Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Time

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WikiProject Time Discussion Page

Archives

Archive 01 - Nov 2004-Feb 2008

Contents 1 Overview February 2008 1.1 Assessment overview 1.2 Implementation overview 2 Project elements 2.1 Scope and Goals 2.2 Time Portal 2.3 Time help 2.4 Assessments on talk pages 2.5 WikiProject parentage 3 Articles 3.1 Vital and Core articles 4 Useful time zone table? 5 Annum 6 Categories 7 Happy Leap Day 8 AWB Assessment 9 Category:Chinese calendar templates 10 Grammar Girl uses Wikipedia as Source for Other Calendar Systems 11 Time Times 12 Astronomical precision of the current civil calendar 13 Bikrami calendar 14 Old Style and New Style dates 15 Native American calendar 16 Confusions about Chronologies and Timelines 17 Request for comment on merger of Samvat 18 History of timekeeping devices 19 Meridians & Datums

To-do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Time:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do: Expand: Timeline Other: Vital Articles The Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team identified the following articles relating to Time as Vital: "for which Wikipedia should have a corresponding high-quality article, and ideally a featured article." Those marked with this icon: are also considered to be Core articles, "one of the core set of articles every encyclopedia should have." Their quality-scale rating as of February 2008 is listed alongside each: Calendar - B Clock - B Day - B History - B Month - B Second - B Time - B Week - B Year - Start Any help in improving these articles would not only further the efforts of WikiProject Time, but Wikipedia overall.

[edit] Overview February 2008

[edit] Assessment overview

The Assessment Department was launched in January, and is now receiving regular reviews by the WP:1.0 editorial team. More articles and assessments are being added to the Project every day.

I believe this attention is what's behind the recent spike in Participants, which is good to see. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Implementation overview

FrankP wrote here in 2004: "Implementation when we are in a position to formulate and implement an appropriate action plan." (See /Archive 01 for the rest of our founder's overview.)

So far, there have been mostly individual efforts, which is what Wikipedia encourages first. I've left a Collaboration and Review links in the main page's sidebar, for anyone wishing to launch those departments. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Project elements

[edit] Scope and Goals

Main Project Page: I've updated the main page with templates, but I'd like input before changing the main text.

Our Scope plainly includes maintaining the Time Portal. I would like to suggest expanding our Scope to include Help pages about Time, including those I've listed in the sidebar, as these are largely disorganized, especially compared to most of the rest of Wikipedia's help and MoS pages. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Expand our Scope to include Help pages about Time?

• Support — The potential for coordination, alone, would be helpful. It would provide users somewhere to turn with additional questions, and could lead to discovering missing features. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Those pages have nothing to do with the concept of time. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 19:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Our Goals; currently: "To create, expand, and maintain articles related to time. This will specifically include those articles contained within the Category:Time, and generally include any article that discusses time." Fair enough, but I suggest a clearer hierarchy, with the Vital/Core articles being at the top, and perhaps a mention of maintenance. Any thoughts? —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Maintain is the verb form of the noun maintenance, so this is already mentioned. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 19:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I'll add "sleep before writing" to my personal to do list. —Yamara ✉ 20:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time Portal

I've listed the Portal as being the purview of WikiProject Time on various directory pages. While I hope I have made it a useful stop on Wikipedia, its "monthly" features (Selected article/picture/biography and Did you Know?) are still not built in, and are static shells. It's not a major goal of the Project, but if anyone is interested, it's something that would enhance the Portal. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time help

Help:Calendar, currently a very sketchy page of time/date presentations, held WP:TIME as one of several redirects. This seemed unhelpful and counterintuitive, so I directed WP:TIME here to the Project, and put it into the various WikiProject directories. I placed a hatnote on our main page to aid anyone still looking for Help:Calendar (Help:Time was already another of Help:Calendar's redirects.) I also have listed the various Wikipedia feature pages about Time on the main pages of the Project and the Portal, since I had a hard time finding them, and wanted to save other users the same trouble.

