I like the idea very much, as Im sure other do as well. Maybe for sake of humility is should simply be called the Timeline of Everything (TOE) ;). -SV 9 July 2005 00:11 (UTC)
Widening the project scope to Timeline of Everything could also mean some loss of focus. It would mean any timeline does fit in and would require attention when submitted. A random example: a timeline about the history of clock making would be very interesting indeed, but not easy to integrate into a crosslinked set of timelines for now. Of course the scope could be broadened as time goes by. Erik Zachte
There are a couple issues, one organization related and the other tech related. One, I think that a consolidated timeline project should be a commons project, and the resulting works should be accessible from individual wikis in the same way that commons images are. This suggests using commons as a basis for creating template data - which can be a tradeoff considering that such data needs to be localized anyway. (Would moving to the commons be efficient consolidation or inefficient diversification? In anycase the commons should be used for all crosswiki projects. (And redirecting subdomains, like foo.about.com's, increasingly seem like a good idea for all Wikimedia projects.)) -SV 9 July 2005 00:11 (UTC)
That might be good idea to use commons for storing the original timelines. I'm not sure what the policy for commons is. Because timelines are language dependent they could only be linked directly from one or two wikipedias. I'll ask Erik Moeller. Erik Zachte
Secondly, there is the ideal representation of data. The current en:Wikipedia:Timeline scheme has a number of different resolutions, and likewise forms, which are integrated only by links -- not by dynamic process. (The great flaw in the wiki model). There needs to be a representation of listed data integrated from various data sources, and not just the category scheme. (ie. DynamicList at Wikinews). This is just a longer-term idea, but ideally, any "timeline" would be a categorical and dynamic system (like the cat tags are), bringing a visualization capability for the whole wikipedia via different means for sorting. (The exclusively alphabetical cat sorting is unnatural, and the hard-link tags can be cumbersome to deal with en masse without special tools).
Of course, simply getting started on your idea would probably increase the overall use of timelines at least tenfold within a few months. I think thats it for now. SinReg, -SV 9 July 2005 00:11 (UTC)
That would be my ultimate dream: a set of raw meta tagged data that can be filtered and visually organized dynamically on each user request. So that a user could ask "draw me a timeline about arabic astronomic achievements, include names and short descriptions, do not include locations and other achievements of these scientists". I'm afraid that would be a bit overambitious for now. I'm not sure that is what you meant, but it did resonate. By the way for categories there is a cross reference/global mapErik Zachte
Interresting project ! :) It would probably have more support if the utf8 was better supported in links and displays (it's the main argument some opposes to easytimeline on fr: for example). About localisation just some raw thoughts : we should probably use commons for that but we should maybe offer an easy way to localise the content and keep content updated. Commons transclusion process could check if a subpage with the language code of the target wiki exists (let say [[Commons:TimeLine:Roman Empire/fr]] for w:fr: ) and uses it. A warning should be visible on subpages whom main page is more recent; that warning could also appear in user's watchlist. --FoeNyx 9 July 2005 16:24 (UTC)
I have no idea what can be done on commons right now and what can't. Does your suggestion require Mediawiki programming?
FoeNyx, you're absolutely right that lack of utf8 upport is a big omission and even a nuisance. I promised to add that long time ago, and haven't been able to live up to that promise yet (I'm almost daily working on several Wikipedia projects for 2.5 years, but actually accepted more obligations than I can handle). It is not so easy to do it properly, because rendering package Ploticus needs to be changed as well, to supply font metrics to EasyTimeline, so that text segments are placed properly even with a variable size font (which most unicode freetype fonts are). I hope to start looking into it next week, in my vacation, and maybe first release a intermediate solution without Ploticus patch (one link allowed per text block, whole text block colored as linked text). Erik Zachte 02:13, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
This project is very much like what I envisioned when I started working on the Graphical timeline of our universe. I was inspired by Maps of Time by David Christian to start a series of graphical timelines which scaled from the largest period of time (the life of the universe) to the smallest (depending on the topic). Each could be reached by moving up or down in scale. From the timeline of our universe, you could therefore go to the Graphical timeline of human evolution or the Graphical timeline of the Big Bang. And although this project is aimed at human history (exactly what this means should be more clearly defined), I see where it could very easily be expanded into a Grand Unified Timeline of Time—from the very moment of creation until the most distant moment in the future that we can reliably see.
In putting together these timelines I found I had to consult a few other sources because the Wikipedia information was either sketchy or inconsistent in a few cases. You will probably find this to be true in many cases as this project advances. After all, Wikipedia is still a work in progress. Also some have suggested that this be placed in the Commons, but I think that would not be the appropriate place for it. Because these timelines are not images in the normal sense and are language dependent, they should be integrated into the Wikipedia. And unless creating only smaller timelines, they should probably be stand alone articles rather than templates. Smaller versions, or excerpts, could be used for articles (compare Graphical timeline of human evolution with Human evolution/Species chart). When I began the graphical timelines I decided to make larger timelines that allow easier viewing (not needing to resort to small fonts) and keep additional text to a minimum, but with plenty of links to other articles.
The case study is interesting, but as you say, it is probably impractical. In many cases it would be highly subjective to try to measure the influence and power of a civilization that doesn't officially conquer surrounding territory. But I do think this can be alleviated to some degree by subdividing the period into subperiods when appropriate. For example, instead of just saying "Roman State", you could divide it up by Pre-Republic, Roman Republic, Roman Empire, etc. I do like the new version of the example Roman timeline. It is much easier to read.
I like this project and it appears you have given it much thought. I would be happy to help contribute to the effort. —Mike 06:32, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
Mike, great to have you on board. I ordered the ebook version of Maps of Time today from amazon (amazon.com was not allowed to 'ship' ebooks outside US, but they pointed me to their UK sister, who had no qualms about this, hey this is a bit weird :) I expected a historical atlas, but it is mainly text, but seems very interesting. I might return it (amazon does allow this on ebooks) and buy the paper edition when I'm in the New York in September. I have a bookshelf of historical atlasses, kind of collect them, but timelines are much more rarer and mostly low grade stuff, years and pictures, no structure, no well thought-out layout.
I agree that major timelines merit a page of their own, but that could still be a template page, so that people can include it somewhere if they wish. The only drawback of a template is that no explanatory text can be added outside the timeline, or it would be copied as well. I asked Erik Moeller about commons, more below, also about project boundaries. Erik Zachte 02:41, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I didn't really say much about the book, but you are correct. I have always enjoyed history, and especially enjoy reading authors that put things into the bigger context and trends. Currently I'm reading The Enduring Revolution by Major Garrett—an interesting read if you are into politics. About the templates, you mentioned before that you might like to do larger timelines and then break them up into pieces in some cases. When they are broken up is probably where the template would be most useful. But we'll just have to see how it works out. —Mike 02:56, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I was already sold on the title and the price was quite OK. As I said I'm a bit of a collector of historical atlasses. Amazon does allow sneak peeks into the content but not on this one. Anyway it seems like good reading. I also like authors that try to give a helicopter view of a field of knowledge. I enjoyed 'A short history about almost everything' First thought it would be rather superficial but a colleague urged me to read it, and it was great fun. One of the central themes of the author is that very often the wrong person gets all the glory for a scientific discovery :) Erik Zachte 03:24, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea. My thoughts are below. I have tried to concentrate on how I might like to see it actually work - I have not considered if it is actually possible in EasyTimeLine
Dschwen mentions the idea of zoom levels in the next section, I do like this idea. We would start with a single top level timeline (I would prefer starting with something at this sort of level: en:Graphical timeline of our universe). The user can then click on a part of the timeline to get more detail on that time and gradually work there way down. So we you could end up with a navigation such as: Universe - Earth - Life on Earth - Mankind (eg. Homosapiens, HomoErectus) - Civilisations (Egyption, Roman) - Roman Timeline - Julius Caesar.
As mentioned elsewhere we should try to have consistent colours and layout so the user becomes familiar with the way it works overall.
It would be useful if each item on the timeline had two links: One to the next level down timeline and one to the article. So a Roman Emperors timeline might have a Julius Caesar item - this then has a link to a timeline just on Julius Caesar and a link to the text article. Maybe an icon (a magnifying glass?) to indicate the next zoom level down would be useful with the actual words in the timeline linking to the text article.
