) 00:34, 29 August 2021 (UTC)