Wikipedia:Plus-one
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
 This not-policy in a nutshell: |
| Keep speculation down to the current incarnation of an event, plus the next one. |
Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. By definition, it is impossible for us to know what will happen in the future. We cannot report on what has yet to happen. What we can do is keep a record of what other people think is going to happen. This becomes very much easier as events approach us, and more and more reliable sources start reporting the information, which we can then record. Thus, it makes sense to restrict this to perhaps the current event, plus one.
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[edit] Examples
[edit] United States elections
We know that there will be an election in 2008. We know that the position of President will be up for election. We know that (pending a change in the US Constitution) George W. Bush is term-limited, and will not be able to run. Thus, there has already been a lot of speculation in the media in the US as to who may or may not be running on both sides. So, while we don't know that Hillary Clinton will be running, lots of other sources have speculated that she might take up the challenge, so it would be appropriate for us to record the fact that others have speculated that she might run.
On the other hand, nobody knows what will happen come the same elections in 2012 or 2016. Hence, we have some coverage of the status quo, plus one future election.
[edit] Olympic Games
The schedule for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing is in planning. Some of the venues are complete, and work on completing the rest is well under way. We know that the 2012 Games will be in London, and a good deal of the transport infrastructure work is done (including the Jubilee Line extension, improvements to Stratford station, and a large part of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Budget concerns are already surfacing, and Tessa Jowell's head has been placed above the parapet several times already.
The IOC is expected to decide the venue of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in July 2007. We're already down to the final stages, and there are three candidate cities. But that's about as far as we know. Beyond that, we're speculating on who is bidding, or even who might be bidding. Speculation on the bidding isn't really widely reported besides the possibilities for 2016, given the bids will not be presented until the time of the 2008 Games in Beijing. We also can't really say anything useful about 2018, 2020, 2022, etc. (WP:NOT uses 2032 as one of its case studies).
So, we should keep it to the Summer Games approaching, plus one each way thereafter.
[edit] What to do
For information about specific events, e.g. 2014 FIFA World Cup, it makes sense to simply redirect to the page for that event (in this case, FIFA World Cup). Where there isn't a sensible target, e.g. 2015 in stamp collecting, then the best course of action might be deletion. In all cases, we should do least harm, and there comes a point at which keeping information in the form and location in which it exists has the potential to do harm.
Ideally, categories should not be left hanging around, as they may act as a magnet for those who fail to grasp that Wikipedia:inclusion is not an indicator of notability who decide that because we have an article on the potential 2019 Armistice celebration, that we need to fill up Category:2019 with all manner of other events from the year. We don't. Our templates for future events (including {{future film}}, {{future book}}, et al.) all include a category for future-dated events. Apparently, having large categories causes performance problems, but the answer to this is simple. If there are lots of things at the short end of an "upcoming" category, then it might be worth unfolding them into year categories (e.g. a TV show due to air late next year). If there are lots of things at the long end, then perhaps any performance issues there might be sending us a message that we've got too much speculation.
[edit] Summary
Try to keep pages for major events in the future down to just the status quo plus the next one. "Years in" for things such as films, books, etc. should be kept to a reasonable margin into the future (12-18 months might be reasonable, 3-4 years in most ases may be pushing it). The same applies for categories - just because we have articles on events years into the future does not mean that we need to have year-by-year categories for them containing only two articles. Consider dropping them into future categories with a sort tag, e.g. [[Category:Upcoming films|2010-F]] (or something™).
