Wikipedia talk:User preferences for BCE/CE notation

Wikifying
The proposal says: ''This page sets out the specifications of what would need to be programmed into the software. It assumes that, to work, all dates would need to be wikified - which here means that some of the text appears in double square brackets. Currently, not all dates are wikified. If this specification is adopted, the MoS will change to make clear that all dates should be wikified so the specification works.''

This idea alone would lead me to oppose the proposal. i think that far too many years (as opposed to full dates) are now wiki-linked to little or no benefit, and I typically remove all such links when I encounter them in editing, which the MoS currently supports. If we are going to request a new feature, then that feature should include a way to indicate dates for the software to parse and apply preferece settings to oates other than standard wiki-linking. Most dates are now linked only so preferences can be applied, not because the link adds any value. Many years are linked in imitation of the style for hadling full dates, even though this is quite pointless. If there was new syntax for indicating dates and parts of dates, preferences could be acted on even in the avsence of a wiki-link.

Furthermore, the proposal assumes that an era indication ought to follow (or be assocaited with) all years. When a topic is talking about the 2004 US Election (for example), there is no reason for any era indication. Only when the topic makes the year less than clear without an era indication should one be present, and the the new date syntax should allow the editor to specify whether or not an era indiaction is desired, with the default being NO, just as it is currently. DES 21:18, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

No need to favor either side
There is no need to favor either side of the controversy, either in the "situation" section or the default (when no preference is chosen). Maurreen (talk) 06:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

This situation hasn't gone away
Hi. I bear tidings from Wikipedia talk:Eras - it's back, because another group of Wikipedians got tired of the BC/AD versus BCE/CE edit warring. I'm therefore atttempting to restart this talk page and see if we can get this proposal off the ground, after all. It looks like some good work was being done here. Do the rest of those tables on the project page just need filling out, and then we try to get a developer's atention, or what else remains to be done here? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Style sheets already!
[moved from Wikipedia talk:Eras -GTBacchus(talk) 02:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)]


 * I am so tired of this. It will be well worth a developer's time to hack up stylesheet support for this. we can then have 2001, and people will be able to choose if they want to see -5 CE, 6 BCE or 6 BC. Hell, they'll even be able to customize Hijra or Middle-earth calendars.
 * This is only a question of representation for crying out loud, and like font, background colour and what not, it should be rendered client-side.
 * The only exception will of course be discussion of calendars and Common Era itself, where the template will not be usable, because the notation will be part of the statement.
 * dab (&#5839;) 18:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * They should also implement style support for 12 vs. 24 hour clock and metric vs. imperial measurements while they're at it, although I haven't heard about any work on these areas yet, unfortunately. Kaldari 19:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * the nice thing will be that Wikipedia will become more machine-readable. 2001 and June 29, 2024
 * will be so much more parseable than numbers scattered over the text. dab (&#5839;) 08:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Two options
We seem to have at least two options on the table for how one might go about implementing a technical solution to the era format dispute. One is via wikified years, the other is by stylesheets, whatever those are. Let's find some reasons why one or the other might be preferable. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Style sheets
How do we address the fact that we sometimes want to call it "AD 1492", and sometimes just "1492", such in cases where the era is unambiguous? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC) Thus, we need templates for four cases (nrs. 3-6). For ease of use, they should be as short as possible, e.g.
 * Comments
 * See BCEBC for a working solution. Except that the "Default notation" should be either BCE or BC, because "BCE/BC" is the most horrible of them all. There would need to be a corresponding CEAD. It is important to distinguish six cases:
 * 1) Unwikified CE dates, In unambiguous cases, no era has to be specified, we don't have a problem: "in 1492".
 * 2) wikified CE dates, same thing, but the date is relevant to the article: "in 1492".
 * 3) Unwikified CE dates with era specified: This is only necessary if (a) the date appears in the context of a lot of numbers, and it has to be made clear that it is a date; (b) we are looking at the first few centuries BC/AD, so that we have to specify that AD is intended, e.g. "Tacitus was born in AD 56."
 * 4) wikified CE dates with era specified, same thing, but the date is relevant; "Tacitus was born in AD 56."
 * 5) Unwikified BCE dates, "Caesar died in 44 BC". With BCEBC: "Caesar died in ."
 * 6) Wikified BCE dates, same thing, but the date is relevant to the article: "Caesar died in 44 BC"
 * 3.
 * 4.
 * 5.
 * 6.

Once we have a solution along these lines, the "preferences" pages should receive an option to configure the stylesheet. Otherwise, only savvy users who can fiddle with their css will benefit from the solution. Another issue will be the "Default" notation: Personally, I favour BC/AD, but I'd rather have BCE/CE by default than the embarassingly clumsy "BCE/BC" or "BC[E]". dab (&#5839;) 10:55, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * A format like 1956 for AD 56 and 2042 for 42 BC might also work? Then there's only the one template that people have to know, and it isn't named after any particular system.  It also would allow for expanded functionality, like people who want their years in Chinese, or Hebrew. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:37, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikified dates
A problem here is that not all years are wikified, and lots of people are in the habit of un-wikifying years that aren't substantially important to the article. Also, how do we address the fact that, for years in the Common Era, the abbreviation is often suppressed, whether AD or CE? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:19, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * see my comment above. Both cases (wikified and unwikified CE dates) have to be addressed. We do not want to auto-wikify all dates. dab (&#5839;) 11:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Problem needs to simultaneously address yyyy-mm-dd preferences. All dates of the form yyyy-mm-dd ( dd Monyyyy, etc.) have to be wikified anyway. For BCE, all the dates have the BC/BCE in them, so using the display parser will be the natural place to handle preferences for both types.

