Wikipedia:Eras

'''Please discuss this on the talk page first as the way to move forward with this proposal has not yet been agreed upon. A vote will only be held if it is clear that it may help clarify consensus. We are currently in an information gathering phase, not a voting phase.'''

This is a proposed amendment to the Eras section of Manual of Style (dates and numbers). It is an attempt to avoid future revert wars regarding the disputed use of BC/AD or BCE/CE.

Necessity
This proposal has been sparked off, twice now, by ongoing revert wars at, and other articles and follows from the discussion at Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, Talk:Jesus, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and several other articles. Having no consensus at the BCE-CE Debate, the current situation is a little ambiguous as to the policy. Revert wars have happened between people interpreting the spirit of the policy differently.

In August, 2005, a compromise proposal was presented to the community, and failed to achieve consensus.

BC/AD versus BCE/CE reading list
''Please feel free to add sources - neutral or POV - to this list. Please comment on sources rather than removing them. This section is to help acquaint readers with the controversy, so we should include sources biased in both directions as well as neutral sources - for a panoramic view.''


 * Common Era at Wikipedia
 * This one's a bit messy, especially when it gets down to the arguments. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The 'Common Era' at h2g2
 * The use of "CE" and "BCE" to identify dates - from Religioustolerance.org
 * This essay definitely takes a side, but for that side, it lays out the arguments quite clearly, IMO. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Concurrent technical proposal
There is a proposal to implement a technical solution by wikifying all dates and allowing users to select in their preferences whether Augustus lived (63 BC – AD 14) or (63 BCE - 14 CE), and possibly other choices as well. (Chinese? Hindu? Muslim? Hebrew? Mayan? ISO 8601?) Please see this project page and its talk page for details or to help out.

Independence of this proposal from technical proposal
Whether or not this proposal is adopted, the technical solution seems to have some support, and is being pursued independently.

Even if the technical proposal is agreed to and implemented, it does not resolve the issue of how dates will look to non-registered users, or how they will look by default to new registered users, and this is, in many ways, the most public face of Wikipedia, so the technical fix, although it would quell edit warring to a large extent, does not make this proposal irrelevant or unnecessary. Therefore, the two are being pursued independently, and simultaneously.

Policy in question
The following is taken from Manual of Style (dates and numbers).


 * Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable, but be consistent within an article. Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Common Era, but when events span the start of the Common Era, use AD or CE for the date at the end of the range (note that AD precedes the date and CE follows it). For example, 1 BC–1|AD 1 or 1 BCE–1|1 CE .


 * In articles about prehistory, if you use BP (before present) or MYA (million years ago), expand these abbreviations when you first use them, as most readers will be unfamiliar with them.

Should this policy be approved the first paragraph above would have a paragraph added to it to clarify the guideline regarding eras.

Similar policies
The controversy over eras is similar in some ways (and dissimilar in others) to the debates between spelling choices (primarily between British English and American English), which are addressed in detail in MoS, here and here.

Straw poll
We held a straw poll on options, beginning in December 2005. If you wish, you may still contribute to the poll at Eras/Straw poll.

Recommended reading

 * After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don't have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn't last long enough. - Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters