Forum:Forum:History Dates Conflicts
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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Forum:History Dates Conflicts
Hi there. My favorite period is early history of the Traveller, particularly the Interstellar Wars. I am coming across some issues with date conflicts in entering events and wanted to know if there is a an order of precedence in order to resolve them. I see that year entries are in Imperial Years. No problem there. It is in resolving dates between sources.
Types of Conflicts
- "Real life events" - A few of the entries list real life events like first Solomani spaceflight in -2555 (resolves to 1967AD from the date template) If it is different, should the Imperial Year be used from the source canonically regardless of it's "real life" date (as the OTU is a "different universe") or should I find the appropriated Imperial Year to match the AD Year
- Date conflicts between sources - As my focus is the Interstellar Wars period, I come across date conflicts between sources like the new Mongoose Solomani AM, GURPS-IW, Reft Sector, the old Solomani AM and others. I can calculate the appropriate Imperial Year for Solomani AD references by playing with the date template, then creating the appropriate year entry. The problem is that Imperial year for events conflict. Mongoose is more recent, IW is more complete, etc. Is there a proper method? Use the more recent (Mongoose), use the more complete (IW), use "consensus" (more sources list the same date) or another method? I would lean towards GURPS IW because it is far more detailed than any other source, but as they say, I am not the only one here
~~Nathan Brazil~~
- The conflicts of canon is not a new issue. There are examples scattered throughout the entire wiki (see, for example, Beyond Sector which has been done several times). Generally the author of the articles picks one and leaves a note regarding the conflict on the talk page of the article. Sometimes we can hand wave off the differences (e.g. Solomani spaceflight as the moon landing rather than first orbit). If you find a particularly egregious conflict you can post a forum note and we can take a look and find a solution. Tjoneslo (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2013 (EDT)
- Back when we were working on GURPS Traveller: Sword Worlds, Jon Zeigler and I selected one of the handful of events for which we had canonical Imperial and Solomani dates and calculated all other dates from that, The chosen date was 292-950 Imperial = 13 March 5471 Terran, the date Margaret chose for decreeing the reintegration of the Solomani Sphere into the Imperium. Thomas adjusted the date conversion program for the wiki to conform to this standard, although there are rounding issues that can introduce errors.
- If you check the talk page for Date Conversion, you will find instruction on how to calculate other dates from that. Just remember that in the OTU, the Gregorian Calendar was replaced with the Revised Gregorian Calendar where 4000AD is NOT a leap year. This means the Julian Day count is out by 1 day for all dates after Feb 28 4000AD, which must be accounted for.
- If we're in luck, Mongoose stuck to the standard established in Sword Worlds, but otherwise I suppose we will have to get a statement from Mongoose Matt or perhaps even Marc Miller and establish a new standard that everyone can adhere to in the future. Rancke (talk) 20:26, 5 April 2013 (EDT)
I guess it all depends on the "time zone" of the writer.
- "Hey, I heard about this happening last week... and put today's date on it" kind of thing. Then again, this encyclodeia is just like any other source you can find... biased by the observation of an objective fact by a subjective writer.