User talk:I'm doing this for Uzicxer

Footnotes can turn you into a liar

Wikipedia articles contain footnotes* in accordance with the verifiability policy, which requires citations to reliable sources to support statements When editing, it is important to notice if a statement is supported by such a source. If you change the statement, as you did in this edit to "Aquarius (astrology)", you are claiming that the source says your new version of the statement is true. If you have not read the source, most likely your claim about what the source says will turn out to be false. In the case of your recent edit, your claim about what Oxford Dictionaries say about the sun entering and leaving the sign of Aquarius is indeed false.

*Sometimes parenthetical referencing is used instead of footnotes, but not in the Aquarius article. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for more information. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

You replied on my talk page:

I have many sources that say that the zodiac 'Aquarius' is from the 20th Jan to the 18th of Feb. even the Aquarius Wikipedia said it.. I'm doing this for Uzicxer (talk) 11:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for replying.

It is critical to understand that when you just edited "Aquarius" to read as follows:

Under the tropical zodiac, the sun is in Aquarius typically between January 20 and February 18,...

References

Works cited

• "Aquarius". Oxford Dictionaries. n.d. Retrieved December 16, 2017.

• "Pisces". Oxford Dictionaries. n.d. Retrieved December 16, 2017.

You are making two statements. First, a state about when the sun is Aquarius. Second, a statement that the information comes from the Oxford Dictionary entries for "Aquarius" and "Pisces". I'll address the accuracy of the first statement later. But the second statement is clearly untrue. Go look at the entries. You see they state 21 January and 20 February. So it is a misquote to claim 20 January.

As for which is accurate, your edit summary states "The teet was condrodicting itself." It looks like you were having some trouble with your keyboard, but I take it to mean the article is contradicting itself. Perhaps you are thinking of the statement in the infobox, which states "January 20 – February 18 (2018, UT1)" and the footnote states

• • Astronomical Applications Department (2011). Multiyear Computer Interactive Almanac. 2.2.2. Washington DC: US Naval Observatory. {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Longitude of Sun, apparent geocentric ecliptic of date, interpolated to find time of crossing 0°, 30°...

It's important to understand that the sun enters the sign of Aquarius when it crosses the celestial longitude 300°, and this happens at the same moment in every time zone. But the date will not be the same in every time zone. The dates in the infobox use UT1, which is nearly the same as UTC. The dates in the lead of the article don't say what time zone is used.

Also, the date shifts a bit because of the way the calendar aligns with the earth's orbit. It gets off a bit, then we bring it back with a leap year. So the date can change depending on how long it's been since a leap year. There are other smaller variations in the earth's orbit too.

So the statement in the lead uses the word "typically", which is equivalent to "approximately", and does not mention any particular year or any particular time zone. The statement in the infobox gives both a year and a time zone. So, before your change, the article could be understood to say that typically the sun enters Aquarius on January 21, but in 2018, using a clock set to UT1, it entered on January 20.

So there isn't necessarily anything wrong with your sources, it's just that they figured out the dates in a somewhat different way and came up with somewhat different results. There's nothing wrong with that, there's no exact way to figure out the dates if you aren't going to specify the year and time zone.

I will now change the article back so the statement agrees with the information in Oxford Dictionaries Jc3s5h (talk) 14:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC)