and I frequently see Wookieepedians basically trying to argue that misconception as fact to the point of great stress, as if somehow they can beat the facts into the shape they want by sheer verbiage.

I've been editing the year articles recently and as far as I can tell, it's mostly that no one's put a ton of thought into it. Now that you've directly worked on dates for the Atlas, your argument can be considered official Licensing policy and not fanon as some have claimed.

That's essentially why I have stopped arguing the point beyond answering Milo's question here.

Hopefully the new policy, whatever is chosen, will change that. Wookieepedia is probably the main source of information for most fans, given the limited aspects of the CSWE and Databank, and the first step toward reform is awareness. Question, though: is there both a 0 BBY and a 0 ABY that are each full years?

So...you're saying that most of the galaxy uses the ReSynch calendar for their day-to-day business, while historians tend to use BBY/ABY, and it's less a specific year in this context than it is establishing a timeframe? If so, that would make sense. It would still be a lot more convenient for everyone if 2 ABY and 37 were names for the same span of time though.

Well, apparently people were using the ReSynch calendar at least up through the era of ESB because we have GWNN articles using that system up until then, plus, I think, some WEG materials that use similar dates for later events.

Remember, other than guidebooks like the Essential Guides, we have never (if I'm recalling correctly) actually seen someone in regular conversation refer to a date in either "BBY/ABY" or ReSynch numerical terms. They just refer to things usually in relative terms. I can't speak to what an in-universe character would refer to, though I'd imagine that at least until post-ROTJ, they'd be using the ReSynch one, as the BBY/ABY would likely not yet exist.

Even then, if individuals in-universe were often referring to years like we do in real life, then with several galactic calendars and billions of local calendars, presumably, we'd likely find people able to use multiple calendars, much like, say, a businessman who keeps track of Chinese calendar dates and western ones while doing business with both cultures.

Right, but the year 2 ABY, for instance, wouldn't necessarily have to be from the same month. Our calendar is ostensibly based on the year of Jesus' birth, but not the birthdate. So it's not unreasonable for people to get the two confused.

Oh, it's definitely easy to confuse, especially since we are so used to thinking of our own year dates as names. It is not common practice for modern westerners to think in terms of duration when thinking about years. Then again, that's why so many people end up getting other people's ages incorrect. We have to remember to account for when in the year they were born before determining age. In SW, the BBY/ABY calendar is much like that calculating of a person's age. You're likely to accidentally end up off by one digit if you don't bother to account for the "birth" (so to speak) of that calendar's zero point.

So you're saying that all references such as 19.5 BBY or etc. take place in month 9 or etc.?

Precisely, just as, for example, the LFL-approved date for the beginning of XWRS (2.5 years after ROTJ or 6.5 ABY) is in early 41:9, not 41:6.

What makes me scratch my head on this, frankly, is that people have no trouble, it seems, getting how the BBG/ABG calendar works in the Clone Wars era (barring all the craziness lately with that era), yet for some reason get confused and can't figure out that the BBY/ABY calendar works the same way in relation to its own starting point.

Apparently, at some point in Wookieepedia's existence (or some other source, for all I know), someone made the incorrect assumption that you can just swap out year numbers without accounting for time of year between the ReSynch and BBY/ABY calendar, and all of Wookieepedia seems to have adopted that incorrect notation as its standard. That just makes it an even more widely-held misconception, and I frequently see Wookieepedians basically trying to argue that misconception as fact to the point of great stress, as if somehow they can beat the facts into the shape they want by sheer verbiage.

Hey, I believed in Santa Claus for many years before someone finally explained that he didn't exist. I'm sure I spent time in a Luke-esque "That's not true! That's impossible!" mental state about poor non-existant Santa, willing him to be real . . . but that didn't make it so.

That's essentially why I have stopped arguing the point beyond answering Milo's question here. There's only so many times you can lay out the same information for people (others, that is) who refuse to accept any view other than their own, despite the facts in evidence laid before them, until you're just running around in circles and wasting time and stress for no reason. Some people will always try to squish that square peg into that round hole, praying they can somehow will the peg to become putty and fit right in with enough effort. : shrug :

Yeah, Stackpole repeatedly refers to Yavin as 7 years earlier, which was never correct for those books. All of those references were in error originally, so we completely discounted them when coming up with the Atlas dates.

