Forum:History's past and present tense.

Hello everyone,

A little while ago, I was changing a history page from present to past change. Then I went to the newest information from the latest chapter. And I noticed it was written in present change. Then I went to some other history pages relevant to that chapter, and found out most of them were also written in present tense.

In order to prevent this in the future and also prevent us from having to do unnecessary work, I propose the following rule: All history pages must be updated into past tense.

Please let me here what you all think about this.

Anti-Jester (talk) 14:34, February 23, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion
I agree with Anti, it results to extra work and difficulty for the Grammar Marines and other users who use to edit history pages a lot, if history pages is written in present tense only because the chapter pages are written in that tense. There is not much work need put into it to make everything so much easier either, just that every user editing a History section, whether for an important page or not, use the past tense, instead of the present or a mix of both. 16:40, February 23, 2013 (UTC)

When writing about fiction, the English grammar rules are that you must write things in the present tense, since the work can be considered "alive" as people can read it at any time. However, the exception to this is when there is a shift in time, like the timeskip. See #4 on this explanation. 14:45, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

While I can certainly relate to the argument of JustSomeDude and also see the logic in it. The information of events we put into the articles of characters, locations etc. is put under the "history" section. Implying the events happened in the actual past, which it did. So most people will probably assume that the grammar will be put in past tense. And those people might also get confused if for example the events of an earlier saga and the following saga are both written in the present tense. In conclusion, in order to prevent confusion, I say all history related information should be written in pas tense. Anti-Jester (talk) 15:54, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

No, we should follow the rules of English grammar. We wouldn't be a very good encyclopedia if we didn't follow them. And we already have this rule stated here. If you have problems with other users changing articles to the wrong tense, tell them on their talk pages and undo their revisions. 16:16, February 24, 2013 (UTC)