Forum:Births by Year/Deaths by Year

Forums: Index > Watercooler > Births by Year/Deaths by Year

"Year births" and "Year deaths"

I have a suggestion... to make it shorter and easier to look through, should births by year and deaths by year categories by "Year deaths" or "Year births" (example: [[Category:1900 births]] or [[Category:1900 deaths]]) instead of the current format? -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions}

I'm not clear about WHAT would be "shorter and easier to look through". Your idea would apparently reduce by only three characters ("in" and a space) the name of each category, and would not reduce the number of lines to look through where they are listed in separate lines. Please clarify. Robin Patterson 08:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Like Wikipedia. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions} 16:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I know it's like Wikipedia, which would usually be a fairly compelling reason. But in this case, I have two problems with the idea of changing: (1) we already have a great many categories in the current form; (2) I think the WP form is ambiguous (especially for a site where at least one highly perceptive new user doesn't even recognise that a category name consisting of a four-digit number refers to a year) and can look quite silly when the year number gets small - does "Category:3 deaths" refer to the Crucifixion?? You've not clarified your problem with the form. I say again, WHAT would be "shorter and easier to look through"? Robin Patterson 04:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Births and deaths by year

And also, could we group them by Births and deaths by year, instead of just by year? Because im sure some people would want to see an index of birth years without having to go to each century, year, etc. Just a suggestion. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions}

We can group them in any number of ways. Do you mean adding Category:Birth years, covering all millennia (and similarly death years)? So a reader could more easily jump from 1899 to 1900 to 1901, etc? Robin Patterson 08:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions} 16:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

They will be long lists (each well over 1000 subcategories eventually) needing lots of scrolling to reach 20th century, but I don't mind adding that to the standard. (There can be easier ways to jump from 1899 to 1900 to 1901, such as direct reciprocal links from Category:Births in 1900 to Category:Births in 1899 and Category:Births in 1901; I think Wikipedia has some clever templates designed for that sort of thing - see, for example, Wikipedia:Template:BDYearsInDecade, which I'm planning to study.) Robin Patterson 15:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I've now copied to some wiki, and will do here if not already, a template that matches Template:BDYearsInDecade. Thinking about an overall Category:Birth years, and deaths ditto, I wonder whether we might just have a Category:Births in the 2nd millennium, so that people wanting 19th and 20th centuries don't have to scroll through loads of pre-1001 near-empty categories. I should have a closer look at how Wikipedia handles the short menus and links between them. We probably need a separate page project:Categories for birth and death years where we can set out the current standard format and use the talk page to discuss changes to it. Robin Patterson 04:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Matching WP

The wonders of bots have convinced me that a slight ambiguity in the name is nothingb compared with the value of matching WP cat and template names. Thank Phlox if you haven't already! Robin Patterson 03:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Putting all 2100-odd into one category

Not a good idea - category practically unusable. Decades and centuries at the most, I think, with WP's clever navigation templates to jump people fairly easily from 1899 to 1901. Robin Patterson 03:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Bot ready to go

Apparently AMK is good with moving the cats as is. This was delayed due to some further discussion but this appears to be resolved now. Tonight, I will squeeze the trigger and move all births and deaths year cats over, as done with Category:1003 births in a test run of the bot script. Anyone that feels this should not happen should contact me without delay. We can always fix things later, and even radically change such schemes as we learn more. That's the nice thing about bots- as in video games- there are Redo's, and you can take a lot more risks. So let's be bold and move the ball down the field. Genealogy wikia has a job list higher than the himalayas. Enough talk- let's get back on the trail and reach that next ridge. ~ Phlox 17:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposing we move associated Year, decade cats

There are some additional cats and articles we probably want from WP. Proposal is here:User:PhloxBot/ Proposals#Additional Time structure

~ Phlox 20:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)