Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)

message: The current guideline states: (quote)
:The recommended format for separate articles on events that recur at regular intervals is as follows:<Name of event> ()Where:
:*<Name of event> is the existing article title (non-redirect) that describes the event;
:* is used only as a disambiguator, giving no more detail than is needed for disambiguation, which would be a year in most cases.
But the actual format used for events is <year> <event>. The article Summer Olympic Games (1920), given as example in the guideline, is at 1920 Summer Olympics, and there is not even a redirect! I found the same with Winter olympics and Alpine skiing World Cup. For Football World Cups, <event> <year> is used, as in Football World Cup 2002. The Expo articles are inconsistent, cf. Expo '70, 1982 World's Fair, Expo 67, Expo 2005.
The only consistency seems to be that the guideline is not used.
Four different proposed solutions: 
# Abolish guideline and use official name of event, i.e. the name the organizers use
# Rewrite guideline to match majority of articles; leave events with different, but consistent format as they are
# Rewrite guideline to match majority of articles (either <year> <event> or <event> <year>); rename all articles that don't match new guideline
# Enforce old guideline with mass renaming and relinking
-- Mkill 17:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  guidelines and practice don't match for olympic games and others 

message: (Copied from the wrong place to both Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)
List of "bad" articles he's created (IMHO) include:
* (-> means redirect)
* with my comments after
*
:292,277,026,596 -> 11th millennium and beyond 
* (still on WP:RfD.)
: edited both 10000 and 10,000 to be separate disambiguation pages  
* (I think they're now at least the same disambiguation page)
::Category:Thousand
::Category:Million
::Category:Billion
* on WP:CfD
:123456789 (number)
:1023456789 (number)
:1234567890 (number)
:12345678987654321 (number)
:987654321 (number)
:9876543210 (number)
* (On WP:AfD, but will probably end up redirected to Pandigital number)
:−2 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−3 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers 
:−4 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−5 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−6 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−7 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−8 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−9 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
:−10 (number) -> Negative and non-negative numbers
*I changed all of the −n (number) to redirect to n (number), but I don't think they should be there at all
:Year −1 -> 2 BC
:1st decade -> 0s
:1st decade AD -> 0s
:−0s -> 0s BC
*(OK, these aren't confusing, anyway)
:1st changed from 1 (number) to first
:2nd from 2 (number) to second (completely wrong, this time)
:10th from 10 (number) to tenth (wrong again)
*I reverted these.
:−1 as a disambig between -1 (number) and 2 BC
:−2 as a disambig between −2 (number) and 3 BC
:−3 as a disambig between −3 (number) and 4 BC
:−4 as a disambig between −4 (number) and 5 BC
:−5 as a disambig between −5 (number) and 6 BC
:−6 as a disambig between −6 (number) and 7 BC
:−7 as a disambig between −7 (number) and 8 BC
:−8 as a disambig between −8 (number) and 9 BC
:−9 as a disambig between −9 (number) and 10 BC
:−10 as a disambig between −10 (number) and 11 BC
*Why?
:2100 changed from a redirect to 21st century to a disambig between 21st century, 22nd century, and 2100 (number)
:4000 added reference to 5th millennium and 4000 (number) to disambig
:5000 changed from a redirect to 5000 (number) to a disambig with 5th millennium, 6th millennium, and 5000 (number)
:6000 etc.
:7000 etc.
:8000 etc.
:9000 etc.
* I'm not sure about these.  They probably should be reverted per Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (numbers and dates), but...
:[[12:00] -> hour
:[[1:00] -> hour
:[[2:00] -> hour
:[[3:00] -> hour
etc.
*I've proposed these for deletion.  He's now redirected one of them to clock.
*Help — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 02:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Hoof38]] 

message: Should we have a standard format where the article on an event that does not recur at regular intervals (or didn't recur at all)? Currently there is no "standard format" for the representation of the time indicator, This creates inconsistency as well to the project. I feel that a conclusive consensus would create less inconsistency here. --Siva1979Talk to me 22:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard format? 

