Wikipedia talk:Eras/Compromise proposal

message: I noticed in the tutorial that dates are recommended to be placed in links: e.g., May 1, 1980 (my birthday).  Why not place the era-signifier in a link too?  i.e., March 15, 44 BC (the assassination of Julius Caesar).  Just as the date and year can be styled according to user preferences, so too can the BC be converted to BCE dynamically, based on user preferences.  Thus, registered users who are actually offended by BC/AD nomenclature can see their preferred style of naming eras across the board.  The main reason for suggesting BC/AD as a default is that it already seems to be the dominant usage on Wikipedia (17113 matches for BC versus 2848 for BCE; but especially see titles such as 44 BC--now that I think of it, perhaps the link should instead be March 15, 44 BC).  However, it is possible to combine this dynamic proposal with any other proposal on what should be default usage: for example, if CE is used in articles pertaining to Judaism, then CE could be converted to AD dynamically for those who have that setting, while those who have the opposite setting will see CE on all pages, including the Jesus article. This would not change occurences of BC/BCE/AD/CE that did not occur in a link, with either those letters alone in the link, or accompanied by just a number preceding the letters. Of course the guideline would remain that articles dealing entirely with the last two thousand years would not use either. (For disclosure, I am an atheist academic used to seeing CE/BCE in my reading and who usually writes CE/BCE. --Peter Kirby 21:34, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dynamic Proposal

message: I support the compromise proposal for the reasons given on the project page. I'd also like to thank Kaldari for this work. Maurreen 17:54, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Support compromise proposal

message: I think one of the cruxes of this debate is what you define as "the relevant literature". Jguk, you claim that use of BC/AD is "overwhelming" and "by far the dominant usage". However, it is important in this case to note where BCE/CE is commonly used, which is within academic literature (which tends to be more heavily weighted by Wikipedia editors):
"The [BCE/CE] system is gaining popularity among most historians..." - from a NASA Newsletter
"Some historical and theological academic works do use the CE/BCE designations, although publications on non-religious issues tend not to bother. It is expected that the use of the two new terms will increase in the future..." - BBC
Although I don't know any percentages, it seems like a significant number of academic journals suggest or require the use of BCE/CE .
The Smithsonian Institute uses BCE/CE and so does Encyclopedia Britannica (which also uses BC/AD).
If you primarily consider academic sources, the use of BCE/CE is not uncommon.
If, however, you are searching Google, you will see a heavy preference for BC/AD by a ratio of 6 to 1 over BCE/CE.
So not only is this debate about POV, but also about what types of sources are relavent to Wikipedia (which may depend on the topic). Further research on usage would be useful (as opposed to blanket statements without any evidence). I'm especially interested in the difference in usage between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Kaldari 30 June 2005 16:07 (UTC)
:I think you are mistaken. It is the language of our readers, not of academic sources, that is important. If we were writing for Jewish American academics we may well choose a different style. But they alone are not our readership, which is anyone who may search for information in English on the net. We should therefore use terms and styles they will be familiar and comfortable with: our readers must come first.
:Academic writings from longer back than 20 or 30 years ago exclusively used BC/AD - and there are plenty of those on all historical issues. Your own quote notes that the BBC state that on non-religious issues BC/AD is the overwhelming favourite even in academia. Encyclopaedia overwhelmingly prefers BC/AD notation (it is very very few of its articles that use BCE/CE notation). Incidentally I have checked the websites of the leading museums in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata in India - all of those (as far as I can see) use BC/AD throughout, even referring to things like 1958 AD, where we'd just refer to 1958. I've never seen BC/AD in the UK (except in the odd book imported from America). Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen a UK style guide that even refers to BCE/CE, even to say not to use it. In New South Wales, changing one instance of BC to BCE in one exam paper prompted angry questions in both chambers of parliament. As far as I can tell, outside N America, BCE/CE are very rarely used (just being limited to some, but by no means all, university academics). And the google searches I've done, which I would expect to be biased towards the US and academia (ie to overstate BCE/CE usage) come out at 9 to 1 in favour of BC/AD notation. I don't know where your 6 to 1 figure comes from, but that also shows an overwhelming preference for BC/AD anyway.
:As far as usage in the US is concerned, I am not clear - but I do know that the claims of some of WP's more enthusiastic proponents of BCE/CE notation tend not to bear up to scrutiny. For instance - are you aware that the term "Christian Era" is much much more common than "Common Era" and that many dictionaries that have an entry for "Common Era" have that entry just saying "see Christian Era"? jguk 30 June 2005 22:14 (UTC)
::My statistic of 6 to 1 on Google was found by picking a random number, 500, and searching for both "500 BC" and "500 BCE". That gave me 203,000 to 31,600 or 6.4 to 1. What test did you use? Kaldari 30 June 2005 22:33 (UTC)
:::That is strange. I tried Google “500 bc” and got 4,220,000, while “500 bce” was 345,000.
:::Another Google test is “christian-era” which yeilds 223,000, twice as many as “common-era” with 107,000.
:::It has been claimed that CE/BCE is favoured by academics.  Since its use in is single percentage figures, there must be a great interest in history by many non-academics occupying academic posts writing non-academic articles.  The claim is nonsense. --ClemMcGann 11:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What's a bigger nonsense is why we should take note of what style academics (and in particular American academics) favour. We're writing for everyone, not just them, jguk 12:31, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Citing some evidence on usage