I've posted a request above to expand our scope into this meta realm, as these pages are a disorganized mess, which is not what timekeeping is supposed to be about... —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assessments on talk pages

Should we set up a hierarchy for Importance assessments? Few projects do, but we're interdisciplinary (including Religion and Science) and this could circumvent conflicts... or maybe set them off. Or would it be only so much wasted effort at this point? —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I started to do this and I think I have all 25 "Top" importance articles tagged, I will soon start doing the high importance. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 19:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject parentage

Here's a space to discuss what everyone thinks this means regarding WikiProject Time's "descendant" projects. Should these be turned into taskforces or something? —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Articles

[edit] Vital and Core articles

I've featured them on the To-do list above, as they are all major goals of Wikipedia itself. It's good to research lower-importance articles (ie Hourglass) and make improvements here or there, but the primary articles should always be showcased and encouraged towards completion. —Yamara ✉ 17:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Useful time zone table?

Does anyone have any use for this table? I made it, but I don't have any use for it now. - LA @ 07:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It will at least help us locate a few more articles to assess. Thanks! —Yamara ✉ 08:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I will move into your project's space at Wikipedia:WikiProject Time/Time zone table. You can then include it anywhere you wish. Sound good? - LA @ 09:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Annum

Seems to be off the radar here. Talk:Mya (unit) has a discussion about merging a group of rather sloppy articles into Annum. Please weigh in there.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Hi I just started tagging - and realised from doing some tagging for non article and category that there might have been two varieties of category tagging - is anyone around who set up the template? Is there a deliberate separation between the NA and Cat versions of class - or was it an accident? thanks SatuSuro 11:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Leap Day

Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 15:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Happy leap day! --Yamara ✉ 17:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AWB Assessment

I am using the AutoWikiBrowser to tag the articles in sub-categories of Category:Time. These articles have not been assessed unless they were previously assessed in other projects or were categories. I have currently tagged, all the articles in Category:Time itself,Category:Time in astronomy and its sub category, Category:Units of time, Category:Philosophy of time, Category:Timekeeping, Category:Time measurement systems, and Category:Calendars. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 01:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I completed Category:Specific calendars and all sub-cats expect for Category:Chinese calendar templates, see below, and Category:Jewish holy days, Category:Shabbat, and Category:Hebrew years. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 21:05, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Time and fate deities completed. Zginder 2008-04-23T20:39Z (UTC)

[edit] Category:Chinese calendar templates

Should we tag all 4,100+ of these templates? Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 01:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar Girl uses Wikipedia as Source for Other Calendar Systems

[1] links to many calendar articles. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 15:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time Times

Can Some one who knows the template on the right on the project page, add Time Times to the template? Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 21:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. Put it next to the Time Portal. --Yamara ✉ 21:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Astronomical precision of the current civil calendar

The achievement of astronomical precision concerning solar calendars doesn't be attaint as long as the civil calendar doesn't apply the true value of the tropical year. This means: One exceptional not-leaping year every 128 years exactly one, instead of three days during 400 years, i.e. 133⅓ years on average. Thus only this proposal of a New Civil Calendar is astronomically correct. Don't look for groups or associations supporting this calendar, since its creator detests all practices of lobbying, but trusts on its indubitable correctitude.
-- Halloo 007 (talk) 16:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bikrami calendar

I ran across this article via Special:Random and was wondering if it should be improved or merged to Nanakshahi calendar? --Random832 (contribs) 15:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I am no expert, but I do not think they are the same thing. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 20:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, yeah - but they look related. I don't know. --Random832 (contribs) 03:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Old Style and New Style dates

April 21 indicates that Catherine II of Russia was born, but reading the article Catherine II of Russia suggests that this is the old style (Julian) date on which she was born, and that her new style (Gregorian) date of birth is actually May 2. Accordingly, May 2 also lists Catherine II of Russia as being born on that date. To list her (or anyone else for that matter) as being born on both dates without clarification is to mislead anyone who doesn't click through to the article for that individual. Is there some sort of policy for this? 199.91.34.33 (talk) 14:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Native American calendar

