Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years/Archive 6

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:34, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Project revival
This project has had little activity in the past 4 years. Most of its members are no longer with us. The scope of the project as described seems outdated and, in my opinion, needs to be rewritten. We have just come up with a compromise for allowing summaries of the year into year articles. Things are changing and I think we need to look at where we want to go with this project and what we want year articles to look like in the years to come. I suggest a roll call of all listed members to see who's still around. I also suggest we remake our todo list and scope description. We also need to invite new members into the project regularly to keep it active. Wrad (talk) 18:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I personally am about ready to put my 1346 summary on the mainspace and continue to work on adding summaries to older year articles so that we can become more familiar with the issues surrounding year summaries. I could create a watchlist to add to this page with all of the year articles on it so all of us can see all of the changes being made to year articles. It would be nice if some of our templates could be prettied up a little. I'm just brainstorming here... Wrad (talk) 18:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I have only made one edit to 1345 in the past, but I have watched all the discussion with close interest since the start of the year. The 1345 experiment is a very interesting idea with a lot of potential. I would, however, like to see the year articles updated slowly and well, one decade at a time. One problem that has been commented on is that some of the information is too general for 1345, and is more appropriate for the 1340s article. I imagine that close collaboration on each article, with the decade articles aiming toward GA criteria, would not only be better for article standard, but would also recruit more interest. With all that said, you probably have the best idea of which direction to take this project. I'd like to work on a year article at some point. At the moment I am working on the History of calendars with the Tzatziki Squad — I'm sure that if you nominated an article there, you could get a collaborative effort that could take it to GA or even FA. --Grimhelm (talk) 19:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I wonder if people here could comment on exactly what they consider to be too general for the 1345 so we can get a consensus on what does and doesn't belong. We want the article to be about 1345, but we want to provide context as well. Where is the line? What do you think about the Americas and Africa sections of that article, are they too general? Wrad (talk) 19:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

What I like most about this wikiproject is that it cuts to the heart of a gordian knot of audience and level of detail that Wikipedia has never addressed head on, while slowly over the last 6 years addressing the issue implicitly by adding depth in every dimension and new articles to fill gaps.
 * 1) How does one define a year?  Is it a milepost in the passage of time?  A historical snapshot?  A lens through which to look at every other category?  A story with its own beginning and end, its own cast?
 * 2) How much detail is appropriate for a year?  How does one address being in media res with a wealth of topically-focused articles covering anything notable that happened during those 12 months?
 * 3) What sorts of reproduction of detail and information are appropriaet across consecutive years, decades, centuries?  How can different timescales be used to address different [informational, notable] narratives?
 * 4) Large timescales : We now have years, decades, centuries.  Should we focus as well on millennia?  10,000-year time periods? (cf the "long now foundation" and a few reference sources that break time into such periods)
 * 5) Short timescales : We also cover months and days for current events, at least from the past 5 years.  How far should this be extended into the past?  Could this be meaningfully populated from a historical database of news stories?  From a tool that extracts information from the rest of the encyclopedia?  Do historically significant days already deserve their own articles?
 * 6) Current events : in addition to the historical question preceding this, how does this project interface with the active current events projects which are more actively constructing articles on the current and recent years?
 * +sj + 04:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I concur with others that 1345 is too detailed for our current encyclopedic style; and should have perhaps half of its information moved into the 1340s article and a further 10% moved into the 1300s article. I also think that we should have our own standards for featured quality for such explicitly detail-layered sets of articles -- 1340s might be an appropriate first target to raise to featured status; which should be granted only when each of the decade's years is dealt with in appropraite detail, and the events and figures prominent in the decade are laid out in balanced overview in the decade article. +sj + 04:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow! You have hit a lot of nails on the head! I agree with you on 1345 being too loaded with detail unrelated to the actual year which needs to be relocated. I've tried a different approach with 1346 I'd be interested in getting feedback on. (Incidentally, it is about half' the size of 1345, mainly because it is more focussed, so you guessed about right, I think.) I'm hoping I can get a good series on the 1340s and hammer out a lot of the issues we're dealing with. However, it takes more than one person to hammer anything this big out. I need this project. Wrad (talk) 04:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Just took my first look at 1345 and I like it, although the style slightly reminds me of the text you get at the start of an epic film. I was half expecting a fade through to Kirk Douglas. But even so, it's better than a list (Wikipedia prefers prose style over lists). Grouping events by region works well. There is still a way to go to get it consitently good though, but I think this is the way forward for year articles. Should we aim to get all years like this? Totnesmartin (talk) 08:29, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that style. History excites me. I think we should aim to add solid prose summaries to all year articles, yes. However, I think we need to be smart about how we do it. Some year articles (i.e. 2000 BC) may not have enough events to make a good prose article, so we may have to settle for writing just a decade or century summary. The fact remains, though, that we won't know if it has enough events for a year summary until we do the research, so it's worth a try. On the opposite end, for 2008 and other more current events, the problem is choosing which of a huge number of events to summarize. For more current articles, I think we'll need to take it slow, not adding a summary until the regular editors for that article agree to it. This means that the summary may have to be written in a sandbox first before it is approved and added. Wrad (talk) 14:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the points made are quite accurate. Personally, I think that the Americas and other regions don't need a general overview for each year if no details are known — just use to produce

