Category talk:Timeline Templates

NOTE: This talk page was moved from Category talk:Timelines.--æþel 00:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

There are quite a number of timelines for specific fandoms. Shouldn't all those pages also be in this category? It strikes me that it would be very useful to be able to find them all together under "timelines", as well as with their own fandoms. --Greer Watson 07:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, this category should be for templates rather than regular pages since it's a subcategory of Fanlore Templates. We could create a history category for the articles, but it doesn't fit in the category structure. --æþel 04:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

We do need a category for timelines (whatever it's called, and wherever it's put). Someone could well be looking for fandom-specific timelines—perhaps to fill in more detail than any general timeline can provide. A category is needed where all timeline articles can be found together.

I might add that, if I were looking for such a category, I'd look for it under Category:Timelines. Infoboxes are not what I'd expect to find. Perhaps what is needed is to move those to a new Category:Timeline Templates? --Greer Watson 05:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It'll be easy enough to create a Timeline Templates category and move the one existing template there. The problem is where to put the Timeline category for the regular articles. I think it would have to become a floating category like Fanworks. In which case, we should probably run it by the wiki committee and/or gardeners.

A new infobox to go with the category would be a good idea, though I can't think of anything to put in it other than name of fandom, date range, and see also.?--æþel 02:45, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Related to this: a Category:Chronology has been suggest here and a Category:Before 1900 has been created. Timelines/chronology could be a subcategory of history or the other way around. It could certainly be useful to have categories that are either grouped by century or decade (where there aren't a lot of pages) or by year (subcategory of subcategory) when when we do have a lot of pages. We then could add cats like Category:1995, Category:1996, etc. to fanworks and it might be interesting to see what was created at the same time to have a better idea of what influenced what. --Doro 12:10, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Would we use "Chronology" instead of Timelines?--æþel 13:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

For which use? The current one or the one requested above for timelines and history pages? I'm not sure about the nuances of the word chronology. To me it suggest a sequence of events and I don't know if that covers all the potential history pages. I would maybe go with Category:History as a floating category in the sidebar and have a subcategory for Category:Chronology (1995, 1996, ..., 2006, 2007, 2008, etc.). Right now there aren't enough pages for Timelines as a subcategory so I would put them under Category:History together with the histories... The use of the Category:Timelines as originally intended isn't all that clear to me. It looks like the category is supposed to have just one page, the TimelineCanon template. Why this can't be just sorted under Category:Fanlore Templates I don't know. Is it at all likely that we'll have more timline templates than the TimelineCanon one? Who is supposed to create one and what for? I find this all a bit puzzling... --Doro 13:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

"Timelines" was originally created in a spirit of optimism, I think. Maybe we don't need it as a separate template category yet. But it is not clear to me why we need multiple categories for history and and chronological timelines. All or most Fanlore pages should include a historical perspective, so the history category would have to be defined more narrowly. How would we define this category so that it doesn't include most of Fanlore?

If we have a separate category for each year, what goes into that year? Fanworks? Fandoms that started in that year? Conventions held in that year? When adding categories to a page like K/S, would we have to include 40+ categories just to indicate all the years it was active? That sounds like a nightmare. Date categories could be interesting and useful, but we need to think about how we're going to handle it. Personally, I'd go for decade categories rather than individual years.--æþel 14:51, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't say that we do need separate categories for histories and chronology. It's just that we have "history of..." and "timeline of..." pages that are basically the same thing and should go somewhere. Possibly somewhere where we could also add hypothetical pages like The Zine Era, The Mailing List Era, The Livejournal Era, or existing pages like the Three Year Summer, etc.

If we have a separate category for each year, what goes into that year? Fanworks? Yes. That's exactly what I would put there.

When adding categories to a page like K/S, would we have to include 40+ categories just to indicate all the years it was active? Well, no. I would put just decade or century cats on such a page. I would image that date categories would function the same way fandom cats work. You start with a more general category and when you have a minimum of pages in that category that could have a more specific category, you create a subcategory for that. --Doro 15:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

example category structure so we have something to look at

Doro, are you thinking of something like this:

Category:History included in History Template

Category:Before 1900

Category:20th Century 1900-1999??

Category:1960s

Category:1970s

Category:1980s

Category:1990s

Category:21st Century 2000-2099

Category:2000s

Category:2004

etc.

Category:2010s

And then something like Merlin (BBC) would be in the 2000s and 2010s categories, but The Trouble With Unicorns would be under 2009? Would K/S get decade categories or the 20th Century and 21st Century category?--æþel 15:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, like that. :D (Also, it doesn't have to be Category:History if you think that would confuse the whole history mission of the wiki. I'm sure there are alternative category names that we could find. I don't find Category:History confusing but you should probably get additional input.)

The K/S thing... Most fandoms have an era where they are most active and after that there is occasionally a new story or something but K/S is still active. I could see it go both ways - Kirk/Spock (TOS) -> Category:20th Century or Category:20th Century + Category:21th Century; Kirk/Spock (AOS) -> Category:2009 + Category:2010s.

ETA: On second thought, who says that fandoms need to have a date category? I assume trope, glossary and activity pages won't have one either. Maybe we should look at it differently and just add it to pages where it definitely works, like for example fanworks, conventions, archives, websites, archives, challenges, newspaper articles, pages about specific events, etc.

I like this idea! We could always add a specific note to the history category, stating that dated categories are for specific things that have dates -- not every page will need or have one. --Awils1 08:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)