It would also be useful to have a way to standard way for the user to move out a zoom-level.
Overall I like the example Roman timeline. I think the use of sections works well, we could also use the sections to provide links to a more detailed timeline covering just that section.MarkS20:03, 13 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Zoom levels: Ultimately that it the goal, see also 'scope' below.
Good idea to use symbols for this. I don't expect each item will have 'downlinked' timelines in the foreseeable future, so a separate section would be almost empty for quite a while, we can add that later. As for the magnifying glass, EasyTimeline does not yet support images. I'm working on unicode and external font support right now, so we will at least have lots of graphical symbols (dingbats and the like, as long as the font is open source truetype [1]).
Yes some parts of the Roman timeline do deserve a timeline of their own, e.g. 'Reign of Augustus'. In fact the 'Roman Empire' timeline is itself part of the 'Roman State' timeline. Unfortunately that would become a bit unwieldy in the current scale, and a mighty big chunk of text to edit, (and for now past the 1600 pixels width in limit in ET, but that can be changed, some upper limit is needed though, to prevent maluse). Erik Zachte 01:40, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
note : comments copied from several talk pages to here
That's a pretty good idea. We should start drafting some more concrete guidelines on what to put in the timelines of different "zoom-levels". I'd propose a section for singular events in history, like the en:atomic bombings of Hiroshima_and Nagasaki, first en:moon landing or en:sputnik or the invention of the en:steam engine. Secondly it is a sad fact, that mankind is constantly at war with 15 armed conflicts going on right now (en:List_of_wars_1990-present). War (and the aftereffects of en:colonisation) is what mostly determines our borders today, so I would sugest a section for it (wars between nations, civil wars, en:colonisation, maybe insert acts of terrorism as well). Should the differernt aspects of the GUT be separated into their own barsets (like the en:Roman Empire timeline), or intermixed and just differentiated by color? --Dschwen 9 July 2005 09:20 (UTC)
Today i whipped up a small script which tries to optimally distribute overlaping event bars in as few rows as possible. I tested it on a timeline of wars in the 20th century. The content is extracted using a script from some Wikipedia-Lists. I colorcoded them by hand (preliminary). --Dschwen17:58, 10 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Dschwen, quite amazing little script you wrote. I might incorporate it into EayTimeline as an optional tool. Maybe we better present periods of peace instead of war, it will save ink on the printer :) I copy your comments to the GUT talk page so that others can read it. And raise the case about what barsets to use in the main article. Erik Zachte 02:27, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
The script would probably work for putting together a quick timeline, but it is likely that it would still have to be edited by hand afterward to organize things a little better. The mentioned timeline of wars would work better if wars were grouped together based on geographical region (or other criteria). Maybe the initial data could be divided into groups and then have each group run through the script. —Mike 03:04, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Several of you suggested to use commons as repository for the timelines. I asked Erik Moeller today (he more or less initiated commons project and guides it). He said that wikidata, which is still in development, might come in handy, but could not give any specifics, as the programming (by him also) is still ongoing. My perception of wikidata is that it is a raw data container with advanced forms and query tools, not sure if that would apply to timelines. Secondly, in the future it will be possible to include templates from other wikimedia projects directly, that would help as well, Kate Turner hacked this, but "ït is not active yet and hardly tested". So finally Erik Moeller suggested to keep templates on meta for the short term and decide later where to put them for longer term. It would help if links to en: and other wp's from timelines on meta would still work. It used to work but seems to be broken now, I'll have to look into that. Erik Zachte 02:53, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
Several of you commented on the scope of the project. I'm happy with any nice timeline that is created on wikipedia, be it about the history of computer games, or the evolution of feathered reptiles. Surely grand conceptual timelines like the history of the universe, or geological epochs come close to what this project aims for, sketching the big picture, but I thought it would be better to narrow the scope, at least in the beginning, to timelines that offer a grand perspective and are about human history. It gives us some focus and direction about what kind of problems to solve, so that we don't drown in complexity and keep seeing the wood from the trees. Once the major timelines are there, more specialized ones like a timeline of the history of Berlin or of English Kings will fit into the scheme. People will keep working on those anyway, but many of those timelines are somewhat simpler in structure so no coordination is really needed. A one dimensional timeline can very easily be reformatted when guidelines that we draw here could apply. Would this make sense? Erik Zachte 03:16, July 11, 2005 (UTC) Is this still an active project?
