Wikipedia talk:Timeline/Archive 1

I'm not sure a table is necessary or desirable for timelines. What's wrong with either regular headings and paragraph text, or dictionary lists, as below? We can tweak the stylesheets to make the text more compact if desired. And timelines should be on their own pages anyway, linked to from the subjects they describe. It just as important--if not even more important--for wiki text to be easy to edit as well as easy to read. --LDC

1820s
First mention of Poker by Cromwell

1840s
The game is adapted to the 52-card English deck.

1850s
The Joker, first used for the game of Euchre, is adapted.

1860s
Introduction of the draw, followed shortly by jackpots.

Dictionary list

 * 1820s
 * First mention of Poker by Cromwell


 * 1840s
 * The game is adapted to the 52-card English deck.


 * 1850s
 * The Joker, first used for the game of Euchre, is adapted.


 * 1860s
 * Introduction of the draw, followed shortly by jackpots.

I agree with LDC here, the table is not really needed here, and the other format lets people more easily add stuff. Tables would be useful as an extra note, but only if they're not too big (like the facts-tables in the country tables) or complete (like tables of Tour de France winners or countries in the world), and most timelines will be very big and probably never really complete.

Since this means timelines probably warrant their own articles, how to name them? History of Tarquinia - Timeline, Timeline of the History of Tarquinia?

Also, there are already a lot of timelines for science topics, let's not forget these.

Anyway, I like the idea of standardisation, so keep up the good work! Jeronimo

Use of Timelines
One of the standard uses to which I would put a timeline would be to view when an event happend in relation to another event. The problem I see with all proposed methods of displaying time lines is that it is difficult use any of these methods to get a quick visual understanding of the temporal relations of events. For a timeline to be useful in this way, the graphical placement of an item must be scaled based on its date. For instance, there should be a greater distance between 1054 (The Church in Rome breaks with the Church in Constantinople) and 1204 (Constantinople is occupied by crusaders) than there is between 1204 (Constantinople is occupied by crusaders and 1261 (Constantinople is liberated by the Byzantine emperor Michael Palaeologus).

Hope this makes sense, KalevTait 13:21, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Copy of text from the Project page
The last update to the text copied from the Project Page was "19:43, 21 July 2005 Attredies (→The Rice Pudding Wars)" As most of the project page was user comment which should have been on the Talk page, I have copied all the text into this section so that I can edit out the chatter from the project page. --Philip Baird Shearer 14:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the older discussion could be archived? I find it difficult to follow. --Sean Brunnock 16:28, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

 To the right is a basic template. These hopefuly will go into history sections of countries and have main events in that country's history. Or it can be used elsewhere like for an empire or ex-country or a person.

Currently working on Byzantine Empire/temp

Using HTML table markup is very heavy on the page text in raw format. I think for timelines, the ; : format looks fine, and is much easier to work with -- Tarquin

Beg your pardon :-s? -fonzy

It's generally preferable to use Wiki markup and not HTML, for legibility (and other reasons, dotted around on talk pages and on WikiWiki). There are proposals to implement wiki-style table markup -- however, for a simple date list, I think the following style would suffice. It's much easier to work with. -- Tarquin


 * 2003 : Tarquin elected President of the Universe
 * 2004 : Tarquin decrees benevolent dictatorship
 * 2006 : Tarquin abolishes tinned rice pudding
 * 2009 - 2012 : Rice Pudding Wars in Europe

Fonzy I really appreciate your enthusiasm however what you propose here has already been done using much simpler markup. Besides there are already thousands of Year in Review pages. --mav

If i was looking up say. The Persian Empire, I would actually prefer just to look at a nice table to the right of key events. Rather than having to go all the way down te page to find something about the events or find a timeline. - fonzy

Timelines do exist already on wikipedia. See List of timelines and Timeline of invention for an example. In fact, they use markup even simpler than my example above. -- Tarquin

The First Tarquinian Dynasty

 * 2003 : Tarquin elected President of the Universe
 * 2004 : Tarquin decrees benevolent dictatorship
 * 2006 : Tarquin abolishes tinned rice pudding

The Rice Pudding Wars

 * 2009 - 2012 : Rice Pudding Wars in Europe
 * 2013 The Restoration

YOU STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!!! Having a nice quick table to the right is much nicer and easier and its good quick refrence for anyone wanthing to know a very brief history -fonzy


 * If I understand you, you're suggesting the use of little table boxes with a quick overview of major events which can sit at the top of long history articles, and NOT suggesting that entire articles that are timelines should be giant tables. Am I right? --Brion


 * I get the same impression as Brion here. If there indeed were such small timelines, a table would be fine. But as I just pointed out in Talk, that is unlikely to be the case. Jeronimo

Have you looked at Byzantine Empire/temp? that what i am suggesting.


