Talk:2000s/Archive 2

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Archive 5

Request for deletion

This article should be deleted for the following reasons:

1) It documents ongoing trends, which are subjective until they are finished.

2) Because it documents ongoing trends, those who believe that a trend is significant can readily edit said trend into the article.

3) Due to its speculative nature, it is impossible to cite sources.

4) Because of the impossibility of source-citing, there are no means of verification and thus the article qualifies for original research.

66.142.88.232 08:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I would have agreed with you a few days ago, but the recent edits by anon 65.80.244.202 has vastly improved the article. I think it's fine the way it is now. 216.199.161.66 17:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

theres nothing special about the 2000's anyway, I mean yeah, it gave us cool technology etc, but theres not much to this decade so far, 1980's and 1990's were the best IMO.

Your personal preference for those decades has nothing to do with whether this article belongs in Wikipedia or not. Personally, if it came down to deletion, I'd say speedy keep, but it certainly didn't need to be as long and full of... stuff that made it a bad article, one of the worst if not the worst I've ever seen... now that all of that has been removed, I think it could use a rewrite at some stage... a verifiable, good, cited rewrite... maybe not until the decade is over.--HisSpaceResearch 00:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this the worst article in Wikipedia?

I think it's a strong contender!

How about this: Some also state that the symbolic beginning of the decade (and the 21st Century) was the 9/11 attacks, although others find this view pessimistic. Rubbish in the extreme!

And then what about the claim that the BBC brand the decade The Noughties? This is absolute garbage.

And then we have: Throughout the decade, the conservative George W. Bush presided over the many radical changes in technology and foreign policy in the United States. . Well it's only 2006 at the moment, and what are these so-called radical changes? It seems to me Bush has been fairly consistent in his foreign policy, and anyway, why single him out - what about the 200 or so other world leaders? Might it be possible to have an article in this encyclopedia that uses a non-American example to illustrate a point? Arcturus 21:32, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of Wikipedia is it gives you the ability to change these things yourself if you don't feel like they're adequate. Either way, I've seen tons of articles on Wikipedia worse than this one. And there have been radical changes in foreign policy. How much do you think foreign policy changed after 9/11? And how do you know there's not some people that think the symbolic beginning of the 21st century was 9/11? bob rulz 22:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Bob - don't worry, I'll be changing it, but I just wanted to elict some views first, then no-one can accuse me of "making changes without adequate discussion".

American foreign policy changed after 9/11? Not really. Rumsfeld has been pedalling his filth for about 30 years now - that's the real US foreign policy; it hasn't changed in decades. After 9/11 it was just more up-front.

I'm sure there are some people who think 9/11 was the symbolic start of the 21st century. I think it must be a minority in the extreme who hold such a view. I suggest the statement is removed. Do you vote to keep it? Arcturus 22:43, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I would prefer it be removed unless there's a source that can prove otherwise. The other thing I'm really not too sure about; I don't have much of an opinion on it (ie I don't know enough about it). bob rulz 00:33, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking the "symbolic start" of the 2000s is something akin to an article I read (probably on Wikipedia, but can vaguely remember something similar from my university history classes in the early 90s) where, to use the same terminology, the "symbolic start" of the 20th century was World War I. I beleive historians called it a "short" 20th century theory, if that'll help someone find the reference (if it exists) in WP. However, since 9/11 was, as of this writing, just over 5-1/2 years ago, it may be too soon to call it the start of the "short" 21st century/2000s (where the "short 20th century" historians wrote decades after 1914), but I can see how people think that, as the world pre 9/11 has become quite different from the world post 9/11, as the world pre-WWI was different from the world post WWI. Perhaps, with the blinding speed information is being made at now (which I think WP deserves a lot of credit for), the "short 21st century" theory will become more popular before the tenth anniversary of 9/11. --Canuckguy 12:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

There was something to that effect earlier (look at versions of this article from perhaps six months ago). I thought it was good (implying that the symbolic start was likely 9/11), but others disagreed. Take a look, and put it back if you like it. Unschool 13:17, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• This is the worst article I've ever read, bar none. It's entire raison d'etre is a mystery to me, other than to allow various people to scribble down something that they have either heard about (anything that has happened since 1/1/2000 is game!) or have an opinion about. There is no cohesive theme here. Look, it's one thing to have an article on a decade like the 60s that a) is actually over with and can be seen from the distance, and b) actually had something culturally or historically cohesive about it. But this article has been going March of 2003 [and, I must say, the original article was not only leaner, but was almost certainly better than this tumor-ridden piece of crap we have now], and no one can say with any kind of surety what this decade will look like to the future. Somebody ought to delete the whole thing. It's an idiot's playground. Unschool 19:26, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

This is the worst article i have ever seen. half the stuff is not true.Yet-another-user 05:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about the worst article, but I agree with much of what Unschool has said. The decade articles are basically an attempt to summarise a period of time from a historical standpoint, and its just not possible to do that until enough time has gone by to give a balanced perspective. Things which appear to have tremendous importance today will be forgotten a year later, while apparently insignificant events will turn out to have major consequences. It's the nature of things that we simply can't distinguish the wheat from the chaff at this point. Apart from a lack of discrimination, the "article" suffers from its style, or lack of it. A huge list doesn't make for a very readable article - in fact it is arguable whether it deserves to be called an article at all. It's just a collection of stuff, with little or no attempt at analysis, and it encourages anyone who feels like it to add on their favourite fad of the moment. If the whole thing disappeared, it would not in my opinion be any significant loss. --Stephen Burnett 06:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a shockingly bad article. As others have said, anyone can add almost anything from the 2000s to this and claim that their contribution is a significant part of what has defined this decade, with no measure of real relevance. --HisSpaceResearch 19:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. BBC has not adopted the term 'Naughties'. Googling for "site:news.bbc.co.uk naughties" only returns one such usage[1], and no where can I find a source BBC stating that it has adopted this term. —Tokek 04:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC) Update: oops, seems like I mis-spelled noughties with naughties... Never mind. —Tokek 05:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Clean up

I think this artcle need serious cleap up. It seems people are just putting in every fact they can think of, Without considering whether the fact is true or important. Other parts of the article barely have any info at all. The general writing style is awful, anyone who has not lived through this decade would not be able to figure out what any of the discriptions mean. The Fashion section is the worst that I've read so far. Some parts of the article does not even make sense. This article has gotten to long. This article needs cleap up, quickly.DesignForDreamingFan 09:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this article needs serious clean-up, re-writing, and fact-checking. I've thought many times how to rewrite some portions of it to no avail. I've done my best on the intro, the video games section, and the music section, but they're far from ideal. I've thought of ways to rewrite the events section into prose, but it's a gargantuan task. Rewriting of the entire article is a more than gargantuan task. bob rulz 10:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The reason it's such a gargantuan task is because this article should not even exist in its current format. See the comments of myself and others in the above discussion section: "Is this the worst article in Wikipedia?" Unschool 21:50, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I did read that comment, and I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think it should exist in the same format as previous decade articles. It will probably remain a bad article, however, until the decade ends and we have a better idea of the scope and trends of the decade. We can certainly improve it, though. bob rulz 22:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If this article is, as you say, then it badly needs rewriting (and maybe protection, from my own viewpoint). It's very hard to say anything about a decade that is still going on, as events will take place suddenly. And also, I have to agree with you on the Fashion section, DesignForDreamingFan. SK2034 00:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow... this article is so much shorter than it used to be.--HisSpaceResearch 00:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

And I've just reverted it to the very ugly old version. Unschool even deleted the categories of the article, which was unneccessary. There is some good stuff here, but there's also so much bad stuff. Reverting it back to almost nothing would be a bad idea. --HisSpaceResearch 01:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if you go back and look at the original megachop of this article, you will not see my name there; you probably referred to me because I reverted back to that megachop version. Anyway, see my comments elsewhere on this talk page; I look forward to any discussion. Unschool 06:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

But you've even removed the categories.--HisSpaceResearch 15:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Have re-added the categories, one external link and the 'in other languages' things.--HisSpaceResearch 00:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Music: Generated?

