Category talk:Years

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Categorization

There's quite a lot of "X by year" articles and categories, so starting a series of "Category:[Year]" articles seems logical. Category:2004 would be a subcategory of Category:Years, but where would Category:Years go? -Sean Curtin 04:32, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A hierarchy of time could be constructed... thusly.

2004----------Years------\
 |                        \
 V                         \
2000s---------Decades--------->Master Timeline
 |                         /    (or whatever)
 V                        /
21st century--Centuries--/

'Course, you still have the problem that 2000 is in the 2000s, but not in the 21st century. Might end up parenting 2000s to Master Timeline, and 2000 directly to 20th century, then 2001--2009 to 21st century... or something? I don't think there's an obvious clean way of doing it... grendel|khan 04:51, 2004 Jun 30 (UTC)

That system would put several thousand articles into Category:Years. Better to go Year -> Decade -> Century -> main timeline page, for readability's sake. -Sean Curtin 05:34, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

So the agreed solution looks to as:

- Time Line

-- Century (20'th Century)

--- Decade (1900-1909)

---- Year (1907)

But we have still to define the rules as what article would belong to these "Time Categories" and to which one of them, otherwise almost every article may belong to one or more of these categories (and we'll lose the benefits of Categorization). ^^ Dod1 05:05, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agreed -- things shouldn't be put in year categories for insignificant dates. Perhaps restrict subcategories to Births in Year XXXX and Deaths in Year XXXX).

Also, it's not the right place for "Years", but note and compare Category:Calendars... Catherine | talk 20:51, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Events occuring in a year should probably be included in that year's category as well: it'll look quite odd to not see September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in Category:2001. Note that I'm only suggesting that for articles about events, not articles that refer to events; people can use "what links here" on the individual year pages for that. I definitely support the "births in XXXX"/"deaths in XXXX" categories, though the naming convention established with Category:Books by year and Category:Films by year suggests that they'd instead be titled, for example, Category:2004 births and Category:2004 deaths.

A related question: would it be worth it to create categories for specific dates? I doubt it: Events, holidays, births and deaths are already listed on the individual dates' pages. Still, it may be worth considering. -Sean Curtin 04:18, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not all holidays are on the same date each year. And some holidays require an event, such as someone seeing the Moon, so can not be predicted exactly. (SEWilco 06:17, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC))

I don't think date categories more specific than years would be helpful or well-maintained. "2004 births", "2004 deaths", "2004 events", then? A note could be placed in the description section of each year's category page asking folks not to create more subcategories without discussing it on the Category:Master timeline (or whatever) discussion page first..... Catherine | talk 06:29, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Am I right in thinking that the parent category for the year pages would need to be placed on Category:Fundamental? -Sean Curtin 05:48, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'd agree with that too. Catherine | talk 06:29, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The parent category of "year pages" should be something related to Time, not simply "year pages". Specialty timelines are likely to belong nearby. (SEWilco 06:17, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC))

Possibly Category:History. -Sean Curtin 01:14, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Rhetorical question: Which calendar? (SEWilco 06:17, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC))

We need a year category! If no consensus on a name for the category is picked soon, I'll just be bold and make one up. I don't think Category:History is where it should go, but that certainly would be a good parent for the category. I would suggest Category:by year or Category:items by year or even Category:History by year. Category:lists of years is kinda ugly though. --ssd 13:30, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Category:Years seems fine by me; the name makes the contents obvious, and there's no chance of confusion with any other category like there might be with Category:Timeline. -Sean Curtin 21:35, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Anyone wanna second this motion? Years is fine with me as long as the individual years mostly go in subcategories so we don't have all 8000 of them in one spot. :) --ssd 01:11, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Someone has created Category:Events by year, so I moved all those into it that were not already there. --ssd 05:15, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Also: Category:2000, Category:1900 and the like present interesting challenges for parenting. Category:2000 goes under Category:2000s (for the decade) and also under Category:20th century; the rest of the years in Category:2000s go into Category:21st century. Where will Category:2000s be parented? -Sean Curtin 21:45, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, as I see it, you've got 3 choices: 1) put them in the correct spot 2) put them where people will look for them 3) both. --ssd 01:11, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Years 40 to 1788

Shall we add a year category those years as well, similar to years 1789 (Category:1789) through 2005 (Category:2005) ? -- User:Docu

