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)