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Anniversaries
I think this is the correct talk page for this. Year, decade, century, and millennium articles seem to collect anniversaries of notable events, such as the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 2012, the tricentennial of the founding of the United States in 2070s, quadricentennials (which probably should be "tercentennials") in 22nd century, millennials in 28th century, etc. I propose a general standard that states
Anniversaries should not be listed unless there was (for past events) a notable celebration/memorial, or (for future events) a notable celebration/memorial is presently planned.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia to present facts and ideas, not trivia; so random possible future anniversaries (as opposed to expected events i.e. eclipses) are not relevant - perhaps the best place to raise it is on the talk page and then delete said trivia. I would support that. On another note, quadricentennial is awkward but probably correct as consistent in Latin origins; tercentennial is used although stylistically wrong as it is a Greek-Latin hybrid--AssegaiAli (talk) 15:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Events section
Currently the standard for the year pages describes the events section as follows:
The events section is divided into months, each month has a calendar at the beginning and lists any important events that occurred. The month header once linked to the particular month in the year (if the page exists, eg. January 2004), but doesn't anymore. Every item links to the day.
I would like to propose a similar standard for the millennial pages, but instead of dividing them by century, I propose that we divide them by geography. The geographical divisions I propose at this time are: West Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Africa, America, Europe and Australia. More specific or more general geographic sections may be more appropriate for different millennia. As a reader, I think such sections would make the event list much easier to read and take in. This might be particularly appropriate for millennial pages which do have corresponding century pages since our current scope states:
Articles for the year 500 BC and earlier should be redirected to the relevant decade. Articles for the year 1700 BC and earlier should be redirected to the relevant century. Articles for the year 4000 BC and earlier should be redirected to the relevant millennium.
YMCA has a timeline of the history of the organization. Currently it's a simple bullet list, e.g.:
Before 1844: The oldest of all YMCA-like organizations is the Basel association, which was founded in 1787 as Lediger Verein. Bremen Jünglingsverein was founded in 1834. All German Jünglingsvereine were cancelled by Nazis and re-established after the war as CVJMs (German initials for the YMCA). In Britain the oldest association is in Glasgow where it was founded in 1824 as Glasgow Young Men's Society for Religious Improvement. In France the Société Philadelphique was founded in Nimes in 1843.
1844: George Williams was a 23-year-old draper, typical of the many young men who were being drawn to big cities by the Industrial Revolution. His colleagues were similarly employed, and they were concerned by the lack of healthy activities for young men in cities such as London. The alternatives were often taverns, brothels, and other temptations to sin. On June 6, Williams founded the first YMCA in London for "the improving of the spiritual condition of young men engaged in the drapery and other trades."
The article doesn't specify whether timelines should use present tense (1492: Columbus sails the ocean blue) or past tense (1492: Columbus sailed the ocean blue). Should it? Tayste (edits) 06:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that such a standard would be very useful, but I don't really have an opinion as to whether it should be present tense or past tense. -ErinHowarth (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Historic present" is in vogue, however it is confusing, and inappropriate for Wikipedia. The reason is that phrases can be taken as the continuous present - "warring factions continue to disrupt peaceful commerce in Afghanistan" - does that mean they did then, or they continue to now, and clumsy qualifying phrases such as "until the present day" are needed as qualifiers (which, as we know need to be modified with the current date - "as of 2011 XXX continues/continued to..."). RichFarmbrough, 00:51, 1 January 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I am not taking a position on what the correct format and process should be, but I am documenting some of the characteristics of this article and its evolution for the purposes of further discussion:
Main section for the timeline (e.g., ==Timeline==)
Section heading for each day (e.g., ===Friday, 11 March===)
Each timestamp in a day is hour:minute using 24 hour format, begins on a new line that was preceded by a blank line, the timestamp is on a line of its own, and the text for that timestamp begins on the line after the timestamp and is indented.
Each timestamp used the format of a bolded hour:minute followed by a colon and space (e.g., ; 15:01 (approximate): Text or ; 02:44: Text) and paragraphs in the text following the timestamp were indented using a colon and space (e.g., : Text)
The timestamps used the local time of the geographic location of the event
Some timestamps are the time of the event, and some timestamps are the time of the report of the event, but this is an inconsistency
Timestamps in sources for the same event did not always agree
The timestamps are in chronological order starting from the earliest, not most recent on top
The events for all the geographic locations (in this case, primarily the nuclear power plants) are mixed together so there is one big timeline
Technical status tables
The format and contents evolved as the event evolved
The article Fukushima I nuclear accidents contains just one copy of the latest version that was updated as events transpired
This timeline article was not done in a vacuum, but was part of an ecosystem of articles, navigation, hatnotes, categories, templates, and lists, including the overarching 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, with name changes to the articles as events evolved
Initially, the timeline of events for Fukushima I and Fukushima II were combined, but a discussion to split the article resulted in the article being split into two articles.