The distinction will become clearer as we start working on the decade articles. --Grimhelm (talk) 17:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

1346
I just expanded this article and added a summary as requested by several people on the 1345 talk page and here. Wrad (talk) 23:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Bot tagging
After the tagging run I've had WP 1.0 bot do a manual update so you guys can see how many articles you have. The template is located here. If you need any more tagging done ever, feel free to hit me up on my talkpage. §hep  •   ¡Talk to me!  00:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

2008
I have tried twice now to remove what I consider inappropriate content from 2008. This includes:
 * 1. Elections. There are innumerable entries of the sort "Election held in XXXX" and others in which there is nothing more added of any significance. Most, if not all, of these are already in Elections in 2008 or 2008 in politics.
 * 2. Annual and/or national sporting events in which this year's results are no more significant than any other year. Most of these are, or should be, in either 2008 in sports or the appropriate "2008 in xxsport" if there is one.
 * 3. Weather events and other incidents which are not significant enough to have their own page and have no reference (e.g. "February 18 - Athens, Greece is paralysed by its worst snowstorms in more than 50 years." and "March 6 - No one is injured when a small bomb explodes at an unoccupied U.S. military recruiting station in Times Square, New York City.").

Much of this is News, in many cases barely even that!

These removals have been reverted with the excuse that they are included in previous years or that they are in fact "highly notable". I strongly disagree, in fact they should be removed from those other years as well, but as it is not possible to revert the reverts after more than a few hours because of other editing I don't (yet) feel like wasting my time trying this again. Is there anyone else out there interested in trying to enforce wiki policy with regard to this? Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It is my opinion that we need to rethink how we do recent year articles. They are currently following a pattern that was set in 2004 when there wasn't nearly as much current-event editing on wikipedia. Just because we did it wrong in the past doesn't mean we can do it wrong now. Many of these articles are 100,000+ KB in size and that is way beyond what Wikipedia recommends at WP:SIZE. Wrad (talk) 13:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's another thing. The lead of all of these recent year articles tells us a lot of useless information such as the fact that 2008 is the International Year of Languages, and the International Year of Planet Earth. Am I the only one who just could care less? Our current year guidelines, which were written ages ago and, I think, need to be seriously rethought, say that a lead in a year article "lists any official designation the year has". I think that this needs to be changed BADLY. It is in direct conflict with WP:LEAD, which states that a lead should be a summary of the article. How does knowing that 2008 is the year of languages summarize anything or even provide me with information that is remotely useful or notable? Wrad (talk) 14:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll keep an eye on these pages, and if I have time I'll remove some stuff. "international year of the X isn't always an official designation, just declared so by some lobby or other. if you can find out who declares these years to be year of the whatever, then that'll give you a better idea of how important it is. Totnesmartin (talk) 16:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * A debate is ongoing on this subject on the 2008 talk page. Wrad (talk) 19:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

1340s
I have written a redraft of the 1340s article, and nominated it for collaboration by the Tzatziki Squad. The 1340s made sense because the only two years rewritten thus far are 1345 and 1346. As a decade article, it also has a more general scope than a single year; we can iron out some of the background issues in the curent year articles, and it is more likely to reach Featured status.

