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When do centuries and millennia begin?

The articles I've seen about centuries and millennia seem to take the view that they begin on January 1 of years who's last two digits are 01. Certainly many academic sources can be found to support this view. But there is a contrary view, that they begin in years ending in 00. Stephen Jay Gould in his 1997 book wrote that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Sigmund Freud, and Lord Kelvin were in the 00 camp (p. 120). Gould claims the 01 view is generally prevails in high culture, while the 00 view is usually associated with popular culture. Gould takes no position himself, stating the issue is unresolvable.

I don't think it is appropriate for Wikipedia to state as a fact that centuries and millennia begin with years ending in 01 when the matter is subject to widespread debate. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:57, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

"Widespread debate"? Unlikely, more like confusion. A century or millennium starts on 1 January xx01 and ends on 31 December xx00, end of story! DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 19:00, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Statements by Wikipedia editors carry no weight, only reliable sources count. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:27, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
There are no reliable sources (well, at least, you have not provided reliable sources) which state that a century or millennium starts on 1 January, xx00; you have now provided reliable sources which state that some state that the century starts on 1 January, xx00, and a potentially reliable source (Gould, although he's not an expert on timekeeping or on popular culture) stating the question is unresolvable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:18, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

William Herschel isn't a modern source, but he was an astronomer, who are often the people who are looked to to resolve such issues. This article indicates that although he was somewhat equiviocal, he seemed to favor the view that centuries begin in years ending in 00. His last word on the subject (at least, as reported in the ariticle) are

Those who object that the 18th Century cannot be comleat till the year 1801, forgot that you and I with Dr. Priestl[e]y make the last Century begin 1700 and certainly(?) from 1700 to 1800 is an hundred years complete.

Jc3s5h (talk) 22:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

0 (year): "Year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini system usually used to number years in the Gregorian calendar and in its predecessor, the Julian calendar. In this system, the year 1 BC is followed by AD 1." This means the first century is not complete until the end of 100AD and the first millennium until the end of 1000AD.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 17:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Dionysius Exiguus never discussed the years around 1, and never stated in which year he placed the Incarnation. Although the symbol "0" hadn't been invented, he did use the word "nulla" in his tables when it was called for. So we don't know if Dionysius had something akin to a year zero in mind. (That was around 525.)
Bede invents the concept of BC and AD (using equivalent Latin phrases) but the BC part didn't become popular until 1627, according to our Anno Domini article, which offers supporting citations.
Jacques Cassini (d. 1756) introduced the year 0 to astronomers.
So the BC/AD system is not dramatically more ancient than the year 0 system.
Furthermore, pedantic academic sources can rail against popular usage as much as they want, but usually they loose. Pendants might never want "unique" to be used in a relative sense, but it is. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

A bibliography is available from the Library of Congress. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Many sources were published in the late 20th century expressing an opinion about when the new millennium would begin, and predicting the general public would celebrate more at the beginning of 2000 than the beginning of 2001. Here is a source confirming that this prediction did come to pass, at least in the US:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talk) 22:06, 31 December, 2013 (UTC)

And the citation correctly states that "...the third millennium officially began..." (i.e. on January 1, 2001). DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 22:27, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
This is a language issue, not a question of fact. Language means whatever most people think it means. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:14, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@Jc3s5h and Jc3s5h: your first sentence, while true, implies a criticism that I think is falacious, namely that the subject should be a matter of fact and NOT one of language. It seems to me that the subject is entirely about language as even if we could go back in time and count the days there would still steadily arise a divergence between different methods of calculation. It is all about where we choose to place markers and what we call these markers. The markers have no existence apart from in our language. If it were about fact then surely a year would begin and end at a solstice or equinox. Millenia too require us to choose a start point and that, in recent history, has been taken as the birthdate of Christ. That date too is a matter of conjecture so the entire issue becomes moot. IMO all that is actually required is consistency in language so that we know what we are speaking about. It seems to me that the confusion in numbering millenia stems not from the year zero argument but from confusion over what constitutes the first millenium (and the first century). Years 1 (or zero) to 999 (or 1000) as a matter of fact would be in the first millennium but most people would refer to the years 2000 (or 2001) onward as being in the second millenium rather than the third. Although "incorrect" many countries (e.g Finland) refer in their language to, say, the 16C as being those years begining with the numbers 16, not 15. It seems to me this is all about language not fact, and that this fact is the one we need to address. Does the article on the year 400 refer to 400 BC or 400 AD and if it is to 400 AD is that the same as 400 BCE and if 400 BC is that the same as 400 SDY ? As long as the language of the articles is consistent and clear the facts will be too. LookingGlass (talk) 10:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Even if Jc3s5h were correct that it's a "language issue" and there were a dispute about the definition, we need to avoid ambiguity in the "events" section of century and millennium articles, so that the lead should state unambiguously what years are in a century or millennium. As I don't agree that it's a "language issue", none of the sources provided that there is a problem with the definition are both "reliable" and relevant except possibly William Herschel, who might be treated as an expert on time-keeping. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 13:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

There are two separate issues. First, an article about a decade, century, or millennium should specify the scope of coverage of the article, so that if a reader is looking for information about an event that occurred in 2000, the reader will know whether to read the 2nd millennium article or the 3rd millennium article. For this purpose, the time span covered by a Wikipedia article should be stated, and should conform to WP:CENTURY, which considers 2000 to fall within the 2nd millennium. The decade, century, or millennium article should also state what the world at large, or at least the English-speaking world, considers the beginning and end of the period to be, in the same manner that an article about a deceased person would describe the birth and death dates, and would also describe any uncertainty or controversy about the dates. Of course, the birth and death of a person are definite events which, if sufficient records survive, can be unequivocally be placed on the calendar. The calendar itself is a purely human invention, and it's nomenclature is whatever people decide it is.
Interestingly, according to Richards (2013, p. 583)

[The Gregorian Calendar] is the official calendar of the United Kingdom (since 1752), but not of the United States (which has no official calendar).

So apparently any "official" pronouncements from US government agencies are merely good advice from respected institutions, since they have no formal authority to make pronouncements about calendars. Presumably all those official actions against individuals who didn't file their income tax forms by April 15, or appear for jury duty on the appointed dates, were on the basis that the population at large understands what the dates mean.
  • Richards, E. G. "Calendars" in S. E. Urban & P. Kenneth Seidelmann, Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, 3rd ed. Mill Valley, CA: University Science Books.
Jc3s5h (talk) 13:36, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
If one is one is interested in official determinations, the Library of Congress bibliography mentioned that Germany and Sweden observed 1900 as the first year of the 20th century; search on "Kaiser" and "Sweden" within the document. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:57, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

An additional source: the Oxford English Dictionary, millennium entry.:

b. spec. Usu. as the Millennium. The year 2000, as marking the beginning of the third millennium a.d., or the end of the second; this year viewed as an occasion for celebration or commemoration. Also: New Year's Eve 1999 and the New Year holiday of January 2000. Cf. Compounds

1.According to traditional Christian chronology, the first day of the third millennium and of the 21st cent. was 1 January 2001.

