Template talk:Time measurement and standards

Time related templates
Time is a pretty vast subject, and it's impossible (or, at least, very unwise) to try to group all of it into a single template. A cautionary lesson is the defunct Template:Culture of China. It ran on for hundreds and hundreds of links, but the articles were better served by a few interlocking templates, which they enjoy now.

My intent is to build a loose hierarchy of Time templates. There will a good deal of overlap, especially regarding calendars.

I have no absolute goal in mind for the templates, and expect Wikipedians to edit them to suit. A general goal is, of course, to make articles on Time more accessible and interrelated.

Some suggestions:
 * The Time Portal will display all the templates.
 * Don't duplicate Template:Calendars, which is very concise and useful, into another template. Calendar topics are bound to show up in several Time templates, but none should be a list like the one in the Calendars template.
 * Individual articles should preferably have just one, and no more than two or three Time templates. There may be exceptions, but the goal is to resolve clutter and confusion, not create it.
 * Let the Geology editors work out their own Era templates. This may well apply to other disciplines; it's enough to link to chronology and overview pages about time in various disciplines.

Cheers, Yamara 06:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Editing the template
I have no problems with edits to the template, including making the title bar match Wikipedia standards of capitalization for readers. This is all fine.

Please do not redirect to edit the template. It does not allow updates to reach all of the entries. -- Yamara 11:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Archaeology & geology
I'm removing the links to these major topics. They are about the past, but this template is primarily about measurement & standards. Other Time templates link to these articles where appropriate. See Portal:Time for all the templates. -- Yamara 11:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Time ball
Can one of the admins please add Time Ball to this protected template. It probably fits into the section with marine chronometer. Thanks Socrates2008 ( Talk ) 10:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Eliminate Pro-Islamic Bias please
Listing only the Islamic calendar, but not the Hebrew Calendar nor the Indian Calendar discriminates against these commonly used systems. Either include other common calendars, or remove the Islamic one. Wikiguy0812 (talk) 12:49, 29 December 2008 (UTC)Wikiguy0812

New and Amend Pages
Could an administrator add to Measurement and Standards/Calendar the following;

Week

7 Day Week

And amend

Days of the Week to 7 Days of the Week

ta--Pnb73 (talk) 11:18, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Week was already in the template.
 * 7 Days of the Week is a redirect to Week-day names, which I've fixed.
 * 7 Day Week is a redirect to Seven-day week, added.
 * In future, you need to use editprotected if you want to get an admin's attention. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In future, you need to use editprotected if you want to get an admin's attention. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Add the Annums
I've been looking for measurements of time greater than millenia and couldn't find anything. Eventually I found Myr which led me to Annum and I found what I was looking for. Why not list the different annum measurements in the "Calendar" section under 'day' 'week' and such and link them to that page? I'd do it myself if I were an admin. --IdLoveOne (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Better still: delete the Unusual in the Unusual units section & group all units together. In fact, move the  from Major subjects. Something like this.


 * (Code removed.)


 * This solves the problem of labelling units "unusual" (what's unusual here might be common over there). J IM ptalk·cont 07:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I see no objections so ask that the edit be made to group units of time together as suggested above. J IM ptalk·cont 13:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There seem to be an unnecessary number of line breaks - possibly because you have a small monitor and have adjusted it to look nice on yours. Would there be any objection to removing artificial line breaks and letting the browser break the line where it needs to? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

What I'd had in mind is grouping like units together (from second to fortnight we have all simple ratios, similarly with month to millennium & then the less common ones). But I think I might have been previewing it in a narrow window. Looking at it with normal width I see what you mean. I have no objection to the removal of these line breaks. J IM ptalk·cont 18:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's looking good I think. Is there any reason why some of the entries are bold? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Can't see any reason for the bolding not to be removed. J IM ptalk·cont 11:27, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I say they should be added, it's a logical next step after century, millennium... It's not a common measure of time used, but neither are many of the other things listed in here. Will somebody explain why they think annum doesn't deserve presence in this template? --I′d※♥※Ɵɲɛ (talk) 22:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Accessibility improvement
editprotected For WP:ACCESSIBILITY by visually impaired readers, purely decorative images should not link to their image pages and should not have alt text, as per WP:ALT. Can you please install this obvious sandbox patch to add "|link=" to the two purely decorative images that this template generates, and to remove the alt text from one of them? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 08:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:55, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Update to accessibility improvement
Due to a change in the MediaWiki software, purely decorative images now have to say "linkalt" instead of merely "link"; this is now documented in WP:ALT . Please install. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 20:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done, cheers, Skomorokh,  barbarian  22:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Marine sandglass
Please add Marine sandglass to this template. Biscuittin (talk) 16:23, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅  Ron h jones (Talk) 19:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Portal Image
Can the portal image be updated from Portal.svg to Portal-puzzle.svg to match that used by the portal template. Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ JohnCD (talk) 19:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