Definitely. I would favor consistency across the board, rather leaving them uncategorized, or arbitrarily picking a cutoff between one style of categorization and another. Plus, leaving them not done will only lead to edits such as this: [1], which is not a good thing. - 18:36, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

The bot is ready to add the category on the year pages and create the 1700 remaining year categories (e.g. Test on Category:51 and others of Category:50s). I added Template:Yearcat to the categories and intend to run the bot next weekend. - User:Docu

As there haven't been any objections, it's running now. -- User:Docu

Done. -- User:Docu

For the few years BC which have their own page (approx. 440 BC to 1 BC), we should probably categorize them in the same way. -- User:Docu

Centuries

Whoever created most of the "XX century" categories included the wrong years in them, stating that (for example) "The 1st century is from 0 to 99." Obviously this is wrong and now many of the existing century and millennium categories need to be fixed, as do almost all year categories ending in 00, 01 or 99. I think I've fixed all of the AD century categories, but may have missed some. -Sean Curtin 04:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year

Previously Category:2004 deaths was mentionned. It has now been created and it's part of Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year. The two categories seem quite suitable to identify biographies.

If we want use this type of category, I would be nice to have a tool to populate them, e.g. from List of people by name or the year pages. As a sample, I populated Category:1914 births and Category:1995 deaths (from 1914#Births and 1985#Deaths). -- User:Docu

This function is better served by lists, not categories. I would prefer to use a scheme borrowed from Wikipedia:As of, which is a special form of link for information which may date quickly. I'd love to work with someone setting up a "Born in" and "Died in" series along these lines. -- Netoholic @ 02:52, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I assume you mean "whatlinkshere" rather than lists. I'm not sure if the use of that with "As of" is really conclusive, i.e. Special:Whatlinkshere/As of 2004 isn't necessarily the most useful part of the "as of" solution. An advantage of the category solution is that they can only be applied to biography articles and it's quite easy to see if it's done correctly. Further, linking, e.g.

XYZ (1 September 1915-1 September 1985)

as

XYZ (1 September 1915-1 September 1985)

wouldn't allow the date formatting to work either. A special markup for DOB and DOD might be preferable, e.g.

XYZ [[(1 September 1915-1 September 1985)]]

but would have to be introduced first. -- User:Docu

No, I meant lists. The function I refer to (seeing who is born in what year) is best done by using the year pages, which already list famous births and deaths. I don't see any reason to clutter up the categories at the bottom of an article just to facilitate this, since very few readers would use the links. Using the [[born in XXXX|XXXX]] and [[died in XXXX|XXXX]] linking could achieve the same ends (editors locating that information), and is extremely similar to the existing "as of XXXX" system. (As a side note, please sign your comments by appending with "-- ~~~~" so your notes are properly signed and dated.) -- Netoholic @ 13:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok, then you prefer lists such as 1985, rather than the sample you quoted afterwards, e.g. Special:Whatlinkshere/Died in 1985. As previously stated, the later formatting ([[born in XXXX|XXXX]] and [[died in XXXX|XXXX]]) breaks the wiki-date formatting. -- User:Docu

For the moment, these categories should be deleted, as we already have valid lists of this information in each of the year articles. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 16:31, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

• I agree. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 00:01, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)
• I agree as well. Lists offer several advantages such as only displaying more notable births and deaths as well as giving a synopsis of who they are. Some of these year's catagories are already mammoth, and they're just a pile of uncatagorized names. I'm not convinced these are useful at all. Are we going to do births/deaths by day next? CoolHandLuke 17:59, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• When cross-referencing categories is fully implemented, these will be very useful in determining people who were alive in any given year, which is a function that cannot be achieved by lists. -Sean Curtin 04:25, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
• I disagree. User:Cool Hand Luke points out that lists can be used for notable births and deaths. This is the advantage of lists, but also their disadvantage. A list of notable births is always going to be subjective. Whereas a category should be a comprehensive collection of all the articles covered by that category. I see the lists and categories existing side by side without a problem; the list offers births (or deaths) in various subjective collections, whereas the categories offer all births. If the categories get too large then they can be split into sub categories (eg. births by country). MarkS 21:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • That was one of the main arguments for keeping when both categories were brought up on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. - Sean Curtin 01:15, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

---

For further discussion of this topic, see Wikipedia_talk:People_by_year.

