Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:26, 19 December 2005

Please discuss this on the talk page first as the way to move forward with this proposal has not yet been agreed upon. A vote will only be held if it is clear that it may help clarify consensus. We are currently in an information gathering phase, not a voting phase.

This is a proposed amendment to the Eras section of Manual of Style (dates and numbers). It is an attempt to avoid future revert wars regarding the disputed use of BC/AD or BCE/CE.

The situation is similar in some ways to the debates between spelling choices (primarily between British English and American English).

Necessity

This proposal has been sparked off, twice now, by ongoing revert wars at List of kings of Persia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Sophocles (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and other articles and follows from the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, Talk:Jesus, Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and several other articles. Having no consensus at the BCE-CE Debate, the current situation is a little ambiguous as to the policy. Revert wars have happened between people interpreting the spirit of the policy differently.

In August, 2005, a compromise proposal was presented to the community, and failed to achieve consensus.

Concurrent technical proposal

There is a proposal to implement a technical solution by wikifying all dates and allowing users to select in their preferences whether Augustus lived (63 BC – AD 14) or (63 BCE - 14 CE), and possibly other choices as well. (Chinese? Muslim? Hebrew? Mayan? ISO 8601?) Please see this project page and its talk page for details or to help out.

Independence of this proposal from technical proposal

Whether or not this proposal is adopted, the technical solution seems to have some support, and is being pursued independently.

Even if the technical proposal is agreed to and implemented, it does not resolve the issue of how dates will look to non-registered users, or how they will look by default to new registered users, and this is, in many ways, the most public face of Misplaced Pages, so the technical fix, although it would quell edit warring to a large extent, does not make this proposal irrelevant or unnecessary. Therefore, the two are being pursued independently, and simultaneously.

Policy in question

The following is taken from Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Eras.

Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable, but be consistent within an article. Normally you should use plain numbers for years in the Common Era, but when events span the start of the Common Era, use AD or CE for the date at the end of the range (note that AD precedes the date and CE follows it). For example, ]–] or ]–].

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.

Should this policy be approved the first paragraph above would have a paragraph added to it to clarify the guideline regarding eras.

Preliminary consideration of variations

Please direct discussion to the talk page until discussion is declared open here. The list of variations presented here is almost certainly incomplete, and we will allow for adding variations to the list as they arise.

• This is not a vote. We are in an information gathering phase.
• This is not for critique of the finer points of wording. We wish to gague the relative support of the ideas presented in each variation. Therefore, proposed wordings have been commented out for this phase. You may still see proposed wordings that were here by editing this page and looking at the source.
• This is not a place for posting arguments pro and contra each variation. Please keep discussion on the talk page for now. When we open polling, it will likely be signature only, at first, to help narrow down to a few good variations before debating the merits of those.

FEEL FREE TO ADD TO THIS LIST. PLEASE INDICATE YOUR OPINION WITH SIGNATURE ONLY AND DIRECT DISCUSSION TO THE TALK PAGE

Variation Z - the status quo

There should be no change to the policy. This option does not see the need for a special case for eras and this page will simply be a redirect to the Manual of Style page. Revert wars are subject to the three revert rule and page protection, as for other disputes.

Weak or strong support

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variations A - Favour the change

The concept of favouring the change is that the switch from one method to another should go ahead and discussion should take place afterwards.

Variation A1

The policy should simply state that it is a controversial change.

Weak or strong support

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation A2

The policy should state that the change should be performed and then any opposition discussed on the talk page – the change should not be reverted.

Weak or strong support

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation A3

The policy should state that the change should be discussed on the talk page after the article has been reverted to its previous form.

Weak or strong support

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variations B - Favour discussion

The concept of favouring discussion is that the change should not be done unless there is enough support to do so from the talk page.

Variation B1

The policy should reflect that the change may be controversial and should not be done without prior discussion. The proposal to change the article should be made on the talk page in a hope to gain consensus. If there is a clear consensus to change it (or no opposition to changing it), it can be done.

Weak or strong support

Weak or strong oppose

Variation B2

The policy should recommend discussion but not mandate it.

Weak or strong support

1. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. Neonumbers 08:53, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variations C - Favour the original author

The policy should reflect that the change should not be done except to return it to the one used by the original registered author of that article.

Variation C1

The policy should favour the original author in all cases.

Weak or strong support

1. Okay, I know this isn't a vote, but an information gathering thing so I support this version, as a wikipedia author and as a wikipedia reader. Chooserr 05:24, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

Variation C2

The policy should favour the original author by default, but allow for consensus to overrule authorship in individual cases.

Weak or strong support

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

Variations D - Favour BC/AD

Variation D1

The policy should favour BC/AD notation, as the most common standard, in all cases

Weak or strong support

1. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Kjkolb 08:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. Clawed 09:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
4. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation D2

The policy should favour BC/AD notation as a default, but allow for consensus to overrule in individual cases.

Weak or strong support

1. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. Kjkolb 08:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variations E - Favour BCE/CE

Variation E1

The policy should favour BCE/CE notation, as an NPOV standard, in all cases.

Weak or strong support

1. Kjkolb 08:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Why is this even an issue? Clawed 09:13, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
3. This has been the practice taught from elementary school for 50 years. But then, I grew up in an area known for its Jewish population where half the teachers were gone on High Holidays, and attended university at places with high concentrations of foreign students. Rather like Misplaced Pages. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation E2

The policy should favour BCE/CE notation as a default, but allow for consensus to overrule in individual cases.

Weak or strong support

1. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation F - A categorical solution

The policy should designate categories of articles in which to use BCE/CE notation, and categories of articles in which to use BC/AD notation.

Weak or strong support

1. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Weak or strong oppose

1. GTBacchus 05:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Variation G - Change of venue

This is not a style-related policy, but a behaviour-related one, as should be proposed to WP:NPOV or some other area of policy, not to the MoS.

Weak or strong support

Weak or strong oppose

1. Neonumbers 08:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
2. William Allen Simpson 13:55, 19 December 2005 (UTC)