(I added the preceding on 16:07 UT, 17 April 2014 but forgot to sign. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:29, 17 June 2014 (UTC))

Relevant RfC:

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RFC:_Naming_of_one_and_two_digit_numbers_and_years PamD 14:19, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject tagging

As we can see frequent creation of articles that are related with this project. I've collected a huge list where this wikiproject was necessary but not added. For example 1870 in Paraguay, {{WikiProject Years|class=list|importance=low}} should be there, similar to 99% of other years related articles. But now the list is so huge and it has to be completed, I guess a bot will be appropriate.

Let me know your views. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 10:06, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Fiction

It seems to be quasi-consensus that works of fiction should be moved to Works of fiction set in 20yy for years in the 21st century. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I don't think it's worth fighting over. However, these should be in {{C21 year in topic}}; see Template talk:C21 year in topic#Fiction for the proper place to discuss it. Possibly also {{C20 year in topic}}; some of them have been broken out, but not many. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:49, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

In an attempt to create navigation templates to go to the individual months in year articles, Davykamanzi has severely damaged a few year articles, at least 1996 and 1997. Thinking about it, it seems a good use of my time is to revert ALL his edits to year articles. It is possible that some of the people he added actually meet WP:RY, but it is not likely. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:42, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Although 1996 and 1997 do not come under WP:RY I agree with your actions to revert the edits. I suspect the deaths were copied from the the appropriate categories which is not appropriate for Year articles. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:30, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
@Arthur Rubin and DerbyCountyinNZ: It's good you pointed out that 1996 and 1997 don't come under WP:RY. Other than that, I expanded the Births sections of those articles WAY before I created the navigation template, so I don't see how I "damaged" those articles or added "datadumps" and I find all of this confusing. I created {{BD ToC}} to enable users to go directly to specific months in these Births and Deaths sections. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 09:11, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
On what basis did you decide who should be added to the Births sections? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 09:35, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
See Talk:1996#Births datadump. I only checked the first two comments in this section; I didn't check whether it had been updated. Current status is that 1996 births has the expanded version (with a couple more deleted), and a {{content}} tag. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:20, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Recently created future categories

I've proposed about 50 recently created categories for deletion, (e.g., Category:2105), on the grounds that the base article (e.g., 2105) does not and should not yet exist. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 July 28#Future categories and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 July 28#2073 in fiction. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:24, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Scope of the project (templates)

Maybe it is inactive. In any case, if decade, century, and millennum articles are within the scope of this project, we need to keep track of templates used in those articles, as well as the year articles.

Templates to be considered include:

{{year box}}, used by many year in subject articles
{{year nav}}, used in most year articles.
{{year article header}}, used in many year articles
{{Events by month}}, used in some recent year articles
{{BD ToC}}, (or wherever it ends up), experimental template used in some year articles
{{Decadebox}}, used in all decade articles
Decade displays, including
{{Ld2}} (formerly, {{L1d}}), undocumented
{{Decade category header}}, used in many decade categories
{{Centurybox}}, used in all century articles
Century displays, including
{{Years in century}}, used in all century templates
{{DecadesAndYearsIn}} (which I recently expanded, and is presently used only in Works of fiction by year and centuries in poetry.
{{Decades and years}}, footer for century and some decade articles (needs to be updated for decade display)
{{L2d}} (undocumented)
{{Millennia}}, footer for most millennium and era articles.
{{Millenniumbox}}, used in all millennium articles
Millenium displays, including
{{L3d}} (undocumented)

and probably many more. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:22, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Datadumping and inclusion criteria for Births and Deaths

Following on from above and discussions at Talk:1996 and User talk:Arthur Rubin#1996.

  1. Datadumping a huge quantity of entries is neither constructive nor co-operative editing as it very difficult for other editors to check which inclusions are merited and which are not.
  2. A single editor dumping such a quantity on one or two articles entirely under their own subjective opinion is not co-operative editing and sidesteps this Project.
  3. Dumping large quantities of entries on only one or two articles unbalances those articles with respect to all other articles in the project.
  4. Subjective opinion is not a proper basis for inclusion, some criteria is necessary. Even poor/inadequate criteria are better than none. WP:RY has such criteria but unfortunately, despite previous attempts, none had been decided upon here. This should be done before any more datadumping.
  5. Year articles are for internationally and historically notable entries. Sub-articles, by topic and country, are for those entries which are less notable. New editors are often unaware of this, some editors intentionally ignore it and some refute that this is their purpose (but fail to come up with any reasonable alternative purpose). In most cases it should be fairly clear which cases belong only in the sub-articles.

DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 01:16, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

@DerbyCountyinNZ: As I had mentioned before, I don't think international notability is (or should be) limited to having non-English Wikipedia articles. A person like Zendaya would still merit inclusion in the 1996 article, whether or not there are non-English articles available on her, because she's massively notable around the world. This matter of "international notability" has to be clarified by the WikiProject because there's no existing consensus as to what constitutes "international or historical notability", and everyone has their own perspective on what these terms could mean. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 16:34, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
The subjective opinion of a single editor is not an adequate criterion, something more objective is required. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:08, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
@DerbyCountyinNZ: I agree, and that goes for you as well. That's why I said criteria on this subject has to be clarified by the WikiProject. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 08:58, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
You have come up with nothing objective; your statement that someone is "massively notable around the world" is certainly not objective. A minimum number of non-English articles has been used at WP:RY after a considerable discussion among a number of users. It works well 90% of the time. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:09, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

And I repeat @DerbyCountyinNZ: That is why such criteria has to be clarified by the WikiProject. They should be the ones to come up with something objective instead of me, since they oversee years articles. Besides that, I'm quite sure 1996 doesn't fall under WP:RY. Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 15:39, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

So you are happy to have your recent additions removed until such time as this project comes up with a suitable criteria? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 18:36, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

@DerbyCountyinNZ: I let Arthur Rubin revert my changes to 1996 yesterday, but I went through the list again and introduced a revised version where I omitted a lot of entries which as it turned out didn't merit inclusion in the article. It turned out to have been more than 25,000 bytes less than what was previously there, so I think it's as big a list as any other year article would have. I Davykamanzi → talk • contribs • alter ego 13:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

As you don't explain that you see why your previous edits are wrong, I see no reason to believe that your current edits are in keeping with consensus, even if (per WP:AGF) you do. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:52, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like every year article opens with something along the lines of "Year 487 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar)", and a similar wording ("link displays the full calendar") appears in {{Year article header}} as used on every year article from 1929 onwards. This is a WP:CLICKHERE self-reference that makes no sense in printed versions of the articles.

