Talk:Year zero/Archive 1

message: This article belongs in:
*A. :Category:1st century
*B. :Category:1st century BCE
*C. None of the above
*D. Both A and B
--66.32.241.40 01:58, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: C. None of the above, but it should be linked from :Category:1st century, :Category:1st century BC, :Category:1st millennium and :Category:1st millennium BC. -Sean Curtin 23:11, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organizing this article. 

message: Uh-oh! The Interwikis for this article have plenty of information! Can any registered Wikipedian who can translate any of those into English put the translations on this article?? --66.32.252.8 23:12, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interwikis 

message: Since two month the German "Year zero" page describes a proposed "civil, historical and astronomical Year zero" for the first 365 days of A.D. 1792. A proleptic chronology with intervals of 128 years for the exceptional not-leap years. My German is not good enough to catch all. But this seems to be very interesting. --Peterly 13:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  German Wiki "[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahr_Null Jahr Null]" 

message: Because I have been requested to explain my reversions, here goes (you asked for it):
Jclerman recently made the following changes to Bede:
*because an epact is a number of counted days,
*but did not use a [year] zero (when he numbered years) between BC and AD because all calendar units (week, month, year) begin their numbering with 1.
I am reverting both because they are wrong or not used by Bede. An epact is not a number of counted days for two reasons: Its first number is zero as the article states whereas counted items begin with one, and it does not follow a counted sequence (1 2 3 etc.)--its sequence is 0 11 22 3 14 25 6 17 28 etc. See computus. Although the day is not listed, as used by Bede it did not begin with one: Bede used the Latin or Roman calendar which, for example, labeled the five days centered on 1 January as (translated into English):
*the third day before the calends of January 
*the day before the calends of January
*the calends of January
*the fourth day before the nones of January
*the third day before the nones of January
The first two refered to January although they were in December. Obviously, Bede did not number the days in his months, let alone begin them at one. Sequentially numbering the days of a month developed during the late Middle Ages. 
Only the middle five days of the week were numbered by Bede. He named the first day the "Lord's Day" (our Sunday) and the seventh day the "Sabbath" (our Saturday), which is still used to refer to the days of the week in Portuguese. Weeks of the year were never numbered nor were they even indicated in the medieval calendar because only a generic calendar for all years existed. Weeks were not numbered until the twentieth century. Months were not numbered by Bede except in conjunction with the name of the month--he stated that January was the first month but did not give any date by stating that the event occurred in first month, or any other numbered month. The article already states that Bede numbered years from one because all previous eras began with one. — Joe Kress 08:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed my mind and thought it would be useful to add at least some of this explanation to the article. — Joe Kress 18:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bede changes 

