Talk:Timelines of modern history

Gandhi

I have changed the 1922-Mohandas Gandhi launches Non-cooperation Movement to calls off the movement.Reference :Non-cooperation movement Changed By :KeshavKaps

So who said the "Great Recession" ended last year and isn't still ongoing? ldvhl (talk) 22:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm going by the Wikipedia page. Serendi^podous 22:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to make that claim, and Financial_crisis_of_2007–2010 seems to indicate that it's still ongoing. Shall we edit? ldvhl (talk) 03:00, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thing is, Late-2000s recession, which is where I got the info, does. Serendi^podous 08:49, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

So how does Wikipedia resolve these discrepancies? ldvhl (talk) 11:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The same way it resolves everything; by consensus. If you really want to tackle the issue then you'd have to post on the talk pages of both articles and notify regular contributors of the discrepency. Serendi^podous 11:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Done and done, thanks! ldvhl (talk) 12:53, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

acording to US government authorities the Great ressesion in the usa ended in the summer of 2009. by there own admission a ression is only aloud to be a period when national GDP declines for 2 quarters in a row. since 2009 the US economy has been growing and quite steadily but at a slow pace thus the period since 2009 has been called a slow recovery. not to mention it has been a job-less recovery for the US becasue the population of the USA has been growing at its fastest pace since this modern nation was born in the year 1790. and becasue the population is growing fast due to immigration the job growth cannot keep pace also due to discrimitory hireing practices. becasue its a job-less recovery the US economy is growing very slowly so it still feels like a ression for the average joe cause they dont have acess to capital and high end goods so they do with out. 76.211.5.253 (talk) 02:14, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Japan earthquake in 2011? 31.147.97.228 (talk) 21:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

2011 won't get added until Jan 1 2012. Serendi^podous 21:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Article scope

Impressive effort on a nearly impossible topic. I wonder why "modern" history, when the other timelines (subsets of "early modern history") cover just one century? (And contrast page on modern history bounded by contemporary history and early modern period, as well as modernity as a special concept which probably shouldn't be arbitrarily begun in 1900). Also, and more importantly, what are the criteria for inclusion? (And is there a quota of events or links for year or for decade?) groupuscule (talk) 05:37, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know why 20th century, alone among the century pages, doesn't have a timeline. Certainly the editors of that page must have had their reasons. I would be perfectly happy to split this article between 20th century and 21st century, but it would have to be cleared with the editors of those articles. Serendi^podous 07:12, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Splitting into "Timeline of the 20th century" and "Timeline of the 21st century" seems reasonable, but I'm not pushing it too hard. I'm more interested in the other question, about criteria for inclusion. Do we have general reasons for why the list displays some things and not others, and limits (or goals) as to how long the list of events for each year should be? I think you've done a really nice job so far—I like the selection you've created—but I wonder about encyclopedifying a little further and having a clear understanding myself of whether/how it would be appropriate to add/modify the timeline. Thanks, groupuscule (talk) 06:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

At the moment, criteria for inclusion are mostly intuitive on my part. For instance, I removed a mention of Paul the Octopus, because I didn't think he belonged on the same list as World War I or the eradication of smallpox. But since I don't really have a criterion for notability, I tend to err on the side of inclusion. I'm a little ambivalent about "such and such leads to such and such"; for instance, I took down someone's attempt to claim that the Falklands War led to the collapse of dictatorship in Argentina, because I felt the connection was a bit vague; however, I do feel that it's fairly obvious that Operation Palliser ended the Sierra Leonian Civil War so I kept it in. In short, no there are no strict criteria for inclusion, nor do I see how there could be, nor is there a limit to events per year. Serendi^podous 06:57, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Moving article?

This isn't really a timeline of modern history, at least not according to the modern history article, which defines the period as starting in the early 16th century. This timeline suggests that the best name for this article would be Timeline of contemporary history. Once moved, links can be updated and the Timeline of early modern history article can be moved here, since it mentions everything from the 16th century to the present, which is not "early modern". Any objections to me doing this? Cheers, Laurdecl ^talk 07:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

"Contemporary history", at least according to the article on it, is usually defined as post-war. I think the solution to this would be to break the article in two and move the 20th century timeline to the 20th century article, and the 21st century timeline to the 21st century article, thus bringing those articles in line with the other century articles. I haven't done this, because it would require collaborating with the editors of those articles, and they obviously had their reasons for not doing it. Serendi^podous 08:10, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I notice that both articles link to this one under the section "Events timeline". I think the aim is to provide a brief overview by topic on those articles and to shift the less-important-but-still-important stuff here. It's true that contemporary is defined as "post-war", but it seems like the most accurate solution with the least amount of work, as opposed to merging these pages. Even so, the "modern history" title isn't strictly correct and the Timeline of early modern history article should probably be moved here. Laurdecl ^talk 08:26, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Agree. History textbooks start "modern" more like 1500 rather than 1900--such as Great events from history: The Renaissance & early modern era, 1454-1600 (2005). This is called "historical perspective." Rjensen (talk) 10:28, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Serendipodous, do you have any objection to this going ahead? Laurdecl ^talk 06:45, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

If a better word than "contemporary" can be found. If we're complaining about the term "modern" not covering the right timespan, why are you being cavalier about "contemporary"? Serendi^podous 07:10, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Because the margin of error is a lot less. We're talking 600 years as opposed to 30. Maybe Timeline of recent history would be better? Laurdecl ^talk 10:59, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

A split at 1945 makes sense: a) this article (20th century) becomes 20th century 1900-1945," and new "Contemporary history" = 1945 to present. Big changes after 1945 = an extra 100 or so independent countries emerge 1947-1960, and new electronic media increases volume of news. Online sources are very rich RS after about 1990. b) another alternative = start this article at 2000. "Modern history" is a technical term used by historians that works poorly here. Rjensen (talk) 11:10, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem with this is that it leaves a gap in the Timeline of early modern history article. What seems to have happened (quite inexplicably), is that every century article (e.g. 18th century) has had an events timeline, but this stops with 20th century and 21st century, which have a more obscure overview by topic. I think this article is supposed to serve as the timeline for those articles. By cutting 1900–1945 we leave an arbitrary period of history without any timeline. Two solutions I see are either to name this article "contemporary history" and say that that's good enough, or split this article into Timeline of the 20th century and Timeline of the 21st century. The latter is looking more and more like a good idea. Laurdecl ^talk 11:40, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I feel that this is probably the most accurate solution. Serendipodous, what do you think? Laurdecl ^talk 05:56, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Just linking to the articles in the 20th century and 21st century pages, rather than merging them? I suppose that's OK. Serendi^podous 09:54, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we could WP:SPLIT this article in two and treat it as the main timeline for the 20th and 21st century articles. This would make sense, seeing as just how much there is in here. Laurdecl ^talk 00:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Or we could split this into Timeline of late modernity and Timeline of postmodernity, corresponding to the 20th and 21st centuries, but then we might as well just say Timeline of the 20th century, etc. We could keep the article in one piece and call it Timeline of recent history, and define "recent history" as the period since 1900. Laurdecl ^talk 01:42, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Those are artistic concepts, not historical ones. Serendi^podous 08:39, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

The article is a timeline based on years not on concepts like "modernity" and "post-modernity." (those two overlap in time and so are not useful here.) Rjensen (talk) 12:20, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

That leaves us with either splitting this in two or calling it a Timeline of recent history and defining "recent" as since 1900. Laurdecl ^talk 00:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I see now why 20th and 21st century don't have a timeline. The "developments in brief" sums it up quite nicely and the timeline here is huge, so it would make a massive article. Now, how would we go about splitting this article? Laurdecl ^talk 10:06, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

List split

I object to the split of this article/list, and do not feel proper consensus was gain for this radical change to a useful and long term article.

I will withdraw if we can find a useful compromise-- but would rather the split were undone.

After the split was pushed thru, @Laurdecl: object to this this compromise without any discussion. Normally went I see timeline pages split I see them link in (at least) this sort of way (e.g. 20th century, List of state leaders in the 20th century).

Since the single hatnote link from Timeline of the 20th century and Timeline of the 21st century to the Timeline of modern history does not do this-- as I pointed out it is a very very cumbersome way to try and go from one page to the other-- when there is no need to split the one list into in the first place.

Would you rather we placed the links in navbox, like they are for 20th century page and related pages? tahc ^chat 23:02, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Tahc: During the week in which the split discussion was open there was no objection. The split was done because "modern history" means any time from the 16th century to the present (see the article), so to define it arbitrarily as from 1901 is completely wrong. The only reason I reverted your change was because the links looked out of place. Do we really need them? Why would someone looking for a timeline of the 20th century want a link to the 21st at the start? Maybe at the bottom? P.S, when you fix a ping you have to resign your post for it to work. Laurdecl ^talk 01:03, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

If you are on the 21st century page-- you would want (and expect) the link back to the 20th to be at the top. So we could either have (1) links backward at the list top and links forward at the list bottom, or we could have (2) links (both backward and forward) together at the top.

I suppose can live with either-- but much prefer option 2. I consider it makes the purpose of them more clear, takes less space, I consider it more common, and would allow them to be in a box / navbox. I consider a navbox much better because a box is easy to ignore when you want to ignore it and easy to find when you want to find it.

So to answer your question, readers of the timeline of the 20th century would want a link to the 21st at the start, because time-based pages normally have links to both the later (and earlier) time-based pages at the top of the page (often, but not always, in a navbox). tahc ^chat 20:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

The navbox you put on the 20th century page is excellent, I'll add it to the 21st. Laurdecl ^talk 23:16, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

"Modern history" sometimes means from the "16th century to the present"-- but not always. It looks to me that the (other) idea was to name the list Timeline of contemporary history.

I don't see anyone agreeing or disagreeing with the discussion. You had only a consensus of silence-- which is "the weakest form of consensus".

I did not see the discussion at the time because I was on vaction last week. Thus I did not have a chance to voice my view.

(And thanks for the ping tip.) tahc ^chat 20:52, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Rjensen agreed, then thanked me for my edit. Also, see the 2012 discussion above. Anyway, modern history is literally defined as the period after the Middle Ages, according to both our article and Google. Using incorrect terms for arbitrary timeframes does no service to our readers (or historians, for that matter). Laurdecl ^talk 23:13, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

History

The Industrial Revolution in Britain and southern Africa from 1860 41.114.127.142 (talk) 13:12, 9 April 2022 (UTC)