Talk:List of centuries and millennia

Standards

i remember i saw once a page with standards for timeline, but i can't find it now; anyway, there is total mess, almost each page is slightly different from others. I guess we should take one standard, stick to it, and convert all pages to that standard. Working in teams! I mean, i could take 2nd centuy, other one 3rd century etc etc szopen

I agree. Someone recently changed the intro to the 19th century so it is "consistent with 20th, 21st centuries". I don't think the 20th century article should be the new template.

Most of the century articles start out with As a means of recording the passage of time, the XXth century was that century which lasted from XXX to XXX, followed by Events, Significant people, and "Inventions, discoveries, introductions". Is this official? Brunnock 13:47, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

I think the 20th century and 21st century pages are the most thoroughly developed of the century pages, and thus are good choices as the "model" for how other century pages perhaps ought to be formatted. *Dan* 16:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, the 20th century article is poorly written and edited. Several lines are laughable-

In spite of the terror and chaos, the 20th century saw many attempts at world peace.

Virtually every aspect of life in virtually every human society changed in some fundamental way or another during the twentieth century.

And the 21st century contains the Largest mass killings section which was eliminated from all of the other century articles.

I like the idea of categorizing "significant people", but I don't think the articles should be used as models for the other centuries. - Brunnock 20:40, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

Found it - Wikipedia:Timeline standards --Brunnock 19:36, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

BC/AD vs. BCE/CE

I would like to suggest a general conversion from BC - AD to BCE - CE, for the sake of NPOV, SR

And also becauser BCE/CE are increasingly used in scientific, historical, and archaeological materials. Wikipedia should reflect the best of current 21st century scholarship, not the religious genuflections on the 19th century.

Why is BCE/CE NPOV?!? Normal usage is BC/AD.

"normal" is not the most appropriate word in this case. "Conventional" is better.

But I didn't mean "conventional". I meant that it is the norm, the usual usage in the English-speaking world.

That depends on what you are reading and how old it is.

Adhering to normal usage expresses no point of view.

What? Of course it represents a point of view. It merely represents the dominant point of view. This point of view may be dominant because it reflects the view of a majority, or the view of a group that is politically, economically, or culturally dominant. One way or another, however, it most definitely represents a point of view. It happens to represent a point of view that I and many others find offensive. I can understand of course why people who belong to or accept the dominant point of view are untroubled. I suspect that the NPOV policy is more likely to challenge and trouble people who adhere unquestioningly to the dominant point of view. Deal with it.

What exactly is this "dominant point of view" that you are talking about? I can understand that you think the usual usage represents some point of view. But I merely claimed that adhering to the usual usage does not express any point of view - this is something different. For example, the word "December" represents the point of view that that month is the tenth month of the year, but using the word "December" does not express any such view, since it's the usual word for that month in the English-speaking world. Similarly, one can certainly take BC or AD to represent a point of view of considerable non-neutrality (not to mention considerable absurdity), but merely using them while they remain the usual terms obviously does not express any such view.

Deviating from normal usage, however, obviously does express a point of view.

yes, indeed. the deviation I suggest reflects a point of view. It reflects a neutral point of view, though -- as opposed to what you call the "normal" point of view, which is not a neutral point of view.

The terms we are talking about here are BCE and CE, which in practice represent the point of view of "political correctness". But any deviation from usual usage would represent a non-neutral point of view of some sort. (By the way, I didn't call anything "normal point of view". I'm not even sure what "normal point of view" means. Please read more carefully.)

(Of course, the main argument against using BCE/CE is simply that it's less widely understood, and is therefore just needless obfuscation - but that's another matter.) --Zundark, 2002 Mar 11

an encyclopedia of course should not be needlessly obfuscatory. On the other hand, an encyclopedia is meant to inform and educate, and I see no reason why this one should not inform and educate readers about "CE" and "BCE" as well as "NPOV." SR

Of course it can inform readers about these abbreviations. It already does so, in the appropriate articles. --Zundark, 2002 Mar 11

I followed your suggestion and looked at the "political correctness" page, and read that the term refers to "a movement to encourage the use of language in such a way as to avoid perpetuating past hatred and discrimination." This still seems relatively consistent with NPOV concerns. I do not think that "AD" and "BC" themselves perpetuate hatred, but they do represent Christian hegemony.

