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Turning years articles into prose

I want to propose a big change to the structure proposed by this project to years articles. Last month, I posted the proposal in the Village Pump (read the "Turning years articles into prose" section) which consisted of turning years articles (like 2005) from lists and timeline to prose. These articles could be well-written summaries about what happened during the year in all fields. It will be divided by topic (politics, science, sports...) rather than months. It would be an enthusiatic community work, and relativly simple with very easy-to-find sources and pictures. So what are your thoughts? CG 17:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, past efforts to turn century articles into prose resulted in disjointed, eurocentric, and error-riddled pablum. See 19th century and The 20th century in review. I don't think it's possible to summarize a year or a century. --Sean Brunnock 18:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes I know, every one would want to add events in his country or region. That's why I proposed in the Village Pump two steps: First we discuss and vote for the events that are important enough to be included and then comes the writing. CG 18:28, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
If you want a list of events, then a timeline would be the best format. It's easier for people to edit. --Sean Brunnock 20:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
If you read my post at the Village Pump you would see that I proposed we move the timelines to Timeline of #### (eg. Timeline of 2005) and the 2005 page becomes a summary of the year. CG 14:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, I don't think you can summarize a year. Can you provide an example that would prove me wrong? --Sean Brunnock 22:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, if you read the Village Pump (the link I provided earlier), you could see two examples: 1922 in Germany and de:1974 from the German Wiki. However the German article has a lot of POV and German bias, a problem I intend to fix here. CG 07:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Let's keep this discussion here. Looking at de:1974, it seems that you want to segregate events by region. Is that an advantage over listing events chronologically? I can't read German, but it appears that the 1974 article just proves my point. It's extremely eurocentric. The Soviet Union isn't even mentioned in the "Politik" section. The 1922 in Germany article only discusses politics. I don't want to nitpick. I just want to see one decent summary of a year that is under 32 KB. --Sean Brunnock 11:23, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems that you're missing the point. First, there's no ongoing discussion in the Village Pump. I started one a month ago (you can see it here) but it didn't go far. Second, the 1974 article is just an example, and like I said, it contains a lot of flaws and balance and POV problems. But, if it doesn't exist yet doesn't mean that it's impossible. We just need more discussion. CG 15:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we should discuss changing all of the year articles into prose if you can't provide proof that it would be an improvement. --Sean Brunnock 15:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm just suggesting a new way of presenting years articles that would make them more interesting. I've read some works that does the same thing with some variations and I found them great. We don't need proof that this is works. We just need community support. And if it doesn't work, nothing's lost, we return back to the old article. The only must now is some discussion and some more users to participate (other than me and you). CG 15:56, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd have to vote against a prose style as well. I think some principles of web design are at work here, namely the idea that people read Web pages in visual chunks, and I think that's what people hit the year pages for: bullet points. When I look up a year, it's because I want a quick glance at what was going on in the world at that time. Users expecting quick bites of information are going to be discouraged by an article format, and will likely go to another site for the highlights they're looking for. I'd be on board for a separate "Year in Review" article, though. Elizabeyth 19:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd be favor for the other way round. Years articles written in prose will improve Wikipedia quality while the timeline will be moved to Timeline if ####. CG 08:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I realize that you think it would be a good idea, but you haven't provided any reasoned argument as to why, either in your response to me or in any of your responses to Sean above, whereas we both provided reasons why we think the format should stay as it is. "Improving Wikipedia quality" is too generic to convince people of such a huge change. Can you be more specific about why you think your way would be better? Elizabeyth 17:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Since I didn't have much support for this I'll just drop it. Thank you for your comments. CG 18:09, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The proof is here! See related discussion much lower on the page. Wrad (talk) 01:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

"b." and "d." vs. "born" and "died"

Hi all, is there a standard somewhere for the birth and death listings on year pages? For example, in a given year's birth listings, there may be "Joe Smith, American person (d. 2000)," and in another year's listings (mostly pre-20th and 21st centuries), it would be "Joe Smith, American person (died 2000)." I checked the main Manual of Style and it seems to indicate that the word should be spelled out. I asked about it in the discussion and got a generic "yes, conformity is the idea" type response, so I began killing some time by changing them to the full word on random year pages. Now I've found this Project, so, my apologies if I've gone against a pre-determined style decision. Should I revert the pages I've changed? Elizabeyth 19:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Please continue to spell out 'born' and 'died'. It is much more clear and saves us dyslectics from going crazy. :) --mav (talk) 17:02, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

2006 in Doctor Who

I created this as a sandbox, and wonder if anyone else thinks it's worthwhile exercise, or if it's a stupid idea and unutterable listcruft... ;) I'll move to main space if anyone else likes it is an idea. Tim! 18:07, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia: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 00:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

"b." and "d." vs. "born" and "died"

Is there a firm policy on the standard? I just noticed that a new editor has taken it upon himself to work his way through all of the year pages, methodically changing every "b." and "d." to "born" and "died". This is completely contradictory to the standards on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year, where "b." and "d." are enforced. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 06:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

I found this Userbox created by User:Guðsþegn:


ADThis user prefers traditional terminology in date naming.