 * That's fairly tasteful, I like it. Section headings in the main text that matched the events covered in the timeline would make it even nicer. --Brion


 * Yeah, it looks ok, but I'd rather call it a "timeline outline". Anyway, the addition of "ce" should be removed, it's a wrong politically correct notation not used on Wikipedia.
 * I beg your pardon, but since when is CE a "wrong politically incorrect notation not used on Wikipedia"? A lot of people, including me, think it is very much preferable to AD; and I cannot remember anyone banning it from the 'pedia (I'm not even sure who if anyone would have the authority to do so...) Of course, CE should be capitals, not "ce" as in the example above -- SJK

The reason i chose CE was because its less biased. There are more than just christians on wikipedia. CE is the less religious way to do it. - fonzy


 * Maybe I'm wacky this way, but I don't see changing one acronym to another as being "less biased" or "less religious", or even relevant in any way. The simple fact is that the standard Western calendar is based on a cycle for calculating Christian religious holidays no matter which two letters you put after the year. That doesn't mean I'm against "CE", I just don't see a purpose for it. --Brion

The point is i am not christian or any religion. I am just monotheist. But i dont agree with using AD as i do not believe christ was the messiah. I'm shore Jesus was a real person. But anyway CE is not targetd at any religion and wiipedia should not be targetd at any religion either. OK? - fonzy


 * Sure, fonzy. Because using one opaque acronym instead of another magically changes everything! --Brion


 * Like a lot of other things in Western society (Christmas, Easter), although our system of chronology may be Christian in origin, it is no longer the sole property of Christians. I think calling it the "Common Era" instead of "AD" is a recongition of this fact. It may not make a major difference, but a difference it does make. Besides, the other advantage of "CE" is that in English it could stand for either "Common Era" or "Christian Era", so that can keep everyone happy. -- SJK


 * As an atheist, I derive no particularly warm, fuzzy feeling from using a different, even more presumptuous acronym for the Christian imperialist calendar. ("Common era"? Why, does history start with Jesus?) Nor do I demand that the names of pagan gods be removed from the days of the week. :) --Brion

I am not going to argue about this! - fonzy


 * Actually, Brion, in some ways (or perhaps I should say, for some people) it does. "AD" does after all stand for "Anno Domini" ("The Year of Our Lord") after all and so does contain an implicit claim that Jesus is Lord, which isn't very NPOV.  Personally speaking (as an atheist), I have no problem with "AD" because it's just a couple of letters to me; it's been defanged of religious significance by overuse.  Anyway, the Manual of Style implies that AD/CE/whateveryouwannacallit years are just referred to by their year number without any suffix, while BC years get a BC after them.  This is how it's currently done in the example page, too.  I'm not sure I like this, myself (it feels inconsistent), but it's what the current style is. --Bth


 * I don't think abbreviations such as AD can be NPOV. That would mean it's also NPOV to use SI units over imperial ones. The Christian way of counting years is well established in the (English speaking) world, and can therefore be used without problems. Being established as such it can be used in Wikipedia. The alternative CE notation seems to be invented by some politically correct people that also want to call Indians Native Americans. Once using CE becomes the common way to denote it, we could start using it, but it isn't. I had NEVER heard of the abbreviation before I saw it in Wikipedia, and I do read a lot of English language texts, also involving years. As Wikipedia always seems to "go with the flow" for using established names, we should as well, and preferably use AD when necessary - CE should not be forbidden of course.


 * Well, then you must've been living in a cave for the last 100000000000000000000000 years because CE is in and AD is out. AD is offensive to many people, while CE is neutral and now in common usage. Maybe when you crawled into your cave 100000000000000000000000 years ago, people only used "ooog" and not "CE", but now that you're out of the cave, it's time to adapt to modern society.


 * In addition, do you really want to call Native Americans "Indians"? Do you realize that the word "Indian", when used to refer to American aboriginal persons as a noun or an adjective, has pejorative connotations? Sure, it may be better than "injun", but its similar to the way it is now considered offensive or at least weird to say "negro" instead of "black" to refer to African-Americans, and many even find "black" offensive and prefer "African-American". There are even those who are offended by "African-American" (after all, why do you have to be "African-American" when many plain "Americans"' ancestors came to America well after yours did?) and prefer "Afro-American". Times change. At one time, "nigger" was only mildly offensive and was slang common to the Southeast. However, it very quickly gained racist connotations. "Jew" is also considered by many to be at least mildly offensive (I'm not sure if there is a preferred term, "Judaist" sounds a bit lengthy). Put simply, we try our best to not offend. You really should not say "indian" to refer to an American indigine on Wikipedia, though it is acceptable to use it for people from India (which brings to mind another thing: if you say "Indian" instead of "Native American", there is the question of whether you mean somebody from India or not). "Native American" is what most newspapers use nowadays, and all current encyclopedias use it. It is the only choice for textbooks.


