Forum:20th/21st century individuals

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I'd like to get a ruling on a silly question. I'm wondering how best to apply Category:20th century individuals and Category:21st century individuals to people from the present day. For example, we've seen Sarah Jane Smith and Amy Pond living in both centuries on-screen, so they'd qualify for both categories. However, other individuals might qualify by sheer arithmetic. Should every 21st century individual from 2010 who is more than nine years old also be categorised a 20th century individual? Or should we keep things simple by limiting the categories to only the known data, by only using years actually portrayed on-screen? Rob T Firefly 18:00, May 11, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I have to admit to not being that concerned about this issue. Or perhaps I mean that consistent. If there's strong evidence of a person being alive across a century mark, I'll place them in both centuries. If there's not, I'll go for the century in which they're most likely alive, based upon in-universe evidence. On the whole, though, I don't particularly find these categories very useful, so it doesn't much matter to me. How many times have you actually gone to one of these categories? For me, the answer is "practically never". Still, I do try to append these categories, out of almost slavish habit. If I was really forced to answer your question directly, though, I'd say that, yes, if a person is obviously of an age that would mean they lived in the previous century, they should be in both categories. But it should be obvious. I remember recently taking down the 19th century individuals cat from someone in Victory of the Daleks, because it was by no means certain that the individual would have been 42 years old at the time of Victory. But should (most) of the kids in Human Nature be considered 19th century people? I think so, but no one is really going to comb through these categories to weed out the "possibles" from the "definites". Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if categories get so large as to require clicking through multiple pages just to get through the alphabet, that category is too large to be useful. And Category:20th century individuals is certainly a massive cat like that. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:47, May 12, 2010 (UTC)

Using known data would make the most logical sense (using only in-universe data that is).

So we couldn't classify any of the kids in Human Nature to be 19th century individuals, as we don't have definite proof of that, we have inferred proof by way of logical extrapolation based on their age and the year in which they appear. But I'm just wondering if that's a too narrow perspective?

Just to throw an idea out there (as I do) would it be of use to have '1990s individuals' all the way back to '1900s individuals' as sub-categories of 20th century individuals or would that be making a category more complicated than it needs to be? --Tangerineduel 15:16, May 14, 2010 (UTC)

It could be useful and interesting to group people by decade, but UNIT dating might make that a bit of a headache. Rob T Firefly 17:26, May 14, 2010 (UTC)

That was the one thing I was thinking (obviously I thought of this after I hit 'save page'). Though now I give it more thought, it's probably not a good idea, we'd have people like the Brigadier, Benton, Jo, Sarah in 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s at least. --Tangerineduel 12:55, May 15, 2010 (UTC)