The definition of political correctness that you cite is from the point of view of supporters. The article clearly shows that political correctness is controversial, and so adhering to a politically correct viewpoint is not NPOV.

Using the terms BCE and CE are not obfuscatory nor are they fads. More and more scientific and scholarly works rely on this nomenclature, because they manage to accept convention (e.g. non-Christians and Christians alike use the same calendar) without privileging Christ or the belief in the divinity of Jesus. Most people I know who are not academics are aware of what these terms mean, and seem comfortable using them. It is strange that you seem so defensive about the issue. It really seems rather straightforward to me: an encyclopedia with an NPOV policy should not use the terms AD and BC. SR

It seems straightforward to me too: BCE and CE are tendentious and are not widely understood (at least in the UK - maybe it really is different in your country), so they shouldn't be used. I didn't say they were fads - it's too early to tell. But I think I've had enough of this argument now, having had a similar one on "Czechia" recently. (I'm keeping out of the "South Congo" one...) --Zundark, 2002 Mar 12

Sorry, but AD means 'Anno Domini' that is 'Our God' and this contains a lot of presuppositions.

I myself would write simply +2003 and -212, having in mind the fact that the distance between 1 Jan of them is 2216 years.

And let's add dates in non-European calendarsUser:ilya

Upon reading this page I immediately noticed the AD/BC usage and wondered why it wasn't under dispute about NPOV. CE/BCE are the accepted usage in pretty much all of the scientific and historical community that I am familiar with, and AD/BC are very Christian-centered. Whether or not there are other calenders, this is the one linked to from the page on History, which implies a European and Christian-centered view of history.

I'd agree. AD="the year of our lord", which many people would have a problem with. It is not neutral to use this. OTOH, BCE and CE do not repel anyone. A good solution would be to link BCE and CE, so if people don't know what they mean, they can click. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 01:24, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There's a long debate on this subject at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Note that Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) recommends writing dates in the common era as plain numbers (thus, [[1664]], not [[1664|AD 1664]]). This avoids the whole issue of whether to call the era "AD" or "BC". Gdr 15:15, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

That certainly avoids the issue of whether to call a year "AD" or "CE", but it does nothing to address whether to call a year "BC" or "BCE". -- Jeff Q 20:07, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Oops. Of course I meant "AD" or "CE". Gdr 20:40, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

I reverted the omission of "AD" from years in this era. Face it, whether it imposes a "Christian" hegemony in Wikipedia or not, it is the usage most English speakers are familiar with & use. If you want to change it to "CE" or to a simple number, I insist you put it to a vote for all of the Wikipedians to decide, & not impose your own sense of what is right or NPOV. -- llywrch 04:22, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's not my sense of what is right; it's what I believe to be Wikipedia consensus as reflected in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

I'm not sure where you get the idea that most English speakers use "AD" with years or centuries. A quick Google test finds more than 5,000,000 hits for "20th century" but only 1,680 for "20th century AD". I think that's pretty convincing evidence that AD is uncommon among English speakers. (As you lower the number the preponderance of plain over AD gets lower, but even for "1st century" it's still running at about 2:1 in favour of plain centuries (note: it helps to add -"1st century BC" to the query to rule out some false positives).)

So I think you need a better case for why it's necessary to use the era name on this page. Gdr 16:19, 2004 Jul 15 (UTC)