What would be easier, using categories to have the musicians updated or doing it manually? I'd like to see a lot more artists up there personally, but I'm hoping theres a more efficient way to do it. --70.71.206.216 07:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

A lot more artists? There's too many listed as it is. We need to set down some sort of criteria for determining who does and doesn't belong there. bob rulz 20:41, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who's released a studio album in 2000? Also marking artists who have started in the 2000's --Sidewinded 21:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC) PS 70.71.206.216 was me

Go ahead and make a seperate article for it, but there's no way it's going on here. bob rulz 03:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Archived talk page

I created the first archive using the cut and paste method. Let the cleanup continue.... Xaxafrad 02:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Article Contraction

These comments were originally placed on the talk page for MPS. By no means are they intended to be a comprehensive statement about the problems with the incredibly long and irrepairably sloppy 2000s article. Just some thoughts.Unschool 06:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Hey, I totally understand your point about the massive deletion from 2000s. However shocking it was, however, I feel that it was probably a very good move. That article was possibly the longest article in Wikipedia, and had evolved into a ridiculous catch-all. I think that all of us who had contributed to it over the years lost something--some people more than others. But what had happened to it was really embarrassing to the Wikipedia project, I realize. That wasn't an article about a decade, in the same way that the articles on the 1960s and 1930s are on their decades. Those articles—while still imperfect, I admit—were summations on their respective decades, and kept to a reasonable length. The article on 2000s was a completely unkempt mess of everything that anyone thought to put in there, with barely a semblance of organization, and with nothing that shouldn't just be placed elsewhere. It shouldn't be necessary to have (for fashion in the 2000s, see Fashion in the 2000s) comment in the 2000s; let that be found in the article on Fashion. An articles content is supposed to be bound by what it has in common, and the only thing in common that these eclectic bits had was that they took place during the 2000s, and if that's all you need to have in common, then you can just eliminate every other article in the encyclopedia except the decade articles. Why have an article on "Sports", when all you need is a subsection on sports within the articles on the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s, etc. Why have an article on "Fashion", when all you need is—well, you get the picture.

What is needed is just a brief glimpse of what changed the world during that decade, what was truly notable, and frankly, such a task is nearly impossible today, since we are still in the middle of it. If someone had tried to write an article on the 1960s in March of 1963, they would have written some pretty dumb stuff to the eyes of the future, because no one in 1963 knew what the "'60s" would look like (pre-Vietnam, pre-Kennedy, Kennedy, and King assasinations). But that is what we're trying to do today (the 2000s article was started in March, 2003). I think the article as it existed did more harm than good to the pursuit of knowledge. Just my two cents worth. Unschool 20:49, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Per one of my favorite essays, WP:RECENT, we shouldn't delete information on an article just because there is so much of it. How do I say this concisely?... Wikipedia has no place to aggregate content on the verifiable trends of this decade, and this is a great loss. I will add the content on to my personal page until I can find a place to put it. MPS 21:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The point that content should not be deleted because there is "so much of it" is well taken; I actually agree. But it's not just the quantity, it's the presentation. We need to ask ourselves, Is this article helping to inform about the title subject? I would submit that 2000s did not. It had instead become a collection of mini-ego trips, with people (myself included) inserting bits of trivia that they happened to know. The result was chaos and confusion (forgive my redundancy).

I would be willing, with my limited time, to help construct a better article, but I am pessimistic. Others have tried, but the article had gotten so big that no one could manage it. I just now placed in on a Word® document, Times New Roman 12-font, and it took 56 pages! It was essentially too big to fix. And yes, the content is elsewhere, as it should be. If it's not, it probably was non-notable. And that's another point. We do delete new articles because they are non-notable, but there exists no effective way to do the same thing to content within an article of this size. Fortunately, this article was almost certainly the only one of its size and kind in Wikipedia.

