Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering! I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another name when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it. Mgm

On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but I'm sure there will be "bickering" over the default setting of any UI option we come up with. After all, the default will determine what those who are not logged-in or who have not modified their preferences will see. -Rich [[W:en:User:Rholton]] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: It eventually came down to a US vs UK argument, which is why the MOS says "whatever it is now, leave it kthx." The Arbitration Committee has had to penalise people for edit-warring on the subject. (Wikipedia! No stakes too insanely small for a battle to the death!) - d. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: I am simplifying greatly ;-) - d. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the NPOV policy asks. On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of users supported BC, while the other half did not.

point, NPOV means BCE.

Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be, if he existed when he supposedly did).

violates the _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines - many people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV. The problem with accepting a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating systems. Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias. However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones. So if we allowed a user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old Russian calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous. However, you have a BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of Nazareth. So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting that Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the word). Similarly, if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to Jesus, then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has come to mean God) Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two. On the other hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the requirement of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting that he is the Messiah or God. On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote: the what shouldn't _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

(sorry for once again diving into this debate) And I'm one of those non-Christians who feels that BC/AD is more appropriate. We use BC/AD in normal conversation. This is one of those things where, if the typical Wikipedia reader were to see "BCE", he would wonder "what the hell is BCE?". I certainly wondered that the first several times I saw it. I see it as a sad sign of political correctness that is creeping into our content, but I'm in the minority (and yes, I'm also aware of the fact that Jesus was likely actually born between 4 and 6 BC). BC/AD has been in use for centuries. Why wipe out history in the space of a year or two? I don't even know who, when, or how BC/BCE came to replace BC/AD, and it's certainly not in widespread use. On 9/5/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott(a)mu.org> wrote: Well, there is the patch I submitted that started this whole argument.. The only issues I can see are: 1) What to do about AD/CE, and wikilinked dates with explicit display text in general, e.g. [[July 4]], [[1776|AD 1776]] -- the existing code won't reformat such dates according to user preferences as it is, so this isn't just a problem with the patch.

The default setting in my patch is to simply leave BC/BCE as they are, i.e. "No Preference." If people think it'll become a point of contention, then we can simply wait a while and look at the statistics of what preferences people actually set. If 90% of the English Wikipedia users set their preference to BCE, well then that would be a good argument in favor of making that the default. At least we'd actually have some numbers to go on, rather than just arguing about whether BC is religious POV or BCE is Political Correctness run amock or an Americanism or what. -Bill

The problem is that AD/CE are only supposed to be displayed (according to the manual of style) if you're dealing with a span of time that crosses the BC-AD (or BCE-CE) boundary. In other words, this is proper: [[July 4]], [[1776 BC]]–[[July 4]], [[1776|AD 1776]] ...and this is proper: [[March 21]], [[1974]]–[[October 16]],[[1975]] ...but this is not: [[March 21]], [[1974|AD 1974]]–[[October 16]],[[1975|AD 1975]] ...and this is not: [[July 4]], [[1776 BC]]–[[July 4]], [[1776]] I'd like to point out that this aspect of the style guide needs to be

Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the NPOV policy asks.

On 9/5/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: But isn't that taken for granted, that we must blindly accept, while accepting as little as possible, that Christianity is the dominant religion?

G'day Alphax, w00t! 1700 years? I've got a note here saying the "Common Era" has lasted 2006 years ... but I admit, your number is far closer to what my history and religion teachers all told me. How strange!

Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the NPOV policy asks.

As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics using BC/AD?

On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote: And this shows the major WTF assertion. "Before Christ is a violation of NPOV, because it speaks in terms of Christ, whereas Before Christian Era ... hold on, I'll come in again." - d.

The problem really is that making a policy here requires us to make a decision. Yes, *us*. This is enormously different to normal article writing, where we just report what others have said. We have to make a decision about which is correct, yet we can't, because to do so would be to break our principle of neutrality (though not NPOV, which is related but different). In short, we're stuffed.

Yes, it's a great workaround... until people say "but this article displays BC[E] when users aren't signed in. THAT'S AN ABUSE OF NPOV."

"People" was intended to mean "complete idiots who get into pointless debates for the sake of it". I am not majorly concerned about the PR side of things -- I'm sure that can be handled. I just don't think this can change the edit-warring side of things.

Try geolocation on the basis of source IP, and select CE north of the Mason-Dixon line, and AD below?

On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up > the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics > using BC/AD?

