Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years

Chinese dating (WP:BIAS/WP:UNDUE)

This has been briefly and unclearly mentioned before but the current treatment of Chinese dating in our year by year infoboxes is nearly entirely mistaken. Yes, the sexagenary cycle is real and important to mention.

A. No, Yellow Emperor dates aren't really a thing, the way they're being presented.

I mean, sure, they're a thing in the exact same way AUC dates are. They're a fad some people went through in the 19th & 20th century, largely based on the mistaken idea that other important people had used them. The Romans actually almost entirely used eponymous consular dating. The Chinese actually entirely (except for that fad still somewhat upheld on almanac-style Chinese lunisolar calendars) used imperial era names.

It's a more valid notable system than the Discordian calendar we keep as lagniappe from Wiki's fun early days, sure, but it's entirely WP:UNDUE to treat it as the Chinese year now and just a WP:LIE to treat it as the Chinese year in any historical context. It's fine to keep but it absolutely needs to be labeled (YE, AH, AHD, whatever) to clarify what it is, which isn't the "Chinese calendar year".

B. No, we don't need to include two Yellow Emperor dates.

There's a list of different epochs on our Chinese calendar page. No, the other ones aren't as notable (especially in English) as YE dating and don't need to be included in the infobox. However, absolutely none of them involve a computation that even remotely produces an equivalent year 4514/4515 for AD 2024.

The same section of the same page includes what I think the second "Chinese year" in the infobox is trying to do: In 1905, the Jiangsu provincial government used a system that would've made 2024 the year 4514/4515 if anyone still used their system. Per cursory Googling in English, we're the only ones who seem to and we should just stop. Unless the second system is actually still prominently used (which the article should be changed to discuss), no, it isn't important to cover variant YE dates any more than all the variant AUC dates or Marianus Scotus's variant AD computation that was popular for a while in the 12th century.

C. Yes, we absolutely need to include the era dates.

Like the Greek and Romans, actual Chinese dating was based on regnal eras. Years in some periods like the Northern and Southern Dynasties had more than one era name and both should be included. Years were double counted as the last year of a dying emperor's reign and the first year of his successor's; both should be included. Reigns before the Han dynasty without formal era names should just list the regnal names (or conventional regency name) standard in Chinese historiography at least as far back as the Eastern Zhou. We could simply omit less certain regnal years before that or include conventional dates from a single system along the same lines as the calculation of the Yellow Emperor's reign in the first place; we don't seem to include footnotes on questionable eras for the other sections but could for those if people felt strongly about it.

In any case, there's at least 2000-odd years of an established dating system being used by roughly a fourth of humanity that we aren't mentioning or even vaguely hinting at. We should fix that.

D. Eh, the "Minguo calendar" is simply the continuation of the exact same system,

switched over to Gregorian months and years. I get why you might not want to include it in the "Chinese year" section after 1949 and why that means not including it before 1949 either. Fact remains that it's literally the exact same system, using the people's government as the new eternal era name. Similarly, as far as our article on the Republic of China calendar knows, it isn't used for dates before 1912. Our template currently (mis)uses it for ~3000 years before 1912, at least as far back as 719 BC. It's possible some people have used it that way, which should be added to our article. It's certainly uncommon and the infobox shouldn't be using it for any of those earlier years at all, just like we don't have a Juche calendar date for 1900.

E. No, we shouldn't have a separate name for the ROC era.

The Minguo era page might very well be in the wrong place. The discussion for its move from Minguo calendar to Republic of China calendar was very short and apparently based on misreliance on misplacement of the Juche calendar page to "North Korean calendar". Whichever is right, though, our infobox and the page should be using the same name for the same epoch.

 — LlywelynII 22:14, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

• This is a wide-ranging RfC so forgive me if I have not addressed , but on C/D the backdating of the ROC/Minguo calendar does look really strange. That dating system shouldn't be on pre-1912 years, and it would be sensible to treat it as a continuation of dynastic eras prior to that date. CMD (talk) 01:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't have time for a full reply right now (on lunch) but I fully agree with C, B, and A. The periods of disunity will be a bit tricky with regnal periods, but we should do what we can to be inclusive.

I did want to call out that for the period prior to the Eastern Zhou, we don't have many, if any, reliably established dates, except maybe for Zhou Wu Wang and Zhou Mu Wang. Archaeology still hasn't quite caught up, but I am aware that disvoveries in the '00s caused the state-sponsored XSZ chronology project to disband without ever releasing a final report, since some of their main dating theories had been falsified by new evidence. I'm also not sure of the current scholarly consensus of the Nivison–Shaughnessy "double yuan hypothesis", which affects the Western Zhou.

Anyway the early chronology is still not secure. Folly Mox (talk) 17:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Well no one else seems super interested in this conversation, but I think the way forward probably involves the following:

• Figure out how to display multiple regnal periods for single monarchs and for multiple claimants that coincide during a single calendar year
• Change the ROC calendar field to display
  • named regnal periods from Han Wudi through Minguo, which can be treated like any other regnal period, as it is in Chinese texts
  • ruler name and year for Qin Shihuang through Han Jingdi (nine monarchs)
  • Zhou mandate calendar for the period prior
• Remove the "Yellow Emperor" years entirely, leaving just the ganzhi terms? Or we could leave them in for years before the mandate calendar?

