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Forum:Years - Separate pages or Century pages: Difference between revisions
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Forum:Years - Separate pages or Century pages (edit)
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:::I'm not sure I'm understanding all that this page is asking, cause it's sorta late, and I'm sorta tired. But to chip in with a technical point, the current {{tl|timeline}} doesn't at all contemplate any other epoch but AD. Since the term "BC" is mentioned in the series, that can be our organiser for those few BC dates we encounter. Everything prior to 1AD can go on a page called [[BC]], as far as I'm concerned. (I've never liked "[[early human history]]" as everything prior to the 13th century, or whatever it is, cause that term and that definition isn't in-universe.) It's not like we have a lot of BC dates anyway. I'm sure I'm missing the actual point of this discussion, but it does need to be pointed out that making pages for [[1000 BC]] poses a technical problem that's honestly not worth the effort to resolve. {{user:CzechOut/Sig}} <span style="{{User:CzechOut/TimeFormat}}">'''08:25:27 Sat '''09 Jul 2011 </span> | :::I'm not sure I'm understanding all that this page is asking, cause it's sorta late, and I'm sorta tired. But to chip in with a technical point, the current {{tl|timeline}} doesn't at all contemplate any other epoch but AD. Since the term "BC" is mentioned in the series, that can be our organiser for those few BC dates we encounter. Everything prior to 1AD can go on a page called [[BC]], as far as I'm concerned. (I've never liked "[[early human history]]" as everything prior to the 13th century, or whatever it is, cause that term and that definition isn't in-universe.) It's not like we have a lot of BC dates anyway. I'm sure I'm missing the actual point of this discussion, but it does need to be pointed out that making pages for [[1000 BC]] poses a technical problem that's honestly not worth the effort to resolve. {{user:CzechOut/Sig}} <span style="{{User:CzechOut/TimeFormat}}">'''08:25:27 Sat '''09 Jul 2011 </span> | ||
==Revived discussion== | |||
Okay, so it's a month late, but it's taken me a while to sift through the rubble of [[:category:Timeline]] and figure out what happened. Now that I've seen the massive destruction, let me just say that: | |||
*Individual AD year pages are perfectly valid, regardless of length, so long as they are actually mentioned in a DWU source. Many year pages have been inappropriately deleted. | |||
*Where BC years are specifically mentioned, the in-universe article should redirect to [[BC]], simply because a) there aren't that many BC years specifically mentioned in DWU fiction and b) it would cause a technical problem with {{tl|timeline}} were we to use "negative" years. (And, again, that technical problem ''could'' be fixed, but I don't think it's worth the effort since the number of BC years is ''just'' a handful.) Since [[BC]] is an in-universe term, it's fine to have this handful of pages going to BC. | |||
*The article [[early human history]] should be destroyed. I've always hated it, because it has no in-universe or commonly-accepted out-of-universe meaning that matches our definition. "Early human history" is '''not'''"everything prior to the 14th century", by anyone's common-sense definition. | |||
I wholly reject [[user:Doug86|Doug86]]'s notion that redlinks are problematic. It follows, then, that I disagree with his drive to reduce redlinks by '''destroying''' perfectly valid pages about years that are unfortunately located in sparsely-populated centuries. For instance, look at what's happened to [[1492]]. It ''used'' to be a page to its own. And it should be, since it's the explicit setting for ''[[The Masque of Mandragora]]''. But now Doug has converted 1492 to a redirect to [[15th century]], which means that a) our page count on the front page (which casual users see as a measure of our "size" or "completeness") has gone down. Redirects don't count in the main-page article stats. Where we used to have 16 pages, we now only have one. But worse, '''we've lost category data'''. Where before [[1492]] would have been in categories like [[:category:15th century years]] — whose members could have been manipulated through advanced coding — we have ''nothing'' anymore. And, now that he's deleted that category, I've lost the ability to create a dynamic list of the categories underneath [[:category:years]]. Whereas before this was a beautiful list with tons of entries, now it's stripped bare: | |||
<dpl> | |||
category=years | |||
namespace=14 | |||
</dpl> | |||
''That's it''. '''On a wiki dedicated to the most famous time travel show ''on the planet'', we appear to only cover the 18th-21st centuries. And for some reason the 26th.''' Wow. The destruction that has been done to our database is . . . staggering. | |||
Because we, luckily, still have [[:category:20th century years]], we can do this: | |||
<dpl> | |||
category=20th century years | |||
columns=10 | |||
</dpl> | |||
. . . but we can't generate a list of years in the 17th cenury, or 15th, or 1st or 23rd. And we ''used'' to have that ability. And, frankly, we need that ability more with the sparsely-populated centuries than the ones that are fully-populated. We can well expect that there's going to be a page on most years of the 19th and 20th centuries, Where we need the software to help us is in generating lists of the years in the 16th. Or the 3rd. ''With'' that ability you can say to the {{tl|timeline}} template, "Okay, I'm at [[1492]]. Show me the 5 pages before this in the category [[:category:15th century years|15th century years]]. Show me the 5 pages after that. And then you won't have redlinks anymore, but just the pages that ''do'' exist. | |||
I'm truly saddened by how much has been destroyed. It's like we've amputated our hand because it got a twinge of pain one morning. Just getting back to where we '''were''' a year ago — not ''improving'' our coverage, but merely getting back to par — we've now got to do a ton of work. And it all makes no sense, to me. We've sacrificed the ability to leverage our information through advanced coding for what, exactly? Just because we don't like ''red-links''? That's . . . not very sensible. | |||
I'll take some of the responsibility for this bloody great cock-up, because I ''did'' promise a year ago that I would alter {{tl|timeline}} to exclude redlinks and I never got around to it. But, honestly, it just '''never''' occurred to me that someone might hate red-links so much that they weould destroy perfectly valid '''blue'''-links to ''hide'' the red-links. Read that sentence again, folks, cause I just can't get my mind around it. Hundreds of blue links were destroyed to hide redlinks on a ''template''. Wow. So if it'll stop the destruction of perfectly valid pages, I'll get to work on "fixing" {{tl|timeline}}. If, on the other hand, there are other objections besides hatred of redlinks, then list them below. | |||
In the meantime, I would ask that no one should delete years that have been specifically mentioned by a DWU source, nor '''create''' pages for years that ''haven't'' been. {{user:CzechOut/Sig}} <span style="{{User:CzechOut/TimeFormat}}">'''06:54:55 Tue '''02 Aug 2011 </span> | |||
