--- Zoney <zoney.ie(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yep, the 1st of January, 2001 was the beginning of
the 21st century!
Hence the amusement of the better educated at the
big celebrations on
31st December 1999! Not to mention the fact that
it's a tad odd anyway
even to mark the true change of millenium. (A rather
arbitrary date,
especially considering the re-jigging of our
oft-times dubious Western
calendar system!)
However, are the English Wikipedia articles
currently set up according
to the correct system, or the incorrect one?
What is this "correct" and "incorrect"? Either system
is an arbitrary division of time, and it only becomes
important which you prefer when you get to year 0
(because it doesn't exist). In the real world, the
vast majority of people these days celebrate the
change of a decade/century/millennium when the last
digit changes to a zero, and so Wikipedia should
certainly mention that to be the case. NPOV!
However, it probably does make sense to use the
"traditional" rather than the "popular" definitions
for decades etc., as that's the way they would have
been most often referred to historically. There's
certainly no problem linking to the Icelandic articles
either, even if they would be a year out.
-- a clearly very poorly "educated" sjorford
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