I have been working on a similar problem, just using resources on my local server.
It's an interesting problem, and I thought this "Scope" section would be a good place to enter some comments about what I have run into, aside from the more obvious challenges. Benefits
The hoped-for benefits of any data visualization scheme include:
1) The ability to literally see patterns, sequences and trends in the visualization.
2) The ability to select the level of detail you want to look at.
3) The ability to filter or order by different dimensions (traditionally, "fields"). For history this would include location, time range, topic.
4) The ability to access really a lot of data using just one basic user interface. Challenges relating to time-based data
1) Determining when events actually occurred. This gets worse the farther back you go. And one wrong date can throw out a whole sequence and turn it into a confusion.
This involves questions of how to establish reference dates (or reference events) as well as the philosophy of time itself.
But I am more interested in the fact that you can find different researchers who will assign different dates to the same event. How does one handle such a problem? In my own application I include a "source" field that specifies which researcher proposed the data given.
Thus, you could call up different timelines according to different researchers.
2) The limitations of current scientific practice. When you get to the question of cosmology, you enter an area that actually is not yet pinned down.
Based on my research, this physical universe is trillions of earth years old. So why does science say it's only several billion earth years old?
Again, you are looking at multiple timelines on the same subject based on different information sources, if you want to cover all information sources, and not just those connected to mainline science.
3) What really happened, and where? What do you do when two sources describe the same event differently?
This gets into the whole subject of history as propaganda. Take 911 as a huge recent example.
The best practice is to take a very strict almost "forensic" approach to historical data. However, who would police that?
This is not the usual academic approach to history, even if it should be.
There is also the problem of pinpointing the physical location of historical events in eras when cities had different names or locations, or when, possibly even planets had different orbits. Summary
This project faces significant technical challenges, even at its most simple conceptual level. When you add in the above challenges, it gets worse.
But if these are pushed through and resolved it could result is something quite magnificent. L e cox (talk) 11:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, my name is Navino Evans. I am the co-founder of a new UK based website called Histropedia. I’m posting this here because what I’m working on has the potential to solve the problems that have been raised in the discussions above.
In short, Histropedia is an interactive graphical timeline which stays synchronised with new additions and changes in Wikipedia automatically and is completely free to use. Editors will be able create timelines extremely quickly and easily by simply searching for each event and clicking on the result.
It’s very early days yet, so please forgive the look and feel of the current version (as well as the obvious bugs) but we would be very grateful for any early feedback on the concept itself.
The controls are basically like Google Maps - click and drag to scroll time, zoom with the mouse wheel. You can 'open' an event by double clicking on it. More instructions are available here if needed. Please note that there are currently many events which are not available yet and some incorrect dates. Many of these will appear automatically as we update our algorithm, but full wiki style adding and editing will be available soon.
Here are a few example timelines to give you the idea.
It seems very crowded, but beautiful nonetheless. I might order one when it is in reprint. Erik Zachte
Hyperhistory (e.g. click on button 'history' left, then on a period at the right)
Very nice to look at, but not very structured, the maps are crammed with texts, so the visual guidance one gets is mainly the separation by geographic region and red underlined text for armed conflicts. The large printed foldout version that one can order is nicer. I'll bring it to wikimania. Erik Zachte
A large set of printed timelines (scroll down and click on full size image for any map) :Some are really nice and well structured into layers of info, with good use of colored text [2], others are overloaded with facts [3]Erik Zachte
A team lead by Arno Peters developed a timeline called Peters Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte (German). It covers a time span of 5000 years (ending in the seventies because there are no newer versions), each year gets the same space. Peters worked hard to avoid eurocentrism. Here is a long speech by him. I am sorry that it is in German, but even if you don't speak it well, you will get a good idea about that project by the pictures. user:????
Fascinating. I knew of the Peters projection for a long time (and coincidentally learned just hours earlier today that there is a complete atlas now in that projection, which can be ordered from a site that specializes in non conventional map projections. All this was triggered by a wonderful new history map by wikipedian Avsa about human migration patternshuman migration patterns).
