Talk:Maya calendar/Archives/2008/November

B.C. vs. BCE

Aren't you guys sick of reverting B.C. back to BCE yet? Guess what? Almost nobody uses BCE and CE. Even if BCE and CE were widely used they should be abbreviated B.C.E. and C.E. Surrender to the dark side and change them to B.C. and A.D. Then you can stop reverting these edits. Senor Cuete (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)Senor Cuete

Afraid the problem stems from those drive-by edits by folks who, despite having made zero contributions to the article themselves, are intent on imposing their arbitrary choice of date style against the judgement/intention of the editors who put together and built up the article in the first place. The BCE/CE system is an acknowledged and completely acceptable one, there are any number of historical, archaeological, journal and even generalist publications that use it; "almost nobody" does not stand up to scrutiny. If editors took more notice of the WP:ERA guidelines they'd see that this is so, that they should leave well-enough alone and not discourteously impose their personal preferences. To quote from the opening stanzas of MOS:DATE, "Edit warring over optional styles...[including [BC/AD vs BCE/CE]...is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." This article has long been settled at BCE/CE, those periodic drive-by attempts to change it go against the letter, and in particular the spirit, of guidelines intended to promote co-operative and inclusive editing and collaboration.

Also to note, on wikipedia at least the documented and current convention in the Manual of Style is to omit periods in these abbreviations, so when used we should be writing BC, AD, or BCE, CE. See WP:YEAR. --cjllw ʘ TALK 23:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)