Discussion JustForFun / GrandUnifiedTimeline

It's because AD stands for 'anno domini, meaning in the year of our Lord'', which apparently is offensive to some people who don't worship Jesus and/or God.

Personally, I just assume CE stands for Christian Era.

I think it's better to look at it through the lens of the relevant works; some works may not have a Jesus in them, but still use the same dating system out of convenience. CE covers both cases.

Thought of something else:

• Determine which reference for Star Wars we should use. The full copy of Into the Great Unknown is here; we are currently using the date from the Multiversal Omnipedia. io9 gives 0 BBY/ABY = 1804 CE, while SWTG gives 1798.

More:

• Make the timeline hemisphere-neutral. In particular, make seasonal references unambiguous.
• Replace dashes with colons (not a priority, but need consistency; see below).

Good question. I was going to ask Random888 anyway, so I'm contacting them now.

Maybe this should lead into a larger community discussion about where to divide different eras in this project (or bring back the old discussion below), because Random888 just cut the 1990s page into two, with no rationale listed (from what I could see) in the edit histories.

Community's too small.

My proposed rule is simple: split if and only if the page reaches 400,000 bytes (the threshold for Overly Long Pages). This would be retroactive back to Random888's last two changes, thus restoring the 1960 split and recombining the 90's pages. If you agree I'll recombine the pages.

I didn't know the community on this project was small (makes sense in hindsight), but I do agree with you. 400,000 reasonable for a project that has potential and high likelihood for huge amounts of expansion.

I've pointed Random888 to this discussion.

As for community size, only a handful of users make regular edits to pages at the moment, though sometimes there might be one-offs.

By the way, if Random888 doesn't respond by the 30th I'll go ahead and revert his last few changes.

As I've already explained in a private message, my reasoning was that I thought "The Postwar Era" was a bit short and that "The Sixties and Seventies" was a bit long. Likewise, I thought "The Nineties" was getting too long. If you disagree with my reasoning, I suppose you'll have to change them back.

I should mention that I've been reworking these pages for months. In fact, "The Postwar Era" and "The Sixties and Seventies" were originally created by me splitting a previous article. This whole thing was a mess when I stumbled upon it and it seemed like there was no one looking after it. I took the liberty of reworking it as I saw fit. Up until now, I received no comments or objections of any kind, so I assumed that no one cared and that I therefore had free reign to do whatever I wanted.

Good, you're here. I guess I may have been a bit hasty in wanting to revert your changes but certainly that last rearrangement struck me as unnecessary. I appreciate the rest of the work you're doing - this project never seems to have many people.

At any rate, do you agree with the 400,000 byte rule that I proposed for the future?

I don't know how you measure how many bytes a page is. What does a 400,000 byte page look like?

There's a counter on the bottom left of the page, in the grey footer. Overly Long Pages has a list of pages over 400,000 bytes if you want to know what that looks like; for example, Aerith and Bob is 400,158 bytes long.

If you look at the left bottom corner of a wiki page, you can see two numbers one above the other, here 33776 or something similar above and 6 below. The 33776 number is the page size of this page, if it becomes larger than 400000 or 500000 the pages begin to break.

I personally think 400,000 bytes is too long, but I'll be okay with whatever the consensus on this issue is. I don't have any sort of alternative suggestion.

As I stated above, I am in favor of splitting pages after 400,000 bytes.

Prefer colons. Especially when the dashes are already used to connect a range.

Ditto.

1991. You can insert a hottip explaining the discrepancy.

Split by time period as opposed to Medium, correct?

I think if we do do that, the Beginning of the Universe should be grouped with the era immediately after it, and the End of the Universe should be grouped with the era immediately before it. Not enough in 'em for a whole page.

Yep, split by time period. Might be easiest to take the folders we have now and just make pages from them (and incorporating the merger you suggest, Schizo Technician), unless anyone wants to propose a new split. That'd be 19 folders (21 folders, plus merging the first two and the last two together).

