Talk:Modern era

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Requested move 5 November 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:10, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Modern era → Modern period – Should be renamed to ether Modern period to be consistent with Early modern period and Late modern period. Also consider Modern history. Interstellarity (talk) 01:23, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Move to Modern history per WP:CONSISTENT to be consistent with Prehistory, Ancient history, and Post-classical history. Rreagan007 (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 04:22, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose (both of the above): All of these terms are relatively synonymous, or, according to dubious understanding of Wiktionary, totally synonymous, and all carry relatively equal weight in the present day according to Ngrams. However, I think the current title is still best. 'Modern era' is concise and clear. On the point of consistency, there is little consistency in period names: ‘ancient history’ and ‘early modern period’ do not abide by a consistent scheme. On the contrary, I think it is an advantage to use ‘modern era’ over ‘modern period’ precisely because it disambiguates between the modern era as a whole and what are the two modern periods of history – early and late. Having the title as just ‘modern period’, at first glance, gives the impression of a single unitary period. ‘Modern history’ on the other hand, strips away all the sense of epoch conveyed by ‘era’ or ‘period’ and boils it down to the sense of just dates and events. The ‘modern era’, however, is much more. Just as Wiktionary notes it is somewhat synonymous with ‘modernity’, ‘modern era’ conveys that sense of a conceptual framework of the evolution of human intellectual and artistic thought, as well as history. The modern period therefore covers history, but it is also broader than it. It is its own epoch of intellectual, technological and artistic development. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:08, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Iskandar323, Could you clarify from your oppose vote at Talk:Early_modern_period#Requested_move_7_October_2022 whether you support moving Early modern period and Late modern period to either Early modern era or Early modern history and Late modern era or Late modern history respectively? Thanks, Interstellarity (talk) 14:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think all of these article titles are fairly fine as they are, but 'early modern period', for instance, dominates its alternatives, see the Ngrams for that. The later modern terminology parallels this, but with lower usage, since 'late modern period' has more synonyms. However, as mentioned in that discussion by myself and others, the early/late distinction is useful for disambiguation. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 3 September 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Editors disagree over what topic is the common name, and what title is consistent. After two relists there is no consensus to be found here, although I find the arguments against as presented by Amakuru slightly stronger.

Editors interested in resolving this problem may find it beneficial to pursue Peter's suggestion. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 03:15, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Modern era → Modern history – I believe that this article should be moved to Modern history to be consistent with other titles such as Ancient history and Post-classical history. The ngrams show that modern history has been used throughout the last two hundred years while it looks like that both Modern period and Modern era only gained popularity only recently and all three terms seem to be about the same now. I would suggest moving to modern history for historical purposes. Interstellarity (talk) 20:54, 3 September 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. ❯❯❯ Raydann ^(Talk) 17:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support per WP:CONSISTENT. Rreagan007 (talk) 04:18, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Seems right to me. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 16:26, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. The ngrams appear to be neck and neck, but when you drill down into what book results Google is actually turning up for the terms, you see that many of those for "modern history" aren't really about this topic at all - [1]. For example, I'm seeing it return results such as Leicester: A Modern History, Sport and the British: A Modern History and Hunger: A Modern History. Looking at the modern era results, however, they seem to be mainly on-point. I think as a period of time, the current title (or modern period) describe it best. — Amakuru (talk) 22:23, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- @Amakuru:, this is a topic that is about historical research. In most serious historical works, authors specifically explain how they use certain terms to avoid confusion. If this was about about, say, chemistry or biology, wouldn't we be looking at the academic definitions primarily rather than trying to make our own surveys of language use? Shouldn't we be focusing on looking at historical research that actively discusses the concept of the "modern period"? What do standard textbooks and research encyclopedias say about this? Peter ^Isotalo 11:18, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of detailed articles on various parts of modern history. Suggest that this article is heavenly pruned to remove the detailed historical content, and the name "Modern era" is retained.----Ehrenkater (talk) 17:53, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the situation here is a little more complex than this. There's also the page modernity that also has some overlap with this page and what Modern history could be. It might be more appropriate, for example, to move this page to Modern history and redirect Modern era to modernity, since the concept of an "era" is a bit broader and more thematic than that of a "period", which is more firmly history-focused terminology. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:59, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. In looking at Category:Historical eras, I don't see any consistent usage -- history, age, era are all in use. Seems like there's no agreement about how to name this kind of article at all. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:27, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WikiProject Vital articles has been notified of this discussion. ❯❯❯ Raydann ^(Talk) 17:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WikiProject History has been notified of this discussion. ❯❯❯ Raydann ^(Talk) 17:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WikiProject European history has been notified of this discussion. ❯❯❯ Raydann ^(Talk) 17:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WikiProject History of Science has been notified of this discussion. ❯❯❯ Raydann ^(Talk) 17:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article does not follow current research. In just about all recent historical writing I've ever encountered, in my university studies of history, and from personal acquaintances who are academic historians, the term "modern period" is what's most common and it refers to the period c. 1800 until now. There's an older use of the term "modern" which includes everything after the end of the Middle Ages, but that more or less stopped being the case after the concept of the early modern period was popularized. However, here on Wikipedia, we seem to have gotten stuck in trying to include both the new and old definitions. To fix this misunderstanding, we kinda seem to have invented the notion of the "late modern", or at least pushed its usage beyond what's actually relevant.