Years BC

Why, oh why must we have categories for years like 86 BC? In the unlikely event that we get some 86 BC in ... articles, then a category would make sense, but this is just pointlessly cluttering up the articles. Everyking 16:07, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

See the discussion above (#Years_40_to_1788) about which category to add. The main problem is to choose the cut-off for categories by year. Currently they go from 100 BC to AD 2004 and even beyond (Category:Years in the future).

If it's just the fact that there is a category on 86 BC bothers you, you can choose the Monobook skin displaying it at the end of the page. It's probably possible to modify it to not display the categories at all, but we would want to add one category or the other anyways. -- User:Docu

I just used that as an example because it was on my watchlist. I don't understand the point of one-article categories, especially when there is, for most of them, no real prospect of there ever being more than one. I would say there should be no cut-off; it should just be determined on a case by case basis, depending on whether or not Year in ___ articles exist to be categorized. Everyking 21:36, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

With the idea of having a category for every page (including 86 BC which currently fills Special:Uncategorized pages with other years BC), it would be either Category:80s BC or Category:86 BC. Having categories by year prepared in advance, makes it quite easy to add specific articles to the categories. I started with the battles from List of battles 1400 BC-AD 600.-- User:Docu

---

Despite briefly discussing this with Docu and reading this page, I still don't see how it's useful to have category pages for years at all, since they are just duplicating the year pages (and are actually less informative because the year articles can have red links). Adam Bishop 13:21, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure if they are really to be compared. Year categories allow to select articles by year, decade, century. A year page is a summary to be read as is. -- User:Docu

---

So there are all these BC year articles. I was about to propose auto-categorizing them by decade, thusly:

101_BC -> Category:100s_BC

102_BC -> Category:100s_BC

103_BC -> Category:100s_BC

...

110_BC -> Category:110s_BC

111_BC -> Category:110s_BC

112_BC -> Category:110s_BC

...

477_BC -> Category:470s_BC

478_BC -> Category:470s_BC

479_BC -> Category:470s_BC

But should they be put into per-year categories instead? -- Beland 04:08, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If there were just these pages to categorize, it's indeed advisible to place them in categories by decade.

Since these categories are also used for other events (see the template for these categories: Template:Yearcat), I think it's preferable to use categories by year. They are easier to add to other events.

As Scudlee pointed out above (Category_talk:Years#Years_40_to_1788), a cut off at a given year --uncorrelated with the pages by year-- would be arbitrary. Year pages currently go back to the year 500 BC following the dicussion at Wikipedia_talk:Timeline_standards#Year_articles_before_CE.-- User:Docu

RFC on my activities in year categories

I have an issue concerning the categorization of year-related pages in Category:2004, Category:2003, etc. Over the past few days, I've been changing the way pages are listed (sorted) in those categories. Could interested parties please check out the categories above and, say, Category:2000 & Category:2001, which I have not changed, and let me know which format (or which aspects of each format) they prefer? The differences, I think, will be obvious, but you can check out my recent contributions to see exactly what I've been doing. See also my remarks at User talk:D6#Better sorting for year categories and User:Docu's responses. What do you think? Please comment on my talk page or here, as I don't wish to unfairly flood Docu's talk page with comments he didn't ask for. Thanks. - dcljr 23:23, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OBTW, I should point out that this is not a request for comment in the dispute-resolution sense. I don't have a problem with User:Docu, I just want to know what direction, if any, I should take my efforts on the year Category pages. - dcljr 23:45, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• On balance I prefer the order used in Category:2004. The first time I saw it I thought it looked a little odd, because the articles did not immediately seem to be listed in order. However, once I had compared it with Category:2000, I preferred the newer format. The category does look better when the articles are not listed under multiple headings each starting with '2'. Changing the order of the articles seems to work particular well for the 'in' articles (eg. 2004 in music) which under the original format all got grouped together, rather than been sorted nicely. MarkS 22:12, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Discussion of year category pages

The following discussion took place at Village pump (policy). - dcljr 21:10, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Earlier this month I went through Category:2004, Category:2003 and Category:2002, and added sort keys to the category references in the articles and subcategory pages so they would be sorted (more or less) by topic on the Category:YYYY pages. Contrast the results on Category:2004 (which, as I type this, looks pretty much as I left it -- except for all those List of..." articles) with, say, Category:2001 (which I haven't changed). Which version do you prefer? See also the discussion on Category talk:Years. - dcljr 22:49, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Merely from a quick eyeball of Category:2004 and Category:2001, I would say that your version is indisputably better. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)
• Seconded. Keep doing that. You might want to add a sentance or two to Wikipedia:Categorization or some such, so other people can find out to do this also. JesseW 02:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. - dcljr 21:46, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fundamental?