The only discussion I can find is an editor raising an objection here in 2010 and asking if it was ever discussed, and - getting no response - removing it. But the bracketed explanation seems to be widespread today. Should it be there? --McGeddon (talk) 14:10, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Citations needed

There seems to be a tacit consensus that most entries do not require inline citations if the information is properly cited in the target article, but the policy WP:V seems to require that, at least where WP:BLP is relevant, that entries have inline citations. Can anyone point to where this consensus is memorialized, and whether WP:V overrides it? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 11:17, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Citations needed

There seems to be a tacit consensus that most entries do not require inline citations if the information is properly cited in the target article, but the policy WP:V seems to require that, at least where WP:BLP is relevant, that entries have inline citations. Can anyone point to where this consensus is memorialized, and whether WP:V overrides it? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 11:17, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Century categories

Fayenatic london has been replacing the {{YearsInCentury}} templates with {{cat pair}}. Does this have consensus? If it does, I won't object, but I don't see it, and I don't see why the YearsInCentury template should not be present. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:14, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm seeing other cases where we have very large templates showing up on the first screen that really offer little in terms of navigation and force all of the content off of the first page of a category. My personal opinion is to shot on sight. So, I see someone removing this specific template to be doing something that actually helps the readers. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:42, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
I only did this on categories for future centuries where all decade and year categories had been upmerged following Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_July_28#Future_categories, so all the links within the century templates were not only red but permanently red, i.e. going to remain non-existent. The "cat pair" is therefore more friendly and more useful on Category:22nd century and following. Also, leaving the old templates there would tend to encourage people to re-create the categories that had just been deleted by consensus. Now that I have explained my edits, I hope this project will agree with them. – Fayenatic London 23:13, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
OK, no objection. The 22nd century category may need to be updated in 40 years or so, but I'm probably not going to be actively editing Wikipedia then. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:37, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Class

Hi, what may be the class of a typical Year article; start/stub or list ? There are examples of both in this project. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 13:54, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

1440s

1440s is now empty, though still linked from dates in 15th century BC. Should it be redirected to the century? PamD 08:02, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@PamD: You mean 1440s BC? I'm afraid it should remain, as part of a pattern, with both 1450s BC and 1430s BC having non-trivial entries. (Either that, or all of the 1400s BC should be merged into the 15th century BC, with the templates {{yearnav}} templates properly matched.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:43, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Dr-make revisited

I've updated the year/decade/century/millennia intervals in {{dr-make}} (see the first section of Template talk:Dr-make, but the decade code needs some more work. What I want is:

  1. If decade ddd BC (actually -171 corresponds to 170 BC)
    1. visible part = ddd0s BC
    2. link (if in range and "n" not set or if "y" set)
      1. if dd0, link to dd00s BC (decade)
      2. if ddd (not zero), link to ddd0s BC
  2. If decade ddd AD
    1. visible part = ddd0s
    2. link (if in range and "n" not set or if "y" set)
      1. if dd0, link to dd00s (decade)
      2. if ddd (not zero), link to ddd0s

But it's not properly handling the links to the dd00s (decade) with "y" set when out of range. Any ideas?

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years/Archive 10#Decadebox, etc. subpages for the last time I attempted to fix this. I've already made 3 edits, which will have to propagate to thousands of pages, but I'd like this fixed so the test page will detect the endpoints properly. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:13, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I noticed this when I looked at List of years and wanted to unlink the years which redirected to decades. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Leap Year

who wants to go through every fourth year entry from before 1582 and mark them ALL as not being leap years ? Dave Rave (talk) 06:30, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

The Julian calendar had leap years every 4 years. Going back before the start of the Julian calendar is problematic in terms of contemporaneous dating, but the astronomical calendar can be continued back indefinitely. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:04, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Category:Images of 1978

Category:Images of 1978 has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 04:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

{{00sbox}}

I've modified {{00sboxBC}} to point where the decade and ambiguous articles now are, and not to use {{LinkBCif}}, which orphans the latter. If there is no objection, I'll propose the latter template for deletion. I'd suggest moving it to use {{dr-make}} and {{drep}}, but that would require a separate type and active list for 00s "centuries", and I'm having trouble modifying the "decade" code already. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 13:36, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:LinkBCif

Template:LinkBCif has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Empty years

Does this project have a policy about empty "year" articles? A number are currently being created and coming through as stubs in Category:Stubs, containing nothing except navigation - eg 1997 in North Korea, created 2nd Jan, which I've nominated for Speedy Deletion as "no content", and 1940 in the Soviet Union, created by a different editor on 15th Jan. Are these a useful asset to the encyclopedia, or is the reader better served by a red link in relevant templates which shows "nothing to see here"? PamD 12:17, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

There is no policy that I know of. Personally I agree with Speedy Delete and redlinks. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Years before 1752

In the UK at least, the year began on 25 March, meaning that January 1749 would have followed December 1749. Therefore all year articles for 1752 and earlier which have January, February and events up to (and including) 24 March at the top of the page are not in chronological order. Mjroots (talk) 16:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a historian, but I have read that it is accepted practice among historians to treat the year as beginning on January 1 even in times and places where that was not the practice. Maybe you can find some well-regarded source on how to write about history that will confirm or deny my recollection.
Of course, this would mean putting an event that would have been recorded by an eyewitness as January 1, 1666 under Wikipedia's year 1667. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
1665, actually! Mjroots (talk) 22:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
The problem with treating the year as beginning on 1 January is that it puts things out of chronological order - q.v. List of shipwrecks in 1748, where it can be seen from the issue numbers of the various editions of Lloyd's List that the correct order is maintained by placing Jan, Feb and Mar 1-24 at the end of the year, not the beginning. Mjroots (talk) 22:54, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
The 1751 article explains it well. That year had only 282 days, starting on 25 March and ending on 31 December, which was followed by 1 January 1752. Mjroots (talk) 23:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/Archive 31#Gregorian calendar. Normal practice is to use double dating. I'll do that when I get round to it. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 10:39, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Decades?

Your site say's the decade of the 1970's started in 1970 and ended in 1979. this is incorrect just as saying the 21st century started on Jan1 2000. The gregorian calender did not start with the year 0. It started with the year1. So the first decade ended in the year 10. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. 10 years in a decade. So with that said the first millenia was from the year 1 to the year 1000. Therefore the first year of any decade is the year that ends in a 1. 1971 was the first year of the 1970's. 1970 was the last year of the 1960's. So the 1970's actually went from 1971-1980. Do the math. This is an irrifutable fact. Numbers don't lie. Don't feel bad it's a common mistake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.187.12.83 (talk) 13:35, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

It would be petty to note that the claim of date errors has a number of spelling and grammar errors. Suffice it to say that this has been discussed many times, and found to be, if not exactly incorrect (being a matter of definition, not of fact), inappropriate for use on Wikipedia. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:21, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced death of Plato?

Hello I would like to warn you that in the page of 340s BC and in the section "Deaths" it mentions the name of Plato which is not correct. He died at the 350s. Check the entry Plato. Keep on with the good job. Thanks for all your efforts.
(Orphiwn (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2015 (UTC))

@Orphiwn: 348/347 BCE (according to the article Plato) is in the 340s BC(E). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:25, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

8th century BC

There's a problem; some years in the range 799 BC to 730 BC have articles, and some do not. I just changed 730 BC to a redirect on the grounds that no statements made in the article were correct, which appears not to be completely correct, as one succession is listed in 730s BC, although it has no verification. However, all of 739 BC through 731 BC redirected.

