Forum:Dates for articles
The discussion about what should be the base year for the wiki has come up again. Based on many, many long discussions the decision was made to make the base year for articles was 1115 (i.e. after the FFW, but before the start of the Rebellion).
The core problem here is the T5SS is using the date of 1105, in other words before the Fifth Frontier War. As User: Garnfellow as attempted to update the articles in the Spinward Marches Sector the difference between the T5SS (now the "most official" standard) and the other data sources is causing difficulties.
I am not interested in changing the base date for the wiki articles. I recommend leaving it at 1115. Mostly because most of the article (not just the UWP data) are written to or around that date.
To me the question is, how best to manage/update/resolve the data changes from T5SS to the earlier data.
Tjoneslo (talk) 20:45, 3 September 2014 (EDT)
Thanks for starting this. Really, only a tiny fraction of the existing world entries would be affected by the differences between 1105 and 1115, and most of those affected worlds are limited to about four subsectors of the Spinward Marches. Unfortunately, those handful of worlds happen to be in very interesting areas and often featured in very important sourcebooks and adventures. So I think it's valuable to have a discussion.
I think the rationale behind choosing 1115 for this wiki was spot on -- at the time the decision was made.
But given that T5SS is the gold standard right now, and given that Mongoose Traveller is the best supported "living" version of the game right now, and that MgT's baseline is 1105, I think it's worth reconsidering. Also, given how easily all of the classic Traveller material can be gotten on CD, it's probably more plausible now that new groups might want to play through the events of the Fifth Frontier War.
The alternative would be maybe a series of articles that clearly untangle all of the different eras and timelines and sources, something that could guide a new reader through what is right now a pretty confusing snarl. If next year some new player, fired up by Lift Off, started reading some of these world articles they would be terribly confused -- why does the map say this world is a client state, the text say it's non-aligned, and this info box say it's an Imperial world? Garnfellow (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2014 (EDT)
- Please review the previous Proposal for Policy for article time and indicate how this fails to meet your requirements for separation. I dislike hiding information in the base article. Using subpages allows others to reference just the specific information in a given era for their campaigns.
- While we haven't followed the proposal aggressively, it was written to resolve the very issue you are raising. Feedback is appreciated. Tjoneslo (talk) 10:48, 4 September 2014 (EDT)