Talk:2000

Lead unsubstantiated by DWU

Lead says:

The year 2000, although the focus of celebration of the new millennium, was in fact the last year of the second millenium.

But isn't this directly contradicted by Doctor Who (1996)? I mean, I know it's "correct" (albeit finicky) in the real world to make this statement. I understand the Gregorian calendar argument, there being no year 0 and all. But this is a regular, in-universe article, where the definitive source is a DWU one. And the TVM does point out 2000 is a new millennium. The newscasters explicitly identify it as the millennium in the report about freak weather conditions. More conclusively, Professor Wagg, a global expert on time, says, "Ladies and Gentlemen, in three minutes, the world will enter a new millennium." If anyone in the DWU is gonna be anal about time, surely it's this dude.

That's probably enough to establish how the DWU keeps time. But if you need more, let's go to the secondary source. Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film is rife with references, such as "here he was, three days of the millennium celebrations", "The Opera House had been built just one year earlier to commemorate the forthcoming millennium", "The new millennium was going to be just wonderful", and even a bit that's not contradicted by the film where the Doctor directly says, "Half an hour until the millennium."

So I directly challenge the lead of this article as incorrect. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 06:30, April 2, 2010 (UTC)

To make it worse, from the back cover you can tell the Sixth Doctor does indeed support this view. (Millennial Rites) If we take stories absolutely on their word, will articles like gravity end up looking satirical like TFWiki's articles (see hard hats)? --Nyktimos 21:54, April 2, 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're advocating here. Are you saying we shouldn't report the DWU "facts" as they're given to us in stories? I know that in Millennial Rites, the Sixth Doctor does mention the whole Gregorian dating thing, but that's done as an contradistinction to the larger beliefs that everyone else possesses:

"Although, as a Time Lord, I should point out that the end of this particular Millennium actually takes place at midnight on 31 December next year."

Obviously that sentence means that everyone else he's talking to have said it ends that day, 31 December 1999. So, as I see it, we've got the Eighth Doctor, one of Earth's foremost experts on time, news reports, and virtually everyone's common understanding — versus the obviously pedantic Sixth Doctor uttering a weary line he knows is going to fall on deaf ears. Practically speaking, the DWU, just like the majority of Earth's residents, does believe in a calendar with a year zero. I mean this basically comes down to a contest between a televised story, its novelisation, and Craig Hinton's view of the Sixth Doctor. I think the TVM "wins", and the Sixth Doctor's comments are a footnote. In any case, the lead is far too confident. It's not like it's wrong to believe in a year 0; astronomical year numbering (which is much more logically what the Doctor would use), Buddhist and Hindu calendars all have year 0s. And it makes more sense to believe in a year 0 anyway, because then that would make it correct to call 1990 the beginning of the 1990s. I mean, if you want to continue the pedantry, the consequence of the year 1 calendar is that the beginning of the 1990s is actually 1991. So we can't have it both ways on this site. Either we go with a year 0 calendar (supported by the vast majority of characters in DWU sources), or we go with year 1, as this article suggests, and change every single decade and century page to begin on a year that ends in 1. Which is ridiculous. Practically speaking, we do use a year 0 calendar, just like the DWU.

Think about it. A year 0 calendar implies that the Doctor actually believes there's cause to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Why would he do that? He's a Time Lord. And, according to The Satan Pit, he doesn't. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:18, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

I had believed that you were arguing from the position that nothing had been said to establish correct millennium divisions and the absolute lack of a year 0 in the Anno Domini / Common Era. Instead you tell me that the Doctor does indeed point out that if you are celebrating 2000 years passing because it sounds nice, you probably don't want to choose a date 2000 years since the end of 2 BC or -0001, supposing that we change all our dates to astronomical. The argument about Christianity doesn't hold water because any decent grasp of Roman history wouldn't put the birth of Jesus of Nazareth on 1 BC or AD. Speculating about his views based on historical figures (celebrities to a time traveller) the Doctor feels he has to note, what would Mao Tse-Tung indicate? Since the whole year system is arranged around one person's "incarnation" and is largely inescapable, why should the arbitrary use of some variation be an indication of religious feeling? It would be like saying the Doctor said it is Woden's-day instead of Wednesday, therefore we can conclude he doesn't worship the god Woden.

