Forum:CT Archive/Switching to ASW4/BSW4 and a clear conversion system

While discussing Jyn Erso's birthdate according to Pablo Hidalgo's Visual Guide (22 BR1) vs. her supposed age in the film (about 21 years and 4 months according to Pablo Hidalgo's internal worksheet, which uses BBY and BR1 interchangeably), it turned out there is no universal agreement on how such years should be counted or the meaning of the year 0 (ABY/BBY). Nevertheless, Wookieepedia returned to ABY/BBY as soon as the system resurfaced in the canon, with year-articles mapping to those in the Legends section, even though we have no way of knowing if the canon year changes occur at the same exact places in relation to a more detailed calendar (such as that putting Yavin at 35:3:7). I see there is even the interpretation that this year 35 was renumbered 0, and that ABY/BBY are chosen based on whether it's before or on/after :3:7, but I couldn't find that in official sources so far, and of course, there is no reason to believe this would still apply to the canon.

I think it's important that dates on Wookieepedia be unambiguous, user-friendly, and consistent in meaning regardless of the continuity. I therefore propose the following improvement:

1) ABY/BBY should be globally renamed ASW4/BSW4, in accordance with Leland Chee's Twitter comments that a system named thus is acceptable out-of-universe, whereas in the actual canon, the ABY/BBY system is only one of many. Therefore, it is also being given unnecessary prominence on Wookieepedia, while merely renaming it would remedy that.

2) Going out-of-universe will allow us to settle on an internal, clear definition across the board. The easiest approach would be to decide that a page for Year N ASW4 or BSW4 covers that same number followed by a fraction of whatever precision (similar to usage in the New Essential Chronology), eg. 0 BSW4 would contain all events from 0.00... to 0.99... BSW4, 1 BSW4 would carry on from 1.00... to 1.99..., and the same in the direction ASW4. It's easy to remember, and knowing what each page applies to, we would definitely know where a particular event must be documented, be it from the canon or Legends. The calendar conversion will either be exact or approximate, depending on how much we know about the timespan.

Note: in order to keep this intuitive, it should also be recognized that BSW4 would be definitely before the movie, while ASW4 would be definitely after the movie. Events that take place during the movie could be documented on a separate page, eg. ISW4 ("in SW4").

I'm fairly sure I'm not the first person to think about this, but it's a solution that came to mind after looking at a number of problems with current usage. --PreviouslyOn24 (talk) 15:51, May 17, 2017 (UTC)