I ran seachers on the journal databases I had acess to. BCE didn't really feature US or otherwise.

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Hah. So those claiming it was the standard practice in US academia > should in fact be required to produce their evidence?

The solution we have at the moment appears to work. I see no need to reopen the issue.

Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the NPOV policy asks.

On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: Even if it is based on Christian beliefs, it doesn't require users to believe it to actually use it.

Perhaps we should just use TAI or JD(UT1), and eliminate all ambiguity.

There was someone who, in all seriousness, wanted us to get around the AD/CE thing by converting to the Holocene Era system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the NPOV policy asks.

On 05/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Anno Domini. "In the year of the Lord..."

(I don't agree with Guettarda - I feel using BCE/CE is as much making an explicit point as using BC/AD is - but I do suspect the above is kind of his point)

Guettarda wrote: If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were originally set up based on astrological principals. Would it violate NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to keep using months? SKL

maru dubshinki wrote: According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war. The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable? SKL

On 9/6/06, ScottL <scott(a)mu.org> wrote: Are you asking if it's independently verifiable whether in Roman times, Mars was considered the God of War? Certainly it is, pick up any book on ancient roman mythology, and there you will find "Mars is the God of War" somewhere in it. This seems obvious. Why did you ask? --Oskar

On 9/6/06, ScottL <scott(a)mu.org> wrote: Ahh, I see your logic. I apologise for the misunderstanding. However, I think your logic is flawed. Months have names, given names, that are pretty much universally accepted (I realise that they arn't completly universally accepted, but pretty much), the same as (for instance) weekdays are. I'm writing this here on a beautiful wednesday morning, but by recognizing that fact I'm not affirming the greatness of Odin (see [[Wednesday]]). My own name, Oskar, happens to mean "Spear of the Gods", but unlike most spears, I'm remarkably un-skinny (I am fairly pointy though). These are names, and even do they do mean something, they mean nothing. If you know what I mean. However, this is not necessarily the case with AD/CE. I understand how someone might look at it that way, but there are some very crucial difference. First, and foremost, is that there are obviously people who do find it offensive. Many people. That's why the whole CE thing was invented (and btw, when I was studying history in English here in northern Europe, CE was all we ever used, so it's not like it's unheard of in academia), because many people find AD to be offensive. I think a much better PC-analogy for the AD/CE thing than names of months is the introduction of the title (is it a title?) Ms. While it wasn't invented by modern feminists, it was certainly popularized because there is something blatantly sexist in English (and many other languages) titles. So we decided that this was wrong, and thus Ms. was introduced. And now everyone is comfortable with it, it's not in the least controversial at all. I think it's the same with years. There is something deeply eurocentric with using AD, since you are infact affirming the existance of God, so we have a nice little non-offensive alternative. Why not use it? Because people may have difficulty understanding it? Unless you are very thick indeed, it won't take long to understand. And it's not like we avoid using technical language and jargon for other subjects (pick a random non-trivial article on maths or chemistry, you'll see what I mean), so why not for history? I realise that I may not be convincing anyone, but I this is how I feel. AD is obviously controversial, so why not use CE? It's so neat! --Oskar

I'd like to note that there were infact a techincal solution implemented a while ago using templates. I believe you posted {{adce|2006}}, and it would pick the right one after how you had configured your CSS. However, it died a quiet death at TFD. --Oskar

maru dubshinki wrote: According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war. The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable? SKL

We also need to abandon our days of the week. It is clearly a breach of NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every seven days.

On 9/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Once upon a time, David was having tea with their wife. They decided that they wanted to have green tea, but they wanted black tea instead. So they decided to flip a coin. They got heads, but since they picked tails, David didn't get what they wanted.

On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: A significant difference being that nobody worships the Norse/German/Roman gods these days, nor do people live in cultures dominated by worshippers of Norse/German/Roman gods. Another is that the names of the days are named after Norse/German/Roman gods, but do not assert that they *are* gods. On the other hand, billions still worship Jesus and assert he is "our God", as does the designation A.D.

I think that we all should be free to use whichever form we want, without being constantly besieged by the forces of political correctness.

On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.

On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo(a)gmail.com> wrote: I doubt their numbers are in the billions, or that they exert a dominating influence on Western culture. Jay.

On 08/09/06, ScottL <scott(a)mu.org> wrote: The idea above is evidently that the larger the group, the less their POV should be taken seriously. So therefore we should put into place changes that *no-one wants whatsoever* or we are in violation of NPOV.

Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering! I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another name when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it. Mgm On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l