message: Since this is the discussion page, I'd like to introduce myself as a person interested in systems. I have been trying to add information to the page, unfortunately without enduring result: I added information from very official sources who disagree with the historian/scientific approach to the Third Millennium, but saw all my contributions erased. 
While I am not a religious person myself, I consider the Roman Catholic church a source that simply cannot be denied. For Wikipedia, I am not interested in ending up with a single final answer on this page; rather I would like the different points of views all in plain view so each person can make up their own mind. After all, this is an encyclopedia, not a political platform where we boo away views we disagree with. And the facts are quite interesting for both sides...
With ample information about why the third Millennium started in 2001, let me show the facts for the year 2000. Don't worry, it is not the year zero. The Roman Catholic Church opened its Millennium Year on December 25, 1999 symbolically — by opening a door. This religious year culminated in the celebration of the beginning of Chirst's 2001st year on December 25, 2000 when the church closed that door again. So instead of choosing a full year that starts January first, the Roman Catholic Church has the Christian Era start on December 25. The new Millennium started therefore, at least for the church, in the year 2000, albeit close to the very end of it. Seven days later, historians and scientists celebrate their new Millennium on Jan 1, 2001.
With a final point to make in favor of the 2000 Millenium, I'd like to show that there are factual reasons — good intellectual facts — on which the Millennium could have also started on January 1, 2000. As an example, there would probably exist no confusion at all if Jesus was born on June 25 (of whatever year), since this date in June is so far away from January 1 that everyone in the entire world would not be confused about days and years. Everyone would probably agree that the year in which the 2001st year begins is the Millennium year. Personally, I don't count the decades of my own life back to January first — especially not to the first day of the year after I was born — I date my decades back to my birthday itself, and when someone insists to count in years, or only the decades, then they do not change on January first after my birthday, but before my birthday. I am born in November 1960, so when only counting in years, the fourth decade started on January 1, 1990, not in 1991. Without a doubt, the former is premature, but the latter is truly beyond expiration.
That's it! Systems are systems. One can say that when a Millennium must start on January first the reason for the beginning of that calendar must then also fall in that year; therefore there would be a problem for historians and scientists to have the Millennium of the Christian calendar start in 2001 when the reason is falling outside the actual frame work, or one can say that once you start counting in a particular frame work then that's the first year you're stuck with. In either case, there is no clean answer, and both are worthy being mentioned in our wonderful Wikipedia, lest we want it to be less than an encyclopedia.
As an extra pointer for a possible discussion: in my mathematical adventures I discovered Mathematical evidence []  that suggests that zero always exists. This would mean that when a system makes use of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that zero is then already included. From that point of view, a discussion about whether a year zero exists or not would be void, since zero would then always exist; and excluding such year would then be a artificial human act, not a given. This point, however, that zero always exists, has not been discussed widely, and is therefore also not widely considered. As mentioned in several places, zero should not be seen as identical to Nothing.
FredrickS 03:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Millenium-end Confusion about Confusion - Part 2 

message: New to Wikipedia, or at least not versatile in using it, feedback on use OK.
There is a difference between first and zero. The first page signifies the page a person encounters immediately when opening a book. The zero page signifies a numbering. Following convention, close to always do we find a page numbered 1, but not zero. The convention to start a page with number 1 is in my eyes a very logical convention, though not necessarily the only correct possibility. If some people in the past had made the choice to start page-numbering with zero, it would have been the convention today. In my opinion it is zero itself that gives us the option to ignore it or use it - no other number gives us that function. An example of this ability to use or ignore are the first two zeroes in front of 304: 00304. These two numbers, 304 and 00304, are not identical but if both refer to dollars the amount is exactly the same in both cases. Note that the third zero cannot be ignored without altering the whole number; 304 is not the same as 34.
The argument to state a distinction between first and zero seems to be trivial, but it is not. Where a first page names the encounter itself, page 1 names the specific page. To possibly help clarify this: there is no nilth page to encounter - ever. These aspects of first and zero are different, and not necessarily about one and the same phenomenon. People tend to link both together, while they belong to two different categories. The first encounter does always have a preceding moment: but it is either no encounter or not yet an encounter, or this is formed by various different encounters that are in no way linked to this particular first encounter. To find its own category, we could say that, for instance, the zero moment is the moment before encountering the first page. But to specify this precisely; this means that the zero moment forms a pair with the next moment, not with that of the first page which is in its own category.  This would all not be important (and kind of confusing when you read it fast) when all words were used correctly. However, confusion about zero and nilth, one and first, complicates discussions about the importance that zero is always there (once one says one, two, three, four, five, etc). 
Possibly redundant: when I state that mathematical evidence suggests that zero always exists, I mean to say that zero always exists, not that there is something before a first time. A first time is a first time, and before the first time there is only a time when there wasn't a first time yet. If you wish we can call that a zero time, a period in which contents are not yet delivered, but which should be seen as a context, like a book cover providing the context for the pages as the contents.
FredrickS  (UTC)
The differences between cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers are well and clearly established.  However, "nilth" can exist!  Indeed, you can consider that your real birthday was your "nilth birthday". Nevertheless: with your birth began your first year.  -- Paul Martin 06:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero and First 

message: Hi all, I was reading the beginning of this article and it strikes me as though the language, to put it nicely, a bit idiosyncratic.  I'm willing to do a rewrite if people don't seriously object (although I notice a lot of people have contributed so I didn't want to just jump in).   --Deville 00:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  English of the intro