Alternately, we could consolidate the range now to something like ten or a dozen pages, and just plan on being open to further future splits when we need them. If we do that, I'd say the 20th century should remain split into multiple pages, at least.

Also, we should probably put each "A note on dates" on each apropos page (any page with Lord Of The Rings dates has that note, etc.).

How about it splits into

1. Prior to 10,000 B.C.
2. 10,000 B.C. to 1 B.C.
3. 1 C.E. to 1700
4. 1701 to either 1900 or 1989
5. 1901/1990 to 2100
6. 2101 to 3000
7. 3000 to 10,000
8. 10,001 and beyond

Does that work? Not sure what I'd do about the lead section for each though. But yeah, section it off as a Multi Page Trope, whatever happens.

Matching up with the split used by Hollywood History, where applicable, would seem sensible. Doing so exactly wouldn't be workable, but being able to identify the pages that correspond to the Victorian or Classical eras should be helpful for cross-referencing. This means they shouldn't have partial overlaps - 1500-1700 on one page here, and 1488-1603 elsewhere makes cross-referencing harder - though having multiple historical eras on one timeline page, or splitting one historical era into multiple timeline pages is fine

Wait, What?

Consider, for example, Ancient Rome, all of whose examples are naturally set between approximately 750BC and 450AD. Crosslinking that with the relevant timeline pages is an obvious thing to do, and will be made slightly easier if we avoid partial overlaps.

No it's not obvious, partly because it's a Just for Fun page. I don't understand the point of the cross-referencing. Not to mention the shows set there are already listed there.

The alternative risks ending up with two grand unified timelines in two different parts of the site. Further, while this may be just for fun, it's still interesting to give some idea of the assumed historical background.

Right, since the individual pages have gotten quite epically long, I propose a further split to keep things manageable. How does this sound?

• Deep time: Everything up to 100,000 BCE
• Prehistory: 99,999 BCE - 10,000BCE
• Stone Age: 9999 BCE - 3000 BCE
• Ancient History: 2999 BCE - 500 BCE
• Antiquity: 499 BCE - 499 CE
• Early Middle Ages: 500 - 799
• High Middle Ages: 800 - 1199
• Late Middle Ages: 1200 - 1499
• Renaissance: 1500 - 1749
• Age of Revolution: 1750 - 1815
• Mid-Nineteenth Century: 1816 - 1860
• Industrial Revolution: 1861 - 1899
• Early Twentieth Century: 1900 - 1913
• World War I: 1914 - 1918
• Inter-War Period: 1919 - 1938
• World War II: 1939 - 1945
• Late Forties And Fifties: 1946 - 1959
• Sixties: 1960 - 1969
• Seventies: 1970 - 1979
• Eighties: 1980 - 1989
• Nineties: 1990 - 1999
• Noughties: 2000 - 2009
• Recent Past: 2010 - 2012 [will be updated as future years become past]
• Near future: 2013 - 2019
• Early 21st Century: 2020 - 2050
• Late 21st Century: 2051 - 2100
• Early 22nd Century: 2101 - 2150
• Late 22nd Century: 2151 - 2200
• 23rd Century: 2201 - 2300
• 24th Century: 2301 - 2400
• Late Third Millennium: 2401 - 3000
• Fourth Millennium: 3001 - 4000
• Fifth Millennium: 4001 - 5000
• Far Future: 5001 - 30,000
• Age Of Grim Darkness: 30,001 - 42,000
• End of Time: Everything after 42,000 CE

Its explained on the main page, in the giant list with all of the other alternative timeline series we've put in the list (there are 18 other series).

If you take out Star Wars, you must also take out Lord Of the Rings/ The Silmarillion and the Bible; if you leave those, put Star Wars back.

Tolkein's Word of God allows us to date the Lord of the Rings chronology relative to us. Not so with Star Wars.

