With ML4E's digging, we now have a story set in nearly every century of the 2nd Millenium, plus several stories set in the 1st and before the common era. This leads me to propose an category idea that I don't think we've discussed before.
Given HT's willinglness to alter the lifetimes of historical figures, I've often thought that creating categories for year of birth and year of death might be worth doing. The big counterargument that immediately popped into my head (and prevented me from even floating the idea) is that since HT's canon does not embrace every year of recorded human history, we'll have a substantial spike in some years, but one or two people in other years. Then of course, there would be those people whose birth or death is estimated or unrecorded.
But, since HT is also good at giving us throwaway references, and because stories like "Curse of the Three Demons" are finally getting articles, I'd like to at least propose the idea. We can adopt it or shitcan it, I won't lose sleep either way.
Now, as I said, some years will be better represented than others. So, if we went this route, I'd propose a model based on the "Setting by Year" model we have now. Start with births/deaths by millenium. Telescope in by century, then by decade (if justified), then by year. Obviously, some years, such as the period between 1860-1865 and the period between 1939-1945, will be heavily populated with deaths and will justify OTL/Fictional Work splits. Births, even fictional ones, would probably be a little thinner.
Anyway, for discussion. TR (talk) 16:40, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
- I've also had this idea come up from time to time, and I typically stomp on its crib when it does. The counterarguments you identify are the main reasons, plus the fact that we'd have to root through several thousand articles to do it. Telescoping is a decent way of bypassing the issues not relating to laziness, but another wrinkle arises when we think of historicals who died at different times in different timelines. Could get complicated having, say, John Shakespeare in both 1601 deaths and 1588 deaths (assuming, as always, he was still alive at the POD, as logically he must have been, but died before the Hapsburgs took the throne, as Will strongly implied). Harder still with someone like Lincoln, who's had multiple DODs that are not his "real" one.
- So we'd need not only an OTL/Fictional split, but something to handle historical figures in ATLs. (An outgrowth of the Died Sooner/Lived Longer ategories, perhaps?) It will be complicated, though I won't dismiss it out of hand. If we do it, I'd suggest starting with DOBs and working the kinks out there before moving onto the more problematic DODs. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:35, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think that we'd need to make the additional ATL split from Fictional Work--Fictional Work (hopefully) implies ATL. (I've actually been toying with the idea of moving all ATL categories to Fictional Work, but that's for another day).
- Yes, you're right. When I first read your idea, rather quickly, I thought you meant one category for historical figures born/died in Year X and one for fictional characters. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:21, September 16, 2012 (UTC)
- I was thinking we'd start with the Historicals. Any given historical figure is far more likely to have the relevant info available than a given fictional character. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:21, September 16, 2012 (UTC)
I have no objection but it does fail to fill me with enthusiasm. We had previously discussed creating re-directs for historicals for each subsection and using those for categorization purposes for each story rather than the main article. The test case was the Joe Steele redirect TR created, although I can't find the discussion itself. If we follow through on that then varying DODs (and possible DOBs too) could be placed there rather than cluttering up the main article. Doing this would deal with both at once. ML4E (talk) 17:58, September 16, 2012 (UTC)
- If memory serves, that was very similar to Silver's policy when we first started here. We ignored it so widely that it was eventually quietly abolished. I don't object to restoring it, and it would indeed make our far more precise, extensive categorization system less unwieldy. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:16, September 16, 2012 (UTC)
I finished dividing up Joseph Stalin's redirects and categories. We'll probably want to resolve how to address the posthumous reference vs. contemporary reference vs. direct appearance categories (if that's what we want to do). I also created a category for his year of birth; a quick search revealed about 5 1878 births altogether, all historical, so I didn't do the OTL/FW split yet. I didn't add any other people to the 1878 Births cat yet until we "fine-tune" things.
- I'm going to suggest we do the split anyway, so it's in place and we can spare ourselves some additional work down the line. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:18, September 20, 2012 (UTC)
- I shall partially agree to that suggestion, insofar as we should create a "Born in 1878 (OTL)" category. I don't think we should worry about the Fictional Work cat, as it will be an empty category at this stage (unless we want to double cat; Stalin was obviously born in 1878 in Joe Steele, and probably in 191; but that approach strikes me as pointless). TR (talk) 15:37, September 20, 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, good point. And no, I wouldn't want to do that with historicals in AH, even those born post-POD. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:51, September 20, 2012 (UTC)
- I didn't think there were different DoB for historicals. The way Turtledove works it, it seems that this would create a different (fictional) character (e.g. Daniel MacArthur) rather than the same one. However, I try to categorize new characters as much as possible when I create them so if I have a DoB for a fictional, I would like to be able to categorize that too. ML4E (talk) 20:46, September 20, 2012 (UTC)
- Agreed. I'm not sure a split is needed for DOB. It's needed for DOD so people don't think we really believe Strom Thurmond died in 1941, etc. No such threat with DOB, because historical DOBs don't change. The only questionable one I can think of is Jeb Stuart Jr, whom we've deemed fictional anyway. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:26, September 21, 2012 (UTC)
It gives us an idea of how things will look if we adopt both of the ideas under discussion. TR (talk) 04:30, September 17, 2012 (UTC)
- What do we want to do by way of supercategories? Born in 1878 goes in Born in the 1870s, which will go in Born in the 19th Century, of course, and eventually into Characters by Date of Birth--Then what? Directly into Characters? (We have to do that sooner or later, or face an infinite regression arises. Characters by Date of Death can go into Deceased Characters if we so desire; I was hoping we could come up with an equivalent for Characters by DoB for symmetry's sake. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:18, September 20, 2012 (UTC)