Talk:1650

This is the discussion/talk page for year: 1650.

Spec: article specification topics

Format

03-January-2007 (updated 17Apr07): All years 1600-1699 have been formatted, as detailed below. Many years had fewer than 9 dated events (but after 1500 or 1700 many events), so I have added filler events, such as shipwrecks or Jamestown detailed history (Year 1646 had no dated events). As of March 2007, some years have a different format, as people add events or special subhead categories: "World population" or "Ship events" and such. Years from 1900 have "Nobel prizes" (which were first awarded in 1901). In the 1800s, Events have been divided into 4 quarters: January-March, April-June, etc. For the 1600s, I subdivided Events by six-month periods: January-June, July-December, and Undated. It seems that unless month names are identified in subheaders, the un-dated events get added into scattered locations. For the years 1600-1699, I have used a typical series of edits, to have a short Table of Contents and allow space for putting images in the Events section:

- at top of article, use "X" template: {{C17YearInTopicX}};

- in the lede intro, put "Year 16xx" to avoid starting a sentence with a numeral;

- put "link will display the full calendar" (had been "see link for calendar");

- split Events section as 2 six-month periods: January-June, July-December;

- put other-calendars box "{{Year in other calendars}}" into the Births section;

- under Births, put subheader "Date unknown" above births with no-date;

- under Deaths, put subheader "Date unknown" above entries with no-date;

- used a break-line ("{{-}}") to separate subhead sections after images;

Editing has been by hand because various year-articles had sporadic groupings of months (such as "May-October") when grouping under Events, Births or Deaths. However, because the 1600s have little detail (so far), the formatting is mainly for some consistency with other centuries, rather than for organizing large articles, as in other centuries (with many details). Of course, as following the Renaissance, the 1600s offer many events and notable people to list (for at least 30 dated events per year), but no public website has listed that level of detail (in April 2007).

As with many Wiki articles, the format evolves, and multiple people must edit to maintain all 5 aspects: new facts, accurate facts, images, Wiki-format, and some consistency with related articles. It is too difficult to expect each person will master all 5 jobs, across the thousands of yearly articles. -Wikid77 03:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

All years from 1600-1699 have been formatted, as above (1645 was last). -Wikid77 13:53, 14 March 2007

NOTE (for text spacing): Prior to December 2006, for the year articles 1500-1899, the top navigation boxes had crowded the text: daily events had been listed (in many years) with only 6 words per line, due to crowding of text by navigation boxes. Now, the edits listed above should allow over 12 words per line for entries in the "Events" section (on 800x600 PC screens). Also, careful placement of the navigation boxes has allowed space for small thumbnail images to be mixed beside the Events text, to help illustrate events. Thumbnail images (up to 300px wide) can be added without crowding the text. -Wikid77 03:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Images

03-January-2007 (revised 11Mar07): Back in November 2006, many years didn't have event images. For many of the 480 yearly articles in "1500-1980", we have been able to add images beside the corresponding text under Events, but that required opening space, along the righthand-side, by moving the "Year-in-other-calendars" to the Births section (which is where it "appeared" to be in most years with few events, by automatic formatting). The new images now are near the corresponding Events text. I also had to separate some sections by adding a break-line template:

{{-}}<!-- reset to left margin, for future images above -->

The break-line pushes the next subheader down, below any future Events images added above it. Images have been added in a similar manner to 1500-1899 & 1900-1980. Among those 480+ years, the various articles, originally, each had slightly different month-name groups and formats. -Wikid77 20:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

10-day slower

The Julian years 1583-1700 are 10-days slower than the Gregorian calendar, which becomes 11-days ahead in 1701 (following Julian leapday of 1700). See "#Julian slower" below. -Wikid77 19:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Content

There is a common practice of avoiding low-priority information in the yearly articles 1600-1699 (and others). Some basic ground-rules for notable content are:

• focus on major, forceful events of wide impact;
• avoid listing marriages, except kings or the Pope (or other shocks);
• for Births/Deaths, list highly notable (avoid mere relatives of famous people);
• for Births/Deaths, list just date/occupation (let related article describe impact of that person);

For example, under the Births section, put just "Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, professor (d. 1955)" while allowing the related article to state "considered Man of the Milennium in America" or such.

As another example, under "Ongoing" events, it would seem excessive to include "exploration of the new world" or most other activities that spanned over 100 years. Those overall events would be better placed in article "17th century" rather than in each year. Also, typically, a yearly article would list less than half of all births/deaths in the categories ("Category:1616 births"), by omitting people of lower-notability, such as omitting relatives of someone famous. Currently, Wikipedia users put meta-criteria about article formatting & content on the related talk-pages, but it is possible to create other subpages of an article to define such meta information in a stable location, outside the archived discussions of a talk-page. Meanwhile, I have put common formatting notes for years "16xx" here into Talk:1650 as a spot central to those years. [ Ideally IMO, Wikipedia should have 2 page tabs for "Talk" & "Spec" to allow meta-specification of the format/content criteria as separate from the archived talk-page: a reader would click "Spec" to read about the agreed overall purpose and structure of the page. ]. Discuss these issues below, at page bottom. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion topics

Population

Didn't the world population reach 500 million in 1650? Joseandricardo, 21:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Julian slower

16-Feb-2007 (revised 23Mar07): Many of the yearly articles from 1583-1806 have had the wrong weekday starting for the Julian calendar, which started as a "10-day slower" calendar, then lost a day each century, while other nations hadn't converted to the Gregorian calendar (such as Russia until 1919):

- in the 1600s, use "10-day slower" - in the 1700s, use "11-day"

- in the 1800s, use "12-day slower" - in the 1900s, use "13-day"

When a Julian year is 10-days slower, the weekday is 4 days behind (14 - 10), or 3 days ahead (7-4 = 3), of the Gregorian weekday, until a Julian leapday in 1700, 1800, or 1900 shifts an extra weekday. The Gregorian 1582 ended on Friday, while the Julian 1582 ended on Monday (3 weekdays ahead).