But the bible timeline is simply fan interpretation, whereas Star Wars has an officially published document, albeit one from an alternate timeline, defining the "a long time ago" as being "160 years, give or take".

Also, officially published means it DOES have canonical status, just at a lower rung in the Star Wars Canon Heirarchy. As nothing in higher canon contradicts it (160 years IS a long time), I see no reason to disregard it.

The Bible has some historical scholarship behind (i.e. we have an idea when Pilate was governor of Judea) but the story that dates Star Wars, "Into the Great Unknown", is VERY cheeky. Basing the timeline off of that alone is REALLY misleading beside being non-canonical.

BTW higher canon has discredited it. Chewbacca died during the Vong War as opposed to becoming Bigfoot for example.

We have an idea of when Pilate was governor of Judea, yeah, and the stuff with Babylon is easy to date, and there's mounds of archeological evidence for the kingdoms of Judea and Israel, although we could spend years comparing and arguing the starting dates and early years... but anything before the Exodus is pretty much pure interpretation.

edit: its an alternate timeline. Like Star Wars Infinities- same history, but with an unknown Point of Divergence. Higher canon hasn't discredited the events of the story because they're an alternate timeline and so are irrelevant; its the background details that won't change between parallel timelines that are important here.

Its basically a one-note joke story, is all. I won't belabor the point anymore, but the implication has always been that SW takes place untold eons ago, not within relatively recent memory.

Whatever; it was clear from the get-go that neither of us would convince the other, and trying to edit it would just lead to edit-war that'd get the articles locked and make us both look like children. I'm dissappointed and saddened and frustrated, and will simmer for a while and get upset when I think of it, but it really isn't something I'm willing to stake my pride on. I only ask that either you return the entries to "pre-history" or remove them from the rest of the pages up to the 1950s; it doesn't feel right to be half-done.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I made that page under GrandUnifiedTimeline.The Third Millennium and apparently just forgot to list it on the forum thread for indexing. So now we have a duplicate. Um, yay?

Eh, oh well. Feel free to cutlist the one I made then.

It was split based on contents rather than date, since it was split due to overspill. The stuff between the division point used and the present day was voluminous enough that it would have practically guaranteed that this page would overflow again long before Grand Unified Timeline Two.

I would assume that if a fictional work appears to be contemporary with the year it was released, you're fairly safe setting it in that year unless proven otherwise. A lot of sequel works certainly seem to go with that premise when they date events from their predecessors - Beast Wars identifying the original Transformers series as beginning in 1984, for example. If a contemporary-setting work is later revealed not to take place in the year it was released, as stated in a sequel or promotional materials or Word of God or such, it's easy enough to correct it later.

I understand that, but I'm just concerned that people might overdo it. If the year of production is considered to be the setting of the work for all "present day" films, what's stopping people from adding all works. I understand TV Tropes' rules about notability, but I also don't want the timeline to become so big it is impossible to update.

The very concept of this page (a "Grand Unified Timeline") pretty much demands that all works that can be dated relative to Earth history should be included. This also makes it inevitable that it will get quite huge when it is "finished" (which itself seems unlikely). Even if we were to exclude any work that did not explicitly state its date (which would also necessarily exclude a lot of fairly popular and well-known works that could otherwise be dated as "contemporary"), it would still be quite large. There's a lot of fiction out there, after all.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about the ridiculously huge scope of the page - just have fun with it! The page is Just for Fun, after all...

@75.74.152.215: I believe that The Incredibles actually does give a date for when it takes place (or at least, it gives a year). If somebody listed it under the year the movie came out, they were quite a bit off: If I recall correctly, it actually takes place in the '70s.

I would second the idea that works on this page should be ones which give an actual date in the work itself (or enough information that a date can be worked out). For example, if "The film takes place in a leap year where april 13th falls on a friday and there is a full moon" is able to narrow the time of the film down to a time that is reasonably close to when the film was made (or more specifically, when the film appears to be set), I'd say that the film deserves inclusion.