I finished some preliminary research on the trends of the decade. I would be interested in seeing what both projects can do for it; and when it is of reasonable standard, we can move to mainspace and nominate for DYK. --Grimhelm (talk) 17:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Very cool. I've expanded 1347 recently. Wrad (talk) 20:31, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Category sort proposal
See Bot requests. My current proposal, (but not the response), is copied here. Any objections?

Specific category sort proposal
What I'd like, is a bot which, whenever domain:xxx text is in  Category:xxx ntext, the sort key is set to Otext where:


 * xxx is a year period, probably restricted to one of the following:
 * a millennium (examples, Category:1st millennium, Category:1st millennium BC)
 * a century (examples, Category:1st century, Category:1st century BC)
 * a decade (examples, Category:0s, Category:0s BC, Category:1820s, etc.)
 * a year (examples, Category 1, Category:345 BC, Category:2004, etc.)


 * text is arbitrary text (or empty, with the sort key being set to " " in that case)
 * ntext is arbitrary text


 * Otext is calculated as follows:
 * if text is empty, or contained in words within ntext, set Text = " " (sort to top level)
 * otherwise, remove leading prepositions ("by", "of", "in"), and words contained in ntext, and capitalize the first remaining letter.
 * (There may be other rules suggested later, or manual readjustments suggested for some other rules)

To avoid possible accidential sort key errors due to something else starting with 2000 being in Category:2000 AD, we might restrict ntext to be null for years. It's less likely that something would be in a category such as Category:20th Century Fox with the "Century" not capitalized.

The bot should log its output in such a way that it can be reversed if it goes WP:ROUGE, remembering that a sort key of " " is not the same as a sort key of "". Remember, if the bot works at all as I request, it won't change any categories, merely change the sort order of categories.

Some of the categories are populated by templates, so the bot won't effect those. A couple months ago, I changed Template:DeathsInCenturyBC‎ to properly tag the nth Century BC deaths articles.

&mdash; Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Examples
Assuming all of these were not generated by a template:
 * 1) If Category:1st century deaths (or an article 1st century deaths)is already in Category:1st century, change the sort key to "Deaths" by changing the key line to:
 * 2) If 1st century is in Category:1st century, change the sort key to " " by changing the key line to:
 * 3) If Category:1st century deaths by country were in Category:1st century deaths, change the sort key to Country by changing the key line to:
 * 1) If Category:1st century deaths by country were in Category:1st century deaths, change the sort key to Country by changing the key line to:
 * 1) If Category:1st century deaths by country were in Category:1st century deaths, change the sort key to Country by changing the key line to:

Discussion
Any comments? Clarification requested? Rotten fruit? &mdash; Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea. Wrad (talk) 15:54, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that the Wipedia project Timelines is inactive, but a lot of the problems in Years is related to having a decent timeline. I have been working on a timeline concept for years ad think that I now got it right. It is not part of Wikipedia but is based on the Wikipedia content. Have a look at http://www.worldcivilizations.info/civilizations/index.html and see what you think about it. The project is still in development but the basics are there, and the associated blog outlines how it will evolve further. If you think it is worth pursuing and want to contribute send an email to mtomczak@internode.on.net I am not an active Wikipedia contributor, so I don't know how to sign off here. 17 July 2008 Matthias Tomczak —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthias Tomczak (talk • contribs) 14:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger with WikiProject Leaders by year
The above named project is currently tagged as inactive, and covers material which also seemingly falls within the scope of this project as well. A merger seems rather logical to me. John Carter (talk) 00:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. Totnesmartin (talk) 10:31, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

dashes and WP:DASHes
In a number of year articles (2008 through 2011, at least), the "-"s separating the date from the content have been replaced by spaced m-dashes (&mdash;). This may be in better keeping with WP:DASH, but it should also have been discussed here. If done, all year articles, and probably decade, century, and millennium articles, should be changed. (Personally, I think a colon would be better than a spaced dash, as we already have spaced n-dashes for date ranges, but that may be another matter....)  &mdash; Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

