Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any reasons not to make the change?
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
|From: "Alexander Stephen Bradbury" bradba@bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk |X-Priority: 3 |Importance: Normal |X-MSMail-Priority: Normal |Sender: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 15:36:14 -0000 (GMT) | |Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure |you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE |is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian |naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any |reasons not to make the change? | |ASB [[User:Smelialichu]] |
The acronyms may expand differently, but they don't mean anything different. Both date from the birth of Christ, the beginning of the "common era", a watershed in history that affected everyone, Christian or not.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
--- Alexander Stephen Bradbury bradba@bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk wrote:
Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any reasons not to make the change?
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
among others, see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/thread.html
and
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Centuries
cheers
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Anthere wrote:
among others, see http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/thread.html
and
snip from that page:
Using the terms BCE and CE are not obfuscatory nor are they fads.
More and more scientific and scholarly works rely on this nomenclature, because they manage to accept convention (e.g. non-Christians and Christians alike use the same calendar) without privileging Christ or the belief in the divinity of Jesus. <
I would probably be in favour of "BCE", but I am not an historian, so I'm not in a position to assess how much "BCE" is used by academics compared to "BC" -- but that should probably be our guide.
- t
It's interesting that the really presumptuous one is AD, Anno Domini, "Year of Our Lord". After all, BC is pretty NPOV in comparison, so many years before an established date. If AD had been AC ...
Alexander Stephen Bradbury wrote:
Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any reasons not to make the change?
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
I prefer BC because it's shorter than BCE.
As much as I know the origins of "BC" and its relationship to the life of Jesus, my atheistic sensitivities are not offended by its use. "BCE" has always struck me as affectatiously hyper-correct.
Nevertheless, if the author of an article wants to use "BCE" or "CE" in his own article, I would be inclined to treat it as an option in the same way that we deal with American/British spellings. Where a person does use "AD", however, I would treat it as wrong to put it after the year number.
The system could have been designed to use "AC" for both before and after ... Ante-Christ and Anti-Christ :-)
Eclecticology