Talk:Common Era

For Wikipedia policy on use of AD/CE and BCE/BC notation, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers § Era style.

Talk:Common Era/Archive 10#"Christian Era" in lead

@Jc3s5h: Could you show how and where a unanimous consensus concerning the rejection of the abbreviation of Christian Era as CE in the lead has been made? If not, my cited contributions reverted wherein [1] may be restored. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 03:57, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

The burden is on you to gain consensus for your change. One of the reasons I disagree with this change is explained in the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Format of the first sentence. By putting "Christian Era" in the lead, and especially in the first sentence, you are saying the article you edited is the article about the Christian Era. But if you type "Christian Era" in the Wikipedia search box, you will be taken to Anno Domini because Christian Era is a redirect.

Also, your first citation, to the dictionary.com entry for "Christian Era", does not even contain the word "common". Your second citation to an essay by N. S. Gill states

CE stands for "Common Era" or, rarely "Christian Era." [Emphasis added]

I don't belive a rarely used meaning belongs in the lead, much less the first sentence. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Your disagreement does not does imply the inexistence of consensus as seen before in #CE/BCE are also abbreviations for Christian Era/Before Christian Era. Redirects may be changed. Also a rare alternative is still an alternative term, though relatively uncommon as per WP:OBSCURE. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 06:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

"Unanimous consensus" seldom exists and is not a requirement for keeping a version of an article. Talk:Common Era/Archive 10#Requested move in unison with Anno Domini move and Talk:Anno Domini/Archive 4#Requested move in unison with Common Era move indicate consensus for the current names of articles and redirects, and which topics are covered in each article. Jc3s5h (talk) 06:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Christian Era

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

While I am involved, the consensus is clearly opposed to the suggested change, 14 Editors have expressed opposition to the change, and 0 Editors have expressed support for it. Editors have noted that it would not be appropriate to include Christian Era in the lead of the article per MOS:LEADALT. In the interest of saving editor time, I am closing this per WP:SNOWCLOSE and WP:ACD which states If the outcome is truly uncontroversial, closures by involved editors are permitted and even encouraged. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 00:26, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

---

The purpose of this Request for Comment is to seek community consensus on whether the term the Christian Era should be included as an alternative full form of the abbreviation CE in the first sentence of the article Common Era.

Currently, the abbreviation CE is commonly understood to stand for "Common Era", which is widely accepted in both academic and secular contexts as a non-religious alternative to Anno Domini (AD). However, there is historical evidence that the Christian Era was used as a term synonymous with "Common Era" in earlier periods. Some editors argue that acknowledging the Christian Era as an alternative interpretation of CE would provide a fuller representation of the history and context of the term, particularly for readers interested in its religious or historical origins.

Opponents of this inclusion may argue that the Christian Era has fallen out of contemporary usage and may cause confusion, as CE is primarily used today in a secular context. Additionally, they may express concern that such inclusion could give undue weight to a religious interpretation that is no longer relevant to the modern usage of the term.

The community is invited to discuss the following question:

Should the Christian Era and Before the Christian Era be included as an alternative full forms of CE and BCE in the first sentence of the article?

Please provide your reasoning and any supporting sources or guidelines that may assist in reaching a consensus. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 07:22, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Support

Oppose

• The whole point of the term Common Era is to secularise date formatting. If there is a specific Christian religious context that is so relevant that it must be mentioned, AD/BC is well established and unambiguous. If some people also use CE for Christian era, it constitutes trivia for this article about the topic Common Era, which does not belong in the lead· · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:45, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

There are some very wierd arguments there, but I'm travelling. Johnbod (talk) 22:59, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

• This proposal is fundamentally flawed.

• CE is a disambiguation article, it does not redirect here.
• Christian Era redirects, as it should, to Anno Domini (the widely accepted name for the Christian era.
• The term "Common Era" is the one used for our present dating system by non-Christians. This is by far the most widely understood meaning of the term today.
• The etymology of the name is not especially relevant but it is a conversion of the word "vulgar" (which had gained negative meaning, just as the word "common" has begun to do). The word 'vulgar' (of the people) was used to distinguish dating from 'regnal' (of the King, as in 'the first year of the reign of Charles III'). That some sources such as Merriam-Webstee have chosen to define it as "Christian Era" really tells you more about their target demographic than anything deeply meaningful.