I thought it was an interesting idea, and if anyone wants to add it to their userpage just use the template {{User Anno Domini}}

--Grimhelm 10:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

New templates for Chinese calendar conversion

This template can do conversion from Julian day to Chinese calendar within 4 AD to 2044 AD.

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 18:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

YearInTopic templates

I propose removing, or commenting-out, this template from some future years on the basis that no content will exist for 2066 in music et al. for a very long time. Pending no valid objections, I will start later this week. Chris cheese whine 23:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi everyone

I haven't been active at this project for a while, but I've got a great year book, so am going through slowly adding events to the years. One thing I've noticed however, is that the "By country" section in the year by topic template, doesn't have very many countries. For example, 1920 in France is there, but 1920 doesn't have a link to it. Is there a way we can add links such as this to the templates on the relavent page? Thanks, Spawn Man 04:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, & for each event & date I add, do I have to cite them or reference them? Thanks, Spawn Man 04:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Duplicate date links seem like a very bad idea to me. For the past couple of years, I've been avoiding them by doing this:

rather than

To my mind this is much neater, more efficient and more user-friendly. However, I understand that the alternative was at some stage "voted for" in a survey not many people knew about. I would like to propose we change. What do people think? Deb 21:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If a consensus develops for this form, I wouldn't mind. But there clearly isn't a consensus developing here at the moment. Moreover, if we ever change the policy before the whole survey is run all over again, it would be necessary to add a note to the survey results page with a link to the discussion in which the consensus was reached.
One issue does remain: it's likely that different punctuation (or lack thereof) after the date will end up being used by different editors (and possibly even by the same editor at different times). As the survey suggests, people who have tried to implement this style in the past have used at least three different forms, and are likely to continue to do so either by accident or out of not knowing that a convention exists. -- Smjg 23:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Extra Info?

Would it be too much trouble to add extra little details such as what kind of year it was (Year of the Sheep, Dog, Rat, etc.), if it was a leap year...you know...that kind of stuff? Japanimator 01:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The leap year info is already there on most/all of the year pages. --Tugbug 01:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

A user (Brucethompson (talk · contribs)) has started adding links to the Internet Accuracy Project to various year articles; an article on the Internet Accuracy Project was previously deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Internet accuracy project. Do we have a policy on External Links on year pages? It is my opinion that these should be removed, but I wanted to see if the WikiProject had a precedent on this. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

"Before Present" in 1950 article?

The Before Present (BP) dating system used by scientists gives the time of an ancient event in years before 1950. It seems to me that this fact should go in the 1950 article.

But where should it go? It doesn't seem important enough to go in the lead section. It isn't really an "event", so it doesn't belong in "Events of 1950". And no other section of the article is at all appropriate.

Suggestions, anyone? --Tugbug 18:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it is perfectly appropriate for the lead section, so I added it. --mav (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Japanese reign name

Hiya. I've noticed that the Japanese reign name (nengō) and year are missing from the template on 1180. I apologize that I do not know which other years, or how many, this is missing from, but I thought you might like to know so that whoever's interested in handling such things can take a look at it and fix it. Cheers. LordAmeth 17:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


1987 (Robot Chicken episode)

I'd like to reference this on the 1987 page, but I'm not sure the most appropriate way to do so - suggestions please (or do it yourself!) :) SkierRMH 01:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Chinese animal of the year

I cannot find a reference to the animal that is assigned to a specific Year by the Chinese astrological calendar. :(

Articles for Discussion: 1 AH

1 AH at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1 AH (7 October 2007)

In this nomination, the proposal to delete all "x AH" articles is made. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:13, 7 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. SandyGeorgia (Talk)


Optional Layout

It would be nice if a Daily Historical Newspaper were available highlighting the events of the day and recent historical events ranked by page visits. This would facilitate research and show relative importance of recent history in an effort to identify with the psychology of the period of time. Events of the day that were more visited than others would occupy the head article, while minor events would occupy the fold-over. This could be automated, but it would require the cooperation of System admins of Wikipedia itself since traffic logs and page layout templetizing would be required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Lather (talk • contribs) 01:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

references

Having done a lot of year pages on nl. in the past (and still doing some occasionally) I just wonder how you all think of the question of references. It is being encouraged (if not enforced) on most pages, but I do not see much of it on year pages. Wouldn't it make these pages much more useful as a quick reference for people interesting in a historical era?

