Policy:Year Pages

Background[edit]

After three and one half years, the various Year pages on BattleTechWiki had become tremendously confused due to the large amounts of information accumulating, with varying degrees of consistency between them. In some cases, information that some Editors did not deem worthy of articles in their own right were left orphaned on an individual year's page; in other cases, mere statements were allowed to grow with more and more detail, some with references to official sources, some not. Hence, the original focus of the statement was no longer on an event that had occurred within that year, but on details that were less related to the occurrence of events within that year. In some cases, material was stated verbatim from an article on the same subject, duplicating efforts and diluting the value and uniqueness of the Year page.

A summit of Editors discussed various ways to make the Year articles informative, and remain so. From that discussion came eight basic points:

  1. Each entry could be categorized under one of four headings: Battles, Events, Characters and Technology
  2. Each entry should be short & focused, requiring only one line of information.
  3. Each entry should have only one wikilink, leading to an article that will provide the details of the event.
  4. The article to which the entry is linked must reference the actual event.
  5. Year pages should not have reference nor bibliography sections.
  6. All entries should be preceded by the date, if known, in an established format.
  7. All dated entries will be listed in chronological order.
  8. Undated entries will follow dated entries within that category, unless the sequence of events suggests the undated event occurred between two dated events.

Details on these points follow.

Details[edit]

Categories[edit]

In order to quickly assess what occurred in a year, without sub-dividing too far, four basic categories are to be utilized in the years. These will stand out with their colored headings (as found in the Code section below). The four categories are:

  • Conflicts (formerly Battles): events that involve violence as their central occurrence, in whatever form that may take: campaigns, skirmishes, two-person altercations, assassinations, raids, civilian riots, invasions, genocide, wars, etc.
  • Events: occurrences that do not involve violence, technology-based or individual character-related happenings, such as political actions, unit formations & movements, declarations, factory openings, trade agreements, etc.
  • Characters: events such as births, deaths, injuries and actions that are not previously attributed to an event in Battles or Events.
  • Technology: new vehicle releases & events, new forms of technology invented, produced, stolen or transferred, etc.

Each entry should fit within one of these four categories, in some form or fashion.

Short & focused[edit]

The intent of the entries on a Year page are to inform the reader of the basic chronological occurrence of an event, not to educate the reader on the details of that event. Therefore, these entries should remain short, focused on one subject and limited to one line (when displayed). Whenever an event may be complex enough to require further expansion, instead of extending past one line or using lists (bulleted or numbered), consideration should be made to adding them as separate chronological entries into the page.

Examples:

Correct:

  • Shipil Company's prototype FCS Claymore makes it first maiden flight.

Incorrect:

In the incorrect example above, each of those four lines would be better presented as four separate entries.

One wikilink[edit]

The third point that was decided was to limit each entry to one wikilink, which should lead to the focus of the event, or an article that would provide details of the event listed. The rationale behind this stated that multiple wikilinks would not be the best indicator of what the most informative article really was and could seek to confuse the entry subject. As the second point was to provide simple statements of fact regarding the occurrence of an event, the wikilink would enlighten a curious reader as to the details behind the event.

In the above example, the correct form had only one link, to the Claymore article, which was the subject of the entry. The incorrect example was not clear as to whether the subject event was the Terran Peace Summit, ComStar, ComStar's Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission, the Mercenary Review Board, ComStar's historical archives, the University of Blake or ComStar's troop movement announcements.

Linked article[edit]

The fourth point agreed upon was the value of an article that actually provided information regarding the statement. In the original form of the Year pages, some events were only referenced (on BattleTechWiki) on the actual Year Page, and a search for the event would invariably lead right back to the Year page. Other entries, though linked, would not have an article provided, but left open (via a redlink) for later article development. In those cases, a reader would have no further way to explore the interest raised by the entry.

The consensus point for this problem was that each entry, while limited to one wikilink, must also have one wikilink, pointing to an existing article (not a redlink). Additionally, that article must also reference (at the least) the event mentioned in the entry, with expansive details regarding that event, as a preference. If an event does not yet warrant the notability of an article with details, then it does not warrant entry on the Year page. The preferred order of editing would be either the creation of an article about the event or expansion of an existing article to address the event and then the addition of an entry on the relevant Year page.

Examples:

Correct:

  • Shipil Company's prototype FCS Claymore makes it first maiden flight.

Incorrect:

In the first example, the unveiling of the DropShip model links to the actual model's article, which would provide more details on the event and the model. In the second event, the adding Editor has not bothered to write an article about the subject, the Georgetown Crawler, and a reader has no way to find additional information (not even a reference) in its absence.

In cases where no article exists, follow-on Editors may remove the unsupported entry from the Year page.

No reference or bibliography sections[edit]

Year pages are not normal article pages. Instead, they focus on a specific goal: to provide a chronological list of events, both within the order of the events in that year and via the successive order of the Year pages themselves.

Some intrepid Editors sought to fully cite the material added to Year pages, as is encouraged on regular articles. However, the duplication of information proved pointless when the supporting article should provide that same information, and the additional sections led to an increase in size of the pages, causing clutter & without significantly improving the mission of the Year page.

As such, it was decided to discourage the inclusion of any reference or bibliography sections on the Year pages.

Dates[edit]

There are many examples of events being referenced in official sources as occurring within a given year, but with no additional information as to when specifically that event did take place. However, every now and then, the Powers That Be will nail done an event to within a month and even a unique date. When appropriate and available, dates should precede the entry, in the Month-Date format. When an entry's date of occurrence is unknown, it should follow the dated entries. However, if the date of occurrence can be inferred as to have occurred between two dated events, then its placement between those two events is appropriate and warranted.

Examples:

  • March 21st: White Star Shipbuilding's prototype HMS Titanic makes it first maiden flight.
  • March 23rd: During a test demonstration to potential corporate buyers, the prototype HMS Titanic crashes into the viewing stands.
  • Delmas, Wallenius Shipping and Horizon Lines each announce their intention to forego purchasing the Titanic class DropShip.
  • June: White Star Shipbuilding announces the cancellation of the Titanic class DropShip.
  • Hanson Gretal Machinery announces the unveiling of the Georgetown Crawler people mover.

In the above five examples, specific dates were provided for the first two entries, warranting their placement at the top of the category and in (relative) chronological order. The decision to place the third entry before the fourth one was due to the obvious nature that the three shipping companies would only announce passing on a purchase while the possibility still existed, which did not disappear until the fourth entry (dated June). As no specific information exists or can be inferred by Hanson Gretal's announcement, the fifth entry is placed behind the dated ones; all we know of this one is that it occurred sometime within that year.

When dates are provided, they should be in bold.

Code[edit]

This section provides guidance on how to re-build a currently-existing Year page to match the new policy or how to create a new Year page from scratch.

Though most BattleTech-relevant Year pages have already been created, with the release of the new policy, new code must be inserted in each one. Instead of overwriting all existing pages with one template, the available code is being provided to be inserted above the old style entries. As the entries are updated and placed into their proper categories, they should be deleted from the original (older) statement section. The following template is provided, with the Yearlist template, the table of contents and the four category sections (above), for an easy, rapid page creation or modification of the previous free-style year pages:

{{yearlist}}
__TOC__

{{year sections | conflicts }}

{{year sections | events }}

{{year sections | characters }}

{{year sections | technology }}