I was looking at List of years and "corrected" {{dr-make}}, but I may not have corrected in correctly. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:56, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

The years in the from 800 BC through 730 BC which have articles are:
  • 730 (just deleted) 739 740 743 745 747 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 770 771 774 776 781 782 797 800
Without checking to see if they all have actual information, perhaps those should be merged into the decade articles. A spot check shows that many of the events in those year articles are only known within 2 or 3 years, so should probably only be in the decade articles. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 11:18, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Anyone home? It appears that 2063 through 2066 were created some time ago, and 2067 through 2079 created recently, but only 2067 and 2068 had content. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I've changed the convention for more than one entry per day, per apparent consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:43, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

World leaders in recent decade articles

A user, Neve-selbert, has added sections for "notable" world leaders to recent decade articles (at least 1950s–2010s). I consider this too subjective to be appropriate. Comments? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:11, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

They may be subjective, I apologize; here are three of my options:
Personally, I would favor a compromise between those first two options, although I would leave this all to consideration. Neve-selbert (talk) 17:33, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't expect an immediate reply. The section above refers to an apparent consensus from 2013, or perhaps 2011. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:35, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
Are my options suitable or should something else be considered? Neve-selbert (talk) 01:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
Your options are fine. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:06, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Category:NA-Class Years articles of NA-importance

I made a request at Template talk:WikiProject Years but the template is weirdly populating Category:NA-Class Years articles of NA-importance (almost 70k articles) with mostly articles that are categories and thus being called NA-class and thus with NA-importance. Can someone fix this? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:59, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Year articles

Closing per a WP:ANRFC request.
There is a clear (albeit limited) consensus that the year articles should use {{Year article header|year}}. @GeoffreyT2000:. Armbrust The Homunculus 12:02, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

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

Should year articles, e.g. 1899, use {{Year article header|year}}? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:17, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

  • Yes, of course! Otherwise we would be forever worrying about typos in the various representations of the years in all the articles. Also, it is much easier to update the template (if that is ever necessary) than to go through every year article making some change to that standardised information. --Mirokado (talk) 00:58, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes What Mirokado said. Certainly was a lot of trouble for nothing over at PG, no? Since someone's hoped-for outcome ("this is a problem") didn't make it into the close, maybe now we can have some peace. EEng (talk) 02:49, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Burma year categories

Can someone who understands the templates please go through the Burma entries in Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories and fix them so that they reflect the country became Myanmar from 1989 onwards? The information on Template:EstcatCountry is very unhelpful for situations where the country's name changes. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:06, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Done, and done again after user:Johnpacklambert repopulated it. @Timrollpickering: how do you find Template:EstcatCountry and its documentation now? – Fayenatic London 13:08, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Discussion on which significant people to include in millennia articles

Hi all, there is an ongoing issue that could use some additional input here: Talk:2nd millennium#Significant people: Three events limit per category? To a lesser degree the discussion is also relevant for the 1st and 3rd millennium articles. Gap9551 (talk) 16:28, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

September 1913 (month) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for September 1913 (month) to be moved to September 1913. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:45, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Problems with some subpages

the Portal:2010s and Portal:2000s pages both have a bunch of broken links. What happened? Harryhenry1 (talk) 04:08, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

See above Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years#Using archives of Portal:Current events for month articles. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:16, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Do you believe there has ever been working links there? I examined https://archive.org/web/ without finding a version with working links. Portals sometimes copy code from other portals which adds links to subpages that may not have been created. The two portal pages only have around 10 edits each so I guess nobody has been interested enough to clean them up. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:22, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
About 10% of all portals have red links like these. It is easy to create a portal, hard to create a fully-working portal. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:29, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

BC births and deaths categories

The categories for births and deaths in years BC were rather small, and a series of CFD decisions resulted in consensus to upmerge them to centuries/decades, and to the year categories. For example, a death in 14 BC was recategorised from Category:14 BC deaths to Category:10s BC deaths and Category:14 BC.

Towards the end of that process, it was pointed out that biographies should not go directly in year categories because of WP:COPSEP. This led to a DRV and RfC, which was closed last week as:

(option 5:) Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme adding "rollup" categories by decade/century

The "roll-up" on decade categories, as currently seen at Category:0s deaths, is simply done using <categorytree mode=pages>0s deaths</categorytree> on that page. The parameter in the middle has to match the page name. AFAIK this "rollup" code will have to be added manually.

The old categories will have to be undeleted by admins, and either cleaned up manually or listed at WP:CFDWR so that Cydebot will remove the CFD templates from them.

I believe the member pages (biography articles) will also have to be reverted manually. The best help that I can offer as an admin is to provide links to the diffs made by Cydebot or ArmbrustBot when emptying the old categories.

Armbrust has confirmed at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#BC_births_and_deaths_categorizations that he does not mind if we use rollback or undo on his bot's edits. Some articles were edited after the bot, in which case Undo is needed from history, rather than Rollback straight from the list of contribs.

Marcocapelle (talk · contribs), as nominator, and Francis Schonken (talk · contribs), who posted the RfC, may will be willing to share in the work of reversing the upmerges. Assistance from members of this WikiProject would be much appreciated. – Fayenatic London 13:48, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

  • I don't think so. Although I closed some of the relevant CFDs and found a repeated consensus there to implement your proposals, I was surprised at the strength of the consensus. I wish I had realised that it was against policy. The RfC resulted in a new but clear consensus, and I see neither grounds nor scope to challenge it. – Fayenatic London 21:18, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
If there is no interest or support here to help with resolving this matter, I propose to move this section to WP:BIOGRAPHY. – Fayenatic London 15:58, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
I have moved the list and progress-monitoring section from this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#BC births and deaths categories. I am not moving the whole discussion because I linked to this section in the edit summaries for some of my undeleting and reverting. – Fayenatic London 13:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Moved again, to Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_71#Subthread 3 – repopulating BC births and deaths categories. – Fayenatic London 21:33, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
If the year of a person's birth/death is uncertain, is it better to categorise by decade or by the approximate year? Please reply at the discussion linked above. – Fayenatic London 17:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Using archives of Portal:Current events for month articles

We used to redirect specific month articles (like January 2014) to the appropriate section of the year article (for example, 2014#January), but it seems that at some point we started recycling the Portal:Current events archives into actual Wikipedia articles about those months, with pretty much no modification. It even says on the articles that they are just archives of Portal:Current events. This seems problematic for several reason:

  • They are not written according to Wikipedia's guidelines for articles. For example, they use inline external links instead of references.
  • The mentions of Portal:Current events are probably against MOS:SELFREF.
  • If you try to look at them on a mobile device, they are a mess (as the formatting of Portal:Current events is designed for desktop).
  • They divert traffic and editing attention away from the year articles, which are more encyclopedic and written according to our guidelines.