Timelines are not exempt from the RfC determination in 2009 concerning the formulaic linking of chronological units. If the name of this article is not changed, this will need to be pointed out explicitly. Tony(talk)09:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Timelines are not specifically exempt, but "inherently" (or intrinsically) "chronological articles" are. The examples of "inherently chronological articles" in the MOS are clearly not complete, so the question of whether a timeline article is "inherently chronological" is still open. Still, this article is presently about year / decade / century / millennium articles, with a see also for month-and-day articles, so it should be renamed. — Arthur Rubin(talk)10:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we have been through this recently, and there is no community input in favor of your interpretation other than that of the principal architects of the biased RfCs. Still, we are in agreement that this guideline should be renamed. Any ideas for a target. WP:Time interval standards? WP:Epoch article standards?
{{Year dab|2001|the film|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)}}
{{Year nav|2001}}
{{C21 year in topic}}
{{Year article header|2001}} <!-- Replaces the following:
'''2001''' ('''[[Roman numerals|MMI]]''') was a [[common year]] that [[Common year starting on Monday|started on a Monday]]. In the [[Gregorian calendar]], it was the 2001st year of the [[Common Era]] or the [[Anno Domini]] designation. It was the 2nd year of the [[2000s (decade)|2000s]] decade, and the 1st year of the [[21st century]] and the [[3rd millennium]]. -->
Mkweise, DesertPipeline, Mandsford, fellow Wikipedians: This topic has come up at the Village Pump several times, but I haven't found any resolution. We need to resolve it.
The oldest pseudo-millennium article is Timeline of prehistory and is in the present tense ("170,000 years ago: humans are wearing clothing by this date").
The oldest millennium article is 10th millennium BC, but it does not have short date entries.
The oldest millennium article with dated entries is 4th millennium BC, and its entries are in the present tense ("4000 BC – Susa is a center of pottery production.")
The oldest month article is January 1900 and uses the past tense ("Nikola Tesla closed down his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after seven months of experiments in the long-distance transmission of energy.")
A random check of month articles before 1951 shows the use of the past tense.
Many other months since January 1953 also use the present tense.
Some months since January 1953 use the past tense. For example, January 1960 ("The Los Angeles Rams sued the new American Football League and the Houston Oilers over the rights to Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon, who had signed with both teams.")
The List of rail accidents series is another where there is no consistency. MOS:TENSE clearly says to use past tense for past events, and give no exception for timelines. I favor past tense. From the article historical present, it is used to heighten the dramatic force of the narrative by describing events as if they were still unfolding. I think that has no place in the encyclopedia. Historic events happened in the past and should be stated as such with past tense. MB03:13, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That tells me that the MoS isn't comprehensive and timelines aren't given much attention. These are known issues, but there doesn't seem to be much energy to formalize or standardize these things. Personally, I would welcome a more comprehensive effort to fix up the standards for timelines. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:39, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Some issues I have with making timelines simple lists.
Because of the different amount of spacing amongst the list, the item a date is referring to doesn't line up with the previous or next item. For example:
July - A happened.
December - B happened.
For ease of reading, it would be nice if "A happened" and "B happened" were left aligned with each other.
Also, sometimes there are multiple things you want to keep track of in a chronology. For example, along with the date and what happened, often there's a party in involved that you want to keep track of. The current MOS suggests to do the following:
July - Bob did A.
August - Bob did B.
September- Alice did C.
October - Bob did D.
If the list is long, it'd be difficult to parse out what all Alice did in the timeline.
I'd suggest making timelines tables, so that items are aligned, which make it simpler to find specific dates, and parse out particular subdetails. E.g., the above examples would become:
Date
Item
July
A happened.
December
B happened.
And
Date
Individual
Occurence
July
Bob
A
August
Bob
B
September
Alice
C
October
Bob
D
The information is more broken up, but it becomes easier to scan and find information.
A table layout works really well in, for example, North Atlantic Treaty#Article 4. Using tables seems like a good alternative to lists in some cases. The main disadvantage of tables is that if the article is displayed on a phone, wide tables cannot be read without horizontal scrolling. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:55, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