2007
I've made a start on cleaning out the nn entries for this page to bring it into line with 2008. So far mainly elections, annual sporting events and other entries clearly not internationally or historically notable. I've tried to err on the side of caution so there is certainly much more that does not belong that could be removed. Have not yet made a start on deaths. If anyone has time could they look through and see what other improvements could be made? The page appears relatively inactive so there should hopefully less 'resistance' than there has been in the 2008 page. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 07:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Referencing
User:Orion11M87 has been extensively editing and referencing 2008 and is claims that every entry requires a citation. Surely this is pointless as most entries should have a page of their own and the referencing should be included there. Is this a misinterpretation of the "reference everything" policy? Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 00:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Birth/Date/Event by month sections
Hemanshu has been refactoring birth, death, and event months for a number of years. (I only noticed it because of 1990, which I promptly reverted.) His version went:


 * Births
 * January
 * February-March
 * April-May
 * June-August
 * September-October
 * November-December
 * Deaths
 * January
 * February-April
 * May-July
 * August-December

Perhaps we could set a guideline that intervals should be regular (in 6-month, 3-month, 2-month, or single month intervals). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Absolutely agree. Perhaps some sort of figure could be used above which years/monthly groupings should be split eg 30 or 20? Certainly better than randomly grouping entries according to how many fit neatly into each group, as this would need to be changed with every few new entries. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 22:48, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This discussion is clearly incomplete and has not reached a consensus. I see differing viewpoints. Why was I then blocked for "violating consensus"? Please stop this mad ownership of year articles. Year articles should be as editable as other articles. Why not? --Just my 2 cents -- Hemanshu (talk) 12:34, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You were blocked for edit-warring and for being completely unresponsive to multiple messages, all done over many many months. And of course year articles are editable: the fact that all of your eccentric--and thoroughly unexplained--edits have been edited by others should tell you that if anyone is attempting 'ownership' of these articles, it's you.--CalendarWatcher (talk) 13:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't stand those arbitrary three-month divisions, and I'm sure that readers find them distracting. Either month by month or remove the month headings if there aren't enough items for them. Tony   (talk)  14:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Date linkage
With the upheaval in WP:MOSDATE, we need to specify that our dates should be linked. If one were interested in what happened in 1990 on April 30, one might also be interested in what happened on other April 30s, so the date link should be there, even if datelinks are now depreciated. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Bump (as I added this along with the previous section, it might not have been noticed). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Years
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Decades again
Wanna make sure you guys have seen Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (numbers and dates); I know Arthur and Sept have. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 20:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Consensus seems to have been reached to move all except 0s, 0s BC, and possibly 2000s and 2100s, there and at the centralized comment page at Talk:1800–1809. Although I don't fully agree, we need to keep the links working as expected.  I've proposed a list of what needs to be done there, but I think some of the next steps belong here.


 * Required work
 * Move nn00s to nn'00–nn09 and nn00s BC to nn09–nn''00 BC
 * Create redirect at nn00-nn09
 * Create new disambig at nn00
 * Watch the new nn00s articles to make sure that the other language links don't get re-added. (Perhaps it would be better to leave the article as a redirect to the new name for a few days so the bots can catch up, and then make it a disambig page.
 * (check my recent modification to Decadebox to see if the category links are correct) (will also need to modify Decadebox BC
 * Verify the default sort key for decades BC, as I think it should be maintained at the original name.
 * change headers in the century articles to point to the new name
 * Suggested work
 * Create an article with this list of things to do, so that everything will work smoothly
 * Create a DecadeLink so that will link to 1800–1809, (optionally) with the name 1800s.
 * Change autogenerated links to decades to use this function.
 * Examples of autogenerated links include:
 * decadebox (done, I think)
 * decadebox BC
 * year nav
 * year nav BC
 * year nav 1st century CE
 * centurybox family, although those interlink so well that it would be a real pain.