There's also a problem of the article becoming a dumping ground for virtually any events that occured after about 1500. That goes against the concept of periodization that the article is supposed to reflect. Global history does not neatly fall into time brackets, especially before industrialization. Historians do sometimes apply terms like "early modern", "medieval", "classical", "ancient", etc. to everything from Mesoamerica to Japan, but usually with more geographically specific definitions that are not synonymous to how the terms are applied in a European (or North American) context.

I'm not sure what the most appropriate article title for this particular article should be, but we should absolutely reduce the current three articles (modern era, early modern period and late modern period) to just two articles: early modern (1500-1800) and modern (1800-now), at least if we want to be in sync with modern historical research.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:06, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Trim, scope, recency

I've restructured this article and significantly trimmed it. Lots of material was simply copied inline without structure and also with careless reference management. The article is substantially smaller, but always references the main article for the given topic. My changes were motivated by maintenacne concerns, but also by worry for recency bias. While the George Floyd problem is part of a big trend in the US, it doesn't deserve six paragraphs here when the 9/11 attacks (and other attacks around the world) received only a mention in a single sentence.

Copied text remains, and probably should be converted to transclusion. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:24, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved a couple sections to be transcluded. I think this is better, but I remain concerned about this article and its scope. Seems like this should be about the era, not about the specific events in the era. That is, this should describe the times, which includes the effects of and the atmosphere created by the events of the era, not the events themselves. There are other articles for the events -- 2020s, 21st century, and 1998 for example -- no need to enumerate them again. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Globalization

I've tagged this article with {{Globalize}} because it represents an almost exclusively US-centeric view and description of the modern era. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Centralized discussion on modernity

I've raised the problems in this and the related articles early modern period, late modern period and modernity in Wikiproject History. Thread can be found here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Modernity articles are a hot mess

I recommend a joint discussion for all these articles since they seem to suffer from very similar issues. Peter ^Isotalo 13:53, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Western era" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Western era has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 17 § Western era until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 01:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 27 June 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. —usernamekiran (talk) 22:31, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Modern era → Modern period – Although both the modern era and modern period are both common to describe this period. I feel that to be consistent with the Early modern period that this title would be reasonable. Interstellarity (talk) 20:12, 27 June 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 18:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I would like to say that I do not agree that the decision to merge the "late modern period" should have been made by a single user. SailorGardevoir (talk) 03:28, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I would like to apologize for undoing a lot of your edits User:Interstellarity, I did not see that the late modern period got merged. (I still think we need the years though.) SailorGardevoir (talk) 03:36, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SailorGardevoir: I did see that you undid my edits. I didn't merge the articles, but I think it would be better to open up a discussion on the talk page and get input there. That might be a better approach in doing this than boldly redirecting the page especially since it is a level 2 vital article. Interstellarity (talk) 01:03, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'm in the camp thinking that the late modern period shouldn't have been merged at. SailorGardevoir (talk) 02:07, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There has been plenty of discussion before the redirection of late modern period was done with the approval of three editors. There was only one editor really objecting, but admitting that he might agree eventually at some point in the future. As far as I can tell, he was apparently only interested in delaying action by repeating arguments he had already made before and reverting any substantial attempts at improving the situation for no good reason that I can see. As the other two pointed out, the reversions were contrary to policy and the objections not supported by policies and guidelines.