On the other hard, by recycling Portal:Current events, we surface more information about the events of that month than we would by just redirecting to the year article (which is more strictly curated and limited). What are people's thoughts about this trend? Should we keep doing it? Kaldari (talk) 08:31, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I think our readers would be better served by the former practice of redirection to the appropriate year article. I can only speak for myself, of course, but if I typed "January 2014" into the search box, I'd expect to find a curated list of historically significant events, not a list of every single news story that broke that month. And if consensus is in favour of keeping the month articles, all the external links definitely need converting into fully fleshed-out citations to protect against link rot. DoctorKubla (talk) 15:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
The year articles are protected by Cluebot and its fallback team of Huggle and Stiki users. The current event archives are not, so vandalism survives for longer. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:07, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I fully agree with Kaldari, and following John of Reading and DoctorKubla's comments, I have to agree that month articles are a bad idea and part of an unfortunate overall tendency at Wikipedia. We're swamped with stuff like this which is just too much to handle with the few active editors available at the moment. Less is more. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 00:47, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

So, that's a clear consensus to redirect all these month articles. Is this the sort of thing that can be done with AWB? If it has to be done manually, I'm happy to volunteer, but I'd rather not if there's an easier way (and I can't get my head around bots n' stuff). DoctorKubla (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@DoctorKubla: If something like this is being done, I'd rather see the existing pages moved to the portal namespace rather than being lost altogether, so that they can still be accessed from the box at the foot of Portal:Current events. The new names could be something like Portal:Current events/Archive/January 2015. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:57, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Pinging @GeoffreyT2000: who has worked on the month articles. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:11, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
The content wouldn't be lost, it would still exist at (e.g) Portal:Current events/2004 January 1. Still, I've no fundamental objection to moving the month articles to the portal namespace, except that it makes things a little more complicated (and anyway, isn't maintaining a comprehensive archive of past events slightly beyond the remit of the current events portal?). If this were done, though, I'd still want the search term "January 2004" to redirect to 2004#January, rather than take readers unexpectedly into portal-space. DoctorKubla (talk) 09:36, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
@DoctorKubla: Default searches don't include any results from the portal namespace. But I'll leave a fresh note at Portal talk:Current events#What should happen to the current events archives? about the current events archives. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:35, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to make a start on manually redirecting the articles – if we decide we want to recreate the archives in Portal-space, that can be done later. I'll link to this discussion in my edit summaries, and if someone wants to complain that a four-person consensus isn't enough of a basis to make these changes, well, this was a full 30-day RfC and all the relevant Projects were notified, so clearly not many people care much either way. DoctorKubla (talk) 10:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

 Done DoctorKubla (talk) 12:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Coming late to the party, but I'd like to add my comment. But before that, let me just say that calling this a 4-person consensus is a bit of a stretch, when in practice two editors did most of the talking, with one of them explicitly stating he'd prefer moving the archives to portal namespace rather than redirecting to the year pages, and another editor who was mentioned as having done substantial work on these pages (@GeoffreyT2000:) not having had his say on the matter.

As for my opinion on the issue: I do agree with both @John of Reading:'s proposal to move the existing pages to the portal namespace, and @DoctorKubla:'s argument that mainspace links should not point to portal space; this would mean moving the pages to portal space, without leaving a redirect behind, and then recreating those mainspace links as redirects to the corresponding sections in the year pages.

I support keeping the comprehensive month archives for 3 reasons: (1) not all of those month pages have started as a mere aggregation of the day pages, so their histories as manually curated collections of events would be preserved; (2) individual day pages don't replace the function of a monthly aggregate (regardless of whether we should as a project provide that -- and in that regard, I think the fact that people have built them and spent years maintaining them indicates interest in such a resource which shouldn't be discarded so lightly), even if we, say, add navigation links to {{Current events header}}; and (3) those archives wouldn't show up in the search results by default, so there would be no pollution for casual readers, while the information would remain available in an easily consumable format for those who may find use for it.

I believe this would more accurately represent a consensus outcome among the opinions expressed in this thread. What do you think? --Waldir talk 16:14, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

As I said above, I have no objection to preserving the archives in Portal-space, and I understand that, in that case, it would have been better to move the pages and then create the redirects – but no-one had commented on John of Reading's suggestion for nearly a month, either here or at the Current Events talk page, so I assumed there wasn't much interest in the idea, and I didn't want Kaldari's original proposal to languish on account of this side issue. Since most of the pages are template generated, I thought it would be easy enough to recreate them in Portal-space if there was consensus to do so. However, it didn't occur to me that the history of the non-template-generated pages would need to be preserved; I assumed the contents of these pages were copy-pasted from some central "current events" page, but I realise now that the central page was moved each month and a new page created, like the Recent Deaths system.
Okay, so I guess we can un-redirect all the pages prior to July 2006, when the new system was brought in, then move those pages to Portal-space, then recreate the redirects. Is it necessary to do this for the pages after that date as well? I feel like at this point it would actually be easier to just recreate those pages, since there's no need to preserve the history. DoctorKubla (talk) 18:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
I suppose it wouldn't be strictly necessary to move the month pages created after July 2006, but it might be a good idea to check the histories just to be safe, since sometimes editors manually edit these pages due to a misunderstanding of the procedure in place at the time. Are you planning to do all this, perhaps using an automated tool? Let me know if you need any help. --Waldir talk 15:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Bot requests#Month articles. Pinging also SugarRat (formerly known as Randor1980), the one who forms a new month article at the beginning of each month. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
@Waldir: I'm happy to do this myself if no-one responds to Geoffrey's bot request. However, I don't have the power to suppress redirects – is this an essential part of the process? DoctorKubla (talk) 14:39, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
I suggested supressing the redirects as that would make the history of the new redirects cleaner, but come to think about it, it's actually good to preserve an indication that there was another page there which got moved elsewhere. So don't bother about that :) --Waldir talk 15:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Waldir, John of Reading, and GeoffreyT2000: What are we calling the new pages? John of Reading suggested "Portal:Current events/Archive/month year", but I don't think the "archive" bit is necessary; the daily archives are just called "Portal:Current events/year month day". And should the new pages follow the year month (as opposed to month year) format? DoctorKubla (talk) 11:54, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

@DoctorKubla: Yes, there's no real need for the "/Archive" part. But the archived sidebars are all month year, eg Portal:Current events/May 2011/Sidebar, so I'd stick with month year. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
I subscribe John of Reading's words entirely. --Waldir talk 15:25, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done. Almost. There are two move-protected articles (September 2005 and December 2005) that I've asked Waldir to help out with. But all the other month articles can now be found at "Portal:Current events/month year", and the redirects have been retargeted to the relevant year articles. There may still be some cleanup work to do (for one thing, the {{calendar}} and {{events by month}} templates seem to work differently in Portal-space), but I'll leave that to someone more familiar with the Portal's inner workings. DoctorKubla (talk) 17:52, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I've fixed the {{Events by month}} template in all these pages except for the two that haven't been moved. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
I just moved those two and fixed the templates as John of Reading did for the others. By the way, I'm not sure if the move protection is warranted on those pages. The move protection on December 2005 one doesn't even show up on the protection log for that page. The September 2005 protection does show up on its log, with the indication that it was a preventive measure because of the length of the history of that page. Is the history of those two pages particularly longer than the other ones? If not, I'd suggest removing the move protection. --Waldir talk 19:57, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
What to do with the redirects from the talk pages? This RfD will find out. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:01, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Decades, the UK and Europe, and trains