P.S. ad 1477: I'd have reference to show it is not correct what is said there. 75.178.179.208 21:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC) nl:wikt:Gebruiker:Jcwf

Date formats

Okay, I'm constantly getting told that I'm going against the "house style" (whatever that means) for date formatting. I have previously suggested an improvement to date formatting - actually, "my" way of doing it is already the way it is on the huge majority of year articles, but I'm submitting this proposal again, as I got no response last time. The way some people do it is this:


  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

but the way I do it is this:

  • December 13
    • Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
    • Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.


My way not only avoids duplicate links, it also makes it easier to see when events happened on the same day - which I think is useful to readers. I can't see the advantage of doing it the other way, though I gather this was "agreed" in a poll of about 20 wikipedians about two years ago. Views, please. Deb (talk) 13:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I did respond - see above. But I've just looked at the original survey again. I'd all but forgotten which style I had actually voted for, but that's beside the point.
You did too. Sorry, but for some reason I had difficulty finding my previous proposal even though it's not far above this one. Deb (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Everybody: Please look through the six formats that were given in the survey and express your views. -- Smjg (talk) 15:14, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents' worth

I used to maintain the birth and death sections (not the events) of the year and date pages. I prefer the

  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

style to the nested lists because it is easier to copy and paste singe lines when moving them around, etc.

Although I was instrumental in setting the house style, I think, I don't feel extremely strongly one way or the other. I just like consistency, and therefore change that requires updating a large amount of data.

Ksnow (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)Ksnow I vote for keeping the style above.

Personally I like Deb's way better. Having it look more attractive is better, in my opinion, than making it easier for cut-and-pasters. I could easily write a bot to change these, if there were consensus to do so. I'm with Deb here. – Quadell (talk) (random) 17:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Quadrell that Deb's suggestion is more attractive, as I think I did two & a half years ago, but I suggest that Mav's reasons in the earlier debate -- & Ksnow's now -- be given proper consideration: maintainability is a vital criterion. And if the problem is simply one of appearance, then the proper solution (which would also conclude this debate) would be to file a feature request to add functionality to the CSS interface. -- llywrch (talk) 18:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I also concur with Quadrell that Deb's suggestion is more attractive. When copying this kind of sample from a year page to a date page, it will be no harder. Duplicate links will be avoided. If what happened first is known, I suggest first come first posted. Otherwise, should there be a standard order?--Jusjih (talk) 02:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Personally I also prefer Deb's suggestion of not repeating the date. --BozMo talk 07:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

The reason I supported the current house style was for maintainability; At first I too liked the indented format, but I then found that it was way too easy for me and especially newbies to insert an item with a different date within the indent list. This is a serious data integrity issue that is largely avoided by repeating the date. However, a good compromise would be to add HTML comments with the date to any item that is indented. Comment out the date, don't delete. --mav (talk) 16:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Is there any reason not to use the Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the Year convention, which would be:
  • December 13 - Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
  • December 13 - Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind. I forgot about the date preference problem. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments so far. Re the idea of using HTML comments: This would work as long as people are made aware of why they are there and not to remove them. I guess the code would something like this: 

* [[December 13]]
**<!-- December 13 --> Explosion in Outer Mongolia kills 10000 rabbits.
**<!-- December 13 --> Robbie Williams becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

We might need to dot some comments here and there to point people to the explanation of why it's being done this way....

On a different note: So far, nobody's commented on the different punctuations that distinguish three of the formats in the survey. On this basis, should we assume that you all prefer Deb's style, with no punctuation after the date where second-level bullets are used? -- Smjg (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

1345

This is an example of a year article turned into prose. I can see from above discussions which took place over a year ago that this has been proposed but never really successfully tried. Well, here's an example of a pretty good prose version of a year. A group of us over at FAC kind of randomly thought of the idea, so some of us are trying to get this year article to FA status. I, for one, am convinced that is possible. A simple review of the article will reveal that it is not Eurocentric. I think all of the problems listed above for not having prose year articles (euro bias, disjointedness, etc.) are already huge problems in the year articles as they are organized now, and will only be made better by serious efforts to fix year articles. Wrad (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Having a look at the articles in question, I am all for this change. This project is kind of dormant, so I think getting other project involved (History, etc.) would be a good idea. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 23:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I was also thinking of pulling the Middle Ages project in. Wrad (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems this might have fallen by the wayside a bit (or not, not sure), but I strongly endorse this approach. When I go to a year article page I want to see more than just a list of events.
It seems to me that this will require a significant amount of work to pull off correctly, though. Could there, perhaps, be some organizing attempts put about this on the project page? This seems like a significant enough endeavor to require more visibility than being buried on the talk page would give. Thanks, Fractalchez (talk) 17:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
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