I strongly oppose this proposal. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:50, 5 October 2024 (UTC

• Oppose: This claim is only very weakly supported by the article and so hardly belongs in the first sentence of the lead just per WP:LEAD. Incidentally, it looks like the mere use of the term "Christian era" is being invoked in the article to support this as an interpretation of "CE". But that simply does not follow. The abbreviation has another meaning well-established by the body of the article: "Common Era". --Patrick (talk) 15:32, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is an article about the term "Common Era"; it is not the place, and its first sentence is most certainly not the place, to shoe-horn in a trivial claim that the abbreviation of the term might also stand for something else, e.g. the CE mark. NebY (talk) 17:34, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Oppose per above, I've never seen Christian era abbreviated as CE

  Kowal2701 (talk) 19:32, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Though "Christian era" is a reasonable guess by somebody unfamiliar with the abbreviation, it is pretty obvious that any and all writers of "CE" think it stands for "Common Era". In addition your own dictionary links says it stands for "common era" and not "Christian era", look at the page for "CE".Spitzak (talk) 19:49, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose No sources have been given to support equal time. Johnuniq (talk) 01:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons I already stated in #Talk:Common Era/Archive 10#"Christian Era" in lead. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:59, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose: The relevant guideline, I think, is MOS:LEADALT. An alternative name may appear in the lede ¶ if it is significant, and if there are fewer than three alternative names. Looking at major dictionaries, I cannot tell whether Christian Era is significant as an alternative name for the same period as Common Era. Meanwhile, the OED mentions both Christian Era & Anno Domini in this context; the Cambridge English Dictionary lists Christian Era & Current Era. If it's unclear to me whether or not Christian Era is significant, it's very clear to me that there are at least three alternative names. Surely, if any alternative is significant, Anno Domini has a better claim than Christian Era. The current treatment—in which Christian Era appears in the body of the article but not the lede—appears to me to be the right course. Pathawi (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  Oppose as above. The term Christian era is already given detailed discussion throughout the body of the article. Spree4218 (talk) 04:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose AD by definition overlaps with CE, but this is not mentioned in the lead. It would defeat the purpose of CE. Senorangel (talk) 00:41, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• Based on the current state of the article body I don't think that it is sufficiently significant to the topic to put in the lead, which is currently an appropriate size relative to the body. If there really is substantial historical scholarship that this is a historical usage, then (assuming appropriate care is taken not to overrepresent due weight) some careful additions might be made to the body, and iff said portion of the body becomes much more substantial, only then should we start to discuss whether to add it to the lead. Alpha3031 (t • c) 05:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Per JMF McYeee (talk) 05:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose It could be mentioned in some capacity in the article as a historical thing, referenced, but it doesn't seem appropriate to include a usage that is no longer common in the lead, let alone the first sentence.--Brocade River Poems (She/They) 10:43, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

User:Jeaucques Quœure could you do your fellow editors the courtesy of not using large language models to write on your behalf? If I wanted to talk to a chatbot, I wouldn't be on Wikipedia. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:06, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

You may need to think over WP:Culture of disrespect. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 16:31, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

A response like this really isn’t helping your cause any. Great: We need thick skins. True enough. But this is a collaborative project. Pathawi (talk) 09:57, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah there are a lot rules here and some contradict, or at any have different takes. I can shout WP:MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK and you can shout back WP:TOO MANY COOKS SPOIL THE BROTH, Me, WP:HE WHO HESITATES IS LOST, you WP:FOOLS RUSH IN WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD. Etc.

The question is, is the allegation true? If it is, you can't hide behind some rules. If it isn't, it's a pretty scurrilous statement. I don't know anything about Chatbot, how can you tell, or infer to a high level of satisfaction, AirshipJungleman29? Jeaucques Quœuremis, is it true or not? Herostratus (talk) 01:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29 was casting WP: ASPERSIONS. I rendered the benefit of the doubt as I wanted to prevent a WP: BOOMERANG. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 12:23, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Herostratus, GPTZero classifies the opening statement of this RfC as 100% likely to be AI-generated. On the question of a high level of satisfaction, GPTZero has about a 10% false-positive rate, meaning that there is about a 90% chance that the opening statement of this RfC is AI-generated.

For some reason, those who use LLMs get rather defensive whenever you call them out on it (see e.g. this ArbCom case request); unfortunately that seems to be the case here too. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:20, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think 10% false positive rate implies a 90% probability of the content being AI. It could even be the case that we have a false positive paradox here. McYeee (talk) 05:33, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Also... altho using ChatGPT to generate content is not well thought of by many (the whole subject is very fraught), is there anything wrong with how one generates remarks that one puts one's signature under? Maybe -- I'm asking. Speaking just for the moment of talk page remarks... if the matter is that the remarks themselves are incorrect, hard to understand, disingenuous, just blather, or whatever, OK. But if they are cogent, does it matter if you got them from a fortune cookie or your cat? Herostratus (talk) 00:52, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, since most people opening an RFC do so from a particular POV, using an LLM may be a way to present the question more neutrally. Though of course the initiator is still going to write the prompt from their POV and the LLM will respond to that. Or hallucinate. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:06, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

While I do not know the efficacy of the ChatGPT Detector, it is worth noting that the User in question has been warned numerous times on their talkpage about using AI Generated Content and was also brought to ANI about it Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1162#h-Jeaucques_Quœure_and_apparent_LLM_abuse-20240724075000. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 11:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Well, certainly, one's reputation follows them, so I can certainly see the basis for being annoyed here. But reputation doesn't entirely define all one's future actions. I didn't read thru that thread, but the original complaint began:

...added a block of apparently LLM-generated content that's been reverted for having no sources, which they've immediately readded with an apparently dishonest edit summary claiming they're "adding sources"...

