Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years

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[edit] Still active?

I've moved Wikipedia:WikiProject Years to the Inactive section of the WikiProject page, as it hasn't been edited since Nov 1st; I wanted to let you all know, and ask if you're still working on it. If so, feel free to move it back up into the active section. JesseW 07:35, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Still working on what?
-- Smjg 10:42, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've joined and am active (see below for new discussionTrevor MacInnis

[edit] Format problems

I am seeing too many bits like this:

which comes out a mess for any user whose date format pref is set to little-endian. It is necessary to linkify all instances of the date for it to be formatted properly. How can we get this message across to everyone? -- Smjg 10:42, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Looking now, some of them are being formatted like this:

and sometimes with ":" or " -" following the date, while others remain as separate first-level bullet points. This applies to both year and day-of-year pages. We ought to decide on one format and stick to it. -- Smjg 17:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Now the survey has produced a consensus. We shall make them look like this:

-- Smjg 17:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers and Years

There have been a few sporadic discussions of this recently. I'd like to see all of the digits at the default artucle/redirect for 0 through 9; and we should rethink how we redirect people to year articles. The primary reason for leaving years at the default NNNN artielc is to make linking of dates easy. We can still consider whether we want that to be the article proper, or a redirect from NNNN --> NNNN AD, AD NNNN, or NNNN (year). +sj + 19:28, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

There are some NPOV reasons to specify what is meant by a given year-number, aside from simple parity with numbers themselves. For instance people who date things according to other calendars -- lunar calendars, or dated from some other epoch -- will have to make do with something like 3824 (Mnpxjr Calendar), or just 3824 MC... that said, the most frequent reference to many four-digit numbers will of course be to that year AD. +sj +

[edit] Yearbot

People who are working on year articles may be interested in User:Gdr/Yearbot, a program I've written that assists with the updating of "Births" and "Deaths" sections of year articles, by gathering entries from the birth and death categories for the year and examining the articles to try to discover descriptions, dates, and sort keys. I've used it to update all the years in the range 1500–1600 and it works well if used by a careful operator. I'm making the source code available in case someone else wants to use the program. Gdr 21:50, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

Wikipedia:People_by_year/Reports/Stats#Articles_also_covered_by_year_pages : shows how many articles of a given year in the categories for year of birth/death are also linked from the year pages.
I updated the list today with data from May 16. -- User:Docu

Yes, you can see quite clearly from the stats that by May 16 I had covered 1500–1509! Yearbot won't quite bring the counts up to 100% for all years, because articles about people whose dates are uncertain (and therefore not appropriate for inclusion on the year articles) nonetheless often belong to a category anyway. A typical example is Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli who is in Category:1507 births even though it is not known whether he was born in that year. Gdr 17:33, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

Hmm, working on year articles is a good way of finding duplicates. Just today I found John Hale and John P. Hale; Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp and Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp; Geert Groote and Gerhard Groot; Felim O'Conor and Felim mac Aedh Ua Conchobair; Claude Perrin and Claude Victor-Perrin, duc de Belluno; Eleanor of Aragón and Leonora of Aragon... Gdr 23:54, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)
Good point! Here is a report that identifies some of them: People by year/Reports/People with same birth and death year. It currently matches year of birth, death and part of the sortkey. It seems to dig up a lot of {{1911}} articles imported twice. -- User:Docu

[edit] Discussion

I think that the section "this year in art, culture, and fashion" should be left out. I prefer the frame that has links to those pages. LittleDan 16:48 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yep. It is redundant and takes up unnecessary space (I hate having to list things twice). I vote for just having the box links and leaving out the actual section. Oh and each other heading should be a real heading (==) instead of just being bolded. --mav
No, I like the bolded look. It cleans up the page. We don't want giant headings everywhere. But there is one problem with deleting the art, culture, and fashion section. Parts of it might not be listed in the individual pages, so we'd have to check each one. I've deleted the 'art, culture, and fashion' section from the template. LittleDan 15:22 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I would also prefer having actual headings as it makes editing (especially for long articles) easier. If it can be done automatically (some script) for all pages then it would be great, otherwise might as well leave them as they are. Dori 01:29, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'd also like to add my support to the idea of headings being real headings and not just bolded. It's best (especially in the long run) to use proper mark-up not just a lower-level description of what it looks like. If headings appear too big on some browsers (they don't on mine), then that can be fixed by CSS markup. Furthermore, the Wikipedia:Guide to Layout recommends this. -- Cabalamat 02:29, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I also agree with the headings. It looks like we are close to a consensus here. olivier 17:38, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I'm involved in the current project for the year in science pages, and have been adding links to them from the general year pages as they are built. I much prefer the See also boxes rather than art, culture, and fashon heading, as the year in science doesn't seem to fit there, yet it seems clunky to add another section just for the year in science link. Additionally, I agree with using headings over bolded headlines, and have been editing pages to use headings whenever I'm adding the "year in science" link. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. Gentgeen 09:52, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Regarding specific dates, there are a lot of Wikipedia pages that refer to a specific date (day, month and year) on which an event occurred. These are not automatically put on the page for that year. Wouldn't it be nice if they were, in a semi-automated way (this could be done on a batch process running perhaps once per day or once per week). As an example of what I mean, consider the Eurofighter Typhoon site.

This contains the sentence:

The automatic process could insert this entry in the appropriate place in the 1994 page:

I expect there are a few things in this proposal that need to be ironed out.

-- Cabalamat 02:39, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The main problem is that it gets so many bad entries. Most of these should simply be deleted again, the rest would probably need editing. If you do this at all, I'd propose to use to create some 1994/Temp page, and then create entries from there. I have the feeling that getting a list of them is the only useful thing here; rewriting might well be easier than editing. Andre Engels 11:16, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • I would suggest to have an additional paragraph: Monarchs/Presidents. The idea being to know who was in office where during that year. For instance, when I would read: "The Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763) pitted Great Britain, Prussia and Hanover against France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony." I could click on the dates and see who were the guys in power during that period. See my embryonic proposal at: 1756. olivier 00:29, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I love that. It only makes boring year pages more attractive! -- Taku
Along the same line, I suggest adding an Ongoing events paragraph. (see 1757 for an example). The idea being to give a snapshot of the state of the world at the time. olivier 01:18, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Can we put practical rulers as well? Like Monarchs/Presidents/Practical rules or something. For example, in 1756 Japan was ruled by shogun. -- Taku
Same situation for Prime Ministers of the UK, Chancellors of Germany, various Governors... I agree that we should find a satisfying title for the paragraph that would include all of them. Monarchs/Presidents/Practical rulers is a bit bulky... olivier 01:40, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I know it doesn't sound good. Simply rulers or national leaders? -- Taku
I think that's a good term, yes. Andre Engels 11:18, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Sounds good. Another option would be "Heads of states". olivier 17:38, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I like Heads of states. If no objection is seen, I am going to change the heading. -- Taku 23:21, Oct 3, 2003 (UTC)
Popes, antipopes, some important ministers and leaders of breakaway or important dependent territories could also usefully find their way in the list. Does "heads of states" cover these guys adequately? I would say it does, but I would be happy to have other opinions. olivier 08:38, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm definitely coming in late to this discussion (which I only found out because of Olivier's edit to AD 680), but I do have a couple of reservations:

  1. Won't this overwhelm entries of earlier years where outside of the "Heads of states" section there might only be one or two entries? (Hopefully this will not always be the case, but as one person who is trying to add content to entries before AD 1000, there are far more years that would be overwhelmed than not.)
  2. Where do we draw the line on inclusion of "Heads of states"? For example, currently there are about 170 sovereign countries in the World -- which ones do we include & exclude? The problem only gets more entangled the further back we go, & we lay ourselves open to charges of being selective. (For example, including every king of Sparta while omitting any mention of the kings of Nubia, or various client kingdoms of China or the current Indian Empire.)

Until these points are addressed, could the addition of this section be kept to the entries after AD 1000 -- & preferably after 1500? Those entries tend to be quite verbose, & a section like this would be of most benefit. -- llywrch 20:47, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Interesting. I would almost be tempted to say that having all the lists of the all the heads of states pre-1000 or pre-15000 would be a good problem to have. Basically, we are talking about a problem that we do not have yet, but that we will have sometime down the road, after the "heads of states" lists become overpopulated (It is far from being the case at this point). 3 points come to my mind to tentatively address these issues:
1- Let us go back to the reason why we want (or don't want) to have the list of "heads of states" in the years' pages. I have started to include this section in order to generate a discussion, and also because I felt the need to have this information at some point. As I said before, having a page detailing what the world looked like in 680 would be interesting - to me, at least, and slightly more useful than knowing, for instance, who was born this year. Figuring out why we want these lists might help us figure out who should be in the lists. (I know I am not solving the problem here...)
2- Regarding the overwhelming issue. IF you intend to add the births/death and changes of power of all the rulers you are mentioning, then the list of heads of states should not be longer than the other lists on the page. I agree that this would make these pages VERY long. Now, the question is also whether we want to include all these events in the years' pages, and we arrive at a broader question: which granularity do we want to have on these pages? The question has been raised by User:Mazzy at Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards, but no agreement has been reached yet, as far as I know.
3- Wikipedia dynamics. In my Wikipedia experience, problems are best solved when they actually arise. Here is my suggestion: if some people feel enthusiatic about filling such huge lists as detailed "Heads of states" lists, then let us let them do it. It is a work that we probably want to see being done, and if we impose restrictions at this early stage, then these contributions might be postponed for a very long time. If we eventually figure out that some lists have grown out of control, then we could for instance simply create a separate page "Heads of states in 680".
Bottom line. My suggestion is to continue populating these lists, and if they grow too big, let us create separate pages. That reminds me a bit of a discussion we had at Talk:East Germany (see 29 Jun 2003). In this case, I belive that the presence of the template has generated more contributions than if it had not been applied. Of course, these are my suggestions, and I am glad to read others' opinions. olivier 23:42, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I would suggest to reduce the 'this year in...' box to only those years where at least one of these actually exist, and then still only those that actually do exist. Having an empty link to 1001 in sports on 1001 is just silliness, in my opinion. Andre Engels 11:16, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Your voice and the voice of reason seem to be pretty close... olivier 17:38, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)


See my suggestion for The world in at 1220. olivier 03:46, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest the following addition to the template for year pages, at e.g. 80:

Alternate uses: see Number 80

in wikimarkup:

:''Alternate uses: see [[Number 80]]''

at the beginning of the pages. Number 80 is a redirect to eighty.

