Forum:Years of birth/death cats

With ML4E's digging, we now have a story set in nearly every century of the 2nd Millenium, plus several stories set in the 1st and before the common era. This leads me to propose an category idea that I don't think we've discussed before.

Given HT's willinglness to alter the lifetimes of historical figures, I've often thought that creating categories for year of birth and year of death might be worth doing. The big counterargument that immediately popped into my head (and prevented me from even floating the idea) is that since HT's canon does not embrace every year of recorded human history, we'll have a substantial spike in some years, but one or two people in other years. Then of course, there would be those people whose birth or death is estimated or unrecorded.

But, since HT is also good at giving us throwaway references, and because stories like "Curse of the Three Demons" are finally getting articles, I'd like to at least propose the idea. We can adopt it or shitcan it, I won't lose sleep either way.

Now, as I said, some years will be better represented than others. So, if we went this route, I'd propose a model based on the "Setting by Year" model we have now. Start with births/deaths by millenium. Telescope in by century, then by decade (if justified), then by year. Obviously, some years, such as the period between 1860-1865 and the period between 1939-1945, will be heavily populated with deaths and will justify OTL/Fictional Work splits. Births, even fictional ones, would probably be a little thinner.

Anyway, for discussion. TR (talk) 16:40, September 15, 2012 (UTC)