Lore talk:People

Better ways of displaying years for uncertain lifespans

As for now, when we do not know the birth year and year of passing of a character with its own entry here, we usually display it like this "(?b - d?)". This gives no indication at all on when the character lived, even if we do know certain years they lived, like Grandee Zizzeen, who lived in the Second Era, during the Interregnum, and Karrod, who certainly lived during the year 3E 427.

As a reader, you have to read through parts of the article to find it. You certainly can not get it as easily as with Uriel Septim III. Could it have been done in a more reader friendly way for those with unknown birth year and unkonwn year for passing too? —MortenOSlash (talk) 05:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for the necropost but a common convention in such cases is to use the abbreviation 'fl' (for 'flourished') followed by the date or dates when they were known to be active eg Ulfric Stormcloak fl 4E 176-201. This can be as vague or as specific as necessary: fl 3E 427, fl late 2E etc.--Draugluin (talk) 03:42, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yep, we do use this in a few places! Definitely my recommendation for any similar cases in the future. Examples. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 05:06, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Should I start doing this for existing entries then?--Draugluin (talk) 06:12, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Update: I've started a page here listing everything I could find for people who currently lack dates (some of them are so vague as to be pretty much useless but are included for completeness' sake). If they meet with general approval I'll start adding them to the alphabetical pages. Hopefully someone who's better with tables than I am can then add them to the individual pages as required. I've also noted some anomalies/oddities I noticed while trawling the list. This is my first big project so feedback would be appreciated.--Draugluin (talk) 11:51, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I use tilde to denote an approx date (~1E 200}. I have no evidence for this, but I think its better understood with laymen readers these days, compared to the more formal/academic ".fl" or ".ca" --Jimeee (talk) 12:15, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I was planning (if we ended up using the system I proposed) to add an explanatory note in the introduction to each page, but I'm open to other suggestions.--Draugluin (talk) 13:04, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Update 2: see here for the second draft of the list. Do people have a preference where I've listed multiple options? I've adopted Jimee's suggestion of showing approximate dates with tildes but in many cases there simply wasn't enough information for this to be meaningful. If 'fl' is deemed too obscure another option (eg 'active') is possible.--Draugluin (talk) 13:51, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Update 3: Since no-one seems to have an opinion I guess I'll use my own judgement.--Draugluin (talk) 09:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)