various fixes
Please update code to sandbox version:. Fixes: code, put in order, alpha, fx redirects (except one to a section). Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:48, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Dabomb87 (talk) 23:49, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Remove the icon
As per the image as per WP:MOSICON Gnevin (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from ClemRutter, 15 April 2011
Add Whitehurst & Son sundial (1812) to Horology

ClemRutter (talk) 18:42, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The items listed appear to be general topics (such as "sundial" or "atomic clock"), rather than a specific sundial or clock. Is there a compelling reason why this article should be added to the template? I'm not very familiar with clocks and such, but this seems rather odd to me. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  21:50, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Indeed. While it may demonstrate a certain unique functionality, I don't believe the subject in question qualifies as a distinctly different sort of timepiece. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 10:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Stefan.loska, 31 July 2011
Please add link Hebrew to the Calendar section

Stefan.loska (talk) 15:24, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ --RL0919 (talk) 06:34, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from SteveMcCluskey, 7 August 2011
Please add ΔT to the section on International standards. It would probably fit best between the items UT and DUT1. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Additionally, I asked the protecting admin to consider unprotecting this template. Ucucha (talk) 18:15, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Show by default and/or split up into tighter pieces
I was editing Barycentric Coordinate Time and Geocentric Coordinate Time to add See also's between them. I wanted them because my browser in-page search to find references to e.g. Geocentric Coordinate Time from Barycentric Coordinate Time found nothing. That is both because the template was hidden, and because the template covers so many things that it doesn't spell out all the actual article names, and shows just the abbreviations like TCG instead. So I think we want to show the templates by default in at least some of these articles. If it is considered too big to show, then I suggest having smaller templates which are not so distracting and confusing. I also think we should spell out the names, especially for cases where the abbreviation is confusing to remember or figure out because it is in reverse order of the English name. Note that I actually independently thought up the idea to have this sort of navigation template for time scale standards, and just proposed that at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Time. Relying on readers to notice the little "show" buttons and click them to see useful information or get their searches to work goes against my notion of a good design. Is there any research on that relevant to template design? ★NealMcB★ (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Time translation symmetry
Have added time translation symmetry to the physics section as this is equally important to T-symmetry, renamed to time reversal symmetry for clarity.--Sparkyscience (talk) 10:10, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 June 2017
I would like to add a link to the 6-hour clock in this template please. --24.150.217.182 (talk) 20:24, 10 June 2017 (UTC) 24.150.217.182 (talk) 20:24, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Izno (talk) 20:51, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 October 2019
Add a link to the Wikipedia "time clock" article in the "Time measurement and standards box", specifically, in the area of "time and physics". 76.16.47.132 (talk) 03:09, 24 October 2019 (UTC)


 * ❌. This doesn't seem to really fit.  –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 15:14, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

On obsolete prime meridians
, this one is tricky. There are a lot of terrestrial prime meridians that are obsolete, but we still have a prime meridian in the sense of the meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. And the moon and other planets have prime meridians. The link in the obsolete section was put in when the Prime Meridian article (capitalized) was still about the Greenwich meridian. Later that material was moved into the independent article, but the link here wasn't changed. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:02, 9 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is tricky, I agree. Afik, we don't still have a Prime Meridian (except as a curiosity for tourists), we have an IERS Reference Meridian. But yes, it is not obvious how to handle it but your WP:egg version is not the correct solution either.
 * , any suggestions? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:18, 9 March 2022 (UTC)