*It's a duration. 6 - 7 ABY. In other words, all of the events on that map come between 41:3 and 42:3.

Really? So if I was making a timeline of events in the 2008 election, ending at November 4th, it would make sense to entitle it "The Presidental Race (2008-2009)"?*

You'd likely still use only 2008 because "2008" is colloquially used as a year's name, so to speak. As much as people use "A.D." to mean "after death," it's the Latin for "in the year of our Lord," which is a year number, not a duration.

So a duration would, perhaps, say 2008 - 2009 (or, hell, 2007 - 2009 these days), but only if dealing in duration. It would just be 2008 (or 2007 - 2008) if dealing in year numbers.

In Star Wars, the BBY/ABY dates are durations before or after the Battle of Yavin, as the acronym implies. The only year "names" we have are the digital ones. Thanks to the Battle of Yavin not being on January 1, though, we're left with two calendars (one duration, one name) that are off in their alignment by about 3 months.

*We were talking before a month or two ago on the CW thread about whether the BBY/ABY year began and ended in month 3 in-universe. *

I've discussed this to the point of absurdity over the last month or two, but let me put it in simplest terms.

If you were thinking in terms of BBY/ABY, then the month from the Battle of Yavin until that same day the next month, would be Month 1. We'd say an event at that point was "One month ABY." (Just like we'd say something a month after Geonosis is "One month ABG" or one month after the Treaty of Coruscant would be "One month ATC.")

However, that's like saying that if today is the "Question Day," we could have an event on October 25 and call it "One month AQD." That would be on a BQD/AQD calendar, like the BBY/ABY calendar. However, we would still know that on the modern calendar, as we use it in America with leap years and such, that "first month" is actually, for us, "September 26 - October 25."

It isn't that the BBY/ABY calendar is some kind of renaming or relabeling of the digital calendar that began in the WEG materials. It's that they are totally different calendars, and people can't get straight sometimes, so they start assuming that you can just swap out a year number on the digital calendar for a year number on the BBY/ABY calendar without taking into account how the two vary in terms of starting points. That's when errors begin to emerge, like the one I corrected for Mrisst over on Wookieepedia.

The Galaxy Guides are S-canon?

Unless you've heard otherwise, they would fall under Leland's blanket statement from a while back about WEG material being initially designated S.

+> It went with the S-canon version over the C one?!

Well, it was first.

Mr. Chee,

Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races and* Cloak of Deception* show two different versions of the Ossan. The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia says that the former is correct. Is it?

All right, here, better example: on page 197 it shows "THE ROAD TO CORUSCANT (6-7 ABY)" yet all of the dates occur before 42:3, with the seizure of Coruscant itself occurring on 42:2:17.

Leland, will Republic Heroes for the DS contain the "full" storyline of the game, while the other versions contain a shorter version? Or will the versions vary slightly ala TFU? And if so, which is considered the definite version of events in the Holocron?

Mr. Chee
I'm wondering if you can give an official answer as to what happened to the leaders of the Fromm Gang. In the 4th episode of Droids Sise and Tig Fromm, along with Vlix, were captured by Boba Fett and were going to be turned over to Jabba. But in issue 2 of the Droids comic series Tig and Vlix again appear but at supposedly a later time period (reference: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Droids_(Marvel)), but the actual timing of this comic has never firmly been established. While it is often speculated that the Fromm Gang leaders would have been executed by Jabba, the whole timeline issue with the comic raises the possibility that perhaps they either escaped, were set free by Jabba or liberated by other members of their gang. Personally, my feeling is that since the Fromm Gang was a serious power in that part of the galaxy that the rest of the gang would have gone all out to set their leaders free, even if it meant a fight with Boba Fett or Jabba's gang.

This month, Tokyopop will release a Star Wars Manga anthology filled with uniquely bold tales set in a peculiarly Japanese incarnation of that galaxy far, far away... For their daring plots and offbeat directions, these stories are definitely "Infinities"-that is, they don't actually fit into Star Wars continuity. Nonetheless, they are rich in character, detail and action and are definitely worth a look. This anthology, which is a mix of black and white comics with a few color spreads of original illustrations, will only be available initially in Japan.

-from the publishers' summary

Leland didn't seem to imply that the status was changed once informed of the English versions when first asked.