Forum:For people working on year/decade/century pages . . .

Please be sure to read the documenation at Template:Timeline for the latest information on how the new template is progressing. Because the template is heavily dependent upon the PAGENAME and upon assumptions about the range of dates we cover on the site, it's important that we have good communication about what we're all doing. I'm basing my maintenance of the template on things that I observe about the actuality of our pages. So if you go and create a page which is outside the pattern of things that exist as of 11:47, April 1, 2010 (UTC), the template won't necessarily work on it. For instance, if you were suddenly to create a page named 143 BC, the template wouldn't work on it, because we have no pages currently formatted like that.

Also, some special requests:
 * Please remember that all these pages are articles. They're not placeholders.  Thus, they should all have proper lead paragraphs in which you summarize some of the key events of the year/date/century in question.
 * Because these are articles, they must obey the same rules as any other article. Principally, there must be a reference in the DWU in order to justify their creation.  Please do NOT create pages that are blank.  If nothing in the DWU happened in the year 2106, then don't create the page.  I quite understand why there are so many blank year pages — you want navigability from one year to the next — but I'm working on a solution that will still allow navigability without violating the general rules for article creation on this wiki.  If you create blank pages, you prevent this solution from being implemented, because it is based upon sensing uncreated pages.
 * The general format of article pages is that any wikipediainfo boxes are on the bottom. Yet, for some reason, I'm encountering a lot of year pages where template:wikipediainfo is the first thing on the page.  Now that we've actually got a proper way to navigate between pages on our own wiki, Template:Timeline should be on top, like any other infobox.  Indeed, this is being built as an infobox not a nav template.  Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  11:47, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Tenses, OOU perspective
I've noticed that only a very few of the year/decade/century pages obey the standard Manual of style rules. Few have leads, most aren't written in the past tense, and a heck of a lot of 'em create one section labelled "DWU" and, if a 20/21st century year, another labelled "Real World". The general "format", if you can call it that, is:

but Template:wikipediainfo
 * Doctor Who Universe
 * This happens in this year.
 * This other thing occurs.
 * And this person dies.
 * Real World
 * This episode is broadcast
 * This actor is born.
 * This director dies.

Any particular reason for that? I mean these are in-universe articles, right? I know the Tardis:Manual of style does say that "all in-universe articles, with the exception of Timeline articles are written in the past tense", but why? Tardis:Point of view is silent on the issue of timeline pages, so that's no help.

Surely it's precisely the timeline pages that would most need to be written in the past tense, and the fact that they're not would confuse not just readers, but new editors. After all, if an article about 1567 can be written in the present tense, why would an article about a character from the year 1567 need to be in past tense?

I thought the deal was that we were saying that we editors were to place ourselves at some infinite point in the far future, after the death of the DWU, so that everything about that universe was in the past. If we're going to actively disobey that rule on the very pages that chronicle the history of the DWU, what's the point of having the rule at all?

Moreover, I don't understand why these pages aren't following the standard of having a proper lead, and why the ones for "real" years immediately divide the page into DWU and RW. Surely the article should just be written from the DWU perspective, and then "RW" should be in a section labeled "Behind the scenes", like every other article in the DWU super-category.

Are these somehow not seen as "real" articles, but something more akin to a disambig page?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  20:35, April 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * That is a good question. (I can only vaguely answer your last question, back somewhere in the past there was a discussion about the Timeline articles and at one point we did have 1963 and 1963 (Real World), basically it was going to be a massive job and somewhat doubling up to have two versions of every year, so the decision was made to wrap both articles into one.)
 * I'm all for changing the MoS so that everything's in the past tense.
 * The same goes for changing Real World to Behind the Scenes. That would definitely help to keep things consistent. --Tangerineduel 14:27, April 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Returning to this topic once more.
 * I think we should go for 'everything in the past tense', the timeline pages included, unless there are any real concerns I'll go ahead and edit the Manual of Style to reflect this. --Tangerineduel 15:10, April 17, 2010 (UTC)
 * Cool. That's obviously how I'd go.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  14:12, April 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Done. --Tangerineduel 14:37, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Comment re: real world tenses
As (I think it's safe to say) the main contributor to the real world sections of these pages, I wanted to include a few comments here; I haven't been following the discussion because due to real-world workload I've just been jumping in and out when I find something to update. First, I was going to at one point suggest the "Real World" sections be split off in their own. That was before I noticed Tangerineduel's comments saying this was tried before, so never mind.

I do feel the Real World section needs to stay in present tense. These are not in-universe sections, and therefore shouldn't follow the same rule as in-universe Timelines. (A point in favor of splitting them off). I interpret one of the comments above as suggesting there might even be a little confusion in this area.

I also should underline something I've been doing since I started editing the timeline pages, and that is events that have yet to occur should be marked with some variation of "is scheduled" or "is planned". A reason for this is, as we know, dates change. The Runaway Train was scheduled for release June 3. Then it was pushed back to February 2011, except for the special Telegraph issue coming out on Saturday. It's a bit of CYA when things change. An episode announced for next week might get preempted by a news report, etc.

