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==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
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{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please complete this explanation once everyone has entered the new year. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
  
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In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Randall]] is proposing a compromise for when to celebrate, or recognize, {{w|New Year's Day}}.  These celebrations traditionally take place at the stroke of midnight between Dec. 31st and Jan. 1st, at the local time of the event's location.  With "Consensus New Year", these celebrations would happen at the same time, world over, and would be at exactly 1:30 pm {{w|Eastern Time Zone|EST}} (6:30 pm {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}}).  At this time, about half the world's population would be in 2018 local time and the other half would be in 2019.  This is due to the various time zones throughout the world, and the graph is based on the proportion of the population in these zones.
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[[Randall]] is proposing a compromise for when to celebrate, or recognize, {{w|New Year's Day}}.  These celebrations traditionally take place at the stroke of midnight between Dec. 31st and Jan. 1st, at the local time of the event's location.  With "Consensus New Year", these celebrations would happen at the same time, world over, and would be at exactly 1:30 pm {{w|Eastern Time Zone|EST}} (6:30 pm {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}}).  At this time, about half the world's population would be in 2018 local time and the other half would be in 2019.  This is due to the various time zones throughout the world, and the graph is based on the proportion of the population in these zones.
  
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This is based on the assumption that the entire world uses the same calendar system.  Randall's graph shows the year starting on the same day for the entire world.  While the Gregorian calendar is used as the civil calendar in most countries of the world, the Eastern Orthodox churches uses the Julian calendar, on which the year will begin 13 days later, and the year (as of December 2018-January 2019) is 1440 on the Muslim calendar and 5779 on the Hebrew calendar. Other countries have the same New Year as the Gregorian calendar but count years differently; for example, 2019 is the year 108 in Taiwan and 2562 in Thailand.
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This is based on the erroneous assumption that the entire world uses the same calendar system.  Randall's graph shows the year starting on the same day for the entire world.  In fact, the Eastern Orthodox churches uses the Julian calendar, on which the year will begin 13 days later, and the year (as of December 2018-January 2018) is 1440 on the Muslim calendar and 5779 on the Hebrew calendar.
  
 
The Wiktionary entry for "{{Wiktionary|consensus}}" includes multiple definitions, including these two meanings:
 
The Wiktionary entry for "{{Wiktionary|consensus}}" includes multiple definitions, including these two meanings:
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* General agreement among the members of a given group or community...
 
* (attributive) Average projected value
 
* (attributive) Average projected value
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* General agreement among the members of a given group or community
 
  
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In an attributive grammar structure, a noun is placed before another noun to assign an attribute to it. When "consensus" is used this way, it's a statistical term which means the average projected value of the modified noun.
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The second definition represents a noun (the word "consensus") placed before another noun (the phrase "new year") to assign an attribute to it. This is how the word is used in the comic title and also describes the graph in the comic, which shows the "average projected value" of the percentage of the world population reaching the new year at any given time.
  
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Randall properly uses this first definition for both the title of the comic and the graph itself, where the graph represents the average projected value of the percentage of the world population reaching the new year at any given time.
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The highlighted point at 1:30 PM EST matches the first definition, where more than 50% of the world population has reached the new year, thereby achieving a consensus agreement among the world population.
  
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Randall may be purposefully misusing the second definition of the word "consensus" to reflect the common misuse of the term {{Wikipedia|consensus}} for the practice of {{Wikipedia|majority vote}}.
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===Time zones===
  
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In scenarios involving group decision-making, consensus means that all or almost all members of the group will accept the decision.  Depending on how it is done, this generally results in a slower decision-making process due to discussion, but decisions that many more people are happy with.  Consensus can scale to large groups of people using approaches such as the [https://seedsforchange.org.uk/spokescouncil spokescouncil model] to speed dialogue. By this definition, Consensus New Year happens at one of the last four time zones as the last to "agree" enter 2019, so (nearly full consensus definition) 4:00 am, 5:00 am, 6:00 am, or (full consensus definition) 7:00 am EST on January 1, 2019.
 
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Consensus lies in contrast to majority vote, where a decision passes when over 50% of the people desire it.  Majority vote is used in most current large democracies and is what most people are familiar with.  It is quick to describe and implement, but can result in polarized political parties and a stark lack of minority rights, unless enough people develop concern for the issues that they are tempered with constitutions and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling logrolling].
 
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The leftmost horizontal axis label (10am EST Dec 31st) was an error. The point marked as 0% should be 5am EST (see table below).
 
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Additionally, some of the lines are shown with a slope, which is inaccurate. Since sun time is not used anywhere, a correct graph line would only consist of horizontal and vertical lines.
 