An inexperienced editor has been separating the UK from Europe in the #Prominent political events subsection, and has been adding subsections on trains before automobiles. As there is no Wikipedia:WikiProject Decades, perhaps some discussion is in order here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:13, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

There's no reason to single out the United Kingdom without also dividing up the rest of the timeline into subsections by country – and the more fragmented a timeline is, the less useful it becomes. DoctorKubla (talk) 10:51, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
He's now (pretty much randomly) separated out other countries. If another editor here agrees it's inappropriate, I'm going to revert back. So far, as far as I can tell, no events have been changed or added, but putting the timeline back together will be almost impossible, as some events only have years. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree that political events should be combined for each continent. The lists are not too long and there are already specific 'decade in country' articles. The train subsections could be notable enough for inclusion, but preferably with a general title (e.g. 'Trains'), not 'TGV', 'Eurostar', etc. Ideally the focus should also be more global. Gap9551 (talk) 19:33, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Does someone else want to explain this to IkbenFrank? I'm apparently not getting through. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:01, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a "Year Zero"

I don't know where the idea of year 1 came from, but the universal gregorian calender is based 100% on Jesus birth. The AD begins 7 days after his birth. The first year of Jesus' life would be Year Zero. Just like all of us he is not 1 until his first birthday. So while after that he is age 1, that is actually into his second year of life. The first century is 0-99 (Jesus died at age 33, but the century carries on). Second century is 100-199 and so on. 1 BC then would actually be the technical year he was born Dec 25th. Regardless of if there are or aren't actual discrepancies to these dates, that was the intended purpose and structure of the calendar. Please fix your misleading information. First century is not 1-100. That would mean that year 2000 was still in the 20th century, which makes zero sense, it would make the year 2000 in the 90s. LOL — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.203.157.228 (talk • contribs) 07:10, 2 January 2016‎ UTC

Noted and rejected. Many times. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:08, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Millennia categories for former countries

Please see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 January 1 for a proposal to abolish Millennia categories for many former countries, and perhaps to modify the Century templates. – Fayenatic London 08:35, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey, could I please ask for some more eyes on this section? It has been mostly added by the same IP editor from what I can gather and I am unsure about whether to attempt to put this into a table to provide more details, or leave as a column list. Cheers, Doctor Crazy in Room 102 of The Mental Asylum 06:15, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Looks like far too much content for what is supposed to be a summary of the decade. In fact at 200kb the article as a whole seems grossly over-inflated. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:53, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

2305

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2305. PamD 12:07, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC regarding manners and causes of death.

Some of you may be interested in this question about the "Deaths in 20xx" pages. Some of you may not. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Births in music

A while back I pointed out what I saw as a peculiarity in the 1980 in music. See my post in the talk page. To summarise; the article states its about notable events in music in 1980. My argument is that a future musician being born in 1980 has absolutely no significance to music in that year. (It could also be argued that a musician's date of birth is not notable for any year. It's not their age that makes their music notable.)

I suppose it may be more applicable the further back you go, where an interval of one year becomes less and less significant. But it does seem incongruous to have musicians, who could be be total unknowns for the next 20 years, and who played no part in the music of the time, listed in the same article as the active and notable musicians of that year.

This is something that most, if not all the years articles in music do, and I suspect that it could be applicable to other categories. So I was wondering what other editors thought. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 13:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Mesoamerica versus Americas in region headers

I've noticed on a few articles in the 6th/7th century we're using the header "Mesoamerica" as a region. This treatment isn't done for any of the other regions; AFAICT the modern name is plainly used. See for example, 629. Although I'm too lazy to systematically change them all, I thought I'd see if anyone had strong opinions about it one way or the other. -- Kendrick7talk 20:27, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

OK, for lack of an opinion here, I'll kill "Mesoamerica" headers in favor of "Americas" from here on out when I come across them. -- Kendrick7talk 03:15, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

2305 again

See Talk:2305#Requested move 7 March 2016. PamD 13:12, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

1907

Is is standard practice to have a list of births like the one is this article? A user adding more than 237 KB worth at the end of February. Seems that the rest of the lists are under 50 KB total, and with the recent add, this particular article is now over 260 KB. Seems like we may want to be a little more selective with the individual entries. Dawnseeker2000 19:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

This is an old argument which I was at one stage trying to get clarified. There is no point in adding every person born in a year to the year article, that is covered by the relevant category. The Year article should only contain people who are internationally notable, the problem being what criteria are used to define such notability as, despite earlier attempts, this project has never established such criteria. Wikipedia:Recent years uses the minimum criteria for Deaths as 9 non-English Wiki articles, though many users have argued this is not appropriate (however they have never come up with anything better). When I was trying to tidy up this article and subsequent years I used the basis of a minimum of 4 or 5 non-English articles as long as those articles were not stubs and not clones of the English one while trying to make allowances for how recently the person died (the more recent usually meaning there was greater likelihood of articles being created).
In short adding 237k to an article is counterproductive, the maximum recommended article size is 100k. I note that the user has done this for other articles as well. I recommend reverting the addition and bring the user's attention to this discussion. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:47, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree. We need to be a little more cautious than dumping several hundred KB into a list like that. I hadn't acted on reverting yet, but today, an IP took care of it for us. Thanks for the input, Dawnseeker2000 01:39, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes

Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 01:28, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Month articles to improve

Many month articles created by Zee money such as May 1901 have lots of empty sections and few or no references. The same holds for January 1968, which was turned from a redirect to 1968 to a non-redirect by Kthejoker. All those month articles should be improved. February, March, and April 1901 were also created by Zee money but are already being improved by Mandsford. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:32, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Should they be improved or incorporated to the Year pages? One improvement they have over the Year page is the calendar (which doesn't have a template page I could find). This project's example says "The events section is divided into months, each month has a calendar". I'm not a participant of the project. I was just looking for day-of-week for 1968-06-26 (Wednesday).Filbino, the atoms from 0.051 fathoms (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:40, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Categories on 1200s (decade)

1200s (decade) is being categorised in both Category:1200s BC and Category:1200s. The former is clearly wrong, but I can't obviously see where it's coming from - it's obviously one of the templates that's not quite right. I don't suppose someone fancies taking a look? Le Deluge (talk) 22:50, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

This same error was on a number of decade pages. I made this simple fix. It should be fine since that template is only used on AD decades, with no sign it will be otherwise. I don't understand the code well enough to make it work for BC decades, but anyone who does can make that improvement. tahc chat 23:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
@Tahc: That erroneous category was a result of me copying code from Template:Events by year for decade BC into Template:Events by year for decade and not noticing I needed to change the category. My mistake - Pppery (talk) 11:48, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Numbers 1 to 100

It has been proposed that numbers should be considered the primary topic for articles titled "1" to "100" instead of years. This would require numerous page moves and an amendment to the guidelines. Please discuss at Talk:1#RFC1-100. — JFG talk 08:34, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Article assessments

It appears that there are a high volume of articles within the project's scope that are not attributed to it via use of the {{WikiProject Years}} banner on their talk pages. I'll try and rectify that, though it will be a long-term task.