I don't feel my position is impractical. The 1st century is the 100 years that go from 1-100, where 1 is the first year and 100 is the 100th. The 16th century ends in the year that is a century times 16. Treatment of decades should be exactly as done on Wikipedia, if you were to note the template on Wikipedia:2000, because 1970s follows the rationale of all years 197x not the years of the 198th decade (10[d-1]+1 through 10d). Please note that Category:Years was not started by me but every every one of those years by century categories was and so all already have the definition that nth century years are 100(n-1)+1 through 100n. I was manually filling them so this was also more helpful in preventing misfiling. Stories by decade was already established and therefore could be made use of when I was doing this but decade categories were made but only filled with 1 or 2 pages each. Since individual story by year categories exist the only change left would be to place every year 100 along with the stories by decade in the appropriate story by century category. So yes, I have considered all this before.

--Nyktimos 10:49, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, this has nothing to do with Wikipedia. And perhaps I gave you a rabbit hole to run into by daring to introduce religion. The question here is very simple and you're not really answering it. We're not talking about an argument of real world facts. This is an in-universe article. The vast majority of in-universe sources would not agree with your lead. So why should we keep it? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 11:16, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

Rabbit hole?! I don't care about the religious argument. You brought it up repeatedly and I felt obligated to respond. Otherwise, I felt you would have kept dragging it out, over and over again.

My argument about decades had nothing to do with Wikipedia, either. I mentioned Wikipedia because they use two systems with contradictory rationales together. I explained the two because you thought it was either or. --Nyktimos 02:35, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

Okay. How would you re-write the lead, taking into account the fact that everyone in the TVM (including the Eighth Doctor, if we're to believe the novelisation), and everyone in Millennial Rites (except for a frankly unconvincing and unconvinced Sixth Doctor) believes and directly states that the millennium starts on 1 January 2000? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:03, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

Well, how would you feel about this?

The year ‘’’2000’’’ marked the end of one millennium and the beginning of a new one, alternately defined as starting at the beginning or at the end of the year. Public celebrations were held at the beginning, defining it as the start of the millennium from 2000-2999 or the 2000s, a term which could also mean the century from 2000-2099 and the decade from 2000-2009. This definition was also used in the fields of science and technology where the use of a year 0 was necessary for precise calculation. Conventional dating, which referred to the year 0 as 1 BC / BCE, defined the end of the year 2000 AD / CE as the end of the 200th decade, the 20th century, and the 2nd millennium.

Conventional dating truly is different, even if the year 1 is still 1 and 2000 is still 2000. Negative astronomical / ISO 8601 years and BC / BCE years are different due to the presence or absence of a year 0. As an example, the year specifically identified as 1366 BCE in Set Piece is the same as -1365. Accurate dating means using one system or the other. There is evidence of two systems in-universe but is there evidence of a hybrid?

--Nyktimos 00:20, April 17, 2010 (UTC)

Well I still think that's very out-of-universe. You haven't referenced a single story there. How would you feel about this:

The year 2000 was — as evidenced by statements by American news outlets and world-renowned chronologist, Professor Wagg — the start of the 3rd millennium. (TV: Doctor Who) This view was shared by at least one incarnation of the Doctor. (PROSE: Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film) Despite the predeliction of most Humans to celebrate it as the beginning of the millennium, however, at least one other incarnation of the Doctor regarded it as the final year of the 2nd millennium. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:29, April 18, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to not wait for your reply, but the mass emplacement of timeline templates has meant the lead is now at variance with the categories and templates the page is using. Need to go ahead and move this lead to the page. I'm happy to keep discussing this subject, but for the moment, gotta make everything match. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:47, April 23, 2010 (UTC)