What is important right now is finding WP:SIGCOV in WP:RS for modern era and early modern period, instead of yet more WP:OR and WP:SYNTH discussions about people's personal opinions on how we should periodise history, unsupported by any WP:SIGCOV in WP:RS. NLeeuw (talk) 09:22, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem here is not any bold editing but that way too many editors have been trying to describe the modern period without actually reading historical research about it. It's really no different than all those editors insisting that Middle Ages should include content content on "medieval China" or whatever.

Periodization is a serious academic issue and is essentially a kind of taxonomy of historical research. It's very complex since dating can vary depending on region and type of history (social, political, cultural, etc). The idea that Wikipedia should simply decide that a period falls between specific years is a very obvious violation of WP:NPOV. We can't just decide to "simplify" certain facts simply because it feels more convenient. Peter ^Isotalo 17:46, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a strong reason to rename this article right now, but per WP:TITLECON I'd say Weak support. On the other hand, I would point out that there have been 2 Requested Moves very recently, both of them resulting in no consensus. Where is the need for yet another discussion? NLeeuw (talk) 09:22, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support per nom and NLeeuw

Kowal2701 (talk) 19:37, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support. "Modern period" is by far the most common term used among historians. It's the standard heading used when defining the period, even if the precise definition varies a lot. Overall, this article is suffering from confusion by editors who haven't actually relied on reliable sources to write the article. Similar to the Middle Ages, the modern period can't just be applied to any historical event 1500-2000. Peter ^Isotalo 17:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: Notify editors from the previous RM's; Mikeblas, Amakuru, Arbitrarily0, Rreagan007, Iskandar323 BilledMammal (talk) 18:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: While I get the consistency argument, this proposed move, as I mentioned above, flies in the face of the stark usage gap between the two terms. Also, everything I said in the November 2022 RM. The Ngrams remains emphatic in the extreme, and mere consistency somewhat pales by comparison. Also, yes, the redirecting of the late modern period to the modern period is pretty confusing. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why Google is being invoked in this case. The only thing it tells us is that the term "modern era" is more common, but we have no idea in what context it's used. This is supposed to be an article about historiography, right? So why aren't we looking at which terms are actually used when writing about history? Peter ^Isotalo 19:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per the reasoning in the last two RMs, which were less than a year ago and less than two years ago respectively. Just WP:DROPTHESTICK already, the current title is the best one and commonly used. — Amakuru (talk) 19:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Again per the metrics that Iskandar323 gives. And per my previous not-vote: if this naming isn't correct, then we should work to systemically fix all the similarly-named articles. (This isn't OTHERSTUFF ... it's just that looking for consistency peace-meal is a difficult task.) -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand the the consistency argument here. What is that this article should be consistent with and why? Peter ^Isotalo 19:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mikeblas, I think you really need to explain your point here. What consistency are you arguing for and why? Peter ^Isotalo 16:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's odd -- why are you singling me out for an explanation?

But here you go: By my sloppy count, there are about 230 article named "some era", including this one. Why should this one deviate from that pattern? Some are historic ("Greece in the Roman era", "Meiji era", "Music in the Elizabethan era") some are not ("NASCAR Winston Cup Series era", "Noisy intermediate-scale quantum era"). If there's a reason to use "some period" instead of "some era", thats' great -- let's get that on the table and discuss it. But renaming one or two articles of the couple-hundred in this set? Without that information, it seems like the suggested name change is arbitrary. And naming shouldn't be arbitrary. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:16, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.