Don't forget that "nth century BCE" has to be handled as well.

For current era dates, almost all can be left alone. The only time that AD/CE dates are displayed is a change in era. This is a rather rare occurrence. Therefore, why not a single template:


 * {Era|year|month|day}

Template:Era is already defined, but not used, so it could be reused. It would be used immediately following the BCE date, generate the ndash, then wikidate format for AD/CE. The parser would handle the preference display, just as it does now.

Other possible names for the Template could be "Era change" or "Era range", but that's more to type and editors are often lazy.

Summary:
 * All BCE dates wikified.
 * All era ranges wikified.
 * No change to common era, other than to remove extraneous "A.D." or "CE" according to MoS.

This should probably allow conversion with the least amount of manual work.
 * --William Allen Simpson 18:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * no, I don't think it is acceptable to have all BCE dates and all eras wikified. Whether a particular string is wikified depends on the context in the article, and shouldn't be prescribed by formal considerations. something like 1955 can only work with a MediaWiki update, while could work right away. {Era|year|month|day} could be a good approach at least for cases where you want the entire date wikified, which is not infrequent. Let's not discuss things like Hebrew or Chinese calendars; blindly converting to these could have strange effects. "Iceland was Christianized in {Era|1000}, under the impression of the impending millennium" will be incomprehensible in the Chinese calendar. The year of foreign calendars can only be calculated from the full date ({Era|year|month|day}, in the case of the Islamic calendar, not even then with complete accuracy), it is hopeless to convert {Era|1844} into AH, you will get three possible results. dab (&#5839;) 17:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Can we get this going again?
I recently came across this proposal after trying (without knowing the extent of previous debates) to get some work done on the subject of Common Era notation vs BC/AD. It sounds like a great idea to me, and the only thing that seems to have enough support to actually reach concensus. It's been a few months since anyone posted here, however, and I am just wondering if there's anything going on with the implimentation of this proposal. Did discussion move elsewhere? Or was it abandoned? As this topic is apparently extremely divisive within the Wikipedia community, it seems like it would be in everybody's best interest to get going with this; otherwise, more discussions (that often turn quite sour) will keep cropping up because more and more Wikipedians will decide to start them going, as I did, without realizing that such debates had already cause a lot of electronic blood shed. Romarin 20:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

A better approach
This can be easily implemented without having to wikify every date. First of all, this functionality doesn’t have to be triggered from user settings on Wikipedia. Initially, it can be provided by external programs, like browser extensions or user scripts. These programs are just JavaScript programs that will find and replace era labels according to user preferences (provided by user in those programs, Wikipedia settings have nothing to do with it). They will use regular expressions to do so.

The key is not to look for just “BC” abbreviations, because they may mean anything from ”British Columbia” to ”Basketball Club”. You want to look for patterns that look like dates, for example: “123 BC”, “2nd century BC”, “420s BCE”, etc. The same goes for AD/CE labels. Once you find an era label in the context of a date pattern you know that it actually is an era label and not something else.

There will be a very small number of false positives. Take for example this text: “…in a 2011 BC Liberal leadership election”. Here “BC” stands for British Columbia, but the substring “2011 BC” is indistinguishable from a BC date. This is not that big of a deal, because users will be able to turn off the script temporarily if something looks weird on a page. But if you want to get rid of such false positives, a special template can be used (and scripts will be programmed to recognise that template).

Here’s what it may look like:. On the level of HTML it will look like this:.

In some cases “BC” may stand alone but actually still mean “Before Christ”. For such cases another template can be used:

The same template can be used for standalone AD/CE abbreviations:

So, basically, you’ll need two new templates which will be used in a very small number of cases. And even without those templates the solution will be very much usable.

I will probably develop the scripts myself in the near future first as a Chrome extension and then as a Wikipedia user script. As for the templates, I’m going to include them in my proposal for this Wiki project. My project is about detecting all BC/BCE dates on Wikipedia. I intend to propose a bunch of templates that help programmatically detect BC dates that lack actual “BC” labels (this will enable users to use alternative timelines instead of BC dates). So it makes sense for me to also include in my proposal any other templates that mark up dates in any way. KarenGrigMan (talk) 10:06, 19 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The Chrome extension is ready. Anyone interested can check it out here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/era-selector/fedcnfmkgihadcdfnjfhcgmlmcgnlipn
 * The source code is here: https://github.com/kgcoder/era-notations
 * KarenGrigMan (talk) 19:26, 30 August 2023 (UTC)