This seems like it best reflects premodern usage in China. What do people think? Folly Mox (talk) 10:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Significant Lifeforms

A new editor (@Legendarycool:) has started making mass changes to per-year articles to include the heading "Significant Lifeforms" rather than "People" (or the existing "Births" and "Deaths") - Special:Diff/1231376669 for example. Is there support for this change? Walsh90210 (talk) 23:53, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I have done it to try and standardise it and I have not removed births and deaths in fact added them to make it easier for future editors. Legendarycool (talk) 23:56, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

There was no intention of malice and if need be I will revert all of them myself if it is decided that it is not the best option. Legendarycool (talk) 23:59, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I think a good solution would be to do away with “significant X/Y” and just use “Births” and Deaths”, doing this would be difficult as these have been mixed together in the “significant X/Y” category or heading but I think this idea that you mentioned of using the more informative “Births” and “Deaths” headings. Legendarycool (talk) 06:54, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Revert I support changing it back to how it was. House1090 (talk) 05:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

What about my proposal for just using births and deaths and removing significant people of lifeforms as to standardise. Legendarycool (talk) 07:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

importance

Should we remove the "Importance" parameter from Template:WPYEARS? What makes a year low importance or high importance or something like that? 48JCL 15:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Separating elections into their own sections

This is especially the case for the current year, and given that there are so many elections in many years, I think it's only appropriate that elections are moved into a separate section. I believe that their importance is diluted when they are thrown into the general events timeline, and a separate section would provide generally better organization for readers. We already do this on the US articles to highlight every US election in a single place while hatnoting the relevant general election article for further elaboration (such as 2023 United States elections). While for the globe it doesn't have to carbon copy the exact formatting, the principle itself should at least be implemented. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 18:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Formal deprecation of arguments to exclude entries based on Americentrism

We have been having this problem for the past two years and after multiple RFC's, and we still see exclusions of events and content due to "Americentrism" in places as recent as this year. Inherently, this contrasts with DUE. Too many times are editors removing or advocating for the removal of entries since they only affect the United States. In effect, this isn't following the DUE weight policy. This is outright anti-Americanism, and an attempt to bring back the old International Notability standard (INS), which has been proven as not in place at least thrice before on 2022, was the center of an ANI discussion which got INS heavily scrutinized and the primary instigator of INS TBanned, became formally deprecated via RFC last year, and was one of the primary areas of concern which led to editors being investigated and eventually confirmed as sockupuppets for the TBanned user.

I think the multiple discussions in the past have proven enough that INS's time is officially up; its attempted implementation is only taking the new form of "Exclude due to Americentrism". I propose that the exclusion of events due to Americentrism be formally deprecated and invalidated as an argument when it comes to "main year articles" such as 2024. If successful, I believe it necessary to link this discussion to the headers of all main year article talk pages. Given the nature of the most frequent contributors, I personally predict this will go to RFC eventually, though procedurally I think it is best to start here.

Pinging recent contributors to WPYEARS articles: @Yeoutie @JohnAdams1800 @ElegantEgotist @Alsoriano97 @Wjfox2005 (and I invite you to ping anybody else who you would believe be of particular value to the discussion.) InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 20:42, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I fully support your efforts. Wjfox2005 (talk) 21:45, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

So you are saying "This thing is too minor to include" is valid, but "This thing only affected the US, so it shouldn't be included" isn't? Hmm. I suspect that a lot of the arguments are more nuanced, along the lines of "This only affected the US and was not major and therefore should not be included." Would you want such arguments excluded? Perhaps you should give us some examples of what you think is valid and invalid? Brianyoumans (talk) 21:53, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Broadly agree. But it doesn't need to be "deprecated", we just need to enforce existing policy. None of this would be an issue if the people in this topic area (and current events more broadly) put more effort into actually making helpful contributions based on reliable sources. Also, this WikiProject doesn't have any "authority" over any articles, which again goes back to applying sitewide consensus—a consensus that rejects the POV-pushing/OR that you're describing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:06, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Everything InvadingInvader says makes sense within his logic, but a few things need to be made clear.

First of all, it should be made clear that my position is not anti-American, but anti-country-centrism. I don't care if it is the USA, Spain, India or Fiji, if I see that there is an abuse of the inclusion of news from a country I will question its notoriety from the first moment.

Secondly, and we must be well positioned. The United States is undoubtedly one of the most powerful countries in the world and historically one of the most influential in the daily life of, at least, the West. But this has not been achieved without a propaganda machine that since WW2 wanted to promote the values of American society in a world that, according to them, was savage. For this reason, the press since then is able to report on any trifle that happens in that country, be it silly or irrelevant: you will have a news item in Cyprus in which they talk about Biden's fall on a bicycle and another in Namibia in which they will talk about the fly that got on Mike Pence's head. And no, not because of that, as you will understand, it implies international notoriety.

That is why it is more important than it seems that, among the active editors, there are jurists, scientists, political scientists or simple experts in certain subjects that help us to evaluate in a more encyclopedic and less journalistic way the events that we want to include in Wikipedia. And that is why it is also important that editors from other countries around the world participate. Because, let's not forget, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a news journal.

The criterion of international notability should never have fallen. _-_Alsor (talk) 09:47, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia summarizes things as they appear in reliable sources. If you feel that the sources are biased, then that's something you're going to have to work out yourself. Ideally, we'd try to avoid using journalism to determine relevance anywhere on Wikipedia, as I've previously written. But I've long since accepted that we just have to let the "current events" editors scramble and argue for a while. Then after a year or so, more capable editors can go through and fix the mess they made with higher quality sources, removing the cruft when much of what they argued about ended up being irrelevant. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:14, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

• It is also true that this is the *English* Wikipedia. While it tries to include relevant information worldwide, I don't think it is necessarily bad if it includes more complete coverage of matters in America, the largest country of native English speakers, and other major English speaking nations. After all, the sources available in English for such matters are quite plentiful.

As far as tone or slant, we should always strive for an encyclopedaic, neutral tone, but we are also limited to what our sources say. Brianyoumans (talk) 00:39, 28 July 2024 (UTC)