This would replace notes such as (on 10):

  • For the number 10, see ten
  • There are quite a few albums called 10, including recordings by LL Cool J and Pearl Jam. For a complete list, see Ten.

or (on 24):

For the number 24, see twenty-four.
For the television series, see 24 (television).

--User:Docu

I added it. -- User:Docu

Formatting change: Following the introduction of the TOC feature, recent years (e.g. 2002, 2003) use section headers instead of the three ' .. I'd suggest to update the template this way and use section headers for Events Births Deaths Nobel Prizes. --User:Docu

Fully agree with section headers in years' articles. olivier 15:45, Dec 21, 2003 (UTC)
Ok then, I added the result to Wikipedia:Timeline standards. -- User:Docu

<from Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards > I'm having trouble with Docu here. Will people agree with me that, given that the number articles are, for example, at one hundred two, not Number 102, it makes sense that the links from the year pages to the number pages point to one hundred two and not to the redirect Number 102? Also, since any "third" uses of numbers besides the numbers itself and the years are to be listed at the number pages, that there is no point in duplicating those at the year pages, hence we don't need "alternate uses", only the link to the number page? --Wik 10:58, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Docu that it looks better to have the number in digits rather than spelt out, would you be happy with something like;
For the number, see the article on the number 102.
-- Ams80 11:04, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
No, not really. Maybe we can have some more opinions. --Wik 11:25, Feb 15, 2004 (UTC)
Do you have any suggestions for compromise? -- Ams80 11:35, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I don't mind if wick changes the links from Number 102 to Number 102. BTW according to some of the notes, changes to the template are being discussed on Wikipedia:Wikiproject Years, until then, we should leave the template as it had been, and not make any unilateral changes. -- User:Docu

102 (number) seems to have the vast majority of votes on Talk:List of numbers/Deletion

</from Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards >

I suggest changing

Alternate uses: see Number 80

to

For the number, see eighty.

Direct links are to be preferred. This way the reader sees right away that the number articles are at the spelled out word. The redirect here is a pointless confusion. --Wik 03:08, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Per majority vote, it should be changed to 80 (number) in anticipation of the move to this format.

I agree, not much use to change the template to the old format. If a direcly link is perferred, we could just use :''Alternate uses: see [[80 (number)|Number 80]]'' -- User:Docu


[edit] page layout

Just has this page pointed out to me. This template may have been used to set up a large number of the year pages but perhaps 50% of the more recent hundred years or so no longer conform to it (not me I've only talked about it). In particular in many pages the year in topic has been replaced by a "see also" box in the TRH of the page with the same information in it, in many pages the box has been added and just duplicates the paragraph. A few pages have neither. Furthermore the year in topic paragraph has started growing virtually all of the referred page (especially in television) as bullets carried over.

For this reason I have proposed on my talk pages and the year talks 1700-2000 that we get everything onto a standard format and suggested we go for the "see also" boxes not the paragraph (to avoid carry over of sub-bullets and reduce page length). I gave a month's notice and have just had this page pointed out to me. So I will not change them yet and ask you to consider (bearing in mind that the status quo described above is already heavily broken by someone else). --(talk)BozMo 17:32, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I will also copy over reactions of several other people to this proposal on my talk page here:


I think the page layout for years is inconsistent and a bit messy. The perfect year in my view is 1896 1921 etc. where the year by topic only appears as a box in the top right of the page. Some years instead have year by topic as a paragraph 1801. Some have both. In some cases the paragraph duplicates a lot of info under the link 1945 especially for year-television. Clearly people have gone to a lot of trouble putting these things in as part of organic growth and I do not want to upset people by pruning them out without discussion. So I have marked on some of the year pages (running very slowly today) and referred it here for comments. --BozMo

If no one comments in a month I will change the pages I have marked in the way I have proposed and mark a load more pages. But I'll have to find a sensible time of day to do it: --BozMo

1850-1950 now all flagged for change --BozMo 19:22, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

  • Looks good in principle. I've been copying snippets from a few selected years for the fledgling Maori Wikipedia. Not standardised yet. I'd be pleased to see more standardisation of the English version before adding many more years to Maori. No hurry! Robin Patterson 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Looks good. I think many of the pages already conform to that format. But one thing to keep in mind is we are in the process of removing all "Heads of State" portions and adding links to List of state leaders in 1850 (or whatever year). These state leaders pages are by no means complete yet, but are being worked on, and will continue to be for quite some time, I imagine. -R. fiend 21:21, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
--BozMo 10:07, 7 May 2004 (UTC)Thanks. Compliance is about 50% currently but post 1950 compliance is zero. I will do the earlier pages first.
If I remember correctly the extra info in the 1950-onward pages was put there before the separate "Year in" pages were developed. So my personal preference is to move the info to the subpages. However I think it would be good to have a poll on it (post-1950 I mean, I notice 1945 is the same too), but I'm unsure where to put a poll where it would get found by those interested. Anyway I'm definitely willing to help out with the changes. - Hephaestos|§ 14:02, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, particualrly for the offer to help! Agree a poll is a good idea. The size of proposed deletion gets much worse once TV gets going, which is why I am being careful as I don't want to upset them. Anyway lets wait a month as promised and them fix pre 1950s which will make sorting the later pages look less personal. --BozMo 14:12, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Bozmo, there is already a standard for timeline pages. See Wikipedia:Timeline standards for more information. If you wish to make everything conform to the already agreed upon standard, please do so, otherwise, dont arbitrarily start changing pages to what you would like to see. Submit what you want to change to Wikipedia:WikiProject Years, and if there is a consensus, you can start making the changes you want to. Thanks! Theon 16:55, May 11, 2004 (UTC)


BozMo- I just looked over a couple of the pages you referred to as being good pages, and they are pages that are already standards compliant. I think that if you want to go in and standardize pages to the already agreed to standard, thats perfectly fine. I was worried you were going to create a completely new standard (as some people have tried to do) and go start changing things arbitrarily (which incidentally, is part of the reason why everything is so messy now). Just so long as you dont go about deleting things, and try to categorize everything within the agreed to standard, we should be ok.

Theon 18:21, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps I am being unclear. What I am proposing exactly is deleting the "year in topic" paragraph from all pages which still have it including all the sub bullets and replacing it, where one does not already exist, with a "see also" box. Effectively turning 1849 into 1850. But post 1950 this involves deleting a significant sub-bullets (which are repeated on other pages but not in the see also box). You'll appreciate this is a number of days work and I would prefer a very good agreement before starting... I am being ultra cautious!--BozMo 19:09, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I dont have a problem with that proposal, but see if you cant clean up the box in 1850 so that the text within the box is justified to the left, right now the text is touching the right hand side fo the box, which looks unclean. Theon 20:47, May 11, 2004 (UTC)
Tried a few things and cannot manage it. I will try in the sandbox when I have time unless anyone has a good idea?--BozMo 10:18, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
Ive formatted the 1850 box, the trick is you have to get rid of the bullets, they screw it up. Border should be 1px, cell padding should be 10px and you need a <br> tag after each entry, that centers everything, and if you want to put - in front of each entry, that still looks nice. Theon 15:50, May 12, 2004 (UTC)
agree 1850 now looks loads better, well done--BozMo 21:26, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Year Navbox

Years:
1999 2000 2001 - 2002 - 2003 2004 2005
Decades:
1970s 1980s 1990s - 2000s - 2010s 2020s 2030s
Centuries:
19th century - 20th century - 21st century

News by month:
Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun
Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov - Dec

2002 in architecture
2002 in aviation
2002 in architecture
2002 in film
2002 in literature
2002 in music
2002 in science
2002 in sports
2002 in television
2002 in memoriam
2002 in Canada

I've always thought that the navigational elements at the top of the year pages were rather unattractive, so I've worked up a template for a navbox and implemented it on 2000 through 2005 for now. The 2002 box is located at right. Comments/thoughts? -- Seth Ilys 23:46, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Did you implement this as a MediaWiki page? It looks good, maybe you should talk to BozMo. Hes trying to standardize the infobox for years from about 1700 on (see above discussion) Theon 02:04, May 25, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks both for drawing me here. Yes I like the box display but (1)I strongly prefer it if you could get rid of the "year in topic" paragrapgs at the same time (2) it would be nice to have a family of variations for different time periods since what is available for these boxes varies a lot (3) I wonder if we can do something better with the content box. However, I think that (1) at least is a debate we'll have to have. As mentioned if you get the 1950s onward agreed (which is where the contraversy is I and others will happily sort the other few thousand years). It took me a while to find this page I think we need to identify other people likely to argue and bring them here too --BozMo|talk 18:42, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Inter-Language Links

Is there an automated way/bot that can add inter-language links to the years? The Chinese Wiki now has a page for every year after 28BC, and a smattering of pages before that. The links are all quite regular. The AD years are like this: "1002年", or "34年", the BC years are like this: "前1002年","前34年". I'm guessing some of the other languages follow their own patterns as well. --Vina 06:13, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Year in (Nations)

I've been trying to standardize all the year pages generally along the lines of this newer format. I think 1700-1920 basically follow that pattern now. The main difference between this format and the other prevalent one is that the "Heads of states" are deleted and instead there is a link to a separate page below the "year in topic" box. My new concern is that there are alot of "(year) in India", "Germany", "UK", etc. popping up. It used to just be Canada, which just seemed kind of random, but now its getting too cluttered. We could soon easily have a couple dozen more links under the other year in topic links. Is there a way we can streamline this? Maybe have one link to an index of all the counties covered for that year? I'd like to finish up the 20th century soon, but this is sort of in the way. Any suggestions? -R. fiend 20:58, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Days of the week

Some years have days of the week on every event (eg 1985) and some don't (eg 1991). I think it would be better if we removed the days of the week from every year because they are not necessary. I think we need to make it uniform. 132.205.47.180 zh:Wikipedia:WikiProject年


[edit] Expanding birth and death listings

For those who want to expand the listings on year pages, People by year offers a report on how many people listed in the year categories are also listed on the year pages (1800-2004).

On 2004 October 13, the percentages range:

As the report just checks if the article in the category is directly linked from the year page, articles linked through redirects or listed in the events section get miscounted.

BTW the report is at Wikipedia:People by year/Reports/Stats#Articles_also_covered_by_year_pages.