The era name is necessary for this page because we're pointing to dates before and after Year 1. Though most people won't be confused, eventually, some misguided soul will come along and re-add the dates, so we might as well keep them. How about this for a solution? [[Anno Domini|AD]] [[2004]] would go to AD 2004. (Anno Domini has a good summary of this exact debate at the very top.) Similar nomenclature would be available for the other three, but after the year date. I heard something about the use of robots to automatically change things. That way articles using the Common Era, the time Before Christ or Before Common Era, and Anno Domini can coexist, recognizing that the CE/BCE terminology was originally presented as an NPOV alternative, but has come to symbolize the secular crusade to eliminate any trace of Christianity from everyday life. (Am I bitter? Nooo. Just sarcastic.) We can eliminate apparent bias on Wikipedia by just letting the authors of each piece use their preference, giving more recognition to both POVs, and increasing the general browsing public's awareness of both. Also, the AD/CE debate reminds me that they're just different names for the same thing, similar to Kelvin and Celsius, though the temperature to which Zero refers is shifted. 65.19.47.128 00:59, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is one element missing from this entire discussion - which is the term that most accurately describes the concept we want to express here? I say that we are trying to number years clearly, for the sake of referring to them unambiguously, and in a way that is understood by everybody -- to me, that sounds more like a Common Era than an Anno Domini. Individual religions and cultures may also have their own calendars and their own year numberings, which are used and well understood in their own communities, such as the Jewish era, the Muslim era and so on. Personally, I was amazed to see AD/BC here, since I have become used to the current academic norm of CE/BCE. --FrankP 10:47, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the point should be "to number years clearly, for the sake of referring to them unambiguously, and in a way that is understood by everybody". That, to my mind, is the only relevant factor at play here. But your conclusion is wrong. Almost everyone understands the AD/BC notation. Many do not understand BCE/CE (for instance, it has no currency that I am aware of outside academic circles in the UK). This is backed up too by internet searches. There are many queries from people coming across BCE/CE for the first time asking - what is this meant to mean? And site searches (which I would expect to be biased towards academic articles) show approximately a 9:1 preference for BC/AD. Indeed, I'm surprised that you are "amazed" to see "AD/BC" here on Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia written by the general public in the phraseology and idioms they understand. Maybe you're too accustomed to academia, but if we are going for usage that is most easily understood worldwide, the preference would be BC/AD. jguk 13:10, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The use of BC/AD is POV, it uses a figure of one religion to measure time for our entire species. I agree that it should be changed to BCE/CE. However, such a change would be bad because it could confuse or upset the great unwashed masses with a dating system that doesn't endorse their religion, so it'll probably stay that way. For the rest. of. time. Pretty sad when you think about it. - Golfvivid 05:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Most recent year in vertical timelines

I feel that for all "vertical" timelines the most recent year should be at the top. That means that I think this page and all "Year in review Xth Century" pages need to be changed. I would do this, if nobody disagrees. user:Marian

Tabular format

Tabular format, anyone? Martin

I found the older format easier to read at a glance. If you aren't interested in reverting, perhaps you could pad out the cells in your table? I think it would be easier to read. -- llywrch 05:31 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

---

Wow...a very impressive collection of means to view history. I'm not sure of exactly what is being referred to above by Tabular format, but I thought it may be nice to have world history data, at least for the pages covering larger spans of time such as millenia or centuries, in a tabular format. This can allow people to easily compare what was going on at the same time in the rest of the world, yet also be able to track the history of a specific country or continent without leaving the page. As with many pages here at Wikipedia, it would be nice to be able to have interactive databases to do this, but it could still be done, I think, with the system as it is now.

- Brettz9 23:31 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

Creation timetable

hey, how about a Creation timetable (to oppose the evolutionary one)? i'd do it, i just don't know where to put it. -sasha

There already is one: Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar, and I'm not quite sure why you mentioned it here. --snoyes 02:25, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

i meant something like day one of creation, day two of creation, etc. i mentioned it here because you have the evolutionary one here. although i guess they are a little different. i didn't mean how long back (the year), which is how the evolutoinary one is done. -sasha

"Century"

no one actually going to say how long a century is, or why it is called a century ?--BozMo 20:46, 10 May 2004 (UTC)(talk)

Rulers of various countries in year entries

Polish Wikipedia (e.g. 2004) has a neat feature of listing heads (presidents, prime ministers, kings, etc.) of countries and international organizations in each year entry (going back to ancient times). Could something similar be done here? Ausir 08:09, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

"Future"

I think the redirects to Future in some of the 4th-millennium centuries are unhelpful and should be removed... Does anyone have any objection to this?

--- I think the same applies to some years in the 21st century. 193.171.121.30 07:59, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone have any objection if i remove these? --Random|832 12:09, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Remove them, they will be recreated if there's anything meaningful to write about them.

The links to future have been restored. Makes more sense to have an entry in the main article directing to "future" entry & saying that the numerical entries are not being set up unless people have something to put in them. 22 March 2005

13th millennium

Why was this article deleted? The prediction was based on the current rate of slowing of earth's rotation. 193.171.121.30 01:08, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)