Wikipedia talk:Eras/Compromise proposal/Voting

message: Just thought I'd remind everyone. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:57, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polls are evil 

message: # Agree.  Polls are evil. (SEWilco 07:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Agree

message: #The point of this proposal is to try to find common ground. Whether it works is a different question. Maurreen 17:57, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutral

message: The 3 most commonly used consensus thresholds are 66%, 70%, and 80%. Changes to official policy or votes for admin priviledges usually require 80%. The threshold for more trivial matters like Picture of the Week is usually 66%. Since the Manual of Style is neither official policy nor trivial it falls in the middle threshold like most other non-binding resolutions: 70%. Please do not change this threshold without discussion. Kaldari 20:07, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is effectively a policy proposal. It should require an 80%+ threshold. Anything less will just lead to further arguments and divisiveness. Also, I don't think it appropriate for someone to launch a vote after a fortnight's lack of activity on a topic and try to enforce a low threshold for the vote. I have therefore changed it back to 80%, which is the usual consensus threshold. Please do not change it back, jguk 07:08, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we should have a vote on this. Maurreen 07:26, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tee hee (although personally I prefer SEWilco's joke directly above):) jguk 07:46, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I intended a diplomatic way of saying that people shouldn't change a voting format while the vote is in progress. That is confusing at best. Anyone who disagreed with the way the vote was set up should have brought their concerns to the talk page and not decided to make unilateral changes. Maurreen 12:38, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And Jguk, you were quite happy to make changes to the style guide without even a majority. Maurreen 12:41, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW, it seems that even many official policy votes only require 70%. See, for example, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal and Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD. Jguk, what is your reasoning behind terming 70% a "low threshold"? Kaldari 19:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consensus threshold 

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)
*Its already as you said: Normally you should use plain numbers for years [...] (in Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Eras (current version). The problem already is (only?) for when that doesn't apply. See the current dating on Jesus birth: somewhere between 6 BC/BCE and 6 AD/CE. A mess... completely confusing for anyone not aware of this discussion. That's to say what? 99.9% of WP readers? - Nabla 17:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A true compromise 

message: I am so tired of this. It will be well worth a developer's time to hack up stylesheet support for this. we can then have , and people will be able to choose if they want to see -5 CE, 6 BCE or 6 BC. Hell, they'll even be able to customize Hijra or Middle-earth calendars.
This is only a question of representation for crying out loud, and like font, background colour and what not, it should be rendered client-side. 
The only exception will of course be discussion of calendars and Common Era itself, where the template will not be usable, because the notation will be part of the statement.
dab (ᛏ) 18:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: They should also implement style support for 12 vs. 24 hour clock and metric vs. imperial measurements while they're at it, although I haven't heard about any work on these areas yet, unfortunately. Kaldari 19:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: the nice thing will be that Wikipedia will become more machine-readable.  and 
will be so much more parseable than numbers scattered over the text. dab (ᛏ) 08:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

text: I have already suggested (on TFD, funnily enough) that a new MAGICNUMBER attribute, YEAR#NNN, be created. Much like "ISBN 0091801788" generates ISBN 0091801788, it would auto-generate a link to that year's page AND change BCE/BC to the format specified in your preferences. That would be quicker and easier to type than a template. And it can't be hard to code in either. See what you think. GarrettTalk 23:50, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a serious flaw in this proposal in that it may just move the argument over to what the default setting will be.  I don't know the statistics but I think it probable that most people viewing Wiki (as opposed to editing) don't register.  If something could be added so that the default setting is random for unregistered users then that might well solve things.Dejvid 12:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ?!? What the... (miscellany expletives in English and Latin go here) ...I hadn't thought of that. Well, I don't think true randomising is such a good idea, I mean, if you read a page that says BC all through and then follow a link and then come back to it and it says BCE you're gonna be considering professional help. :) BUT the randomising could be based on the last digit of the IP, so that, say, even numbers get BC/AD and odd get BCE/CE. If that's even possible. Hm, unless it reads "BC/BCE" for anon readers and only when you *stipulate* do you get one or the other. That's also possible. Certainly any of these are more involved than my solution was meant to be, but as you say that could spawn more arguments. GarrettTalk 13:27, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

text: BC/BCE for anonymous readers seems to me to be the best solution and if that is possible I'd support this proposal.  Would having three options like that make it harder to implement? Dejvid 15:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

text: We'd need a developer to do this properly, but I can't see why it shouldn't be done, in the same way that DD/MM/YY and MM/DD/YY dates are already done. I'm quite willing to volunteer to help sort out what needs doing, but as I don't know how to program, we'll still need a friendly developer to do it. Any suggestions of where to find one? jguk 17:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Style sheets already!