-- User:Docu

[edit] Headings for Ancient History

The template, while reasonable for the modern age, is unwieldy for those years which find themselves relatively empty of events (or perhaps I should say modern knowledge of events). The unintentional result is that the header is larger then the list of events, and thus, looks strange and ridiculous. There are also four seperate edit boxes for three to seven lines of text sometimes, straining reality even more. I have edited and looked at hundreds of these years, most of my work done primarily in the 800s, 900s, 1100s and 1200s and in those backwaters this template has been replaced most of the time with a bolding of Events, Births and Deaths instead of the larger versions. While this is holding up for most of it, User:Docu has recently brought it to my attention that this template is being violated and I am violating it on many edits, trying to eliminate the spare large headings in the midst of forests of smaller ones. I submit that this smaller template be used for those years with few events and births known to us, and the larger template be left to years of fuller knowledge. --TheGrza 01:29, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

(I set 908 to the template to show the insanity of the template for these years.)--TheGrza 01:35, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

The template you favor is in fact the older version of this template. Many pages that haven't been edited since still have it. Personally, I tend to agree that three section headers aren't optimal in pages with little content, but I still favor consistency and would keep them. A better sample for using bolded letter might be 900, as 908 doesn't have any content at all anyways (at least when you set it to the template). If 908 wasn't a year page, it would already have been deleted.
BTW depending on the skin the three headers look more or less imposing and an easy way to add at least something to 908 is Category:908 deaths (there is no subcategory for Category:Births by year for 908. -- User:Docu

[edit] Ancient years, decades, and centuries

I have been toiling in obscurity in the mid-12th century, and was hoping someone would stop by and have a look. Currently I've completed year articles 1249 through 1267, and the decade article 1250s. I'm particularly interested in what people think of the 1250s article, in which I've taken the following (unusual) steps:

  • Added a couple paragraphs discussing the decade's major events in an easy-to-read prose form;
  • Categorized the most (but not all) of the decade's events into themes so they are more easily parsed (I tried to leave out really inconsequential events that made year articles just because we don't know anything else that happened that year); and
  • Picked out only the most important / noteworthy births and deaths, rather than list all of the known births / deaths in the decade.

(Also, I've tried to add relevant pictures to the year articles to make them more visually interesting. What do you think?)

My goal is to create a system where people can "zoom out" from year to decade to century to get a good sense of a particular time in history. For example, if a reader reads only 1257, he would have no idea that one of the dominating trends in that decade was the Mongol expansion; by using the "for broader historical context" links at the top of the page, he is directed to see 1250s which summarizes in prose the two main themes in the decade as (basically) "Mongol expansion in Asia; cultural changes in Europe". Eventually, he could zoom out to 13th century and see the time he is interested in in the context of historical eras and ages, and very broad political and cultural changes.

Since this is somewhat different than existing usage of decade and century pages, I was hoping to get some feedback from this group. Thanks! - Bryan is Bantman 21:30, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Another question I have -- for early years such as these, dates of birth and death are often unknown. What is the appropriate way to order births and deaths within a given year? I have either been putting more significant people first, or ignoring the problem and putting them in in the order I find them. I suppose alphabetically is NPOV, but it's hard to put minor barons high on the list and bury popes, kings, and emperors in the middle.
A related question is for people whose year of birth or death is uncertain. For "born c. xxxx", I put them in that year only; I think that's relatively straightforward. The question is for those with "born xxxx or xxxx+1" dates; should they be included in both year articles, the earliest or latest year by convention, or excluded altogether? - Bryan is Bantman 21:36, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion if year of birth or death is uncertain, leave the person out of the list in the year. The article is about the year, after all. However, adding it in the proper decade may be feasible. Sholtar 23:00, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is vs. Was

I noticed that almost all of the years say "(year) is a common year..." as opposed to "(year) was a common year..." A couple that I've noticed say was but the consensus goes with is. I think this is incorrect. As the year has already occurred, it should be was. The current year at any given time could say is, or even better in my opinion could have something special saying "(year) is the current year, and is..." or something to that effect. Future years could say will be. I think that this would be more grammatically correct and would probably read better as well. Any opinions? If nobody's against it for a couple weeks I'll go through and change them all. Sholtar 23:17, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

I think that for events in a given year, it is standard to use the present tense. In that sense, it is consistent to use the present tense in describing the year itself. Grammatically, we're in for a semantically confusing discussion; but my opinion is that past years continue to exist as descriptors of historical periods, and therefore present tense is appropriate. As an example, I'll use another period and another verb -- it is clear that "The Stone Age describes the period of prehistory when stone tools were prevalent" is better than "The Stone Age described...", because the phrase "stone age" is still a good descriptor of that (past} period. There is no reason we can't replace "Stone Age" in the above example with "1953", or "describes" with "is"; the grammar is preserved. Just one man's opinion. - Bryan is Bantman 23:41, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
Yeah I was thinking of it from that perspective as well. However, while you can replace "Stone Age" with "1953," I'm not so sure about replacing "describes" with "is." I don't know for sure from a grammatical standpoint, but it would seem to me that "describes" is kind of like the phrase venir de, meaning "just," in French. It takes the present tense but can describe the past tense. Again, I'm not sure if this is true from a grammatical standpoint but that's how it seems to me. In addition... "was" just seems to sound better to me. Sholtar 02:34, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
In addition, another thing I just realized... "describes" refers to the definition as a term, whereas "is" refers to the object itself. Sholtar 02:35, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps we can all vote at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years/Survey#Question 3. I certainly find "is" confusing, it seems as though the year is still ongoing. --Commander Keane 06:56, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Calendar links

All of the years link to a calendar of that year in the heading, where they say this year is a common/leap year starting on (day of the week). Some of them have a little parenthetical remark saying (link takes you to calendar). Others don't. I recommend standardizing this by having none of them link to it or have the parenthetical remark, and instead have on the line below or in some other convenient location a note saying "(year) calendar," or, "A calendar for (year)," or something else to that effect. They would retain the phrase saying that it is a common/leap year, etc. but would link to the article about common/leap year and the article about that day of the week. What do you think? Sholtar 03:56, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Any opinions on this? I also think the calendars in the article itself really, really need to go. They make the articles look horrible and they're quite pointless. Sholtar | talk 03:29, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Unless there are any opinions on this soon I'm going to remove the calendars from the articles themselves, probably tomorrow. Sholtar | talk 19:14, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unnecessary duplication

I recently noticed that the 'year in topic' sections contain a lot of the events that are already in the respective cutoff pages (xxxx in television/film/music, etc). Not only that, but while the events in the other pages are regularly updated, the events in the main year page haven't, meaning they've been left like that for about two years now. For example, compare this event from 1939 in television:

  • September 1 - The anticipated outbreak of World War II brings television broadcasting at the BBC to an abrupt end at 12:10 p.m. at the conclusion of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Gala Première. The last words broadcast are of a Garbo caricature saying "Ah tink ah kiss you now". It was feared that the VHF waves of television would act as a perfect homing signal for guiding enemy bombers to central London: in any case, the engineers of the television service would be needed for the war effort, particularly for RADAR. The BBC would resume its broadcasting, with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon, after the war in 1946.

...to the same event in the 'Year in topic' section of 1939:

  • September 1 - As World War II began, BBC television abruptly stopped its broadcasting in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon (The BBC would resume its broadcasting at that same point after the war in 1945)

Not only is the 1939 version much shorter, but it's also inaccurate (1945 instead of 1946, interrupted in the 'middle' instead of at the conclusion, etc). Therefore, I suggest we remove all the events listed in the Year in Topic sections, and just have a list directing visitors to the respective cutoff pages. There's no point in updating the events, as that would just cause even more needless duplication. Agreed? BillyH 8 July 2005 11:54 (UTC)

I think the way to go here is to eliminate the "Year in topic" section from the page entirely, and leave it up to the reader to go to the more specific pages through the box at the top of the page. If anything is very notable from these pages it will be in the events section anyways.Trevor MacInnis 23:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Ok, that sounds good. I'll start removing the sections now. BillyH 01:38, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] new standards

Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
Years: 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929

Since most of the layouts of millennia, centuries, decades, and years pages in the history timeline do not look like the standard proposed here. I will be taking it upon myself to rewrite the standards (and even suggest a few new ones. Nav boxes seem to be accepted, so I'll start with those (example at right).Trevor MacInnis 19:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My proposals

Since many pages now have Nav boxes (see: 1920s, 1924, 20th century, 2nd millennium), i propose that these are the new standard. In the past these boxes were each written out by hand, but I propose an Infobox template for each type which could be edited to keep them all the same. You can see these Infoboxes at my page here and their practical use at 3rd millennium, 21st century, 2005, and 1990s.

You can see some flexibility built into the boxes. For example the {{yearbox}} infobox can be placed at 2005 and also at 2005 in music.

I have made this edit at Wikipedia:Timeline standards as well. Trevor MacInnis 19:37, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Shorter boxes

Millennia: 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium - 4th millennium

millennia


Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s

centuries



Years: 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929
Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s - 1920s - 1930s 1940s 1950s
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

year



[edit] year in topic box

Since it links to the least articles so far, I've updated the 21st Century year in topic box to align with the new {{yearbox}}. Example below, which you can see in action at 2005:

Years: 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 20072008 2009
Decades: 1970s 1980s 1990s - 2000s - 2010s 2020s 2030s
Centuries: 20th century - 21st century - 22nd century
News by month: Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun
Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov - Dec
WikiProject Years in topic:
Arts Architecture - Art - Literature - Music - Film - Television - Home video
Politics Elections - Int. org. leaders - Politics - State leaders
Science and tech Aviation - Rail transport - Science
By country Canada - India - Iraq - Ireland - South Africa
Other topics Deaths - Video gaming - Religious leaders - Sport

Trevor MacInnis 01:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)









[edit] Survey

In order to focus everyones thinking, I think a survey is in order. Check it out here, and ask anybody you think might be interested to check it out. The more people respond the better we can respond to the answers. And add any questions you think needing answers.Trevor MacInnis 02:04, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Project template

Should a project template in talk page of each year article (like from Talk:1997 etc) direct people to this project? --Commander Keane 07:05, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. I've made one {{YearsProject}} and have started putting it out there, but the are soooo many years to go. - Trevor MacInnis 16:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline Infoboxs in cell form

In order to connect the different boxes and make things look better (and easier to put on new pages) I've tried out a new form where the boxes are individual cells within and overall infobox. This is based upon the form used on Mountain pages such as Matterhorn.

