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Since there has been edit warring over this recently, it's probably worthwhile to have a talk page thread about it. The last time this was substantively discussed
appears to have been 2006, when no consensus was reached. Of course this was long before the Manual of Style was written –– Wikipedia's norms were quite different back then –– so in any case it would be worth making sure that the way we handle this issue accords with current standards and practices. At
MOS:ERA we find: The default calendar eras are Anno Domini (BC and AD) and Common Era (BCE and CE). Either convention may be appropriate for use in Wikipedia articles depending on the article context. Apply
Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Retaining existing styles with regard to changes from one era to the other.
There we are reminded that The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."
So what reason was given for the most recent attempts to change CE to AD? First Article was started using AD dates
, then Consensus on the talk page seems to have been to preserve AD dates, and there certainly wasn't a consensus to change
. I certainly didn't see a clear talk page consensus back in 2006 either way, but in any case it's also common for consensus to be formed through editing (per
WP:EDITCON), so it's worth looking into when the CE/BCE era style became stable in the article. From my perusal, it seems the CE/BCE style has been the norm here since at least 2015, with occasional attempts to return it to AD/BC style being quickly reverted. See e.g.
[1]. If anyone has a substantive reason why we might wish to return to AD/BC style other than
WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, I would welcome their engagement here. If not, we should return to the stable version and the edit warring should stop.
Generalrelative (
talk) 22:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
depending on the article contextlanguage in MOS:ERA might come into play. But again, I'm not sure we need to get into the substance of the issue since the longstanding stylistic consensus on this page is quite clear, as is the principle established by ArbCom. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:27, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
An article's established era style should not be changed without reasons specific to its content. The style that has been consistently employed here since 2015 is very obviously the
established era style. Arguing otherwise is nonsensical and smacks of WP:TENDENTIOUS. Any interested third parties stumbling upon this discussion, please see User talk:Ficaia#WP:POINT for context. Generalrelative ( talk) 22:36, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
An article's established era style should not be changed without reasons specific to its content; seek consensus on the talk page first by opening a discussion under a heading using the word era, and briefly stating why the style should be changed. There was no such talk page discussion. The style was changed back in 2015 without comment or explanation, and if you consult the page history you'll see that there have been multiple attempts since to return to the original dating style. You can accuse me of bad faith, but the policy is very clear that we shouldn't change the dating conventions in an article in this way.
So, this article has been around for 20 years. And the last 6 it used CE/BCE. Prior to that, it was AD/BC. As far as I can tell, there was no consensus to change it. The MOS:ERA is quite clear that it should remain BC/AD until there's consensus to change it to BCE/CE. The argument that it's been one way for the last 6 years does not hold water and there's nothing about implied consensus in the MOS. I suggest BC/AD gets restored and then here on this talk page it gets discussed which era should be used. Masterhatch ( talk) 21:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
In such an article, the use of original sources is very helpful. In fact, in a discussion of a set of ancient documents, to fail to do so would make the article just a way of passing on views that a little more than gossip. The point is that the discussion is not original research. 49.196.45.182 ( talk) 01:48, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
There used to be an image of Josephus, why was it removed?
If it was removed because it is not contemporary/because we don't want to use an image for him, then why Maimonides article has a picture, from the 19th century? Mark. PaloAlto ( talk) 18:41, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Not sure why this was deleted, but I reinserted the alternate names, which are well-supported by the cited sources. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 18:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Since there has been edit warring over this recently, it's probably worthwhile to have a talk page thread about it. The last time this was substantively discussed
appears to have been 2006, when no consensus was reached. Of course this was long before the Manual of Style was written –– Wikipedia's norms were quite different back then –– so in any case it would be worth making sure that the way we handle this issue accords with current standards and practices. At
MOS:ERA we find: The default calendar eras are Anno Domini (BC and AD) and Common Era (BCE and CE). Either convention may be appropriate for use in Wikipedia articles depending on the article context. Apply
Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Retaining existing styles with regard to changes from one era to the other.
There we are reminded that The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."
So what reason was given for the most recent attempts to change CE to AD? First Article was started using AD dates
, then Consensus on the talk page seems to have been to preserve AD dates, and there certainly wasn't a consensus to change
. I certainly didn't see a clear talk page consensus back in 2006 either way, but in any case it's also common for consensus to be formed through editing (per
WP:EDITCON), so it's worth looking into when the CE/BCE era style became stable in the article. From my perusal, it seems the CE/BCE style has been the norm here since at least 2015, with occasional attempts to return it to AD/BC style being quickly reverted. See e.g.
[1]. If anyone has a substantive reason why we might wish to return to AD/BC style other than
WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, I would welcome their engagement here. If not, we should return to the stable version and the edit warring should stop.
Generalrelative (
talk) 22:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
depending on the article contextlanguage in MOS:ERA might come into play. But again, I'm not sure we need to get into the substance of the issue since the longstanding stylistic consensus on this page is quite clear, as is the principle established by ArbCom. Generalrelative ( talk) 23:27, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
An article's established era style should not be changed without reasons specific to its content. The style that has been consistently employed here since 2015 is very obviously the
established era style. Arguing otherwise is nonsensical and smacks of WP:TENDENTIOUS. Any interested third parties stumbling upon this discussion, please see User talk:Ficaia#WP:POINT for context. Generalrelative ( talk) 22:36, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
An article's established era style should not be changed without reasons specific to its content; seek consensus on the talk page first by opening a discussion under a heading using the word era, and briefly stating why the style should be changed. There was no such talk page discussion. The style was changed back in 2015 without comment or explanation, and if you consult the page history you'll see that there have been multiple attempts since to return to the original dating style. You can accuse me of bad faith, but the policy is very clear that we shouldn't change the dating conventions in an article in this way.
So, this article has been around for 20 years. And the last 6 it used CE/BCE. Prior to that, it was AD/BC. As far as I can tell, there was no consensus to change it. The MOS:ERA is quite clear that it should remain BC/AD until there's consensus to change it to BCE/CE. The argument that it's been one way for the last 6 years does not hold water and there's nothing about implied consensus in the MOS. I suggest BC/AD gets restored and then here on this talk page it gets discussed which era should be used. Masterhatch ( talk) 21:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
In such an article, the use of original sources is very helpful. In fact, in a discussion of a set of ancient documents, to fail to do so would make the article just a way of passing on views that a little more than gossip. The point is that the discussion is not original research. 49.196.45.182 ( talk) 01:48, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
There used to be an image of Josephus, why was it removed?
If it was removed because it is not contemporary/because we don't want to use an image for him, then why Maimonides article has a picture, from the 19th century? Mark. PaloAlto ( talk) 18:41, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Not sure why this was deleted, but I reinserted the alternate names, which are well-supported by the cited sources. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 18:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)