message: I've voted for this proposal but I have real doubts that it would help at all.  The approach  seems to fix certain pages as one notation over another but most of relevant pages will still have to be decided by consensus.  First off consensus on this isn't really possible.  Either one writes BC or one writes  BCE  it has to be one or the other.  Even if we decide on BC/BCE thruout it is still a fixed solution with none of the give and take of consensus.  Saying that consensus decides is really saying that there should be a presumption in favor of the status quo - it might be worth saying that explicitly.  
Yesterday there was a little edit war over this.  In was entirely over inconsistent pages but still generated much heat.  I wish I could say that I was too sensible to get involved.  I can't.  Here are my thoughts on things that might help.
#Have a rule like the 3 revert rule which says that no one can change the era naming on more than one page a day.  A week would be better but that is probably unenforcable.
#Consistent era naming is nice but we should recognize that clumsy moves to consistency can spark edit wars so the presumption in favor of the status quo should still apply even where this involves a mixture of BCE and BC.
#Lets be a bit more prescriptive about what kind of agreement is needed before the naming of eras on a page is changed.
Though not exactly a newbee, I haven't been much involved in this side of Wiki so I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this.Dejvid 18:46, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The stupidest thing in this whole dispute is that readers' interests are completely ignored. We're meant to be an international encyclopaedia with as broad as possible a readership. You'd have thought it was obvious to use terminology that every English-reader understands and is familiar with, rather than terminology that has absolutely no currency amongst the general public in the overwhelming majority of the world. But hey - when did commonsense and the interests of the project as a whole have a place in this debate? :) jguk 19:45, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not true to say both conventions are used in the outside world. BCE/CE has absolutely no currency that I've seen amongst the British general public (I've never seen it used here in my 31 years). I also understand it has no currency in India either. As far as how to handle the situation, even in the places in the world where BCE/CE is used, apart from in Israel, which is primarily a Hebrew-speaking country, BC/AD is preferred by that population by a long, long way (ie 90%+). I'm surprised we're even arguing this - for any other word/construction, WP would always go for the common form, jguk 06:01, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: jguk, it is beyond me why you continue to pretend that BCE/CE has anything to do with Israel.  Israel is a Hebrew and Arabic speaking country - they don't use BCE/CE or BC/AD, and this has been explained to you before.  BCE/CE is an English convention used in English speaking countries. As for your other claims about it having no currency in Britain or India, here's a source combining both which uses it, the Hindustan Times UK edition: , and here's an example of it in the India Times:  Jayjg (talk) 06:03, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Dejvid, I like your ideas. Maurreen (talk) 03:10, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: An alternative approach to avoiding edit wars on era names

message: I've suggested a cease-fire on eras, at the  Village pump. Maurreen (talk) 09:32, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, deus ex machina to solve all our problems.  One correction to what you have said Jguk:  Those who don't select the option (BCE/CE or BC/AD) will see what is there now.  So in a way, it wouldn't really change anything.  We have to work it out on an article by article basis, applying the policy framework currently in place.  I really don't see anyway around that.  Sunray 22:09, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
"...those who don't select that option see BC/AD"?  Why, Jguk, would you assume that would be the default?  Meanwhile, user preferences really only affect editors who've created Wikipedia accounts, not general readers, so I don't see what this would do for anyone. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 05:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've also suggested at the Village pump to remove or refine the style guide's call for consistency. I hope to see your comments there, either way. Thanks.
Wouldn't the programming function be along the lines =IF(user preference for bce selected, use bce, otherwise use bc)? Seems more straightforward that =IF(are user preferences set, another IF function, otherwise something else). On MPerel's other point, BC is by far and away the most common notation worldwide, with a 90%+ preference and 99%+ intelligibility, so it seems like the best default. Though this is getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe you could help complete Wikipedia:User preferences for BCE/CE notation and then we can go see if we can find a friendly developer to program it in, jguk 11:45, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cease-fire on eras