The format would be as follows

Some examples are:

Millennia: 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium - 4th millennium
Years: [[{{{yp1}}} in aviation|{{{yp1}}}]] [[{{{yp2}}} in aviation|{{{yp2}}}]] [[{{{yp3}}} in aviation|{{{yp1}}}]] [[{{{year}}} in aviation|{{{year}}}]] [[{{{ya1}}} in aviation|{{{ya1}}}]] [[{{{ya2}}} in aviation|{{{ya2}}}]] [[{{{ya3}}} in aviation|{{{ya3}}}]]
Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s
Centuries: 19th Century - 20th century - 21st century
WikiProject Years by topic:
News by month
Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun
Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov - Dec
Arts
Architecture - Art - Literature (Poetry) - Music (Country, Metal, UK) - Film - Television - Home video
Politics
Countries - Elections - Int'l leaders - Politics - State leaders - Sovereign states
Science and technology
Archaeology - Aviation - Birding/Ornithology - Meteorology - Rail transport - Science - Spaceflight
Sports
Sport - Athletics (Track and Field) - Australian Football League - Baseball - Football (soccer) - Ice Hockey - Motorsport - Tennis National Rugby League
By place
Argentina - Australia - Canada - China -France - India - Iran - Iraq - Ireland - Japan - Luxembourg - Malaysia - Mexico - New Zealand - Norway- Pakistan - Singapore - South Africa - United Kingdom - United States - Zimbabwe
Other topics
Deaths - Awards - Games - Law - Religious leaders - Video gaming
Birth and death categories
Births - Deaths
Establishments and disestablishments categories
Establishments - Disestablishments
Works and introductions categories
Works - Introductions
v • d • e


or:

Centuries: 19th Century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s - 1910s - 1920s 1930s 1940s
Years: 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 19171918 1919


or:

Millennia: 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium - 4th millennium
Centuries: 19th Century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s - 1910s - 1920s 1930s 1940s
Years: 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 19171918 1919
Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s


- Trevor MacInnis 01:09, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

This proposed form never recieved any support and I will be deleting the templates shortly. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 22:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Years

This is a serious issue that I think should be addressed. Why are the year pages referenced in BC and AD, and searching for BCE gives you a redirect, when really, searching for "4 BC" should redirect you to "4 BCE"? And if I'm looking for the year 4 CE, 4 AD will redirect me to 4, but 4 CE won't get me anywhere. The pages of specific years should really be using the universally accepted neutral form of BCE and CE, as the use of BC and AD in any article is usually considered offensive by anyone who doesn't feel the need to organize history around the supposed birth of a Jew named Joshua (also known as Jesus). I don't know if it's possible to do a massive rehaul of pages and just change every single date to neutral form, but any input is appreciated. Sputnikcccp 11:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

BCE/CE are not well known amongst the general public worldwide (certainly I have never ever seen the terms used here). Nor are they neutral - where there have been attempts to introduce them to a wider audience they have met with derision (in the case of the Royal Ontario Museum), confusion and anger (when only the teaching of what BCE/CE meant (and nothing else) was introduced into the English national curriculum) and offence leading to questions in both chambers of the New South Wales parliament (when one question in one exam swapped BC to BCE). So unless we wish to cause widespread confusion, anger and offence, we'll keep the pages where they are. There's nothing stopping you adding redirects though, if you think they may be useful, jguk 15:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
While I do see how using BC/AD my cause offence to some, using BCE/CE may cause offence to others. A balance must be struck. Currently AD is not included in the title or text of the current year pages. In fact the first statement is "2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar" (the De facto standard calander system). Changing the pages to 2004 CE would (in my opinion) do more harm than good. As for BC vs BCE, well, there are a lot of BCs in the navbar, but no mention of BC in the text. If you move the page then you have to move the decade, century, millennia, categories etc.... For the time being I think creating redirects from BCE/CE to BC/AD is enough. Trevor MacInnis 15:42, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, you both have made excellent points. I guess we'll have to leave things where they are, and I appreciate your civility in a topic where it easily could have disintegrated into hostility. Sputnikcccp 21:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Content Rules

I've had the recent years pages on my watchlist for a while and I regularly delete non-notable and trivial events. I think it'd be good to have some general guidelines on the content, not just the format, of year pages. Things like annual sporting events, anniversaries of certain dates, movements of royal families, transport accidents, weather events, release of pop culture events - we need some general rules for these things I think, they're always cropping up Psychobabble 02:26, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Definitely. I addressed a couple things in Talk:2005#Entertainment releases, please comment/add. DDerby(talk) 07:21, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Standards needed quickly

Hi, folks. A fellow just asked about a date in 1965 on the Help Desk. I was going to refer him to 1965, but then I saw there is no calendar there. Looking around at the years ... wow, what a mess. 1965 has no infobox, no on-page calendar, and no calendar link. 1966 has a calendar link and an infobox, but no on-page calendar. 1967 and 1968 have them all, but their first lines are written differently. 2000 has a differently formatted infobox. Etc.

So, sorry for butting into an ongoing discussion, but may I suggest that some tentative standards for year pages be agreed upon very quickly, so we can put the year pages into some semblance of consistency? The standards can certainly be discussed and modified further, but right now things are in a bad state.

Therefore, may I suggest that, for now, we do this for recent years:

  • The first line reads something like

    1967 was a common year starting on Sunday (link goes to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

  • Any further information about the year ("This was the official International Year of the Slug") goes in the next paragraph.
  • Every year gets an infobox and on-page calendar.
  • The infobox always includes links to (at least!) the next and previous years. Thus, for example, the infobox currently on 2000, although I like the style, is unacceptable, since it contains no link to 1999.
  • As usual, disambiguation info ("This article is about the year 2000. For other uses of 2000, see 2000 (number).") is italic, indented, and above the first line.

Lastly, what infobox should be used?

Again, there is no reason the ongoing discussion on standards should not continue, but I think things need to be prettied up right now. Also, other issues, like AD/CE, which births should be listed, etc. are less urgent, and I don't feel any need to have those settled immediately.

— Nowhither 18:30, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Nowhither, I appreciate your interest in this issue, but (notwithstanding your recent help desk request) there is no pressing need to complete this project urgently -- much better that it be done right. A detailed survey has recently closed and is currently being tabulated; that will be a good tool to see what issues have been settled and which still need discussing. I think the ones you're most concerned about will be resolved by that survey, so hold tight just a few more days. - Bantman 19:01, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
Right. And about the survey, sorry about the delay but I'm currently swamped at work (I'm there right now!) but I hope to have it done tonight or tommorow. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 20:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. A couple of days (or even a week or three) is certainly reasonable. My concern was that discussion about this has been going on, on this page, for about 4 months. And similar discussions on the main page go back over 2 years. I'm all for high-quality year articles, but if we wait until everyone agrees on what The Perfect Year Article looks like, then we may just wait forever. The year articles are a very prominent, important part of Wikipedia, so I think it is important that they be in at least reasonable shape pretty much all the time. In any case, I look forward to the results. And, those of you who are working on this, your work is appreciated. — Nowhither 21:28, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Survey results are in!. Lots of issues seem to have support (and some don't). To start let's implement the following:

1. Infoboxes have support. Let's put Template:Yearbox and Template:C21YearInTopic on each page in the 21st century to start, and see what happens. If there are concerns about what in the templets then they can be changes later, but there's no harm in using them now.

2. The following form for multiple events is supported. Lets changeover pages to it.

Anything else people think we can get started on? - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 19:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

On a related note, if anything needs to be update immediatly its the Wikipedia:Timeline standards. I know that everything we're doing right now is just proposed, but the current standards on that page are extremely out of date. Not one mention of infoboxes, which the majority of modern times pages now use. I'd like to get started on updating this. I think everyone should read over the survey, the past discussions here and on the talk pages of the survey and at the Timeline standards, and make the required edits to the "example year" on this projects main page. By the end on September 2005 'at the latest we should have a standard to put forth. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 00:55, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Things to get started on: putting infoboxes, calendar links, and on-page calendars on all the recent years.
Concerning the example year, it looks pretty good. I think three things can be improved, however. In order from most to least important, they are:
  • Putting the current year in the middle of the years in the infobox, so that there are always links to the previous year and the next year.
  • Noting that the link to a calendar actually is one. So replace this:

    2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

    with this:

    2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link goes to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

  • Clarifying the Chinese calendar years. For example, the Year of the Monkey is not exactly 2004, but rather January 22, 2004 – February 8, 2005. (See also the comment after the table on the Chinese New Year page.)
However, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (anyone remember those?) I think that getting the years in decent shape soon-ish trumps all of these. And the example year is a quite reasonable format to put them all in, IMHO.
— Nowhither 20:06, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Survey Results

The results are in from the survey. Some discussion was started on the surveys talk page but I think that may fracture discussions so I'm moving it all here and creating a redirect at the survey talk to this page. Copied text follows. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 17:08, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] From Survey talk page:

So the results are in! Lots of support for some items, division for others. Questions still remain about some areas, and a 2nd Survey (or maybe just a lively discusion) may be in order. Maybe a standard page could be written using these results and people could edit it. Perhaps we should pick a page, say 2002, to test things out on? Good start though, way to go everyone! - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 04:19, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Yearboxes: A late vote for a content-rich yearbox; not like the 18th-c ones. A narrower box as the content diminishes, yes; and a fixed-width pair of tables, so each template is a complete table within itself. +sj +

[edit] Calendars

Just noticed a survey about calendars on year articles. The Wikiproject Calendars put it out and since its results directly affect us here I thought people would like to check it out. Since our survey indicated people don't want calendars on year pages I'm not sure how this will all turn out. See the survey here - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 02:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

Infoboxes seem to be the way to go, but i think the main concern people have is the way they look on some screens. Sj seems to have put that concern to bed with his edits of Template:C21YearInTopic nad Template:Yearbox. The boxes are now at a set width of 350px and a couple of well placed breaks and abrev's. All seems well to spread this use to the other templates involved. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 19:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Julian, Gregorian and other calendars

When debating the Julian/Gregorian issues, we seem to have all forgotten one thing: different countries switched over at different times. Should we refer to both for all years between 1582 and 1926? Moreover, is there any consistency at the moment in whether dates of events/births/deaths in this range are given in Julian or Gregorian?