Well and good, but what is the purpose of the term apparently LLM-generated here? Seems that the problem is that the material was unsourced and the person insisted anyway and was disingenuous to boot. Mnmh? I do get that AI is going to take over all the fun creative work, then destroy our civilization and then either enslave or destroy humanity itself soon enough, probably. So I can see how "AI generated" would be seen as automatically bad. But it really doesn't have anything to do with this project. Write your congressman.

So, would this be a valid reason to open an ANI complaint?

...added a block of apparently LLM-generated content that's good and well-sourced....

How about this?

...added a block of content (apparently written by his next-door neighbor) that's good and well-sourced....

Where is the line?

And this is a talk page, so were sourcing requirements are much less strict than for articles. Is it possible that people just find the editor annoying and are bringing up red herrings on that basis. Herostratus (talk) 18:44, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not up to me to decide how things get enforced or why, but I will say there is also precedent for using LLM on a talkpage as being unacceptable Special:Diff/1246504770. In anycase, it's all above my lowly head on this platform.

Is it possible that people just find the editor annoying and are bringing up red herrings on that basis.

Could be, I don't know enough about their history to swing one way or the other. My point was mainly that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, has been flagged by an automatic duck detector, and has a history of engaging in duck related behavior, it could be a duck. Could also be a Goose, though, I s'pose, or some other manner of waterfowl. When we're talking about a 10% margin of error and "it could be a false positive", the reputation of prior duck activity seems relevant.

Some people just have an eye for recognizing AI Generated Content, the stuff it churns out is very formulaic (I say this having participated in training and evaluating LLMs). My understanding from what I have seen elsewhere on Wikipedia is that LLM's are unacceptable for use on Talk Pages and in Article Content. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 23:06, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Would some kind soul put us all out of our misery...

and WP:SNOWCLOSE this RFC, please? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I am unsure, but there doesn't seem to be any need for an uninvolved editor to close this since there is such a clear consensus. There is exactly 0 supporting votes and an overwhelming majority of opposition. I don't think this needs a formal closure, since the consensus is pretty clear. Per WP:ACD. If the outcome is truly uncontroversial, closures by involved editors are permitted and even encouraged. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 00:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

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.

Epoch of Common Era does not necessarily coincide with the birth of Jesus

The reasons why the epoch of Anno Domini notation, and therefore the Common Era, does not necessarily coincide with the birth of Jesus is explained at some length in Anno Domini#History. Therefore "based on" is a much more apt description.

Leaving the uncertainty about the actual birth of Jesus, even the surviving writings of Dionysius Exiguus leave open the eras beginning at either the conception or birth of Jesus, and the year in the mind of Dionysius might have been 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1. Add to that the day the eras begin depend on what day of the year a particular government, church, or culture decides to start the year. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

It still reads strangely to me, because as I understand, the point of CE is that it is is not based on Christian beliefs but merely recognises the de facto world standard is what it is.

So let's look at it another way: what value does the new sentence However, the epoch is still based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus add to the article? Because to me it reads as POV-pushing. Do we really need it? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:01, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems pretty basic & necessary to me, but "still uses" might be considered more neutral by the hyper-sensitive. Johnbod (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Or simply "uses"? And do we really links to both Christian events? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Please clarify "And do we really links to both Christian events?" Do you mean we should only mention one of the events, or that both of them should be mentioned but only one wikilinked? I believe both must be mentioned because scholars are not entirely sure which Dionysius meant. And if both are mentioned, I think readers would like the convenience of a wikilink. It will not occur to some readers that we would even have the article "Annunciation" so wikilinking serves to notify readers the article exists. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:01, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I prefer "still based on" over "still uses" because "based on" suggests some uncertainty, interpretation, adjustment (or all of these) of the writings of Dionysius may have intervened to arrive at the modern understanding in most English-speaking countries that the epoch of the Common Era is January 1, 1. Indeed, there is uncertainty of a day whether January 1, 1, Julian calendar observed in Rome at the time coincides with January 1, 1, Proleptic Julian calendar, and which certainly does not coincide with January 1, 1, Proleptic Gregorian calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:17, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