 * However, simply saying "X was born in 93 / 1093 / 1993" will imply for everybody that it was AD, not BC, and therefore it is not necessary to use this notation. It is only necessary when talking about something situated both before and after the beginning of the first millennium.


 * On the contrary. CE is unnecessary, though BCE is very necessary and when left out can cause confusion.


 * Summary: AD is more common than CE, so we should use it. However, AD is generally not necessary to qualify years, so don't use it in these cases.


 * Summary: CE is probably more common than AD, but that doesn't mean anything here. What does matter is that AD is offensive to many and CE is not, so we should use it instead.


 * Jeronimo


 * Node

I graduated from Temple University two years ago, and I can tell you that AD is out, and CE is in. This is in ALL of the history and anthropology books that I dealt with in my college career (quite a few, considering my major). Professors wanted you to use CE as well. This has become an academic standard. User:Snarfies


 * two cents: As a non-christian, non-native-english-speaker, I prefer AD, simply because it's better known. I know what AD means (I don't know what it stands for, but I know what it means). CE I had to look up. Obviously Wikipedia shouldn;t be dumbing itself down for people with poor language skills, but this to me seems like a pointless little adversity, as AD, i think, is still more widely used and known. Datepalm17


 * I propose positive dates for AD/CE years, and negative dates for BC/BCE years.

Did you actually know that when CE/BCE was introduced. It stood for the Christian Era, and Before the Chrisitan Era. College textbooks teach you many things. The term "common" was added much later. And as a strong Chrisitan I still prefer to use "Before Christ" and "In the year of our lord" User:Attredies


 * Sticking my oar in: does Wiki implement anchors? It might be nice if the short descriptions in the table were linked to the point in the article (a section heading in Brion's suggestion) where they're discussed in more depth; this would make the mini-timelines handy navigation aids as well as giving a general overview.  But if it would involve doing things in raw HTML it might not be such a good idea.  Then again the tables are already a big glut of HTML ... --Bth


 * In-page anchors are not implemented. The concept has been raised from time to time on the mailing list, but it's controversial; the argument against is essentially that an article that's long enough it needs internal anchors is too long, and should be broken up. --Brion


 * That seems like a fair point; this does seem like an application where even a relatively short article would benefit from them, though. Failing that, I like your section headings idea. --Bth


 * Side-tables in pages mean a ton of HTML at the top of the raw text. I'd prefer a link to a separate page. -- Tarquin


 * I take it you're not a big fan of WikiProject Countries, WikiProject Elements, or WikiProject Tree of Life? --Brion


 * The projects themselves are great, and the taxoboxes and element boxes are great. They just have drawbacks: but I've already said elsewhere that HTML tables make articles hard to edit; and moreover, floating the tables because forces a narrow column of text which makes the rendered article harder to read too. -- Tarquin

OK then put this thing to the vote if it will make you happy.

If you have seen the xample page: Byzantine Empire/temp please vote:
 * Like: fonzy
 * Like: Mixcoatl. But keep it limited to max. 10 a 15 events.
 * with reservations: Brion (it seems to be increasing in length which is dangerous; should also be integrated better with section headings in text), Bth (yes, definitely there should be a limit on the length -- major events only), mav (I renew my plea for a table:namespace for table markup to live though - Tarquin is right in stating that tables make editing the text of articles more difficult than necessary). *Dont like: SJK (agree should only list major events; but what is major? and should list minor events somewhere also. wouldn't support until these issues worked out)
 * use both: use a condensed timeline as a sidetable to illustrate with the history article, and (if it gets too large) have a separate article for a (more) complete timeline - Jeronimo
 * dml Dislike for now. Though it looks good, editing seems cumbersome. Until there is a simple GUI for editing this in the wiki, it seems unwiki to use tables like this which will be hard to change.  The simpler * YEAR - DESCRIPTION format  suffices, either appended at the bottom if short, or another page if long.
 * Tarquin Dislike. Hard to edit. How do we decide what goes in the table. Why, oh why, must everything be summarized? If the article is too long to read, put headings in, or split into several pages. For that matter, why, oh why must everything be put to a vote? Can't we all just agree on things?

Well by looking at the votes so far it genraly seems to be yes but blah blah. SO possibly there could be a limit to how many dates are shown. So easy to edit quicker to load. Only has Main Dates. Aalotugh on the example page i admit i put a couple that i wouldn;t really say were main dates. I just put them there as an example. - fonzy

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