I meant to reply on a possible format for XXXX in other calendars. Maybe something like this:

1456 in Julian equivalent
Hindu Calendar (Saka era) 14 March 1399 - 13 March 1400
Hindu Calendar (Vikrama era) March 21, 1529 - March 20, 1530
Islamic Calendar ?
Jewish Calendar ?

and for the conversions to other calendars:

Julian Calendar 1456
Proleptic Gregorian Calendar 10 January 1456 - 9 January 1457
Hindu Calendar (Saka era) ?
Hindu Calendar (Vikrama era) ?
Islamic Calendar ?
Jewish Calendar ?

with some 'appropriate' choice of Julian or Gregorian for the year in question. But we probably ought to deal with the Julian/Gregorian debate as a whole before worrying about this. -- Smjg 12:35, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

We should refer to both Julian Calendar and Gregorian calendar for all years between 1582 and 1926 whenever dates concern countries and areas using Julian calendar at that time. This is what I am doing for Russian events in 19th century. Otherwise, Gregorian calendar dates only should be fine.--Jusjih 07:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deaths Section

I know people support having all deaths on the year page but I see a major problem arising from this. If every name is to be listed then that will add 112kb to the 2004 page alone (that's the current size of Deaths in 2004). I personally think that if there should be a limit, say world figures and leaders, entertainment icons etc. Redlinks should especially be omitted. I don't know what the upper limit will end up being though. - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 21:16, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Roman numerals?

Someone is adding the year in roman numerals to year pages. I was looking at 2000 and was wondering what the heck the (MM) was after the year. I reverted it as vandalism before it came to me. But I think the roman numerals will just confuse people. --Pmsyyz 05:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

He's added them again. Should I revert them? He also tends to run the years and roman numerals together and bold both, the result of which is incredibly ugly. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 21:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
It would be nice if there was a standard way to add them. -- User:Docu
I'm kind of of the opinion that the roman numeral can be put in the infobox along with any other alternate nomenclatures. Anyway, that user is back... I don't know, should I revert the bolding of the roman numerals? It's irritating that he's not following the wikiproject and not responding to any comments, but I don't know what to do. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The inclusion after the current notation [ 2000 (MM) ] is indeed less than optimal. It may be an advantage to include it another way in the initial text [ 2000 (Roman: MM) ] or [ 2000 (MM) ], unless there is an elegant way to add it to an infobox.
You may want to invite the anon user to comment (on his talk page or editing notes). -- User:Docu

[edit] Hi:

Hi, just letting everyone know that I'm joining your group here. I'm looking forward to putting down the dates for everything, unless we don't do that... But I suppose we do, so anyway.... If you don't want me in the group, that's fine, cause I wouldn't want me in your group either, (Just kidding). K, bye...Spawn Man 04:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Culture/Comic Strips

I recently added the debut of the Dick Tracy comic strip to the Events section of 1931 (Date October 4). But I'm not completely happy with putting it there. It doesn't seem in keeping with the other events. However, I don't know if it really belongs in 1931 in literature... is a comic strip literature? I think maybe a new type of timeline article like Years- or Decades in popular culture would be appropriate, but we already have music and television as their own year in articles. I don't want to drop it altogether, I think it's significant enough for some type of timeline (and a broader category than just comic strips), but just can't figure out the right place for it. Any thoughts? Thanks, --LiniShu 19:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, comics are counted as literature, so are nursery rhymes, books etc... I don't think we should create a new category, as as you said, we already have tv & music etc... Spawn Man 03:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I did go ahead and move the Dick Tracy debut from the main 1931 article to 1931 in literature, per Spawn Man's consensus that such a move would not be inappropriate. Actually, after checking out 1931 in art, I saw that the birth of a comic strip artist was listed in that article, and furthermore Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics#Hierarchy definition places comic strips in the heirarchy for both art and literature. So, I added Dick Tracy to 1931 in art as well. Thanks again, Spawn Man, for your perspective.


[edit] Links to years

There is some discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Links_on_years_in_Luxembourg_.28city.29.23History on when the years should be linked. Some editors use the current wording to justify delinking all year pages. -- User:Docu


[edit] Special Article

I've made a special article and it only includes turbulent years and also i've made a link to a special article that sill dont have a formal name yet (for now it is called 2001-2005) its only about the events that happened in that time period (most of it bad news which is the reason for creating this article. I've havent put any information in it but heres the links if you want to start this article:

ask me if you have any questions or commentsStorm05 19:26, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline Infobox (YearInTopic) and sporadically busy countries

I do love the look of the sidebar (like {{C19YearInTopic}}), but there is a problem:

The sidebar contains links to certain busy countries, but not others. In some years, other countries were busy, too, such as 1830 in France. I don't like the current situation in which an editor who edits a year has to choose between

  • adding a "See also" section (which is unsatisfactory since it is miles away from the other country links in the sidebar) or
  • Writing the country below the century box (ugly!) or
  • Adding it to the century box (or requesting the addition) - The solution obviously can't be to indiscriminately include each such "sporadically busy" country in all sidebars for a whole century.)

Or is there another option? Common Man 05:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC), revised 03:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2005 in the United States AFD

Editors may be interested in the AFDs for 2005 in the United States and 2004 in the United States. Kappa 18:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures in year articles

Pictures enliven pages, and provide valuable learning aids for visual types. With pages like Mammal as a model, I therefore added pictures to the pages from 1825 to 1838.

What do others think - is this helpful?

Background of this question: I found a nice little niche for me by cleaning up the year articles. So far I went from 1818 to 1838 and set myself the goal of going through the whole century with the hope of eventually earning one of those barn stars. I enjoyed doing this until an RC patroller of merit reverted one of the pictures because he felt there was "no need for it in article" and threatened to remove all of them ([1], [2]). Thus, I ceased and desisted, but it took the joy out of my little project. I would like to continue improving these articles without being bullied, which I feel is inappropriate given my track record of constructive contributions to Wikipedia. Common Man 19:04, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I think pictures are great in year articles - they add needed visual interest and can be quite relevant. Lots of people agree; if you need back up for your discussion with the reverting editor, find the survey on year articles (linked to somewhere above on this talk page, I think), which shows a solid consensus for adding images to year articles. - Bantman 19:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree there should be picture, but the reversion may have to do with the fact that the picture was included as part of the infobox. I think a better form to follow would be like on 2005, where the pictures are along the page near the related text item. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 19:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Good point. I now realize I should have added "19th century" to the headline. This certainly looks better on 2005. I triad that, too [3], but since the articles of the 19th century are much smaller (events section about half a screenful, often even ends before the infobox) I felt that it just looks much nicer this way and moved it into the infobox. Generally, more than one picture would cram the page. But if we need more, it is also possible to keep them in the infobox (which can be regarded as sort of a sidebar). Common Man 20:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I understand now why you did it that way. The only problem now is that the current standard for the infobox will not allow for this. I and others have been (slowly) updated the pages but as you can see we have a ways to go. As an example I updated to 1825 infobox to the current standard and now the picture must be seperate. I do agree that in short articles it can be placed just below the infobox. Keep it up! - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 20:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for your encouragement! The new layout does take getting used to. I'm missing the "sidebar" feel one gets when the picture is in the infobox (similar to the mammal page). OTOH, it puts the picture at the top, which makes it immediately visible even on small monitors, inviting to pleasantly browse through the year pages. Common Man 20:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Trevor; the infoboxes need to be immediately visible to be useful in navigation, while the picture don't have to be. That said, they are an attractive addition, and I entirely support adding them in the 2005 style. Keep up the good work! Warofdreams talk 10:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I take exception to the report that I "bullied" Common Man! I did no such thing - I saw an edit which I thought was inappropriate (and still do - I cannot see why the "Years" articles need illustrations, as they increase the size of the article, nor why any particular event should be chosen to illustrate a year, as (a) the illustration is best found in the article itself and (b) potentially implies a precedence of one event over the others). I reverted the edit adding the picture, and only the one edit, giving those reasons. Stephenb (Talk) 10:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
You did threaten to revert all of them. That's what I meant by "bullying".
But let's not quibble over words and let bygones be bygones. I do appreciate that you're taking the time to go on RC patrol, and you seem to be very effective, which is something I wouldn't be able to do as well as you. I think Wikipedia can only prosper when we respect each other. If you take that to heart then I wish you success with all of your future endeavours! Common Man 11:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intro statement?

Some questions have arisen lately on what exactly is the intro statement supposed to be. I think it would be good to have another quick discussion/vote on this and get the issue settled. The following are a few examples in current use:

[edit] From 2005

2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. It corresponded to the years 5765-5766 in the Hebrew Calendar, 1425-1426 in the Islamic Calendar, 1383-1384 in the Iranian calendar and 2758 a.u.c.

[edit] From 2004

2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar.

[edit] From 1979

1979 (MCMLXXIX) is a common year starting on Monday.

[edit] From 1800

1800 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

So I think the options we have to decide are:

[edit] Present or past tense?

[edit] Present

  1. Was indicates that it is now something else. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 16:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Past

[edit] Link to calendar(s)?

[edit] Yes

  1. Until someone creates a separate page with them all on it I think each one should be spelled out.

[edit] No

[edit] (see link for calendar) statement

[edit] Yes

[edit] No

  1. I think people realise that blue text means a link - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 16:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Anything else? - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 16:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Exact dates

I basically like the references to other calendars - however, I'm missing one important detail. When do these years begin and end? They don't all begin on January 1, do they? If they start on different days then "correspond" is just a lame weasel word which we should replace with exact dates. Common Man 17:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Wording of intro statement

I find the word order "2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar" terribly clumsy. Wouldn't it be clearer to write

2004 is a leap year of the Gregorian calendar starting on Thursday

--Redaktor 12:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coins from each year

69.161.13.162 (talk · contribs) has added external links to a number of year articles for a site showing a variety of coins from that year. Should this be treated as link spam, or are these links actually useful? An example is [4] for 1942.-gadfium 02:54, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template- Germany

The 1920 articles are missing- By Country: Germany, France , wheareas non-existant "192x in Mexico" articles are linked. And BTW, how can u edit a meta template, is it? Ksenon 05:02, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Different calendars

User:Philip Stevens has recently created Template:Different calendars and placed it on some of the most recent years pages. It may be the solution to some of the problems with the intro (as to how to deal with the links to calendars etc.). Does anyone have an opionion about it? - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 20:22, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I have an opinion for how to improve the "Hindu calendar" portion (see talk). But otherwise I like it a lot, for what it's worth! QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 17:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I think this is a very good idea but I do have some doubts about the chose of some of the calendars. The Japanese calendar, for example, uses the length of reign of emperors to decide a year, so it doesn’t work for any years in the future. As the Template only seems to be attached to years of the 21st century, only the first six years of are currently relevant. Also, I don’t think that the Runic calendar or Ab urbe condita are used any more. I feel there should be a further discussion, ether here or at Template talk:Different calendars, to decide which calendars are suitable for this template. Hera1187 10:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New WikiProject

Take a look at the newly-created Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events. The two WikiProjects may be able to work together on a few things. joturner 02:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines

I have just reformatted the moribund Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines so that people who are interested can add themselves to the membership section and co-operate on developing Wikipedia:Timeline standards and specific time line articles. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:28, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Years in music

Is there still a WikiProject Years in music? I searched for it very hard, and I didn't find it, which disappoints me, because Years in music articles are very chaotic and unstandardized. And, does WikiProject Years policy also apply to Years in music? Thanks. --Methegreat 23:11, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Derek Avaritt?

Who on Earth is Derek Avaritt, and why do we need to know of his birth?


[edit] 666

On June the 6th, 2006, someone moved the article 666 to 666 (year) [5] and made 666 a redirect to 666 (disambiguation). That day I visited a page containing a link to the year 666 and came on the dab page. I did not know about this project and started disambiguating a lot of links (666 -> 666 (year) or others). Later I found out about this project. I reverted all my edits and changed 666 to be redirect page to 666 (year) so all the links are correct again. But since this is not the wanted situation (according to this project) it probably is best to move 666 (year) back to 666 and make 666 (year) a redirect to 666 instead. That way the old situation is restored and page 666 again follows the same policy that is used for all other years. Cpt. Morgan 14:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that we shouldn't make an exception in this case, actually; I would guess that 666 should actually redirect to Number of the Beast, since it's far more commonly used in that sense than any of the other options. Kirill Lokshin 15:10, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Although I see your point and don't really mind what the choice will be (and will happily start removing dab links again :)), such an exception will be the start of more XXXX year pages being moved to XXXX (year) and replaced by a disambiguation page. If 666 points to another page, why not also the page 1 (surely the number has greater implications than the year, compare 1 with 1 (disambiguation)). Cpt. Morgan 16:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


Please move it back. The date system depends on the years being at the number rather than elsewhere. -- User:Docu
So moved. Rich Farmbrough 13:46 29 June 2006 (GMT).

[edit] Turning years articles into prose

I want to propose a big change to the structure proposed by this project to years articles. Last month, I posted the proposal in the Village Pump (read the "Turning years articles into prose" section) which consisted of turning years articles (like 2005) from lists and timeline to prose. These articles could be well-written summaries about what happened during the year in all fields. It will be divided by topic (politics, science, sports...) rather than months. It would be an enthusiatic community work, and relativly simple with very easy-to-find sources and pictures. So what are your thoughts? CG 17:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, past efforts to turn century articles into prose resulted in disjointed, eurocentric, and error-riddled pablum. See 19th century and The 20th century in review. I don't think it's possible to summarize a year or a century. --Sean Brunnock 18:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes I know, every one would want to add events in his country or region. That's why I proposed in the Village Pump two steps: First we discuss and vote for the events that are important enough to be included and then comes the writing. CG 18:28, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
If you want a list of events, then a timeline would be the best format. It's easier for people to edit. --Sean Brunnock 20:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
If you read my post at the Village Pump you would see that I proposed we move the timelines to Timeline of #### (eg. Timeline of 2005) and the 2005 page becomes a summary of the year. CG 14:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, I don't think you can summarize a year. Can you provide an example that would prove me wrong? --Sean Brunnock 22:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, if you read the Village Pump (the link I provided earlier), you could see two examples: 1922 in Germany and de:1974 from the German Wiki. However the German article has a lot of POV and German bias, a problem I intend to fix here. CG 07:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Let's keep this discussion here. Looking at de:1974, it seems that you want to segregate events by region. Is that an advantage over listing events chronologically? I can't read German, but it appears that the 1974 article just proves my point. It's extremely eurocentric. The Soviet Union isn't even mentioned in the "Politik" section. The 1922 in Germany article only discusses politics. I don't want to nitpick. I just want to see one decent summary of a year that is under 32 KB. --Sean Brunnock 11:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems that you're missing the point. First, there's no ongoing discussion in the Village Pump. I started one a month ago (you can see it here) but it didn't go far. Second, the 1974 article is just an example, and like I said, it contains a lot of flaws and balance and POV problems. But, if it doesn't exist yet doesn't mean that it's impossible. We just need more discussion. CG 15:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we should discuss changing all of the year articles into prose if you can't provide proof that it would be an improvement. --Sean Brunnock 15:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm just suggesting a new way of presenting years articles that would make them more interesting. I've read some works that does the same thing with some variations and I found them great. We don't need proof that this is works. We just need community support. And if it doesn't work, nothing's lost, we return back to the old article. The only must now is some discussion and some more users to participate (other than me and you). CG 15:56, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd have to vote against a prose style as well. I think some principles of web design are at work here, namely the idea that people read Web pages in visual chunks, and I think that's what people hit the year pages for: bullet points. When I look up a year, it's because I want a quick glance at what was going on in the world at that time. Users expecting quick bites of information are going to be discouraged by an article format, and will likely go to another site for the highlights they're looking for. I'd be on board for a separate "Year in Review" article, though. Elizabeyth 19:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd be favor for the other way round. Years articles written in prose will improve Wikipedia quality while the timeline will be moved to Timeline if ####. CG 08:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I realize that you think it would be a good idea, but you haven't provided any reasoned argument as to why, either in your response to me or in any of your responses to Sean above, whereas we both provided reasons why we think the format should stay as it is. "Improving Wikipedia quality" is too generic to convince people of such a huge change. Can you be more specific about why you think your way would be better? Elizabeyth 17:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Since I didn't have much support for this I'll just drop it. Thank you for your comments. CG 18:09, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The proof is here! See related discussion much lower on the page. Wrad (talk) 01:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "b." and "d." vs. "born" and "died"

Hi all, is there a standard somewhere for the birth and death listings on year pages? For example, in a given year's birth listings, there may be "Joe Smith, American person (d. 2000)," and in another year's listings (mostly pre-20th and 21st centuries), it would be "Joe Smith, American person (died 2000)." I checked the main Manual of Style and it seems to indicate that the word should be spelled out. I asked about it in the discussion and got a generic "yes, conformity is the idea" type response, so I began killing some time by changing them to the full word on random year pages. Now I've found this Project, so, my apologies if I've gone against a pre-determined style decision. Should I revert the pages I've changed? Elizabeyth 19:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Please continue to spell out 'born' and 'died'. It is much more clear and saves us dyslectics from going crazy. :) --mav (talk) 17:02, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2006 in Doctor Who

I created this as a sandbox, and wonder if anyone else thinks it's worthwhile exercise, or if it's a stupid idea and unutterable listcruft... ;) I'll move to main space if anyone else likes it is an idea. Tim! 18:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "b." and "d." vs. "born" and "died"

Is there a firm policy on the standard? I just noticed that a new editor has taken it upon himself to work his way through all of the year pages, methodically changing every "b." and "d." to "born" and "died". This is completely contradictory to the standards on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year, where "b." and "d." are enforced. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 06:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox

I found this Userbox created by User:Guðsþegn:


AD This user prefers traditional terminology in date-naming





I thought it was an interesting idea, and if anyone wants to add it to their userpage just use the template {{User Anno Domini}}

--Grimhelm 10:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New templates for Chinese calendar conversion

This template can do conversion from Julian day to Chinese calendar within 4 AD to 2044 AD.

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] YearInTopic templates

I propose removing, or commenting-out, this template from some future years on the basis that no content will exist for 2066 in music et al. for a very long time. Pending no valid objections, I will start later this week. Chris cheese whine 23:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi everyone

I haven't been active at this project for a while, but I've got a great year book, so am going through slowly adding events to the years. One thing I've noticed however, is that the "By country" section in the year by topic template, doesn't have very many countries. For example, 1920 in France is there, but 1920 doesn't have a link to it. Is there a way we can add links such as this to the templates on the relavent page? Thanks, Spawn Man 04:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, & for each event & date I add, do I have to cite them or reference them? Thanks, Spawn Man 04:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate date links

Duplicate date links seem like a very bad idea to me. For the past couple of years, I've been avoiding them by doing this:

rather than

To my mind this is much neater, more efficient and more user-friendly. However, I understand that the alternative was at some stage "voted for" in a survey not many people knew about. I would like to propose we change. What do people think? Deb 21:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If a consensus develops for this form, I wouldn't mind. But there clearly isn't a consensus developing here at the moment. Moreover, if we ever change the policy before the whole survey is run all over again, it would be necessary to add a note to the survey results page with a link to the discussion in which the consensus was reached.
One issue does remain: it's likely that different punctuation (or lack thereof) after the date will end up being used by different editors (and possibly even by the same editor at different times). As the survey suggests, people who have tried to implement this style in the past have used at least three different forms, and are likely to continue to do so either by accident or out of not knowing that a convention exists. -- Smjg 23:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Extra Info?

Would it be too much trouble to add extra little details such as what kind of year it was (Year of the Sheep, Dog, Rat, etc.), if it was a leap year...you know...that kind of stuff? Japanimator 01:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The leap year info is already there on most/all of the year pages. --Tugbug 01:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links on Year Pages

A user (Brucethompson (talk • contribs)) has started adding links to the Internet Accuracy Project to various year articles; an article on the Internet Accuracy Project was previously deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Internet accuracy project. Do we have a policy on External Links on year pages? It is my opinion that these should be removed, but I wanted to see if the WikiProject had a precedent on this. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Before Present" in 1950 article?

The Before Present (BP) dating system used by scientists gives the time of an ancient event in years before 1950. It seems to me that this fact should go in the 1950 article.

But where should it go? It doesn't seem important enough to go in the lead section. It isn't really an "event", so it doesn't belong in "Events of 1950". And no other section of the article is at all appropriate.

