- --But the point of wiki is that it can easily be amended... sjc
- In my opinion, it depends on what is called quickly. I would certainly not want to hold the thousand years rule, but information that has to be refreshed weekly also does not belong here. Information should be dependable for at least about one year, in my opinion - although for subjects that are in current actuality a shorter period would also be ok, that is part of being a developping article. Of the statements mentioned, there is none that I would want to avoid always, but some I would want to avoid in a context. For example, China might soon become the world's major economic power I regard acceptable, but Vice-president Dick Cheney is in the hospital, but will soon be released not, because the first soon means within a few years/decades and the second within a few days/weeks. I would especially not like to live without is now considered - if a scientific theory is regarded plausible by most scientists, but not considered part of the scientific standard, I want to write is now considered the leading theory in the field or is now thought to be correct by most scientists. -- Andre Engels
Begin drj
Well, there are many good points here, clearly I was being a bit extreme. Part of the problem is that words like "now" and "soon" are contextual and it not easy for me, the reader, to tell what you mean when you say "might soon become the world's major economic power". Does that mean in a week's time or a decade's time? I'm no expert, so I don't know the relative economic growths of various countries or how quickly various economies grow over a variety of time scales. To pick an example which I know something about and you probably don't, if I said "the bolting policy for the rock climbing areas in the Wye Valley is soon to be revised" would you know whether I meant next month, next year, or next decade?
"is now considered" for scientific theories seems reasonable to me, probably because it (the theory in question) is largely accepted and likely to remain that way for a long time (though in many cases not as long as a thousand years). But if I say "the wearing of coloured zinc oxide cream is now considered unfashionable" then I think that would be bad. It's all a matter of scale.
"The Sixties" is more interesting. There was a cultural and sociological phenomenom that occurred roundabout the 1960s (free speech, feminism, psychoactive drugs, rock music, ecology, the green movement, space race; you know, all that). Scholars commonly and reasonably refer to that as "The Sixties". It seems to me just lazy, in an encyclopedia, to say things like: "DEC invented the PDP-1 in the sixties" instead of "DEC invented the PDP-1 in the 1960s".
Obviously things like the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack article are a Good Thing and everyone would expect high use of relative and contextual terms whilst it was being built. Still, notice the forsight of the original author in using the full date.
Phew.
End drj
My only strong opinion on this subject is that, whenever we make statements about what's going on "now" (whenever exactly that is), we do not use ambiguous terms like "now," "yesterday," "tomorrow," "soon," and the like, but instead dates or other non-contextual ways of referring to time periods. Anybody can change any article at any time, but there are zillions of articles here that haven't seen the light of day in months, and that's probably not going to change. Besides, there's no big deal about trying to be more precise about
when you're talking about--it's not difficult or inconveniencing. --
Larry Sanger
Mentioning the time context will usually imply a time
scale, too, as a side effect. E.g. compare "China is expected to become a large market in the
21st century", "In
2001, Java has not reached its stated target of a highly portable medium", and "Currently (September
2001) airline security even small knifes will not be tolerated on flights." These all convey an idea of how fast things are expected to change.
It may be useful to stick to a handful of standard phrases. This way we can search for them and find all statements that are on their way to obsolescence. --Robbe
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