"It still reads strangely to me, because as I understand, the point of CE is that it is is not based on Christian beliefs but merely recognises the de facto world standard is what it is." Just because some people wish to ignore the actual calculations conducted approximately 1,499 years ago, and the thinking that inspired the calculations, does mean we should intentionally make it hard for readers to find that information. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:06, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I think a reference to how the dates were originally calculated (as best we can reconstruct it) is as appropriate in this article as when the ancient Olympic Games were held (as best as we can reconstruct it) is explained in the "Olympic Games" article (which concentrates on the modern Olympics). Otherwise readers might assume they could find the years of ancient Olympics simply by counting by fours backward from 2022. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:24, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Others may have a different view, but to me that info is highly relevant and due in the AD article but is irrelevant and Wp:undue in this one. The CE notation is no more than a couple of centuries old. What may or may not have happened over 2000 years ago is a rounding error. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:47, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I took a one-semester university course on numerical calculations. About half of it was analyzing, down to the very last bit, rounding error. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:18, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

In that case, you will be familiar with the concept of false precision (where the output claims greater precision than the least precise of the inputs). I expect that you will also be familiar with the management accounting practice, where (when dealing with large numbers) it is common-place to use the term "rounding error" to discount from consideration numbers less than a relevant order of magnitude. Marginal differences are just distracting.

In this case [taking the Christian beliefs at face value], we have two events separated by about nine months – the dates of neither of which is known but RSs calculate that they did not occur at the actual epoch of the calendars, almost 2,025 years ago. Whether or not Dionysius made his (erroneus) calculation from the date of conception or of birth is of course an important topic in the AD discussion. But how is it remotely relevant in this article? To use another common expression, it is just small change stuff. It is thus WP:UNDUE and close to proselytising. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

So in an article about tape measures, you would be happy to say the meter uses 1/10,000,000th the length of an arc of longitude from the equator to the north pole, with no mention of the actual definition? Jc3s5h (talk) 16:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Both of these statements would be contrary to what one finds in scholarly articles:

1. However, the epoch is still based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception of Jesus.
2. However, the epoch is still based on the traditionally reckoned year of the birth of Jesus.

Hence the need to mention both.

A more accurate statement would be

• However, the epoch of the era is still based on the traditional reckoning by Dionysius Exiguus of the incarnation of Jesus.

But this wold be harder for our readers to understand. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

[edit conflict, reply to yours of 16:03, 4 November 2024] No, because that would be wildly undue. I would say in an article about tape measures that it "gives lengths in centimetres and inches, typically accurate to the nearest millimeter and 1⁄16 of an inch. Both measures are defined by international standards, International System of Units in the case of centimetres and the International yard and pound agreement for the inch." If the reader wants to know what those standards are, we have hyperlinks for that. If the article were about precise laboratory metrology, more detail would indeed be due. Otherwise every article gets clogged with a load of extraneous detail: in the case of this (Common Era) article, why stop at the conception and birth? What about the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar? So we had better include regnal year dating. And the life of Tiberius. And all the Caesars. And the Roman Empire. And Roman Syria. Reductio ad absurdum. We have to draw the line somewhere and it is certainly well short of the two possible dates in the original erroneous calculation. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:40, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

and in reply to yours of 16:23, 4 November 2024, I fail to see any reason why the disputed sentence needs to say anything more than However, its epoch is the same as that of the Anno Domini era. If anybody wants to know what that is, they can follow the hyperlink, same as in every other article. So the more I analyse this issue, the more I become concerned that repeating the Christian belief here is not only WP:UNDUE but actually a WP:SOAPBOX violation. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The addition was only made on November 3 by Meeepmep (talk · contribs). Maybe we should just restore the version before the change; that version is dated October 29. The biggest loss would be we would require readers to realize (or read further in the article) that BC years and AD years are numerically equivalent to BCE and CE years, they must have the same epoch. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:17, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

How epochs are set in a calendar seemed like pretty crucial information missing in the lead to me, I thought there was no harm in stating it, as obvious as it may seem. Personally I think leads are less helpful in general if it is written with the assumption that everyone would read the entire article, or that readers would nessessarily come to the realizations that the writer wants. Meeepmep (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, I am not proposing that nothing be said in the lead about the epoch. But what is said must be proportionate and not be used as a WP:COATRACK. Simply saying that "the epoch of CE is the same as that of AD" is both necessary and sufficient. If anybody needs to be told what is the epoch of AD, then let them follow the wikilink. As is the norm on every other article on Wikipedia for detailed points.

BC years and AD years are numerically equivalent to BCE and CE years would be meet the necessity test but it might be argued that it is not sufficient. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There is NO reason to mention this at all. These years are exactly equal to Anno Domini and that article talks plenty about the accuracy. CE was chosen as a different abbreviation for AD and I see NO references indicating that "accuracy" has anything to do with whether CE or AD is preferred.Spitzak (talk) 01:22, 5 November 2024 (UTC)