Suggestions, anyone? --Tugbug 18:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it is perfectly appropriate for the lead section, so I added it. --mav (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese reign name

Hiya. I've noticed that the Japanese reign name (nengō) and year are missing from the template on 1180. I apologize that I do not know which other years, or how many, this is missing from, but I thought you might like to know so that whoever's interested in handling such things can take a look at it and fix it. Cheers. LordAmeth 17:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] 1987 (Robot Chicken episode)

I'd like to reference this on the 1987 page, but I'm not sure the most appropriate way to do so - suggestions please (or do it yourself!) :) SkierRMH 01:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese animal of the year

I cannot find a reference to the animal that is assigned to a specific Year by the Chinese astrological calendar. :(

[edit] Articles for Discussion: 1 AH

1 AH at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1 AH (2007-10-07 –)

In this nomination, the proposal to delete all "x AH" articles is made. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anno Domini FAR

Anno Domini has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk)


[edit] Optional Layout

It would be nice if a Daily Historical Newspaper were available highlighting the events of the day and recent historical events ranked by page visits. This would facilitate research and show relative importance of recent history in an effort to identify with the psychology of the period of time. Events of the day that were more visited than others would occupy the head article, while minor events would occupy the fold-over. This could be automated, but it would require the cooperation of System admins of Wikipedia itself since traffic logs and page layout templetizing would be required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Lather (talk • contribs) 01:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] references

Having done a lot of year pages on nl. in the past (and still doing some occasionally) I just wonder how you all think of the question of references. It is being encouraged (if not enforced) on most pages, but I do not see much of it on year pages. Wouldn't it make these pages much more useful as a quick reference for people interesting in a historical era?

P.S. ad 1477: I'd have reference to show it is not correct what is said there. 75.178.179.208 21:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC) nl:wikt:Gebruiker:Jcwf

[edit] Date formats

Okay, I'm constantly getting told that I'm going against the "house style" (whatever that means) for date formatting. I have previously suggested an improvement to date formatting - actually, "my" way of doing it is already the way it is on the huge majority of year articles, but I'm submitting this proposal again, as I got no response last time. The way some people do it is this:


  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

but the way I do it is this:

  • December 13
    • Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
    • Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.


My way not only avoids duplicate links, it also makes it easier to see when events happened on the same day - which I think is useful to readers. I can't see the advantage of doing it the other way, though I gather this was "agreed" in a poll of about 20 wikipedians about two years ago. Views, please. Deb (talk) 13:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I did respond - see above. But I've just looked at the original survey again. I'd all but forgotten which style I had actually voted for, but that's beside the point.
You did too. Sorry, but for some reason I had difficulty finding my previous proposal even though it's not far above this one. Deb (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Everybody: Please look through the six formats that were given in the survey and express your views. -- Smjg (talk) 15:14, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My 2 cents' worth

I used to maintain the birth and death sections (not the events) of the year and date pages. I prefer the

  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

style to the nested lists because it is easier to copy and paste singe lines when moving them around, etc.

Although I was instrumental in setting the house style, I think, I don't feel extremely strongly one way or the other. I just like consistency, and therefore change that requires updating a large amount of data.

Ksnow (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)Ksnow I vote for keeping the style above.

Personally I like Deb's way better. Having it look more attractive is better, in my opinion, than making it easier for cut-and-pasters. I could easily write a bot to change these, if there were consensus to do so. I'm with Deb here. – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Quadrell that Deb's suggestion is more attractive, as I think I did two & a half years ago, but I suggest that Mav's reasons in the earlier debate -- & Ksnow's now -- be given proper consideration: maintainability is a vital criterion. And if the problem is simply one of appearance, then the proper solution (which would also conclude this debate) would be to file a feature request to add functionality to the CSS interface. -- llywrch (talk) 18:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I also concur with Quadrell that Deb's suggestion is more attractive. When copying this kind of sample from a year page to a date page, it will be no harder. Duplicate links will be avoided. If what happened first is known, I suggest first come first posted. Otherwise, should there be a standard order?--Jusjih (talk) 02:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Personally I also prefer Deb's suggestion of not repeating the date. --BozMo talk 07:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason I supported the current house style was for maintainability; At first I too liked the indented format, but I then found that it was way too easy for me and especially newbies to insert an item with a different date within the indent list. This is a serious data integrity issue that is largely avoided by repeating the date. However, a good compromise would be to add HTML comments with the date to any item that is indented. Comment out the date, don't delete. --mav (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Is there any reason not to use the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the Year convention, which would be:
  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind. I forgot about the date preference problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments so far. Re the idea of using HTML comments: This would work as long as people are made aware of why they are there and not to remove them. I guess the code would something like this:

* [[December 13]]
**<!-- December 13 --> Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
**<!-- December 13 --> Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

We might need to dot some comments here and there to point people to the explanation of why it's being done this way....

On a different note: So far, nobody's commented on the different punctuations that distinguish three of the formats in the survey. On this basis, should we assume that you all prefer Deb's style, with no punctuation after the date where second-level bullets are used? -- Smjg (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1345

This is an example of a year article turned into prose. I can see from above discussions which took place over a year ago that this has been proposed but never really successfully tried. Well, here's an example of a pretty good prose version of a year. A group of us over at FAC kind of randomly thought of the idea, so some of us are trying to get this year article to FA status. I, for one, am convinced that is possible. A simple review of the article will reveal that it is not Eurocentric. I think all of the problems listed above for not having prose year articles (euro bias, disjointedness, etc.) are already huge problems in the year articles as they are organized now, and will only be made better by serious efforts to fix year articles. Wrad (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Having a look at the articles in question, I am all for this change. This project is kind of dormant, so I think getting other project involved (History, etc.) would be a good idea. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 23:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I was also thinking of pulling the Middle Ages project in. Wrad (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems this might have fallen by the wayside a bit (or not, not sure), but I strongly endorse this approach. When I go to a year article page I want to see more than just a list of events.
It seems to me that this will require a significant amount of work to pull off correctly, though. Could there, perhaps, be some organizing attempts put about this on the project page? This seems like a significant enough endeavor to require more visibility than being buried on the talk page would give. Thanks, Fractalchez (talk) 17:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Categories: Year lists, Events by year, Categories by year

Hi. I've got a confused merge request at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 February 3#Category:Categories by year that someone here might be able to help with or shed light/solutions on. Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 05:01, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional events

Every now and then we seem to get some entries on the year article related to random fictional events. Harry Potter's birth date is one, the date of the brief epilogue to the Harry Potter series (2017) is another. Of their nature, these events are all over the calendar, and for the most part they're clutter. Very seldom does the date of a fictional event have any real world significance. One could make a case for 1984 and various century or millennium ends, but for those particular cases perhaps tagging a fictional section onto a very real-world oriented article is not the best choice. Any ideas? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd say you'd have to take this on a case by case basis. As you said, some of them are notable enough for inclusion, but most aren't. Wrad (talk) 18:18, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Birthdays

This hidden text is found in the birth sections of date articles (eg 7 May);

<!-- Please do not add yourself, non-notable people, fictional characters, or people without Wikipedia articles to this list. No red links, please. Do not link multiple occurrences of the same year, just link the first occurrence. If there are multiple people in the same birth year, put them in alphabetical order. Do not trust "this year in history" websites for accurate date information. -->

I have found a constant stream of non-notable birthdays also being added to year articles and have been removing them as I come across them. Is there any objection to me adding similar hidden text (the bit about non-notable birthdays) to the year articles also? I guess it would need to go back to 1950 or so. SpinningSpark 00:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. Wrad (talk) 00:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Fine with me. You may need to add something about X's 18th birthday not being a notable event unless the celebration has global importance, even if X has an article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:10, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Decade names

I've just noticed that "noughty" decades are named in a potentially misleading way. We have, for example, 1100s (and corresponding categories etc.) used to mean the decade 1100-1009. But in normal English, the 1100s are the 100 years from 1100 to 1199 (are they not?) How about renaming these articles and categories more accurately (i.e. rename 1100s to 1100-1109, and make 1100s either a redirect to 12th century, or a disambiguation page).

Where these decades appear in navigation boxes (in lists 1100s - 1110s - 1120s) I think the use of the shorthand notation is justified, since the context makes the meaning clear. However the articles and categories should be correctly named.

Another small technical problem is that Category:1100s is taken to be a subcategory of Category:12th century, which means Category:1100 ends up in the 12th century whereas it was actually the last year of the 11th. In fact there's a box at the top of the Category:12th century page which illustrates this problem by the way the decades are mis-defined there. This mess might be best sorted out by using 1100s as the name of the century category, rather than 12th century (and similarly for all other centuries).--Kotniski (talk) 09:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

We could just have a thing at the top saying: This article is about the years 1100-1109 for the century, see 12th century. Wrad (talk) 15:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. The hat note is probably a good idea, both for the articles and categories, but we've got a number of automated scripts and templates which require the name be consistent. (I edited one a few months ago.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:46, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Like which? Maybe they could be tweaked without too much difficulty. More important is that Wikipedia be consistent with the real world (i.e. normal English usage in this case). --Kotniski (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, the ambiguation exists in the real world as well...Wrad (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
True, but in my experience the 1100s far more often refers to 100 years than to 10 (and people don't really have a good name for decades like the one we're in now - see 2000s). Even 1110s is not standard usage as far as I'm concerned, though at least that doesn't suffer from having another expected meaning. Incidentally, I've tried to repair the inconsistencies at the top of Category:12th century, by adding a note and defining a slightly different template. If there are no objections to the way it's done there, we can carry it over to the other century categories. --Kotniski (talk) 16:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I object to that, too.... :) (And I had category:12th century on my watchlist, for some reason, before this discussion.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I also object to your term "repair". "Repurpose", perhaps, but not "repair". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Can you explain why you object? I don't see anything obviously controversial in it - it certainly makes more sense than the way it's done now. (I'm not repurposing anything, just trying to state what the purpose currently is.) --Kotniski (talk) 16:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It's repurposing: 1100s is now about 1100-1109, 12th century is about 1101-1200. Changing either to realign for consistency or for (or against, as you started to do) what's done in the "real world" is repurposing. Or are you taking responsiblility for editing and recategorizing all articles and categories which refer to a century year. (I've brought a characterization proposal a few months ago in Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards#Categorization and sort keys; may I suggest that your repurposing proposal be brought there, as the proposals are related?) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:46, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Even if we agree here, these changes would have to be discussed at the WP:VP for a wider consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting to save space) In the case of Category:12th century, all I mean is that Category:1100 is currently in Category:1100s which is in Category:12th century. Meanwhile 1200 is in 1200s which is in Category:13th century. Hence Category:12th century does in fact cover the years from 1100-1199, which is what I wrote. My other change was to the YearsInCentury template, which should show the decades as they are actually defined (both here and - in 8/10 cases - in the real world), i.e. 1120s means 1120...1129 etc. I don't think see how making this clarification entails any need for mass editing and recategorizing.--Kotniski (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Category:1200 is also in Category:12th century. Also, WP:SUBCAT specifies that categories are not necessarily nested. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
All right, I'll try and write a less categorical explanatory note (but not today - time to break off for Easter).--Kotniski (talk) 17:29, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I've edited Category:12th century again with what is hopefully a more acceptable note. As regards the main issue of renaming articles like 1100s, I think I'll take it to WP:Requested moves to generate a wider discussion.--Kotniski (talk) 10:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability?