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===Time zones===
 
  
 
{| class="wikitable sortable"
 
{| class="wikitable sortable"
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! Time EST !! Time UTC !! %Population in 2019 !! Regions entering 2019
 
! Time EST !! Time UTC !! %Population in 2019 !! Regions entering 2019
 
|-
 
|-
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| 5:00 AM || 10:00    || 0                  || Pacific Islands
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| 5:00 AM || 10:00    || 0                  || Eastern Kiribati
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|-
 
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|  6:00 AM || 11:00    || 0                  || Pacific Islands, New Zealand (NZDT)
 
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|-
 
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|  7:00 AM || 12:00    || 0                  || Kamchatka (Russia), Fiji
 
 
|-
 
|-
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| 8:00 AM || 13:00    || 0                  || Magadan (Russia), Pacific Islands, Eastern Australia (Excluding Queensland)
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| 6:00 AM || 11:00    || 0                  || Western Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga
 
|-
 
|-
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| 8:30 AM || 13:30   || 0                  || South Australia
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| 7:00 AM || 12:00   || 0                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 9:00 AM || 14:00    || 0                  || Vladivostok (Russia), Queensland (Australia)
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| 8:00 AM || 13:00    || 0                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 9:30 AM || 14:30   || 0                  || Northern Territory (Australia)
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| 9:00 AM || 14:00   || 0                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 10:00 AM || 15:00    || 5                  || Yakutsk (Russia), Japan, Korea, Eastern Indonesia
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|10:00 AM || 15:00    || 5                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 11:00 AM || 16:00    || 25                  || China, Irkutsk (Russia), Taiwan, Western Australia, Malaysia, Central Indonesia
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|11:00 AM || 16:00    || 25                  || China
 
|-
 
|-
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| 12:00 PM || 17:00    || 30                  || Krasnoyarsk (Russia), Vietnam, Thailand, Western Indonesia
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|12:00 PM || 17:00    || 30                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 1:00 PM || 18:00    || 35                  || Omsk (Russia), Kazakhstan, Bangladesh
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| 1:00 PM || 18:00    || 35                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 1:30 PM || 18:30    || 55                  || India, Sri Lanka
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| 1:30 PM || 18:30    || 55                  || India, Sri Lanka
 
|-
 
|-
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| 2:00 PM || 19:00    || 60                  || Yekaterinburg (Russia), Pakistan
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| 2:00 PM || 19:00    || 60                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 3:00 PM || 20:00    || 60                  || Samara (Russia), Georgia, Oman, UAE
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| 3:00 PM || 20:00    || 60                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 4:00 PM || 21:00    || 70                  || Moscow (Russia), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, East Africa
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| 4:00 PM || 21:00    || 70                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 5:00 PM || 22:00    || 75                  || Eastern Europe, Egypt, Central & Southern Africa
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| 5:00 PM || 22:00    || 75                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 6:00 PM || 23:00    || 85                  || Central Europe, former Yugoslavia, Africa
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| 6:00 PM || 23:00    || 85                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 7:00 PM || 00:00    || 90                  || (GMT) UK and Crown Dependencies, Western EU/EEA<!-- thats Portugal, Ireland, Azores, Canaries, Faroes, Iceland -->, Northeast Greenland, Western Africa
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| 7:00 PM || 00:00    || 90                  || UK, Ireland, Portugal, Western Africa
 
|-
 
|-
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| 8:00 PM || 01:00    || 90                  || Azores (Portugal), parts of Greenland
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| 8:00 PM || 01:00    || 90                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 9:00 PM || 02:00    || 90                  || Parts of Greenland, Southern Brazil
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| 9:00 PM || 02:00    || 90                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 10:00 PM || 03:00    || 90                  || Northeastern and Central Brazil, Argentina, Chile
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|10:00 PM || 03:00    || 90                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 11:00 PM || 04:00    || 90                  || Atlantic Canada, Venezuela
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|11:00 PM || 04:00    || 90                  ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 12:00 AM || 05:00    || 95                  || (EST) Eastern USA, Peru
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|12:00 AM || 05:00    || 95                  || Eastern US
 
|-
 
|-
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| 1:00 AM || 06:00    || 100                || (CT) Central USA, Mexico, Central America
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| 1:00 AM || 06:00    || 100                ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 2:00 AM || 07:00    || 100                || (MT) Central USA, Western Mexico
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| 2:00 AM || 07:00    || 100                ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 3:00 AM || 08:00    || 100                || (PST) Western USA
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| 3:00 AM || 08:00    || 100                || Western US
 
|-
 
|-
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| 4:00 AM || 09:00    || 100                || Alaska
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| 4:00 AM || 09:00    || 100                ||
 
|-
 
|-
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| 5:00 AM || 10:00    || 100                || Pacific Islands
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| 5:00 AM || 10:00    || 100                ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 6:00 AM || 11:00    || 100                || Pacific Islands
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| 6:00 AM || 11:00    || 100                ||  
 
|-
 
|-
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| 7:00 AM || 12:00    || 100                || Pacific Islands
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| 7:00 AM || 12:00    || 100                || Baker Island and Howland Island (US)
 
|}
 
|}
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
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{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
 
:[A graph labeled “Percentage of the world's population living in 2019” with Y-axis markers at 0%, 50%, and 100%, and X-axis markers at 10:00 AM EST Dec 31st, 1:30 PM EST, 7:00 PM EST, Midnight EST, 3:00 AM EST Jan 1st, and 7:00 AM EST.]
 
:[A graph labeled “Percentage of the world's population living in 2019” with Y-axis markers at 0%, 50%, and 100%, and X-axis markers at 10:00 AM EST Dec 31st, 1:30 PM EST, 7:00 PM EST, Midnight EST, 3:00 AM EST Jan 1st, and 7:00 AM EST.]
 
:[The line graph shows the percentage increasing from 0 to 100% in several steps, with 50% reached at 1:30 PM EST.]
 
:[The line graph shows the percentage increasing from 0 to 100% in several steps, with 50% reached at 1:30 PM EST.]

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