Talk:2012 doomsday prophecy

Created article

Traffic driver. Pop culture bunk. But causing much hysteria. Wrote fresh with references.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Just for readability, one citation per sentence is enough in the vast majority of cases. In like manner, if you keep repeating the same citation every few sentences, it tends to cause formatting problems in the footnotes -- they don't work well, especially in 2- or 3-column format, with long lists of the same note. Usually, if there are two citations in a row, the second citation, if relevant, has a different point or perspective to be brought into the article. Otherwise, it feels like WP defensiveness.

This is meant as constructive advice about style here. Thanks for writing the article. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for advice. My purpose in putting multiple citations was to emphasize how strongly the scientific thinking is. I have no doubt that some people will read this article and not get that 2012 is bunk. But if you wish to remove or eliminate refernces I have no problem with this. I noticed there were problems with two or three column referencing format so I always use single column. I have a habit of using the same citation repeatedly, since it is less typing on my part, and yet it points the reader to the source where it came from.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 18:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Remember you have the bibliography subpage. That can be more than just a list of references, their context and importance can be explained too. I don't think we have any really good exmples in CZ yet but I feel that will be the strength of that page in the future. Chris Day 18:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Supposedly there are over 200 books on 2012. Sheesh.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 18:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Not all will be important though. This is the case with any review, its job is to distill the story and separate the wheat from the chaff. Chris Day 19:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It may be more relevant to mix the barley with the hops and drink the beer. Seriously, an annotated bibliography is an excellent way to deal with these multiple sources, which really don't lend themselves to being specific citations to text in the style of a main article. Thanks, Chris, for thinking of it. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:07, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

A perspective

I was the external network architecture consultant for the U.S government Y2K information center, and saw things that were avoided by the effort -- and two scary incidents caused by noncompliant software. To put this in perspective, someone had made up a sign that got onto the wall of many offices:

The Dark Ages were caused by the Y1K problem

Cool quote. And Y0K led to the fall of the Roman Empire?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 18:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Wasn't it the Members' Meeting of 2012 that had one of the great crises for the Howard Families in Robert A. Heinlein's Methuselah's Children? Howard C. Berkowitz 18:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't know. --Thomas Wright Sulcer 18:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)