Does the project have notability criteria? It seems the year pages mostly agree with the style guide on WP:DAYS (At a minimum, all events, births, deaths, and holidays should be linked to existing Wikipedia articles and those articles should mention the specific events. This will aid greatly in maintaining the credibility and verifiability of the date articles.) but not the more stringent notability criteria of the proposal at WP:DOY. However, I can't see this stated anywhere. Is there a guideline for the year pages that I've missed? Its been easy to remove the redlink cruft where the strapline says 'future world president', but for the redlinks with straplines like 'American Singer', I'd like to be able to link to a reason for the revert. Bazzargh (talk) 19:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I usually work with older years, so I don't have experience with this problem. Wrad (talk) 21:30, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requested moves

(Starting a new section to link to from WP:RM.) It is proposed (see also discussion a bit above) to rename the articles 1100s, 1200s, etc., which in fact concern decades, to 1100-1109, 1200-1209, etc. Although it is convenient for project maintenance purposes to have these names referring to the decades, normal English usage is for them to refer to the centuries, i.e. 1100s should be about the years 1100-1199, not just 1100-1109.--Kotniski (talk) 10:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Strongly oppose. The term can mean both; but this provides a uniform series, clarified by the infobox. Leave well enough alone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:57, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
    • I agree with Septent. Wrad (talk) 00:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
      • Well, I wish it were so. But I suspect that for every reference you can find where the 1100s refers to a decade, I can find several hundred where it refers to a century. I would like to be proved wrong, since making the change would obviously involve a lot of tedious work, but from my own experience and googling there doesn't seem much doubt what the term normally means.--Kotniski (talk) 19:37, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
        • Meaning depends on context; the context here makes the intended meaning plain. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
          • What context? Article titles are pretty much context free. I can accept 1100s as shorthand for a decade when it's part of a list 1100s - 1110s - 1120s etc., but as a title for an article it won't generally appear in such contexts.--Kotniski (talk) 17:53, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
            • There are a lot of article titles with that problem. You just clarify by adding a blurb near the top saying This is about the decade, for the century, click here. At least that's how wikipedia normally does it. I think it makes more sense to leave it as is and do something like that than to change all the article title in a way that is internally inconsistent. Wrad (talk) 17:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
              • Well, that partially solves the problem, but not for all purposes. Wikipedia normally tries to name its articles accurately (otherwise there wouldn't be all those Requested Moves debates). Consider for example what happens when editors want to create wikilinks in articles. I'm sure editors don't always check out every link they use; if they do a preview and the link shows up blue, they may well just assume it has the natural meaning. So you get an editor writing "in the 1100s" - meaning what it does, i.e. the century, but wrongly linked to an article about the decade. Or another editor, more scrupulous but too trusting of Wikipedia, who checks out what the 1100s article refers to and assumes that he can write "in the 1100s" in his article to refer to the decade - this time the link is right, but the average reader of the article (who probably won't be following the link) is seriously misled. Even in cases where no-one is actually misled, it looks bad for articles to be wrongly titled. You might argue, for example (and someone no doubt already has) that Warsaw should be renamed Warszawa for "internal consistency", since all other Polish cities are listed under their Polish names, so why should English usage be a consideration?--Kotniski (talk) 18:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
                • These are navigation pages, not articles. They have a nice, consistent, working format, defensible as usage. Please chill. If you want to go amend the handful of actual articles which link to 1100s, do so; if not, the obvious solution is a dab header. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
                  • I don't know what you mean by navigation pages. 1100s at least looks like it's supposed to be an article. And the problem with linking won't be solved in the way you suggest - firstly 1100s is only one of a class of such articles, and secondly new links might be created at any time, so someone would have to keep monitoring them - pointless if the problem is simply that the articles are misnamed. Again, if you can convince me that usage supports 1100s as a decade, I'll be more than happy, but I haven't seen any evidence for this so far.--Kotniski (talk) 19:06, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know that I agree that decade pages are navigation pages. To be honest, they're pretty lame and aren't really anything. Stubs? Wrad (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Unexpandable stubs. But calling them navigation pages provides me with a reason for not proposing their deletion, which would be a lot of effort for no benefit to the encyclopedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. They are expandable. Lots of things happen every decade that could be added to these pages. Entire books have been written about decades. Wrad (talk) 20:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I certainly agree with Wrad on this point. But whatever they are, while they're in Wikipedia mainspace, I still believe they should be named in accordance with real-world usage.--Kotniski (talk) 20:53, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
They are. If no one else supports this idea, it should be WP:SNOWed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Instead of just saying "they are", maybe you can provide some evidence? Then we'll all be happy (it's not like I'm looking forward to renaming all these articles). --Kotniski (talk) 21:06, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
They are what? Navigation pages? Wrad (talk) 21:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
They are named in accord with real-world usage, at least with one of the two usages. If you don't want to rename all these articles, don't do it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I see. I really agree in this regard. The ambiguation exists in real life. It's unavoidable. Thus, I think it's wise to stay with the status quo. There is always a hazard when wikilinking that the editor will mistakenly link to the wrong thing. That isn't really the problem of anyone but the editor. They just need to be aware. Wrad (talk) 21:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, the linking problem isn't quite as huge as one might think, see here. Not many articles link to the 1100s page, and most of those that do seem to be linked correctly. Wrad (talk) 22:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, in only the second one I checked (Leaning Tower of Pisa, now corrected) I found a mistake of exactly the type I predicted. All I'm asking for is a few references to some good real-life sources where "the 1100s" refers to 10 rather than 100 years, like you both claim it can. Because all my experience and Google searching tells me that the century usage is the overwhelmingly dominant one.--Kotniski (talk) 09:01, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm looking for evidence that the linking problem is as bad as you say. One in 250 isn't that bad. There just aren't very many articles linking to decades. Wrad (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I never said it was particularly bad, although since I found an error at only the second attempt I'm quite sure I could find some more. It's just one reason why the naming of articles should not be totally out of sync with standard English usage.--Kotniski (talk) 16:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

We do already have a series of articles on the 12th century, 13th century, etc, do we not? That's what the century usage of terms like 1100s and 1200s would point to.. I think we're just fine continuing the usage of these pages as decades. LordAmeth (talk) 23:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I can see what Kotniski is saying, but I just don't think that the confusion is enough to merit such a big change. Wrad (talk) 23:23, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
All right, since no-one else sees this as a problem, I'll withdraw the proposal.--Kotniski (talk) 09:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Update: this problem has come up again at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)‎#The 1700s and several people there agree that there is a need to make a change along the lines I proposed. If anyone has any good arguments against (such as references to sources which actually use things like 1700s to refer to decades), then please make them there.--Kotniski (talk) 08:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merging years in poetry to years in literature

According to our Literature article, the most basic literary types include poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. If that's true, why do we have year in literature pages AND year in poetry pages? I stumbled upon these two types of pages and found that the poetry ones could easily be combined and should be combined with the literature ones. Most readers won't find the poetry pages because the literature pages usually have a remnant of a poetry section.

Therefore, my proposal is to combine them. If we could get a bot to do a rough merge, that would be great. I (and anyone else who wants to) would then go through and polish them.

While we're at it, I also propose that the confusing "New books" heading be changed to "Novels".

See User talk:Psychless/Temp work for an example of a combined page. Please post your support or disagreements. Psychless 15:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. there has been a problem in some cases justifying the poetry pages for the individual years. And also changing New Books to Novels--but this will need checking to see that all of them in fact are novels, and not, say, short story collections, and a heading possibly for other new books. Cf. 1608 in Literature and many other years around that time with political or religious or travel works. Given the amount of cleanup needed, it may be as well to go manually in the first place for both. I'm willing to do a few as a trial. DGG (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Does this not lead into the grey area of what a novel is? See eg Tale of Genji#Stature, or Novel#Early_novel.2C_1000-1600, etc. I suspect the title of that section is deliberately vague to avoid miscategorization. Bazzargh (talk) 16:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of state leaders in ...

Hello,

I take it that the articles like List of state leaders in 1878 is subject to this Project.

My question is: by what principle are state leaders included or excluded. What about territories that are not (independent) states, neutral territories, condominia?

My question mostly pertains to Moresnet, which is listed in these articles but which was not actually a state. The lists give the monarchs of the two powers that held the condominium (Netherlands/Belgium and Prussia) and gives the mayor. I don't think a mayor (appointed by subalterns of the major powers) can be classified as a "state leader"?

I am awaiting your response. Str1977 (talk) 13:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Weather

There was a "little ice age" in the 1300s or thereabouts. In some cases this "must" have affected crops particularly in the north, England, Scandanavia "should have" been affected. The problem is pinning down an exact year, pinning down the exact affect, the exact place, etc. But anyway, is this sort of thing wanted? Certainly can't pin down by month or day! This was pretty important if you were interested in eating back then! :) It "should have" had a deleterious effect on the growing season. Student7 (talk) 16:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] numbers that could be either a year or an emergency telephone number

I am re-introducing a proposal that was rejected 2 years ago, to see if consensus has changed (or a previous consensus has now become a lack of consensus). Specifically, I think that 911 should redirect to 911 (disambiguation), and the current article be moved and renamed to 911 (year). Please discuss/vote here, and also see my related proposal.

If a new vote reveals that consensus has not changed, then I shall be glad to abide by the result, and make no change to the article as it currently exists; likewise, if there is no consensus now, then I intend to abide by the results of the previous consensus. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 15:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)