Yeah, I listed The Incredibles under its year of release. My bad. But it was properly corrected, so I don't see a problem...

To be blunt, I think it'll choke a lot of the fun out of this timeline if we require detailed proof of the date of every single event. You'll exclude a lot of works and strongly discourage participation with such a requirement, and it also needlessly holds this specific page to a much higher reference standard than the rest of TV Tropes.

I'm not opposed to justifications in cases where a given date might seem unlikely to the average reader, but I think most dates should be reasonably trusted unless there's proof they're wrong (as there was with Incredibles).

Actually, I'd say that "excluding a lot of works" is a requirement for just about every page at TV Tropes. There's a reason we don't have tropes like "People Sit on Chairs" or "People Breath Air".

If we allow date of release/printing/whatever, this list would be "List of all works of fiction by date of release...except for these few which state that they take place in some other time". It's not a "higher reference standard" to require that works listed on a page that lists works in order of when their fictional timelines occur should actually specify when the work occurs (rather than production date), anymore than requiring that all works listed under Mystical Waif should actually have at least one Mystical Waif in them is a "higher reference standard".

First, it is most certainly a "higher reference standard" - the Mystical Waif page does not require a list of traits possessed by each example character that prove they meet the trope. Usually, only the name and source are identified, and we generally trust that the editor's judgment can be relied upon. More detailed descriptions are saved for characters that the average reader might consider questionable, or otherwise form some sort of exception.

Second, requiring proof for every entry that does not explicitly state its date is feasible, but not practical. If we do that, it'll require many entries to add detailed citations noting reference works, web pages, episode names, Word of God quotes, and so forth - simply because the work itself didn't state a year right up front. Furthermore, if you have a page filled with these citations (even in hottip form) many readers who might have initially thought "ooh, let me add <favorite series> to the timeline!" will see how much work they'd need to do, and decide against it. This would likely deprive us of possible additions.

In short, proof seems fine for weird or questionable cases, but I don't think it should be required in every case... or you stop this Just for Fun page from being fun.

I just did [date BBY]-1814...

Let me phrase it another way (even I'm not sure if I know exactly what I'm talking about)—1814 BBY is 1 B.C as opposed to 0 A.D while 1813 BBY is 1 C.E. I believe, if I'm thinking right that anything pre-1813 BBY should be calculated as [date BBY]-1815. The confusion is the Yavin calendar does have a Year 0 while the Gregorian doesn't.

For the sake of all of our sanities, lets adjust by modifying dates ABY, rather than BBY.

I'd assume that splitting after 1899 or 1900 would be better than from 1990.

honestly, I just went from what looked like the middle in an attempt to get both of them the same length and stave off length overflow in the two new ones as long as possible. Anyone want to fix up the dividing point or smooth out the two articles, feel free to. I am beat.

While I have no great love for Sonichu, I have to ask - how can something qualify for a TV Tropes page but not qualify for this timeline? I would think if it's on TV Tropes, it's fair game...

Good idea on consolidating the date justifications (I was increasingly thinking such was a good idea myself), but it might get kinda cluttered up there eventually if enough date systems are put in... maybe the justifications should be moved to the end? Or enclosed in a folder?

Sonichu is fanfic; thus, it isn't part of the canon of Sonic, Pokemon, or whatever else is involved.

The timeline is supposed to be for the events that happened in our favourite books, movies, TV shows, and comics. Fanfic isn't part of that unless it's later made canon.

I very much agree with you about that work being non-canon with Sonic and Pokemon, but I ask again - how can something qualify for inclusion in TV Tropes generally but not a specific page in TV Tropes? So long as there's a link following the event to the TV Tropes entry for said work, I would think we have little fear of people assuming it's canon. (I'd be very shocked in particular if they thought Sonichu was canon with anything else.)