message: After reviewing the discussion of this proposal, it seems that a large number of people support parts of it, but not the whole thing. Taking this into consideration, I have decided to break the proposal up into separate pieces for voting. Since this makes the voting more complex than I was anticipating, I will not be including other proposals as part of the voting. Other editors, however, are welcome to hold their own votes on different era proposals. I only ask that they not be held until after August 1 in order to minimize confusion. If you would like to vote on the compromise proposal, please visit the voting page. Discussion of the proposal should still be held here rather than on the voting page. Kaldari 02:28, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since discussion had died down for a fortnight, it seemed this idea was dead in the water. This seems like an inappropriate way to bring it forward again. We really need to get away from this NPOV nonsense, which quite clearly has been rejected on all front already, and start thinking of our readers. Bringing this vote now, without further notice, isn't right, jguk 06:28, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I assume you're able to adequately demonstrate how "this NPOV nonsense" has been rejected on all fronts? I see no evidence of that myself. siafu 22:59, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voting is now open 

message: I assume the absence of this section in the proposal:
"In articles about prehistory, if you use BP (before present) or MYA (million years ago), expand these abbreviations when you first use them, as most readers will be unfamiliar with them."
doesn't mean that it is going to be removed... - Omegatron 21:45, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
:Oops, right you are. Kaldari 22:55, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  difference between current guideline and proposed 

message: I saw a notice that there is currently a vote on a proposal to change the style manual, but it is not clear to me (1) what the proposal is and (2) where the vote is.  Can someone explain, please? Slrubenstein   |  Talk 20:07, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The proposal is at Wikipedia:Eras/Compromise proposal and the vote is at Wikipedia:Eras/Compromise proposal/Voting. Kaldari 20:12, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  vote? 

message: How's this for a compromise... to get rid of the bickering once and for all, rather than using 'AD' and 'CE' all over the pedia, we should simply not use either of them. Simply refer to a year as 1980 and everyone will understand which year that is. This does not solve the issue of 'BC' or 'BCE' years but that doesn't come up all that often in the first place. Radiant_>|< 14:44, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
:I certainly agree that where an article only refers to dates within the last 2,000 years that no date notation is required. I don't think anyone has really opposed this - it's just a shame that this point of agreement hasn't been written down officially anywhere, jguk 22:00, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why does everyone keep bringing up this point? Has anyone actually read the guidelines??! It already says that you should only use era designations when necessary: "Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Common Era". Kaldari 23:17, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

text: We could always refer to "the year 80", jguk 20:05, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A true compromise 

message: I suggest that the calendar system used in an article be that most relevant to the article's topic, with links to a standard (a la as used for measurements) or to a conversion tool (a la as done for ISBNs and map coordinates).
For example, purely Christian articles would use BC/AD, purely Jewish articles would use Mosaic dates, purely Islamic articles would use Mohammedan dates, etc. Then either:
*The system indicator after the year (e.g. "BC") would then wikilink to a converter for major calendar systems, or
*The whole year value wikilinks to the page for the corresponding BCE year (e.g. 1492).
- Keith D. Tyler ¶ 22:16, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
:The most relevant date style for any English-language article meant for a general worldwide audience is BC/AD as it is the only notation generally understood by that audience. It is only if you want to restrict your audience for an article substantially that you'd use anything else. It's a great shame that almost all our articles about the largest religions are of a poor quality, as various editors try to impose their biases and push away comments from others who may help to present a more neutral view. We really shouldn't be encouraging further worsening of these articles, jguk 07:26, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: Date most relevant to article topic, with conversion link