Of more immediate interest are the assessments, primarily importance, given to articles which are attributed to the project. I propose that Year is the sole top-importance article and that only articles whose titles specify a precise year only (e.g., 480 BC, 1945) should have high-importance. I propose that articles which cover either a range of years (e.g., decades) and those which are about a year within a broad (e.g., multi-national) subject area (e.g., 1977 in association football) should have mid-importance, while those which are year-based upon a narrow or specific subject area (e.g., 1595 in France) should be low-importance. Obviously, there are articles whose titles are outside those parameters and they need to be classified individually on their merits. Equally, there are certain articles, ostensibly "narrow", which are about events that had far-reaching, global impact (e.g., 1789 in France) and must be classified high-importance because of their, well, high importance. Happy to discuss but I am ploughing ahead with this per WP:BOLD. Thanks. BoJó | talk UTC 17:43, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Formatting of images

Hello, folks. Although I'm not a member of the Years Project, I found myself over at the page for 1998 and noticed that the 'Deaths' section had so many images that they were no longer lining up with the correct months of death. I addressed this problem by placing some of the images side by side using Template:Multiple image. I also added the dates of death to the captions, so as to make it easier to locate the linked entry in the lists of deaths. I didn't add any new images, although I note that the freed-up space could easily accommodate some additional Commons images.

These changes were reverted within 24 hours by an IP address who thought they were not an improvement. If that is also the opinion of you folks here, I'll be happy to move on to something else. But I think the decision ought to be made by the participants of the Years Project, and not by some new IP address.

The version of the page that incorporated my changes is here (jump down to the 'Deaths' section). I look forward to hearing your comments. NewYorkActuary (talk) 04:54, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Personally I don't feel that making images side-by-side actually looks better, I mean why bother? Otherwise as long as the images do not break the display then it should not be an issue, although overuse of images should probably be avoided. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 08:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
It's worth having a read of Wikipedia:Image use policy - if you're having to do this kind of thing it's a good sign that there's too many images and a bit of a cull is needed. These articles aren't intended to be image galleries, and too many images makes things difficult for mobile users. It's also quite a good discipline to be selective, trying to get a good balance of professions and countries whilst remembering that this is an international encyclopedia so those known beyond one country should be preferred. So I would keep Kurosawa and ditch Wallace to take one example. I imagine it will be tough to edit 2016.... :-( Le Deluge (talk) 11:55, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. And although it might seem odd, I actually do agree with those comments. Specifically, I agree with DerbyCounty that my reorganization doesn't make the page look better (nor, I might add, does it make it look worse). But my motivation was not based on aesthetic considerations; my intention was to bring each image closer to its relevant text. I also agree with Deluge's observation that these articles shouldn't be image galleries. Indeed, I would go one step further by asking whether the articles should contain any images at all. But the problem here is that all too many editors have decided that the articles shall be image galleries and are displaying none of the selectivity that one would like to see. In my original posting, I didn't mention that the reorganization took place only after I had deleted five non-free images from the article. Here is what the article looked like before that -- there were so many images in the 'Deaths' section that they not only pushed into the next section, but pushed entirely through it and through the section after that.

These problems certainly can be solved by limiting the number of images, either in total or per month (of birth or death). But which images will be used? There will be endless disagreements and, more likely than not, quite a few edit wars. My intention in reorganizing the images was to free up enough space so that these disagreements would not arise, because there would be space enough to accommodate the number of images that editors seem to want to include. Using that extra space would also combat the current U.S.-centric choice of images, by allowing the addition of Commons-residing photos of non-Americans without having to argue whether they are more or less 'image-worthy' than Americans.

The status quo has created articles that look non-professional. If my proposed solution is not acceptable, I urge this Project to consider addressing the problem by moving to the other end of the spectrum -- defining a "manual of style" that explicitly forbids the use of images in the Births and Deaths sections. If this approach is taken, you might also consider having the lists for each month rendered in columns (either two or three). This would remove a lot of the 'white space' and make it less tempting to add images in the first place.

Thanks again for your comments. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:48, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

These articles already suffer from slow-motion edit wars over the photos, and so I would definitely support the creation of some sort of guidance on this matter. -- Irn (talk) 17:40, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Sort key hacks

I see i haven't been paying enough attention. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 149#Sorting in categories unreliable for a few days (August 29, 2016) notes that numeric sorting is now actually numerical rather than lexicographical. This means some of "our" sort key hacks may need to be rehacked (or, in some cases, removed).

I have no idea how much work this will need. I'd be willing to help if an AWB script or module would be written. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:07, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Nobel Peace Prize

A (now blocked) editor seems to have removed links to the Nobel Peace Prize in year articles. I know that's not the name, but he seems to have changed it to (unlinked) Peace. If someone can help me construct an AWB conversion that will revert the ones not already reverted, I'd be willing to run it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:39, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

@DMacks:, who caught many of them at the time. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:05, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
It appears DMacks only missed one of those. There may be other bad unlinks performed by that editor which DMacks didn't catch, but he did a great job, overall. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:08, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: Reinstate the "Years in science" WikiProject

The Years in science WikiProject has been marked defunct for 6 years. I think there is benefit in having the project available as a place to discuss future evolution of the "YYYY in science" pages.

If you have thoughts, please join the discussion in the WikiProject Years in science talk page.

Metawade (talk) 18:50, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

LONG lists of people in decade articles

In 1950s through 2000s, well-meaning editors have added long lists of people. There are no criteria for listing. The recent ones are potential violations of WP:BLP, and, as there is no source, there is no way of monitoring the articles for BLP violations. As an example, suppose there were a doctor (Burzynski) noted primarily for being a quack. He might object, and rightly so, for a claim that he is one of the more notable people in the decade. (There is little dispute that he is a quack, although our article only says he is considered a fraud, rather than a quack.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:48, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Okay-- lists should be of a only a limited scope because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.
Someone should propose a particular set of criteria for listing and then we can refine it by discsssion-- and post it (hidden) in the decade articles and weed out people that do not fit. tahc chat 16:49, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Editors selected all the items and they selected the names. That's what editors do--and in this case they only provided links to full Wiki articles. Arthur Rubin says it's a BLP violation--which is nonsense, as Rubin's silly example demonstrates. (A link does not call anyone anything negative) The idea that a list of 100 important people should be replaced with an unsorted, uncritical list vastly longer that was not chosen by editors but produced mechanically is a violation of the wiki mission: which is for editor to select what is important and leave many thousands more out. Rjensen (talk) 19:34, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
No one ever proposed that a list of 100 so people be replaced with an unsorted list, nor replaced with an uncritical list, nor replaced with any longer list. Do you think that some proposed any of those?
While editors should select important pages and leave out many other, what often happens is that editors see (or write) an article on someone that they personally care about, and then add links for that page to as many lists as they can find. I find that many editors want to add just a couple names, but very few editors want the hassle of removing the many unimportant names that make lists unmanageable. tahc chat 20:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Well yes, Arthur Rubin erased all the editor-selected names on 1960s and said: 14:46, 17 October 2016 (-18,555)‎ . . remove (mostly) arbitrary list of people; World Leaders _might_ be restored if it were a list of all leaders of all countries). Rubin wants to add thousands of useless mechanically generated names of ALL leaders in order to remove the hard work of Wiki editors. Rjensen (talk) 21:03, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
I noticed this some time ago. Some editors seem to think that decade articles should include everything form the corresponding year articles. This is ridiculous. Year articles should contain only notable international events and people. Other events and people belong in the relevant Year in Topic or Year in Country articles. It is so hard to get this through to some editors that I, for one, can't be bothered. The difficulty of course is defining what/who is sufficiently notable for inclusion. For many there is no argument that they should be included, for many others it is equally obvious that they should not. The vast majority fall somewhere in the middle. For the decade articles there should be an even higher level of importance for inclusion. I'd suggest something similar to WP:RY, but unless there are sufficient editors willing to establish and enforce any such criteria I doubt it would get us anywhere. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 03:05, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if this is feasible or even a good idea, but I haven't seen it discussed anywhere, and so I thought I'd at least throw it out there: I’m wondering what people think about a standard for inclusion based on Wikiproject importance levels, e.g. in order to be included, an individual needs to be considered of high importance to at least one Wikiproject. I don't think people pay much attention to importance levels right now, and this sort of a proposal might be putting too much emphasis on something that's kind of irrelevant. I'm also not totally familiar with the whole world of Wikiprojects, and so I don't know how much sense it would make when there might be some very specialized Wikiprojects, but if that's the case, I imagine a more nuanced proposal could somehow take that into consideration. -- Irn (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