It is helpful to maintain day-shift rulers (Gregorian-to-Julian):

10-day: Monday-Thu, Tue-Fri, Wed-Sat, Thu-Sun, Fri-Mon, Sat-Tue, Sun-Wed.

10-day: (3-weekday ahead)

11-day: Monday-Fri, Tue-Sat, Wed-Sun, Thu-Mon, Fri-Tue, Sat-Wed, Sun-Thu.

11-day: (4-weekday ahead)

12-day: Monday-Sat, Tue-Sun, Wed-Mon, Thu-Tue, Fri-Wed, Sat-Thu, Sun-Fri.

12-day: (5-weekday ahead)

Because Russia avoided converting until 1919, the Julian calendar is notable well into the 20th century. -Wikid77 12:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Wikid77: I still have a big problem with "slower"/"faster".

• A watch that gains 11 minutes a day is "fast"; likewise a calendar that gains 11 minutes a year. Of course, years are being accumulated by that calendar more "slowly". English is a funny language.
• In the article 1615 the Julian calendar was "10-day slower" but in 1900 "The Gregorian calendar was 12-day faster until Wednesday, 28 February, but 13-day faster since Thursday, 1 March". Was the Gregorian speeding up or the Julian slowing down? :->

A reader unfamiliar with the two systems could easily be confused. How about something more explicit; instead of:

Year 1615 (MDCXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar).

use:

Year 1615 (MDCXV) was a common year of the Gregorian calendar that started on Thursday. The Gregorian calendar was in force in Italy, Spain, Portugal, ..., Catholic parts of Germany, ...

Julian year 1615 was a common year that began 10 days later on Sunday, Gregorian date January 11. The Julian calendar was in force in England, ..., Protestant parts of Germany, ...

It aint perfict but it's precise and accurate and more informative. --Saintrain 01:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

23-March-2007: I see your point about using "later" but, to someone reading the articles, there is no doubt about the word "slower" because the phrase is "10-day slower" (not just "slower" somehow). Consider those articles from a reader's viewpoint, and the wording makes sense: even a watch that is "5-minutes fast" tends to stay 5 minutes ahead for days; it is very rare for a watch to gain 5 minutes per hour. So, the phrase "10-day slower" is quite logical to a reader as meaning 10 days behind, and if confused, the reader could then link to "Julian calendar" for more explanation. However, suppose the wording were changed: from the other extreme, stating more about the "slower" calendar could then confuse many other people who are reading the article about 16XX and would be confused to find details about adopting the Gregorian calendar, rather than events of 16XX. The current wording is a happy medium. -Wikid77 12:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hacked format

16-Feb-2007 (revised 13Mar07): Many articles start getting hacked and trashed after about 2 months (call it "Wiki-rot"). The Wikipedia concept was warned, years ago, of the natural tendency toward rampant vandalism and hacking of articles, which advised that article-content should be controlled in some manner to avoid trashing thousands of hours of work. Indeed, within weeks of reformatting over 300 yearly articles (according to the repeated steps listed in "Talk:1550#Format" or "Talk:1750#Format" etc.), various other users began hacking and re-hacking sporadic articles into ad hoc formats, returning to the days where each year has a slightly different format from all other years.

On other subjects, various articles, upon justification, have been semi-protected from rampant editing. In the future, as is the case in user-defined webpage-content, articles should evolve into semi-controlled sections, where only some parts of a page could be changed by random users, and protected sections would enforce standard formats and ensure that key information is not vandalized or hacked. For example, for all years in one century, a standard format could be locked into all articles, but users might opt to expand information freely in related articles tied to "see-also" links.

Be not deceived, the problem is critical: the bio for a famous explorer was hacked in 5 weeks to have incorrect dates, joined phrases, and chopped sentence fragments. In the "Hurricane Katrina" article, watched by dozens of people, the Mississippi landfall time (carefully recorded from footnote sources) got botched by several hours during a flurry of edits, and the mistake lasted for over 11 days, even though hundreds of people had edited the article. A controlled section for a hurricane article could lock-down details of eye-path, wind-speed, and landfall details against tampering, while allowing a flurry of edits in other sections not critical to understanding the basic facts of Who, what, when, where, why, and how for an article. There are too many other subjects needing expanded articles, to expect editors to continually monitor older articles for sporadically botched key facts. -Wikid77 19:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding events

Adding events is fun!! I clicked on "what links here" and added some stuff. A samurai visited the Pope in Rome to negotiate a trade treaty between Japan and Mexico. In 1615 !?!?!? And I think driving across town is a pain.

I don't see the benefit of grouping dates, though. I'd even include preceding months/years to the lists; e.g. for decade 151x use years 1509-1521 (yeah, I know), or year lists running from December - January (14 months, not backwards :-). --Saintrain 02:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Testing new Wikipedia tab: new section

20-April-2008: On this day, I noticed a new page tab "new section" which might help keep new topics added to the bottom (not top) of a talk-page, but I don't know yet. I would rather have had a tab "history/talk" that jumped to the history log for the talk-page, or some other tab. I think many people add new sections to the page top, either to focus top-billing attention or because that's how email messages are stacked (new at top). Anyway, this topic was created by clicking "new section" to see what it does. Some day, I would like to find a news-bulletin page about all these trivial changes being made every week to Wikipedia. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:29, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, the above new topic was added at page bottom. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)