Timeline directory
A publicly editable directory of timelines on any topic that are all available directly from the main search box on the site.
Directory Timeline names will be unique, just like Wikipedia articles.
Thousands of ready made timelines can be automatically imported into the directory from the Wikipedia category system.
This feature is now complete! This means that the 350,000 timelines we have automatically imported can now be improved by any user, and new timelines can also be published to the directory. All changes made are stored in a revision history for each timeline.
See our feature release blog post for more info http://histropedia.com/blog/editable-timeline-directory-help-create-new-way-visualise-wikipedia/
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Jakob Voß commented
I doubt that timelines can be as objective as Wikipedia article (rather than based on subjective, artistic views), but that's your choice. I'd allow people making their own timelines and group by topic tagging and filter by with aggregating and voting. Nevertheless it would be great to tag timelines with Wikipedia articles (or more precise with Wikidata items). For instance all timelines related to WW I would be tagged with Q361. By Wikidata, timelines are also connected to Commons categories and authority files, so they can better be found.
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Hi Jakob,
Many thanks for your comment. Our reason for wanting unique names for each timeline in the directory is to encourage people to collaborate and reach a community based decision on the contents of each timeline. If we allow multiple timelines with the same name we will be allowing people to create a timeline based on their opinion of what should go in the timeline.
This doesn't mean every timeline must have the same name as a Wikipedia article and there could be many timelines on the topic of WWI. So for example we could have the following unique timelines relating to WWI.
Battles of World War I, Lead up to World War I, Aftermath of World War I, Important people of World War I and so on, these would all be linked to the Topic WWI.
If you have any ideas on how we could prevent people from making their own directory timeline simply because they do not agree with the existing timeline we would be very interested in hearing them.
Many Thanks
Sean -
Jakob Voß commented
Names are a bad unique identifier, better use the internal timeline IDs and allow homonym names. Categorization and grouping of timelines in a directory can best be achieved by tagging timelines with Wikipedia articles as "timeline topic". E.g. all timelines of WWII should be tagged/linked to the Wikipedia article WWII as main topic of the timeline.