Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Time/Archive 1

The following is being developed as an attempt to start up Project Time. I welcome new participants and contributions to the discussion. -- FrankP 09:36, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Current state of the project
Basically, very early days.

For now the aims are:
 * 1) Assessment phase to examine the current state of treatment for time-related issues across Wikipedia.
 * 2) Implementation when we are in a position to formulate and implement an appropriate action plan.

The project's work is essentially confined to this Talk page during the assessment phase.

Time - main article
Time has many aspects. The central article Time should either cover these directly or link to other subsidiary articles. We can regard time in these ways:


 * philosophically
 * historically, i.e. the measurement of historical events using dates
 * intellectual history of time - how time has been perceived in the past
 * scientifically, i.e. the physics of time
 * socially, i.e. the part played by time in society
 * religiously

It seems that the Time page is a magnet for people offering incoherent philosophical ramblings. Perhaps there need to be a parallel page Nonsense of Time to collect this stuff and keep it out of the way.
 * The main article Time looked |like this when FrankP wrote the foregoing in 2004. It has had some improvements since then, and I believe Nonsense of Time is best kept out or kept on the discussion pages.
 * Interestingly, Wikipedian JimWae was one of the first to edit Time after FrankP's complaint, and he is still at it, contributing his forté, philosophy's understanding of time. He seems to have been shepherding it successfully among the "incoherent", and contributions are likely to be watched closely by him. The article is still a ways from being a GA, and that will take concerted interest and action. -- Yamara 07:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Subsidiary articles
(Original list posted by FrankP, Nov 17 2004:)
 * intellectual history of time replaced by Time discipline
 * Philosophy of time now Philosophy of space and time
 * Physics of time covered by Time in physics
 * Measurement of time - this has been redirecting to Timeline of time measurement technology, which is only so helpful, and not what FrankP (or a user) probably expected to find. Currently, the subject is spread over several articles, as shown on the Template:Time measurement and standards, but the template doesn't have room to explain all these systems. I have changed the redirect to point at Chronometry, which I hope will be a simple overview and clearinghouse page to direct users to the many articles on how time is measured. -- Yamara 08:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Other articles affected

 * Articles which link to Time.
 * Articles with "of time" in title.

Calendars and Dates
As far as historical dates go, we should use (and I expect most pages do use?) the Common Era as a standard reference, and check that explanatory articles for other Calendars are consistently linked together.

Related projects
Some work has already been done by WikiProject Years and Timeline standards. There is a structure (not necessarily complete) of pages relating to specific years, decades, centuries and millennia. There are explanatory articles about the Gregorian calendar, and pages for other calendar systems such as Muslim and Jewish. There are pages explaining the confusion over year zero and the difficulties of extending calendars back before their founding epoch.

There are also potential projects called WikiProject Decades, WikiProject Centuries, and WikiProject Millenia but they have not been started.

Templates and metalevel
The metalevel relates to work based in the wikipedia namespace rather than the main namespace. That is, the metalevel is about coordination with other projects like Years, and with the generation of any necessary templates that can be used in articles.

There are existing templates for years, and decades, millennia, etc. (check exactly what exists)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Birth by date hierarchy
There has previously been an attempt to create a temporal hierarchy based on date of birth in addition to the existing hierarchy based on year of birth. This initiative was however strangled in its birth about a year ago. Would there be any support for a renewed initative from members of this WikiProject? On the Norwegian (nynorsk) Wikipedia such a hierarchy exists and seems to be both innocuous and well-functioning. __meco 10:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Relationship to other Projects
I note that Physics, Astronomy, and Philosophy have also claimed Time. How is that all supposed to work? DCDuring 19:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletions (WP:PROD)

 * 24 September 2007 - expires 29 September
 * Leap 128 ( notification should go to WikiProject Calendars, but that is an inactive project ) --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 11:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Sundials
I just created Man Enters the Cosmos. I placed it in Category:Sundials which I found to be a category in need of creation. I have created the category. However, I do not know sundials, so I just placed a few articles and all the images in the sundials article in the category. I am hoping someone who knows the most famous, important, valuable, oldest, innovative, or demonstrative sundials could place them in this category. I am assuming that WP has other articles on notable sundials that I do not know about. I just don't know any myself.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Timeline Tracer
Should not the relation to WikiProject Timeline Tracer be established an outlined on the project page? __meco 16:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Anno Domini FAR
Anno Domini has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy Georgia (Talk)