There are at least a couple reasons that such system would be infeasible, or at least infeasible by itself. (1) Even within one Wikiproject, articles are not systematically rated-- not even close, and for most such Wikiproject, new articles are made all the time. (2) Even if all Wikiproject were of similar scope and importantce and even if all of their articles were rated systematically, many important topics have no related Wikiprojects to given them a rating. (3) The decade articles list events and most Wikipedia articles are not about events. They are about things like people and organization. While would want some events in Nelson Mandela's life listed, some events are more important than others. tahc chat 21:07, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree with (1), but I don't see it as insurmountable; I think it can be dealt with. And for (2) and (3), I want to be clear that this discussion has been about people, not events, and that's my focus here, too: the list of names of people, not events. In that regard, I find it hard to believe that (2) applies to individuals, and (3) is irrelevant. -- Irn (talk) 13:41, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
Actually, on second thoughts, is a list of Deaths even appropriate for Decade articles? The most notable deaths (Kennedy, Hitler, Stalin, Queen Victoria etc) would be covered in the Events section. Surely links to the relevant Year articles would be sufficient? That would take out the endless arguing about who should, or should not, be included. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:53, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree-- the list of deaths is not needed for decade articles. This would cut out arguing about who should, or should not, be included.tahc chat 16:01, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal: Criteria for recurring events in decade pages

  • I propose that we start with the criteria for listing "recurring" events on decade pages be the same as those for ""In the news" on the main page-- for recurring events.
  • For example, this means that a film (such as All That Jazz in 1970s would not be listed mearly because it gained the ill-defined "high critical praise" or because "the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry" (as it does this for many films).
  • This criteria for listing for recurring events would still be too many... so we would also have to eliminate and modify many of the items listed at WP:In the news/Recurring items. For example, after pairing down the list we might all agree that the 1970s#Sports is fine in summarizing the (United States) World Series winners but should also summarize the Super Bowl winners in the same way, but not detail winners of Ultimate (frisbee). We might also agree to record a film that won "four Oscars" (as long as they were among the 4 to 6 most important Oscars; All That Jazz did not).
  • This would only cover recurring events, so we would need separate criteria for the many important non-recurring events on decade pages. tahc chat 21:49, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
Two topics and already we have a clear split! My suggestions for films would be to list the Oscar Winning best pictures for each year and link to each year's ceremony. For the Super Bowl I wouldn't include it at all, it's a US event not an international one. Only significant International sports events should be included, the Olympics and the Football World Cup along with singular events such as the first sub-4 minute mile. I notice that unlike Year articles the Decade articles don't appear to have links to Decade in Topic or Decade in Country articles. At the risk of creating more work for those involved in this project it would seem that these articles would be the appropriate place for events/people that don't make it to the parent article. :) DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 03:28, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
I am not sure what you mean by "..already we have a clear split", but I would mostly agree to your ideas... for example, dropping both the Super Bowl and World Series. Mentioning only the Oscar winners for best picture would be fine... for now. I would also agree mentioning fewer that all the Oscar winners for best picture, if we could agree which. Currently some films are also discussed do having the highest box office, and I would like to retain this even more than Oscar winners for best picture. A film can have an award but also have few people ever see it. Maybe include the top 6 grossing films, and the 6 most Oscar-awarded films of those that won an Oscar for best picture. tahc chat 16:22, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Talk:List of state leaders in the 10th century#re-focus

Please join the discussion on how to format the lists of leaders on this talk page. Thank you. tahc chat 16:43, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

A Proposal

I believe that there should be image montages inside the year pages from 1950 to last year. This is similar to the decades, centuries, and millennia pages.— JJBers (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't. I consider it of minimal benefit, and there would be too much argument about what should be included. Perhaps a few individual picture for events, as we have for deaths. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:03, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
Well, another idea down the drains,  Request withdrawn. Oh well, time to move on.— JJBers|talk 21:16, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

US Presidential inaugurations

We've got US Presidential inaugurations listed in the Year articles up to 2001. Perhaps we should relax WP:Recent Years & allow them in the 2005, 2009, 2013 & 2017 articles. GoodDay (talk) 03:23, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Or perhaps we should remove them from all years. Seems a better choice. We might make an exception for the first inauguration held in January, and those (although I cannot think of any) where something actually happened. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:33, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
Deleting them all is acceptable. They're more appropriate at the Year in the United States articles. GoodDay (talk) 03:41, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
Very much agree. -- Irn (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
Remove them from all years except 1789. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 00:48, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Keep all. They're historical events, marking the beginning of new US Presidential administrations--which are, in fact, world-notable. They certainly affect world events. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 05:37, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

New Year's Eve

Should year articles be updated on New Year's Eve to show which countries have changed? Oliverrushton (talk) 19:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

No. It's a waste of time. The articles should be left for 24 hours and then the tense changed. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Also note that this issue is more appropriately addressed at WP:Recent Years. 22:38, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

RfC on list format

A RfC on list format is open at Talk:List of earthquakes in 2016#RfC on list format. All editors are welcome to respond to the RfC.―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 03:54, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't seem relevant to this project. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:03, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

November 8, 2016

Election Day -- Donald Trump elected President of the United States.

Certainly, the election of the US is worthy of a mention of events in 2016, particularly when November is currently blank.

RickyRedwood (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Seems a bad idea to me; also discussed on Talk:2016 — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Leap years

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 December 31#Category:Leap years. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:00, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Fiction

There seems to be consensus that the list of fictional items set in a year should not exist, either in a year article or a stand-alone article "year in fiction". (I'll later add links to (some of) the AfDs in which spinoff articles have been deleted.) If there is no objection, I'll remove the fiction infractions from WP:YEARS and WP:RY. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

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