message: I was wondering why some of the examples are red-linked in the Articles on events section? it seems strange that the guidelines give Summer Olympic Games (1920) as an example, and then later say 1920 Summer Olympics is also acceptable, but maybe giving too much weight to the year (though the guideline fails to mention that it also drops 'Games' from the title). Looking at the articles for Summer Olympic Games, they all use the 'year in front' and 'Olympic Games' -> 'Olympics' style. So what is going on there? Then there is the example of "UEFA Champions League (2005-2006) (note that each year is written in full, separated by a hyphen)". If you look at :Category:UEFA Champions League, you can see that this guideline hasn't been followed. They all write the second year as two digits instead of the full year and drop the brackets (eg. UEFA Champions League 2005-06). The guideline also gives the example of U.S. presidential election, 2000, when that is actually a redirect, and the article is at United States presidential election, 2000. So is this guideline just out-of-date, or are people not following the naming conventions? Carcharoth 22:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Francis Schonken changed the U.S. example - thanks for that. Anyone know anything about the other examples? Is 1920 Summer Olympics just accepted as an exception, and are the football league ones named in a different style for some reason? Carcharoth 22:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Funnily enough, I was going to mention elections, as they are the only events mentioned at Wikipedia:Naming convention that have their own convention. See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Elections. I thought that was a bit funny, as it should technically be a subset of "events" or "numbers and dates". Did someone slip that onto the page over there after the above discussion, or was it already there? And what should be done about those earthquakes (that's what set this all off for me). I moved a couple to fit what I thought was the standard way to title (not name) earthquake articles, but now I'm not sure what to do. If you look at the examples I gave, different names give differing amounts of information to the reader. Some earthquakes have local names, some are widely known by another name, many have absolutely no name at all. The USGS seems to introduce them as date (day, month, year), location, and size. With the occassional 'common' name thrown in when an earthquake has acquired one. I suppose if the names are a mess in the real world, then Wikipedia article titles will inevitably reflect that. Would that be a good way to sum this up? Carcharoth 01:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Francis, thanks for the election naming convention update. Was there a talk page discussion somewhere to support that? I really would like to start a discussion somewhere to get guidance on how to decide on a title for earthquake articles, as I want to start filling in the gaps in Wikipedia's coverage in this area (mainly older, pre-20th century earthquakes). I would go ahead with using the Disasters Wikiproject naming convention, but I had a bad experience with 1356 Basel earthquake, which I requested a translation of from the French at that page title, and a few days later (even before the translation process was finished) it got moved to Basel earthquake. The arguments for both sides are at Talk:Basel earthquake, along with the current move request, but before I create any more earthquake articles, I want to make sure I don't get bogged down in any more arguments over what title the articles should be at. What would be the best way to do that, and still fit in with the necessarily slow development of naming convention guidelines? Carcharoth 11:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are people following these guidelines? 

message: I noticed that Wikipedia:Naming_conventions (numbers_and_dates)#Bracketed_disambiguator_style explicitly recommends a hyphen in an article date range, e.g. Azadegan League (1999-2000), while WP:DASH explicitly calls for an en dash, e.g. Philippines campaign (1944–45).  I personally opt for the latter (even though the former is easier to type), but more importantly, the contradiction should be resolved.  71.41.210.146 08:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no-one has replied to this contradiction over several months, I am going ahead and changing the hyphen to an en-dash in conformance with WP:DASH. Ayla (talk) 21:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflicting style guidelines!  Date ranges: en dash or hyphen? 

message: Would commas in article names that use large numbers be acceptable? For example, Temperature record of the past 1,000 years. ~ UBeR (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commas in large numbers 

message: I don't think that this guideline actually is sufficient to support the notion that we shouldn't have redirects like 4004, 6502, 7805 (to 78xx) when there is no year article but would only be a redirect to an article about a century or a millennium. I came across a dispute between User:Sceptre and User:Foogod on this issue and felt it should be resolved in a wider forum. —Random832 21:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Far future and "plausible" search terms 