Hello Time-keepers,
There is an External link off the Aztec calendar main page leading to an animated Aztec calendar that removes all confusion about how it worked. It depicts clearly the exact mechanics of the Native time-keeping system. I think this finally resolves the riddle of how two calendars worked as one. Also, the "Year Bearer" progression-mechanics is fully accounted for. This looks like a breakthrough.Grae Bear (talk) 05:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

---

[edit] Confusions about Chronologies and Timelines

There was a discussion for the aricle talk:list of timelines#Definition of Timeline about the terms timeline and chronology. I agree that that these terms are used interchangeably in practice. However, I have a problem with the usage of these terms in the wikipedia and the distinction made under Category:Chronology to wit:
This category (Chronology) concerns the chronological classification of events. For individual timelines, see Category:Timelines.
I’m not sure exactly what this distinction means, but the usage of these terms in article titles seems very haphazard. Following are representative examples:

Some artcles under Category:Chronology are entitled:

• Chronology of X - as Chronology of Ancient Near East
• X Chronology – as Egyptian Chronology
• On the other hand, Minoan chronology is not listed as a Category:Chronology or Category:Timeline
• Seemingly comparable chronologies are not listed under Category:Chronology or Category:Timeline
• Timeline of ancient Mesopotamia
• Timeline of Middle Eastern history (This is an orphan covered under no categories).
• The article Chronology of Jesus is found under Category:Chronology and Category:Timeline subcategory Category:Religion timelines. This is an interesting and useful article, but with no offense meant to the authors or anyone else, I don’t see the commonality between this and other articles under Category:Chronology or Category:Timeline.

Under Category:Timeline subcategory Category:Regional timelines I find the title:

• Chronology of Tamil history

In List of timelines there are a number of articles that are not listed under Category:Chronology or Category:Timeline

• Chronology of colonialism
• Timeline of Chinese history

These titles and category assignments make it hard to find articles in a systematic way.Grapeguy (talk) 21:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm an editor attempting to clarify this distinction. Chronology is an article that needs to address the science and history of placing events in time (and it's only shakily on its way). I separated timeline to its own article to emphasize this. In any case, the haphazardness predates my efforts to make a distinction: Thousands of different editors create and maintain timelines.

The problem stems from the fact that none of these are linguistically wrong: a timeline = a chronology in standard English usage.[2] However, chronology as a science is much more encompassing in scope. One problem is there are few people who define themselves solely as "chronologists"-- chronology is a science, but is mostly seen as a toolset of other disciplines to determine when events occur, i.e. history, geology, archaeology. And yet it clearly differs from a presentation of these determinations, specifically a timeline. But terminology has not rigorously asserted this clear difference in English: Since "a chronology" is widely attested to equal "a timeline", it might violate WP:NOR to insist that editors choose one name over another.

Perhaps we need to propose a WP:MOS rule for this? It's a consistency issue that exists primarily because of English.

I close with a simple visual we might turn into a talk page template for timelines:

a timeline = a chronology

but

Chronology is much more than just a timeline.

--Yamara ✉ 14:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment on merger of Samvat

--Redtigerxyz (talk) 13:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of timekeeping devices

Could I have someone from the Time Wikiproject analyze the article for A-class status and to see how close it is to FA status? My impression is that it's pretty close, but I could be wrong. bibliomaniac15 04:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have approved it for A-class. If another WikiProject member can assess it too in the next few day, it would be helpful, before I promote. Zginder 2008-05-20T12:33Z (UTC)

[edit] Meridians & Datums

There's a fair amount of misinformation/confusion on various pages regarding the Prime Meridian, & ITRF Zero Meridian.
It'd be worth a full root through & weeding out. 86.135.51.232 (talk) 15:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)