Please let me know what ideas you come up with for improving the situation. You are obviously a thoughtful editor.Unschool 21:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

After this, Thepulse2007 placed some links at the bottom of the article. It's not the direction that I had been thinking the article should go, but it was far better than anything anyone else had done and was more than I could do in my limited time. I think that's a route that should be pursued. Unschool 06:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor, I entirely agree that the long, ugly, sprawling list of an article that used to be here was not at all helpful to readers. Obviously the current article should be expanded, but with concise summaries of major trends/events in prose rather than indiscriminate lists. BuddingJournalist 07:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I love the idea of requiring that the article be written as prose; it would do much to eliminate the ugly nature of the article. But it is not enough to guarantee quality. Many single lines of prose will still amount to garbage.216.199.161.66 20:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I honestly don't think that's it's fair to write much more about this decade, the 2000s, other than mentioning the most significant events, until it's over in 2010 (and yes, I know that 2010 is still part of the first decade of the third millenium, distinct from the 2000s because of a lack of a year zero...)--HisSpaceResearch 01:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

And after reading the 'why tags are evil', essay, it's easy to understand frustration with this article. In my browser, they took up the whole of the top of the page and I had to scroll down to see the article itself. I do also think the current lead section could do with a complete rewrite, although that might be difficult...--HisSpaceResearch 01:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have to protest the unnecessarily massive deletion. If we're going to delete the whole damn thing, then we need to develop the freakin sub-articles first! Look at the content of the articles linked to at the bottom. Oh wait, there is no conent to them! The two that do have articles are in list form and fairly uninformative. Yes, the article definitely needed to be trimmed, but not like this. bob rulz 04:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Bob's point is well taken; I have placed all the old info into the links below. The "articles", if you want to call them that, are not really developed, but now at least they are of a more managable size and more likely to be edited for quality than they were before. I look forward to working on a meaningful 2000s article in about five or six years, when we can all have some perspective. Unschool 14:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I also wanted to say that I endorse the idea put forth above by Budding Journalist that we avoid lists and instead make our contributions as prose. A lot of the stuff in here—no, the vast majority of stuff—was simply a bulleted point that someone inserted because they could. The 2000s article has been the wall on the stall of the Wikipedia restroom, with every person, regardless of capability or effort, just scrawling whatever graffiti occurred to them as that moment.Unschool 14:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

MAJOR CLEANUP and ISSUES WITH TENSE

Everyone knows that this article needs cleaning up. It is currently horrific. I am a new member of the League of Copyeditors and my mision is as follows: get this article to FA status like it deserves to be. I have placed ANOTHER template at the top, letting you know that I am editing this. It's going to take me at least three or four days, but I am working through it systematically. It would be helpful if you would not make huge changes or add giant sections while I edit. I'll let you know here when it's all done. This is my first major project here, so if I do something terrible to it or delete something you actually feel is super important, tell me in this section! Goyston talk, contribs, play 15:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I am updating this article to use current tense throughout seeing as it is in fact the current decade and will be for several years. Unfortunately this article is huge, and I'm going to have to do it piece by piece. You are welcome to help, but just be aware that this is why it is not all in the right tense. Sorry for the slowness! Goyston talk, contribs, play 15:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Another project for anyone who wants to help out: turn all the points...in to paragraphs! Woohoo! Let's make this article great. Goyston talk, contribs, play 16:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This article's problems are not copyediting problems. You can correct every issue with tense throughout the entire 57 pages (as it printed up when I transferred it to Microsoft Word). That's not the major issue.

This article lacks any sense of cohesion, even purpose. It is a collection of graffiti, scrawled by every person with sufficient talent to know how to use a keyboard. You will never get it to FA status (and why, heaven forbid, does this article "deserve" to be at FA status? That makes your motivations suspect, IMO) because it is inherently flawed.

This article is nothing less than an omnibus monstrosity. Let me ask you something: What is the purpose of having an encyclopedia divided up into articles? I mean, why not just have the whole of human knowledge written out in one long exposition? Seems like a stupid question, doesn't it? I mean, without organization, what good would the encyclopedia be? The fundamental problem with this article, as it was written, was that it contained absolutely no limits on content with the solitary proviso that each entry needed ostensibly to be something that happened or was related to the decade the 2000s. I could put in there that Brittany Spears flashed her crotch in public during the decade, and no one would have questioned its noteworthiness and taken it out. Nothing was too insignificant to be included.

