Talk:1850

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I have made some year layout proposals which would NOT affect this page: it is already conform.

If no-one flags where I have put the discussion on my talk page that they object in a month I will start making everything consistent. It may take some time... --BozMo 19:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)(talk)

Contents 1 Format 2 Images 3 Julian slower 4 Hacked format

[edit] Format

30-December-2006 (updated 25Jan07): As of January 2007, each year has a different format, as people add events or special subhead categories: "World population" or "Ship events" and such. For example, year '1778' had 12 month-name subheads parallel to the "Events" subhead (which had un-dated events with no months). In the 1800s, Events have been divided into 4 quarters as subheaders: January-March, April-June, etc. For the 1700s, I subdivided Events by six-month periods: January-June, July-December, and Undated (same as 1650). It seems that unless month names are identified in subheaders, the un-dated events get added into scattered locations. For the years 1800-1879, I have used a typical series of edits, to shorten the Table of Contents and allow space for putting images in the Events section:

- at top, used "X" template: {{C19YearInTopicX}} (in 16xx, use "C17YearInTopicX");

- in the lede intro, put "Year 18xx" to avoid starting a sentence with a numeral;

- put Roman numeral after year (1847 = "MDCCCXLVII");

- put "link will display the full calendar" (had been "see link for calendar");

- split Events as 5 groups (quarters+Undated): January-March, April-June, ... & Undated;

- put other-calendars box "{{Year in other calendars}}" into the Births section;

- split Births 3 ways: January-June, July-December + "Unknown dates";

- split Deaths 3 ways: January-June, July-December + "Unknown dates";

- if no entries under "Unknown dates" put placeholder " * (none)" for now;

- used a break-line ("{{-}}") to separate subhead sections after images.

The above edits will generate a short Table-of-Contents (TOC) so that the text of the article can be seen shortly afterwards (some users have feared a larger TOC, listing 12-36 months, that pushed text too far down).

Editing has been by hand because various year-articles had sporadic groupings of months (such as "May-October") when grouping under Events, Births or Deaths (expect a hodge-podge of prior groupings).

The yearly articles have been undergoing various reformats since 2004 (a huge amount of editing). As with many Wiki articles, the format evolves, and multiple people must edit to maintain all 5 aspects: new facts, accurate facts, images, Wiki-format, and some consistency with related articles. It is too difficult to expect each person will master all 5 jobs, across the thousands of yearly articles. -Wikid77 20:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

NOTE (for text spacing): Prior to December 2006, for the year articles 1800-1999, the top navigation boxes had crowded the text: daily events had been listed (in many years) with only 5 words per line, due to crowding of text by navigation boxes. Now, the edits listed above should allow over 11 words per line for entries in the "Events" section (on 800x600 PC screens). Also, careful placement of the navigation boxes has allowed space for small thumbnail images to be mixed beside the Events text, to help illustrate events. Thumbnail images can be added without crowding the text. -Wikid77 05:09, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

30-December-2006: Prior to December 2006, many years didn't have event images. For the 420 yearly articles in "1500-1799" and "1880-1999", I have been able to add images beside the corresponding text under Events, but that required opening space, along the righthand-side, by moving the "Year-in-other-calendars" to the Births section (which is where it "appeared" to be in most years with few events, by automatic formatting). The new images now are near the corresponding Events text. I also had to separate some sections by adding a break-line template:

{{-}}<!-- reset to left margin, for future images above -->

The break-line pushes the next subheader down, below any future Events images added above it. Images have been added in a similar manner to the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1880s-1890s, 1900s-1980s, etc. Among those 400+ years, the various articles, originally, each had slightly different month-name groups and formats; a few articles had one large image, placed wherever it would fit. -Wikid77 01:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Julian slower

16-Feb-2007 (revised 23Mar07): Many of the yearly articles from 1583-1899 have had the wrong weekday starting for the Julian calendar, which started as a "10-day slower" calendar, then lost a day each century, while other nations hadn't converted to the Gregorian calendar (such as Russia until 1919):

- in the 1600s, use "10-day slower" - in the 1700s, use "11-day"

- in the 1800s, use "12-day slower" - in the 1900s, use "13-day"

When a Julian year is 10-days slower, the weekday is 4 days behind (14 - 10), or 3 days ahead (7-4 = 3), of the Gregorian weekday, until a Julian leapday in 1700, 1800, or 1900 shifts an extra weekday. The Gregorian 1582 ended on Friday, while the Julian 1582 ended on Monday (3 weekdays ahead).

It is helpful to maintain day-shift rulers (Gregorian-to-Julian):

10-day: Monday-Thu, Tue-Fri, Wed-Sat, Thu-Sun, Fri-Mon, Sat-Tue, Sun-Wed.

10-day: (3-weekday ahead)

11-day: Monday-Fri, Tue-Sat, Wed-Sun, Thu-Mon, Fri-Tue, Sat-Wed, Sun-Thu.

11-day: (4-weekday ahead)

12-day: Monday-Sat, Tue-Sun, Wed-Mon, Thu-Tue, Fri-Wed, Sat-Thu, Sun-Fri.

12-day: (5-weekday ahead)

Because Russia avoided converting until 1919, the Julian calendar is notable well into the 20th century. -Wikid77 12:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hacked format

16-Feb-2007: The Wikipedia concept was warned, years ago, of the natural tendency toward rampant vandalism and hacking of articles, which advised that article-content should be controlled in some manner to avoid trashing thousands of hours of work. Indeed, within weeks of reformatting over 300 yearly articles (according to the repeated steps listed in "Talk:1550#Format"), various other users began hacking sporadic articles into ad hoc formats, returning to the days where each year has a slightly different format from other years.

In general, as is the case in user-defined webpage-content, articles should evolve into semi-controlled sections, where only some parts of a page could be changed by random users, and protected sections would enforce standard formats and ensure that critical information is not vandalized or hacked. For example, for all years in one century, a standard format could be locked into all articles, but users might opt to expand information freely in related articles tied to "see-also" links.

Be not deceived, the problem is critical: in the "Hurricane Katrina" article, watched by dozens of people, the Mississippi landfall time (carefully recorded from footnote sources) got botched by several hours during a flurry of edits, and the mistake lasted for over 11 days, even though hundreds of people had edited the article. A controlled section for a hurricane article could lock-down the eye-path, wind-speed, and landfall details against tampering, while allowing a flurry of edits in other sections not critical to understanding the basic facts of Who, what, when, where, why, and how for an article. There are too many other subjects needing expanded articles, to expect editors to continually monitor older articles for sporadically botched key facts. -Wikid77 06:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)