I think the idea of splitting off Real World from DWU timelines should be revisited, at least with regards to the revival series. Between the Internet and everything else, it's pretty evident that the Real World events far outweight the in-universe ones! 23skidoo 22:08, April 22, 2010 (UTC)


 * Isn't anything real world and present tense very reliant on keeping everything very up to date, it just seems it's creating a lot of work to keep things in present tense, when they're going to become past tense at some point.
 * I do understand the scheduling statements would need to be in the present tense as it's a malleable sort of thing. But after the event has passed it would need to be changed to X was scheduled for...etc.
 * It is debateable whether the real world events on this wiki outweigh the in-universe events (it depends what a reader / editor is coming here looking for).
 * I do commend your efforts at keeping everything up to date, but we also need to look at the future development and consistency of the wiki.
 * With regards to separate pages...real world sub-pages could be a way to go for separate (yet linked) real world pages linked off from the year pages. But I still think for ease use and linking having the real world under behind the scenes section keeps more tidy. --Tangerineduel 15:18, April 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know. I just saw that 2012 has been reformatted with the introduction paragraph and I'm sorry, it looks pretty awkward. And the Real World stuff underneath looks kind of buried. And when 2010 inevitably gets the same treatment, it's going to look even weirder given how much stuff is in the Real World section (and I've just been keeping in relevant stuff). And what is to be done with years in which there are no DWU events, just real world items? I'll state here I actually haven't tracked down an example of this at the moment, but I'm sure there must be a few. With regards to the tense issues, timelines are almost always in present tense. The words "are scheduled" are only applied to future events, after which they are simply removed. So right now (23 April) the entry for 24 April says "DW: The Time of Angels is scheduled for broadcast"; tomorrow I'll change it to read "DW: The Time of Angels is first broadcast." And even if I weren't to update it, it would still be correct even with the "future wording". Back to an earlier point, I do think we should consider sub-pages for real world years. I was originally going to suggest only "production years" (i.e. 1963-1989; 1996; 2004-present) where there will naturally be more items of note, but on the other hand, we should do all or none, just for consistency. Also, when an issue arises such as the need to lock down 2009 and 2010 when the edit war occurred over the CoE dates, it wouldn't affect the real world timeline. 23skidoo 03:40, April 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with some of what you're saying and disagree with other bits. I think you're right in that the RW part of these year pages is actually greater (in terms of column-inches) than the in-universe part.  But then, your efforts are kinda making it that way :)  If you weren't noting every single detail about the production/release stuff, but instead concentrating on developing the in-universe part, it could be that the in-universe side would in fact grow to a "balanced" proportion.   For instance, just today I put in the 2005 article a bit about what the year was like for Jackie and Mickey, and we've had, well, precisely five years to make that note, but no one did so.


 * Now please don't misconstrue my words. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong by concentrating on the RW side of years.  All that info is good, right and proper.  We need it.  I'm only saying that we don't have editors as focused on the DWU side of these pages you are on the production side of them.  If we did, the DWU side would grow.  It's honestly not that there isn't more material that could be put on the DWU side; it's just that no one is doing it.


 * Does this mean we should split off the Real world info? I'm actually amenable to the idea, but only if done in a particular way.  If we made the RW stuff a subpage of the DWU page, I'd be okay with that.  So 2010/Real world (and lower case 'w', per Tardis:Manual of Style, absolutely not 2010/Real World.  That would free up the DWU side to actually be written like the in-universe article it is, and would make these pages look less "junky".  These pages have so many headlines and subheads on them, that they're actually fairly ugly.  The more I think about it, the more I think splitting to subpages would greatly help.


 * Now, I disagree with you that they should be on every single year page. That'd be insane.  We don't need a RW subpage for 1434.  I think your first instinct was right, in that it should just be from 1963-present day: the years in which DW in some form was being produced.  That would leave outliers like, how do we note birthdays and such, some of which predate 63.  But personally, I think that's irrelevant information for these pages.   The RW information should only pertain to the release of DW product, not to the birthdays and deathdays of people associated with the show.  There are pages which specifically track births and deaths, and frankly, that makes that information a lot easier to find, than burying it in a list on a year page.   So, I think it's fine to just create RW subpages for 1963-2014.


 * Then there's the question of what we should call the subpages. Should they be "Real World" or "Production info" or something else.  Personally, I prefer "Production info", cause that seems more accurate, and it explains why there aren't subpages on every year page.


 * Tell ya what: I'll help you create the subpages if you stop reverting my MOS-apprpriate conversions.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  04:09, April 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * On Memory Alpha, we've gone a step further and split off real world information from the year pages entirely. We have (for example) 1999 and 1999 productions.  For anything pre-dating the production of the series, we use a generic Early production history page.  That also avoids having sub-pages in the main namespace. -- sulfur 11:35, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Automated replacement begun
The automated replacement of the old timeline HTML code has now begun. It may take several days, even though automated, as the bot takes about several seconds to make every change (so as not to flood the database). The replacement process will take several passes, so you may encounter particular pages at several different states. Don't panic; it'll all get put back together with just Template:Timeline and, where applicable, Template:Wikipediainfo, all at a standard place on each page.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  20:14, April 22, 2010 (UTC)
 * The process of putting the template on pages is now complete, although you may still find a few pages here and there that eluded me, due to the inconsistent categorization of timeline pages in the past.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  12:38, May 2, 2010 (UTC)