I mean, let’s have some sense of perspective here. If the 1960s article—an imperfect article also, to be sure, but nowhere near as bad as this—was written in the same monstrous way as this one, then we could read in there about Marilyn Monroe’s singing of “Happy Birthday” to JFK. But you know what? Even though that’s a relatively famous “event”, it’s not something that belongs in the 1960s article—it’s not noteworthy enough. It is mentioned in the JFK article. But you see, that’s because not every single goddamn thing that occurred in the 1960s belongs in the article on the 1960s.

I’m not judging what should and shouldn’t be included in the entire encyclopedia, but I am saying that noteworthy information needs to be placed in relevant articles. As I stated in an earlier discussion on this, if you include in the 2000s article every single thing that you can think of that occurred in the 2000s article, then hey, why do you even need the other articles? You don’t! Why have an article on Brittany Spears or on the Super Bowl or on Tattoos, when you can just include it in the 2000s article? And let’s put everything that happened in the 1990s in that article! Why, we can have a whole encyclopedia that covers an entire century with only 10 articles! Wouldn’t that be great? No, obviously not. Because it would poorly serve our purpose, which is to present the knowledge of the world in an organized format that helps people learn what they want to learn about. But the “editors” who have been adding to the 2000s article have no such perspective, and they add every bit of inane garbage that they can think of. It is no different than the graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall except that there’s no limit on space.

And another thing about including everything that is supposedly “2000s” material. Many of the so-called trends of the 2000s are just continuations of the 1990s. If a fashion trend exists from, say 1985 to 1994, then it should be included in an article about fashion, or maybe more specifically, Fashion trends. But the mindset of the writers 2000s “article” is that that trend would need to be included in both the 1980s article and the 1990s article. But it has nothing to do with the decades, per se, it has to do with fashion, period!

Look, there are trends and things that belong in an article on a decade. The things that define a decade and belong in the article are the things that changed the world or a portion of it and that everyone who lived through it still thinks about them. In the 1930s, it was the Great Depression. In the 1950s, a major issue was the tension of the Cold War, as indicated by the bomb shelter drills that school kids did. In the 1960s it was war, the youth movement (hippies), and assassinations. In the 1970s, it was Watergate and economic troubles. I can list these things and with confidence know that everyone of us who lived through these times remembers them, as do I, because these were the characteristics that defined those decades. And they will feature prominently in any encyclopedia article—Wikipedia or not—on those times. But an article on the 1960s or 1970s is not going to talk about Elizabeth Taylor’s divorces—because the subject is not noteworthy enough for inclusion in such a generalized article—and because it is not confined to the decade :-)

And an article, as another editor above pointed out, should largely be written in prose. With the exception of a very few areas, such as the first two sections, this was mainly a collection of lists. Before you begin your project, you need to make sure you read What Wikipedia is not. That’s official policy here, and this article violated that in so many ways it isn’t funny (indiscriminate list of information, original thought, crystal ball, soapbox, repository of links, etc.). No matter how you slice it, this article was simply wrong.

The 2000s article has been an embarrassment to the encyclopedia. And don’t fool yourself into calling this a copywriting issue. Copyeditors, as I understand it, catch others’ errors, or perhaps make subtle changes to improve style. This article is way, way beyond that. Hey, you go ahead and try to fix it, but go save it on a sandbox and work with it there; don’t sully up this space with it in the meantime. A lot of well-intentioned editors have tried to save this article. Most of them, even if they are saddened by truncated state of the article, realize that this article was simply too big to fix. We allowed it to grow into garbage, and there was simply too big a pile of it to go through and correct it. A League of Shakespeares couldn’t fix this one.Unschool 17:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

That's quite the comment there, Unschool! I completely admit that punctuation, grammar and tense issues were not the main issue with this article. I placed the LoCE tag because it was, in fact, true that a member of the League was editing the article over a prolonged period of time. I am not only a copyeditor. I am an editor. Editors fix crazy unstructured articles like this, as you well know. A portion of the problem with the article could have been fixed by copyediting, but my plans were to fix up the actual content itself as I went through.