message: I propose to amend Wikipedia:naming conventions for numbers and years, and also to redirect 911 to 911 (disambiguation) and rename the main article as 911 (year).  (Note that the consensus against on Talk:911, while overwhelming, is 2 years old.)
Please discuss here or here.
69.140.152.55 (talk) 13:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to amend the naming convention for numbers 

message: What follows was a footnote to this page. 
Without going too technical, for standard use in articles on time periods, a "year" is defined as:
#:* according to Gregorian calendar for years from 1582 on;
#:* according to Julian calendar, counting back from 1582, for the years 1 to 1581
#:* according to the (proleptic) Julian calendar, counting back from 1 (without year zero) for the years 1 BC and older.
#:Note, however, that also after 1581 some countries continued the Julian calendar, see Old Style and New Style dates. Occasionally for years from 1582 to well in the 20th century (when the last countries converted to Gregorian calendar), dates in the "year"/"day" articles are mentioned not according to Gregorian calendar: in these cases add a notification according to which calendar!!!
#:This might seem complicated: see the October Revolution example above, and the entry of the start of that revolution both in the October 25 and the November 7 articles.
I am not convinced that this helped anybody; it is also questionable in detail. I have therefore brought it here.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure I agree.  This doesn't seem like the page for it, and if it is, then it should be much shorter.  We've talked about this before; there's a tendency for guidelines and naming conventions to accumulate a huge pile of stuff that won't be of interest to 99.9% of the people who actually read the page. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

text: Yep, this is definitely the kind of incomprehensible non-guidance we should be getting rid of.--Kotniski (talk) 10:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Technically speaking, 1582 is in the Julian calendar through October 4, and the Gregorian calendar from the following day, October 15, after 10 days were skipped.  Thus, the year has 355 days. *Dan T.* (talk) 15:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnote

message: I know this matter has already been discussed above, but I have revived it over at talk:2000–2009, where a variety of editors have agreed that we should change the title from 2000–2009 to 2000s (decade), and likewise with all other relevant decades. This would remove ambiguity all the while keeping with convention (the only notable name for the current decade as of present is "2000s") and consistency (all 9 other decades of the centuries are titled "XXXXs"). I would appreciate input on this request— `CRAZY`(lN)`SANE` 23:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems reasonable to me, at least for 2000s (and I believe we found 1900s to be quite often used for the decade as well). How about the older ones - is there really enough usage for 1800s, 1700s etc. as decades to justify their being considered "correct" in that meaning?--Kotniski (talk) 08:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree with your reasoning, I see no reason to tamper with 1800s, 1700s and so on — there isn't enough documented usage for those decades and what they were named colloquially and so on. I think moving simply 1900–1909 and 2000–2009 would be sufficient.— `CRAZY`(lN)`SANE` 20:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it reasonable to generalize; many of these articles are retrospective anyway, beginning with 100-109. My principal concern is having  the template  work predictably and intelligibly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:20, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

text: I've always preferred "2000s" for consistency with other decades; I never liked the awkward switch to "2000-2009". *Dan T.* (talk) 15:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Grumble.  OK, I tend to like this change, but you have to remember that (one of the) (protected) templates transcluded by Yearbox, Decadebox, etc., needs to be modfied before or nearly simultaneously with the renames.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 10:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect this won't actually be necessary (at least, not urgently), as long as the current names are left in place as redirects.--Kotniski (talk) 10:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, you may be right.  The appropriate WikiProject (probably Years, although Timeline may be appropriate) should be informed of this discussion, so that it can be corrected appropriately when changes are made.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:59, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First decade of each century revival 

message: Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy.  That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes.  An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy.  As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC – WP title decision practice 

message: I propose that the "Articles on events" section be brought in line with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events). At present, these two guidelines are in conflict; the main guideline for naming articles about events states that the year should precede the rest of the title and should not be in parentheses, but the "Articles on events" section of the numbers and dates guideline provides the option of using "bracketed disambiguator style". My impression is that this guideline has simply not been updated to match the main guideline for naming conventions for events; the second example of "bracketed disambiguator style", Azadegan League (1999–2000), has been redirecting to 1999–2000 Azadegan League for almost four years now. Considering that bracketed disambiguators serve a separate purpose in Wikipedia titles, I suggest that the "bracketed disambiguator style" section simply be removed from this guideline. Neelix (talk) 13:16, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles on events 