Is this category really fundamental? Surely it belongs under something else? It's already under Category:History by period. Brianjd

This has been fixed. Brianjd

Decade Subcategories?

The way it is now, each century from the 17th century BC to around the 6th century has a subcategory for each decade, with only 1 article in each decade subcategory. For example, in the 12th Century category, you can click on 1160s BC, and there'll be an article entitled 1160s BC. Is this really neccesary? Wouldn't it be better to just have a list of decade articles in each of these sparse early centuries?-LtNOWIS 03:40, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I'm nominating a bunch of early-year categories for deletion on today's WP:CFD page. -- Beland 08:13, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

How many years per article?

I think it would be a useful tool, if a given year category would list not only events that happened (and ended) in this year, but events that a) started in that year and ended afterwads b) events that started before, carried through this year and ended later b) events that started earlier but ended this year. But how to implement it? Consider the question below: --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 02:21, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

If an article is describing an event that went on for more years (for example, the Second World War), should we:

• a) assing the article to the category of the year the event started (1939) (this is what I have been doing so far, but I am not that content with this)
• b) assign the article to the several year categories, for all the years it took place in (1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945) - that's good for short events (2-3 years), but what for 9 years? Or 19 or 99?
• c) create a specific category like 1939-1945 (this is a possible solution)
• d) what about events lasting through a decade (or century?)
• e) and of course, why years? What about spacific day to day events/categories?

-- User:Piotrus

Personally, I'd place the articles into Category:World War II. That category is currently in Category:1940s which seems fine to me. Personally, I'd place Category:World War II also into Category:1930s, but I'd avoid placing the same article into more than one year category (possibly 2 or 3, but certainly not 7 categories). If it spans through parts of the decade or century, place it into the category for that. -- User:Docu

Future Japanese dates

Please help resolve the issue raised in Talk:Heisei#Future Japanese dates. `'mikka (t) 15:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

A new concept for the display of time-related Wikipedia information

I have been working on an intuitive display of decade, century and millennia information. It will be presented to the International Technology, Education and Development Conference in Valencia (Spain) on 7-9 March. Here is the gist of it:

Today’s global world is experiencing the interaction between civilizations more than ever before. But the study of history and civilizations is still largely focused on one civilization at a time and does not encourage a time-synchronous view. This is obviously necessary for any in-depth study, but it narrows the viewing field by blanking out what happened in other parts of the world at the same time.

‘Civilizations of the World’ is a web-based application developed to overcome this limitation of histo¬rical study. It presents a time synchronous view of different civilizations that existed since 3000 B.C. It shows the events that occurred and the prominent people who lived different civilizations on a common timeline. The user interface we designed is user friendly and organized in a way that all important information is typically just a ‘click’ away from the client’s location. The application is available on a portable media such as DVD and can be run effectively on any commonly used computer equipped with either Internet Explorer or Mozilla browser and at least 512 Mb of RAM.

The entire package (database, maintenance mode and runtime mode) is supplied as a stand-alone DVD and can thus be used without connection to the internet. By copying the DVD content to their computer users can personalize their copy of the Time Atlas by adding new entries, deleting unwanted entries and modifying entries to their requirements. Alternatively, the Time Atlas can be opened up for data entry by anyone. This will require installation of the Time Atlas and its maintenance facilities on the web. The authors intend to approach the Wikipedia team with a proposal to use the new Time Atlas as a display tool for Wikipedia’s vast amount of information.

The full short paper is available from http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/civilizationspaper.pdf for download. Please glance through it and see what it's worth. If there is enough support for the concept I'll try and get a group up to see it implemented. Matthias Tomczak 12:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Categorization update

Please see my proposal in Wikipedia talk:Timeline standards#Categorization and sort keys. I think this is a better standarization than we have previously, even though it contradicts both the proposals above and the actuality. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

"Does anybody really know what time it is — does anybody really care …".

Apparently not. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)