My justification for wanting this article to reach FA quality was as follows: it is an article about a current period of time. It should represent the ongoing history of this decade. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. It is a reflection of knowledge gathered by the human race. I have no sinister motives. Isn't the final, ultimate goal of Wikipedia to have all articles at current FA standards? If not, correct me please, but my understanding was that we want all articles to be to the highest standard possible, which is essentially FA.

My plan for the article was as follows:

1. 1. 1. Fix the intro.
      2. Go through section by section, choosing the most important themes in fashion, politics, and so on, and writing a paragraph on each, and at the top of each section, linking to the article on, say, Politics in the 2000s or whatever it is.

I am an inexperienced editor. You have 1447 edits in the mainspace and 328 in Talk. I have 74 in main and 45 in talk. I am over-enthusiastic, no doubt about it, and I won't deny that. I should have used a sandbox, I agree. I don't know why I didn't think of it at the time. This was going to be my first major project on Wikipedia, as so far all I've really done is typos here and there, and vandalism reversion. I haven't figured out all the tricks of the trade, or when to just give up on an article. (I am only a teenager.) Anyway, you make good points, and you've done a good job deleting nonsense. , and I'll see you around. Have a nice cup of tea and a sit down courtesy of me. Goyston talk, contribs, play 19:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Your inexperience makes the tone of my comments regretable. My apologies. I assumed from the whole "League" thing that you were an administrator or at least a long-time editor. And, by the way, I too am inexperienced. While I may have nearly 2000 mainspace edits (and, by the way, there are better edit counters than whatever you must be using; my personal favorite is Essjay's[2]), those are spread over about 17 months. This definitely makes me a part-timer, compared to some of these people who spend sixteen hours a day editing the Wik.

Oh, I wasn't trying to insinuate any sinister motives; I merely thought you might be someone who had spent a lot of time on one particular piece of the garbage pile, and were trying to protect your work at the expense of the whole project. Regarding your plan: That would be the way to go about it, but I very much doubt you'd be able to get it down while the article was active—it was a magnet for people with little to say and no place else to put it. Better to try to work it out off site, methinks. Of course, the real problem is in evaluating what is "most important". As others have pointed out, it's very hard to see the big picture when your standing right in the middle of it. An article on the 1960s written in 1967 would have been much different than one written in 1969, or even 1970—or even, for that matter, in 1977. It's just hard to know what's important while everthing is still happening.

Anyway, good luck to you. Your intentions appear pure and noble, I'm sure I'll see you around over the years.Unschool 20:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

No worries about your tone. I realized early on you have to have a fairly thick skin to get by on Wikipedia. =P (Further, I do use Essjay's. It's my favourite too.) Maybe in 2012 or some such time I will come back to this article and put in the truly important things, and if people think I'm wrong, they can fix it themselves. Good luck to you too, Unschool. Goyston talk, contribs, play 22:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Can the editor who wishes to keep these articles separate explain to me why? I'm in agreement here with Unschool on the worth of these articles and their need to be contracted. Usedup 16:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

How do you like this for Sport?

Take a look at the sport section of the 1960s article. I know there is an aversion to lists here considering what this article used to look like but I think this sort of thing would be an improvement over what it once was, which was essentially a subjective list of random facts and even opinions.

We can decide which sport tournaments are worthy of inclusion. Also, we can have a introductory paragraph to summarise the decade in sport though I'd prefer we wait for the decade to actually end before we did this.

I'll start it now but, if enough people don't like it, we can get rid of it.

- Pyro19 18:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The '60s were over more than three decades before Wikipedia was created. Therefore, there was some perspective on what was important, what was worthy to include and remember. Even so, I would not include all that was included there. (In particular, I think it's silly to have included the Formula One winners in a decade-encompassing article.) Anyway, no such perspective can possibly exist on the 2000s now, which is why the article became the Worst Article in Wikipedia. If we start down this path again, this will become another 50+ page long list of everything that everyone over the age of five can remember and thus thinks is significant. As a general rule I would say that Sports rarely lacks world-changin significance. There are obvious exceptions: Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, terrorists at the 1972 Olympics, integration of major sports in the US, the spread of baseball after WWII, the growth of soccer into the preminent sport in the world, etc. But on the whole, no, I would say, for now anyway, keep this article clean.Unschool 21:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Olympics and the two prominant world cups be considered safe? I did leave out the formula one world championchip. - Pyro19 22:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, it does work better in the separate sports article. - Pyro19 02:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Summary?

