--- Zoney zoney.ie@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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