message: A new addition to this guideline is proposed at Wikipedia talk:Article titles‎#Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) approach --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:43, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Year ranges as page titles 

message: It has been proposed that numbers should be considered the primary topic for articles titled "1" to "100" instead of years. This would require numerous page moves and an amendment to the guidelines. Please discuss at Talk:1#Requested move 5 August 2016. — JFG talk 02:54, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I followed up at that RM on template changes that I believe should be done first before the moves. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 18:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

text: Wider RfC now open at Talk:1#RFC1-100. — JFG talk 08:30, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

text: Please comment at the follow-up RfC on how the topic of years 1-100 should be titled here. Thank you, — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 00:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal on numbers 1 to 100 

message: Editors may be interested in Talk:10000 (number)#Requested move 25 June 2017, which proposes to move nine articles of the form n00000 (number) to n0,000 or n0000, and which may lead to also moving the remaining seven five-digit articles. Certes (talk) 13:28, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move for five-digit numbers 

message: Hi, I'm working on an article with a very specific date (day/month/year). Are both acceptable? I prefer the first option because I'm using the "Month, Day" format in my draft. MX (✉ • ✎) 00:23, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe it depends on the style used in the country in which the event took place. For example, the day-month-year" format would be more appropriate for articles related to the UK while the month-day-format would be better for subjects related to the U.S. --Ixfd64 (talk) 18:51, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "May 1, 2015 Jalisco attacks" or "1 May 2015 Jalisco attacks" 

message: not me but somebody else. © Tbhotch™</font> (en-2.5). 19:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  RM on 911  

message: How should we entitle articles consisting of a number first, and words second? In a case similar to the examples Form 1040 or Intel 80386, but the other way round, the article 5 Whys has long been at that title, but was recently moved without discussion by  to Five Whys.  User:FULBERT followed up by starting a discussion after the fact, at [[Talk:Five Whys#Article name change - 5 Whys > Five Whys]].
I have two comments about this:
* I'd like to request feedback by users familiar with number usage in article titles, to respond at that discussion about the individual case.
* Secondly, and perhaps more important: what about adding some verbiage to this page, to cover the general case?
I attempted to find guidance on this at WP:AT and MOS:, without success. This article seems to be the one that comes the closest to it. So, I'm requesting that we come up with some verbiage to add to the guideline, probably in section Articles on years, articles on numbers, article names containing non-date numbers, to cover the case where the common name starts with a number usually expressed in numerals, followed by a word or words. The case where this is the title of a work, is already covered; we don't need to duplicate that.  This is for common topics that are not titles of a work. 
Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:06, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are two items involves here -- the first would be how this can work with new articles, and the second with how this works with items that are already in the literature. I agree there should be a discussion and policy on this, though one aspect of this should also be how people in the literature are already using the term. In the case of 5 Whys, a quick search in both public as well as academic searches seem to show that the first term is used as a number, namely 5. Thanks for raising this discussion Mathglot.--- FULBERT (talk) 01:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Titles with a number first, words second 

message: See User talk:Crouch, Swale/Year DAB#Batch 1 for a move discussion involving numbers 101 to 125, note that after those have been processed numbers 126 to 150, then 151 to 175, then 176 to 200, then finally any other. Any that are objected at that discussion page or at RMT will be subject to a normal RM. Crouch, Swale (talk)  20:25, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  3 digit number move discussions 

message: There is an ongoing RfC to clarify our stance on titles which form part of a numbered series whose meaning is not inherently apparent, and whether we should disambiguate for the purpose of clarity even when not strictly necessary. An example would be Symphony No. 104 (Haydn) (as there is no other notable "Symphony No. 104"), which is already covered by WP:MUSICSERIES, but this RfC would explore the application of this principle to other domains, such as sequentially numbered legislation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC notice: Titles which are part of an ambiguous series 

message: Please see the RFC taking place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Article titles for years: BC/AD or BCE/BC. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC notice: BC or BCE, AD or CE in article titles