Back to the Synchronoptische Weltgeschichte: the whole project is grandiose in scope, I like the way in which Peters stresses that most history books are hugely biased towards European history, modern history and military history. He also admits that true objectivity is of course not possible, but he does not tell much about how his team tried to reduce onesideness to a minimum, the methodology of it. About the visual aspects: he explains how the complete chart, which covers 5000 years, clearly shows changing patterns from century to century, and indeed even without texts the meshes of coloured bars give that impression (second large image) in the article. But the large picture above it, that shows one century at full size, is a bit disappointing in my view, in that is presents lots of texts that together do not build a visual introduction to this century. It is not much more intelligible than a calendarium, which lists all events per year in succession. I never read those, they are unstructured masses of data, no big picture emerges. I feel the same here to some extent. There is just a little bit more structure than in a calendarium, but the use of visual clues and accents is still somewhat underused.Erik Zachte 01:30, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
They are difficult to create and use by non-tech people, and people who knows a lot of History are usually non-tech people.
Timelines are a mixture of data and presentational features; it's difficult to get the work done when you have to deal with both sides of it at the same time.
I think this project is a big step in the right direction (this standard would solve partially the presentational trouble). It could be very handy to have local groups (wikiprojects, or similar) keeping:
A list of timelines to translate from this project.
A list of "chrono-tables" to convert to timelines. These tables would be made of data formatted in an easy to convert way; best of cases, the conversion could be done by a bot or similar. Wikidata could be used too.
A list of timelines to standardize to de standard "look and feel" of this project.
This way, non-tech people could help translating and making tables to convert, and tech people could convert easily to the standard.
Those "chrono-tables" could be used too to sketch future timelines in a quick-and-dirty way by non-tech people. --Comae18:45, 14 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be a great way for 'technical people' and 'non-technical' people to cooperate in this way. Although the distinction between those is not so rigid: after one has seen a few timeline scripts, they are not so scary after all, I would hope. But for building a timeline from scratch some familiarity with the script language is certainly helpful. I would rather like to make a distinction between people who like to do 'fact-finding' and people who like the 'graphical puzzle' aspect, in other words who like to play and sometimes struggle with limited space to get information as neatly presented as possible, even if this takes a few extra adjust and preview cycles to fine tune the design (I'm one of them). That is not everyones cup of tea. But the people who do the textual 'chrono-tables' should be aware that a timeline demands utter conciseness, telegram style notation, and sometimes it is only clear how much room is left for a phrase when one sees it in the chart, so the chronotables can be suggestions only. They should link to articles where the text is based on, so that anyone can reread the paragraph and choose a different wording. Erik Zachte 02:04, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
It would be better to make for each chart a navigational version (a simple timeline made to be used as a nav-bar for articles, with minimum data) first, and then the expanded one, with all the extra data of the big ones. It would help to keep the scope of each one. --Comae18:45, 14 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That would a great way to get a basic set of timelines reasonably fast, and thus get a better feel for how timelines should be organised and crosslinked ! Erik Zachte 02:04, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that a single database broken into broad types of data could theoretically hold everything needed for the TOE. There are only limited types of data that go on a timeline and it should be simple to create a few templates to accommodate for this. People, Events, Technological discoveries; are there any more?
For example you could have a table full of nothing but people and their birth and death dates. Each "person" has a unique IDnumber in the table for reference purposes. Another Table would be only for events with their start and finish dates. If these events should be referenced to any particular people, the table has enough fields to accommodate for references to the associated unique IDnumber of that person or people. Events would also have their own unique IDnumber so that the entries for people could be linked back to them. As new people or events are entered into the database you can associate the entry with existing data easily by entering the unique number or some sort of alias for the IDnumber as the user does not need to see the actual number.
I don't know how to handle the multi language problem, but if the structure could be created correctly for one language, it should be able to be easily replicated for any other language. An entire set of fields within each record could be dedicated to providing for cross referencing to the different language versions of the same person or event.
The point is with an expandable database you can just enter more and more data in the form of records, over time. Once the data is in there and visible to the public, many different timeline generators can be deigned by anyone who desires too. So the viewers would be different from the web entry forms. I would think adding data to the table could be as easy as a user logging in and filling out an entry form and clicking submit.
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