Besides, a lot of stuff in this timeline already has a lot of coexisting events that are clearly non-canon with each other (i.e. the many assassinations of JFK in 1963), so what difference is really made by throwing a few fanfic events in there? We could always put a caveat that any fanfic inclusions have to have a TV Tropes page already...

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood you.

In general, simply having a page on TVT is not enough for a series to be mentioned on any other page; it must also fit the trope.

As for the GUT in particular, its purpose is to let people see how the dates for their favourite shows line up with each other, and fanfic simply isn't part of that. Yes, there's all sorts of events in there that aren't canon to each other, but everything is canon for something. Fanfic, however, is not and never has been canon, what with it being fanfic and all.

For example, Rei turning everyone into LCL in 2016? Interesting and relevant. Shinji becoming a god of chaos? Didn't happen in either canon, so possibly interesting, but not relevant.

Sigh. I hate to drag this out, but... the "trope" of this page is basically "these are events that happened in fiction". I don't see where that necessarily excludes fanfic.

Also, declaring that a work is "relevant" sounds a lot like you're talking about "notability". Which in turn requires me to point out that on TV Tropes, There Is No Such Thing As Notability.

Mind you, I'm hardly chomping at the bit to add fanfic events to this timeline (plenty occupied with canon events, thanks), but I don't see why fanfic is "not relevant" for this page but relevant everywhere else on this site.

I've had a think about it, and really, I can't come up with a logical reason not to include fanfic. It just feels wrong to me.

So how about fanfic is allowed provided it doesn't contradict canon?

Including fanfic could easily swamp canon. On other pages, it can be segregated into its own folder, but that doesn't work here. However, we can always prune if it gets out of hand.

I'd say list fanfic events only if they would have been listed were they part of canon. Holding both fanfic and canon to the same standard seems fair enough. Preferably, only use fanfics which have their own trope page, easy enough to create but it means people can easily check what specific fanfic is being referred to, same as they can for published works.

That seems quite reasonable to me. I have taken the liberty of editing the page introduction accordingly (but feel free to tweak, obviously).

Can we at least require fanfic entries to be written in red or something to distinguish them?

The point of the Timeline is to be brief; a short description will do just fine.

First episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's shows the date in Hayate's clock as June 3, Friday. Years where that occur are 1994, 2005, and 2011. Since Nanoha A's was broadcasted on 2005...

EDIT: Oh wait, I screwed up. June 3 was shown to be a Saturday. It should be 2006 instead (same reasoning as above since A's ran from 2005-2006). Adjusting. <<

Alright, seems plausible enough.

Considering many of the red links are for Marvel Comics and DC Comics storylines, I would let them stay. If nobody makes pages for them, then delete the links.

Here's an estimation from the 24 Wikia.

I'd leave it as 2004.

I reassigned and dated the duplicate events (since I made the problem). I'm kinda wary of tackling the stuff before the Years of the Sun, though, since those "years" don't match Earth years. Maybe someone with stronger Tolkien-fu than me can try?

Also, now that we have two Star Trek timelines (namely one with James T Kirk taking command of the Enterprise earlier than he should), should they even be listed on the same page?

I see no reason not to use both timelines. Just clarify that it refers to the 2009 film rather than just "Star Trek".

I've been giving some thought to Doctor Who as well, plus other series that may involve time travel extensively. I'm leaning in the direction that we could include stories that coincide with significant historical events, like Pompeii and the like, plus maybe some future events if they signficantly alter history. (Such as the Earth blowing up, or humanity evolving into a different species, etc.)

What do others think?

Maybe ones in the present/near future that heavily change or subvert Like Reality, Unless Noted. I'm just worried that I'd get carried away and include every story from the series (the earliest event in the new series is from 4,600,000,000 B.C. and the latest is from 100,000,000,000,000. Even in terms of ones actually set on the Earth's surface this varies from 79 A.D. to 2069 A.D.  ^{to pedants}