I think that perhaps there could be a kind of "zoomed-out" overview of the decade. If you go to 2000 or 2001 for example, it is so crowded with "non-big-picture" events that is nearly impossible to wade through it and pick out the important things (terrorist attacks, elections, major scientific advancement, etc). Help/feedback would be appreciated. - 2-16 12:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation at the top superfluous?

Quote:

"This article is about the decade starting at the beginning of 2000 and ending at the end of 2009. For the century or millennium starting in 2001, see 21st century and 3rd millennium. For information on various aspects on the culture and history of the decade, see the See also section."

When was the last time someone referred to the 20th century as the 1900s? The second millenium as the 1000s? Also, do we need the see-also-the-see-also-section comment? —Tokek 00:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• Well, I do agree with you about the see-also-the-see-also-section comment; that's just stupid.
• And I don't remember hearing people refer to the second millenium as the 1000s—but that may only be because a) we rarely (in my experience) ever refer to millenia the way we do to centuries and decades, and b) that particular millenium just ended. Who knows how people might talk in the future?

Classroom in 12,646 CE:

"Students, the 1000s were a period of massive change in communications, when communications went from simply being person-to-person speech, or handwritten letters and books created by one person and read by one person, into the era of mass communications, evolving with the printing press, electromagnetic communications, and ultimately, into digitized formats that would be used for the next four millenia."

or

"Students, the 1000s were a period of relatively little change in transportations systems. Despite some minor advances employing chemical processes, for the most part, man at the end of the millenium was still confined to the earth and the space in its immediate area, just as he was at the beginning of the millenium."

I mean, I don't think it's necessarily absurd to think in terms of millenia, we just don't have the perspective, just as I doubt someone writing in the year 201 CE would have thought about the "200s" as being the Third Century. (Yeah, I know, in 201 they weren't using the AD or CE system yet. I'm just making a point here.)

• Now, as to the issue of When was the last time someone referred to the 20th century as the 1900s?. On this one, I totally disagree with you. I hear people all the time talk about entire centuries that way. I think its far, far more common for people to say, "Back in the 1800s" than, "Back in the 19th century". If you don't hear that about the 20th century so much, give it time. We just left it. (And I have already heard that usage multiple times.) Unschool 21:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Americo-centralist?

Several sections sound as though they are written from the veiw of a US resident. Thomashauk 16:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. Western-centric in the extreme. Bleedingcherub 00:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Big fat grammar error

Is it me, or does this stick out like a sore thumb “the 2000s are the current decade”? I know “the 2000s is the current decade” doesn’t work either, but surely there’s a workaround. Max Naylor 14:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Is not part of the problem the difference between the way that British English and American English differ on collective nouns? Unschool 04:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Link Doesn't Match (false) claims

After reading the obviously false assertion that, "(i)n fact, in most English-speaking countries, "Noughties" and "Noughts" have come to be the most widely recognized and accepted terms.[3]" I followed the link to the BBC where, of course, my suspicion was confirmed. They don't make the claim that it's either the most recognized or accepted term at all. What they say is, "The "noughties" seems to be the word of choice for the cultural commentary industry which thrives mostly in Sunday newspapers," going on to caution that, "...this doesn't mean that ordinary people are speaking it in their everyday language. Fashion journalists may use a word over and over again, but that is no guarantee that it will gain wider currency."

The "inventor" of the term, BBC, goes on in the same article to kill the phrase thus, (after alluding to the fact that Americans never use the term "naught" for anything, "Without the US adopting it..the word stands no chance."

Completely different from the assertions in the article. Please will someone registered remove it? 124.86.66.122 07:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

clean up

This article used to be great. What the hell happened to it? It's a mess; it really needs sorting out.