(Copied, with some removals from Talk:1800–1809.)
 * I've got draft templates at User:Arthur Rubin/Template:DecadeLink and User:Arthur Rubin/Template:DecadeLink BC and subpages, although I had thought the BC decades wouldn't have been moved at that time. (The /mode subfunction is temporary, as articles are moved.)  Any suggestions as to what needs to be done, the name of the template, and as to whether Decadebox and Decadebox BC should be changed to cover this, would be appreciated.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 13:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * DecadeLink has been implemented in a simpler form, but we still need to handle the year nav templates . — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The BC decades have been moved, and (I, at least) need help on Decadebox BC. I'm curious why the "BC" is small, and why the "AD"/"CE" is at all near the year 0 (1 BC/AD 1).  It's necessary to the design of DecadeLink BC.  Further comment on that should be at Template talk:Decadebox BC, although it may affect DecadeLink, DecadeLink BC, Decadebox, and Decadebox BC.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 17:20, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

RfC now open on linking dates of birth and death
Is it desirable or is it undesirable for dates of birth and death at the top of a biography article to be linked to corresponding "day" and "year" pages?

An RfC is now open at WT:MOSNUM -- Jheald (talk) 11:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

individual year pages should be conflated before a certain point
IMO, before the past few centuries, there is not sufficient material from which to construct reasonably substantial year pages, and these should be conflated into decade pages. Not 1345 and 1346 but the 1340s. This is a far better way to provide an overview. Tony  (talk)  15:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I would agree with you, except clearly you would need to go back earlier than the 1340s to find an example of a year without enough info for its own page. Wrad (talk) 19:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 1405 contains enough info for a year page? Besides, can someone tell me how the existing decade pages relate to the year pages? Some of the decade pages from those centuries appear to contain little more information than each of their constituent year-pages. I there cross-checking? Are there guidelines for how decade-page info should be included, different to that for year-page info? Tony   (talk)  09:38, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * What about the possibility that at some point there is insufficient information for individual year pages and so decade pages are used instead but further back there are years with sufficient info to justify individual pages? Would chopping and changing from years to decades be ok? Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 10:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Tony, how do we know if 1405 has enough info unless we actually try to write it? As for guidelines, we are in the midst of writing a 1340s article, which should help us hammer that out. Basically, this change is still in its embryo stages, and I don't feel comfortable holding the thousands of other year articles to the 1345,6,7 standard just yet. However, I hope that eventually we will start conflating year articles into decades, as you say. I think that first we need to fix up the 1340s article, though. No one has every really fleshed out a decade article before! We are in uncharted territory, which is why this is so tricky. It's all guesswork right now. Wrad (talk) 16:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is the link to our work on the 1340s article User:AndonicO/Tzatziki Squad/1340s. Wrad (talk) 16:27, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's actually the 1345 article that got me thinking about how the year-page project might be improved. I think that the evidence is already there in the paucity and fragmentation of the information in year pages right through those centuries to prompt us to conflate them. Do you not all think that it might be worth an experiment, say, to pick a decade, paste all of the existing year pages within it into a sandbox, and attempt to knit together the information? It might be an interesting process and I believe would show that we are sitting on featured-article material without realising it. As for the possibility that an individual year might pop out at us after conflation and be worthy of its own individual page, well, that can always be done, but let's face it, won't be a major issue in the foreseeable future. We simply don't have the editor resources to write two thousand plus really interesting, cohesive pages—not within a decade or two. Is anyone interested? Tony   (talk)  15:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * See User:AndonicO/Tzatziki Squad/1340s. Wrad (talk) 20:25, 13 November 2008 (UTC)