era categories....
Category:1st century eras, and Category:1st century Jewish history for "1st" going from 1 through 21, and many of 1 through 40 BC, and Category:Centuries of the future, and a lot of ...by century categories were created by User:IZAK in the past day or so. I think most of these should be killed, but I can't tag them as fast as they're being created. &mdash; Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It doesn't make sense to me. He's just added quantum field theory to Category:Centuries of the future. -- KarlHallowell 22:22, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Arthur Rubin: Thank you for your comments. You are not being clear at all. I have concluded creating categories, and most of my time has been spent copy-editing and wikifying existing century articles and categories, so thank me for that. Please do not touch any of the Jewish century categories, this was something that was lacking until now, and is part of a bigger project. You can see that the parent category of Category:Jewish history by centuries is very clear. The other era categories are all very good and I did not create most of them, just added a few here and there, and expanded an existing framework that I came across, so why would you want to "kill" something that has been and can be of so much use, but that neede some fine-tuning? I will be glad to answer any questions you may have. In regards to Jewish history (as in most history), many eras span many centuries and therefore they belong in those categories for those centuries. Thank you, IZAK 07:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

HiKarlHallowell: You chose the toughest one I had to deal with! The Category:Centuries of the future was difficult to place and populate and I tried to see how it could fit in with various fields. It makes sense that the future, as we conceive of it, is science-filled and science-based (does anyone disagree?), but do feel free to edit it, as you have donw. I do not wish to tread on any "quantum toes" etc! All the other time categories I added to or created are not like this at all. They are all very specific, based as they are on past history, and established categories that were already in place when I came acroos this subject recently. Can you point to anything else specific please, and I will be glad to discuss it with you or anyone else. IZAK 07:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Unless you can explain even a potential use of the "era" categories, they should either be upmerged to the time periods they belong to or deleted. Category:Centuries of the future (including Millennia?) and Category:Years in the future should be merged (and restricted only to include categories) or deleted, and the Jewish categories should be reviewed by that WikiProject. I don't see them as helpful, but I could be wrong.  I'd propose those changes, but I'd need a bot to find all the categories to be nominated, not to mention tag them.  You, at least, could find them.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 08:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Regardless of any of this, you need to document your sort keys. To be helpful, we need to know what they are so they can be maintained.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 09:02, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, could somebody provide me with a list of the categories IZAK has created. He seems unwilling to do so, although he's the best qualified.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 09:06, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Still waiting.... &mdash; Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

YearsInCentury template
It seems to me the decade categories should also be in the box. Also, it appears that Template:YearsInDecade2 is identical to Template:YearsInDecade, (and has been since the first day they've been created) and the YearsInCentury template could be edited to reflect that. Unless there's some reason this shouldn't be done, I'll try it in a week or so. &mdash; Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've now killed YearsInDecade2, I hope, although I don't know how long it will take for the changes to propagate. &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 01:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Any comments on User:Arthur_Rubin/Template:YearsInDecade, User:Arthur_Rubin/Template:YearsInCentury, and User_Talk:Arthur_Rubin/Template:YearsInCentury? If I don't hear anything, I'll update in a week or so.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 02:31, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Updated now. &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 15:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Categorization and sort keys
I've made a proposal for year, decade, century, and millennia articles and category at Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards. Comments and alternative proposals would be welcome, as would suggestions as to where it should be announced, if anywhere else that I haven't already done. &mdash; Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

History of timekeeping
I just did a major revamp of this article, and I wanted to get your input on it. Also, if anyone could help with a history of calendars section, that would be great too. Contact me on that article's talk page. Thanks! J- ſtan TalkContribs 22:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Greenspun illustration project: requests now open
Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.


 * General information about the project: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project
 * Potential illustrators and others interested in the project should join the mailing list: greenspun-illustrations

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 13:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

Time Portal opens
We have a Time Portal. -- Yamara 12:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for fixing the portal I was meaning to get that done. Where should this new templeate

go? Zginder(talk) (Contrib) 22:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:Portal sez: "These templates should be located at article ends in See also sections (or equivalents)." -- Yamara 02:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Top Importance
I beleive I have taged all the Time articles that are top importance. THere are currenctly 25 articles in this catagory. I believe nothing is missing, but if something is list it here. Zginder(talk) (Contrib) 15:24, 12 February 2008 (UTC)