Settled and/or established[]
1. There is a confusion in the categories regarding settlements and a consensus should be reached on when or if the categories should be "settled in" or "established in" or "settlements established in" etc. I am willing to accept any solution but if there are no guidelines, then the categories used will be inconsistent. At present many categories are used at the same time. Afil 01:27, June 27, 2011 (UTC)
- :Discussion broadened on Forum:Settlements and establishments in August 2011.
Decades[]
2. There is a second issue, which needs corrections. In defining the decades in various programs a decade starts with the year 0 and finished with the year 9. This is basically incorrect.
A century starts with the year 1 and ends with the year 100. Thus the 10th century starts with the year 901 and ends with the year 1000 (an not from year 900 to year 999. Similarly a millennium starts with the year 1 and end with the year 1000. Thus the first millennium starts with the year 1 and ends with the year 1000 and the second millennium starts with the year 1001 and end with the year 2000. Why would decades be otherwise defined. The system used at present presents 1000 as the first year of the 11th century, which moves it to the 2nd millennium.
Therefore templates such as estcat are to say the least controversial. I have developed templates such as {{estcat1}} in which decades start with the year 1 but using both leads to inconsistent results. Afil 01:27, June 27, 2011 (UTC)
- On the whole I agree. I'm surprised that we have any incorrectly-defined centuries or millennia, and I'll happily help fixing them. However, there's an easy answer to the question "Why would decades be otherwise defined"? - the English-language tradition of grouping years with simple names such as "the nineties". I studied several Wikipedias several years ago when trying to get more rationality. But very few - the Icelandic and Latin being the only ones I remember - define decades rationally rather than the overlapping "nineties" way. I think we have to live with the "nineties" and the corresponding "1790s" etc, but our templates that collect them into centuries and millennia can do that accurately, reflecting the overlap, e.g. "the 1900s" should be in two centuries or at least linked from any "19th century" category. I doubt if we should bother with templates for the correct decades but I'd be willing to support anyone who wants to bring them in as a parallel system; however, ideally we can hope that SMW will make most such categories unnecessary. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:59, August 10, 2011 (UTC)