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Talk:Common Language Infrastructure

cli
Common language infrastructure (CLI)is a term which gives no results when run on the Microsoft web site]. But Common language runtime is not much better (4 hits). And Common language runtime gives a lot of hits, but they seem to be Java related.

A general google search on Common Language Infrastructure and Common Language Runtime gives a considerable amount of results. But sorting out needs its time.

I would like to see an article which translates the Microsoft speak into commonly known computing terms. The stub above is a first attempt at this. Perhaps it should be moved to another heading. -- Kwaku

CLI as seen with the eyes of a Java proponent: http://www.javalobby.org/clr.html (link put here to consult for further work on the article)

I removed some stuff because it was copied without even some decent formatting from http://hosting.msugs.ch/dotnetrox/vb/Ch01.html -- Jan Hidders 20:47 Sep 7, 2002 (UTC)

Inter-language integration in the open source world
One of the strengths of CLR seems to be that it allows lots of different languages to be integrated and call each others' code. The code to produce and use DLL assemblies in many languages is quite simple. Is there any similar "inter-language integration" layer in Linux, or in the open source world? I have used SWIG and Boost, however, I'm more asking whether it is possible to not merely export C++ code into various languages, but rather, to share code between pairs of arbitrary languages. For example, is it possible to take a CPAN Perl module and call it from Python, or export a Tcl module and a Ruby module and call each of these from clisp? If the necessary technology to do this does not exist, then I'd like to know that as well. Thanks. Connelly 00:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The easier part of the problem is the parameter-passing mechanism: different languages use different techniques to pass values or references to called methods.  Some push only references, while others push values or references depending on the parameter type and options. So its a difficult problem even if the parameter types are limited to integers and reals.  Stepping up the complexity a bit, consider dates:  each language has its own internal representation of a date value that would be incompatible with that of another language.  Decimal values, ditto.  And when you get to passing references to structure memory like objects, forget it.  Perl would have no way to interpret an instance of a Python object: the internal representation of that object is totally foreign to Perl.
 * COM and COBRA were earlier attempts to support inter-language calls by forcing representations into a commonly understood format. They've had limited success due to complexity and inherent limitations. COM is still used pretty commonly on MS platforms CORBA is the non-Windows implementation of similar technology, but I have the impression that is a failed technology. (I'm sure someone will disagree, and that's fine.)
 * Hope this helps.
 * Thanks, that does help. I noticed that if I google specific pairs of languages, such as Tcl+Python integration, I can often find mechanisms for working with the given two languages at once, such as .  Perhaps in the open source world, inter-language integration is typically done over the Web: via app-specific protocols, SOAP, CORBA, XML-RPC, ....  That is a fine answer; I just wondered if I was naive and didn't "know" how inter-language integration was done in the OSS world.  There are also some discontinued research projects like ILU and Flick which seem to be focused on this same goal.
 * Found what I was looking for. The open source world has copied Microsoft's OLE and COM with technologies such as KPart and Bonobo. - Connelly 23:18, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Category
I noticed that the article has no category. Maybe separate Category:Microsoft .NET should be created? --Derbeth 19:42, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I've put it in the already-existing Category:.NET programming languages. ··gracefool |☺ 05:13, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that the CLR (Common Language Runtime) is not technically a virtual machine. It does not run IL code, it loads and compiles it. The architecture is designed to provide a platform-neutral layer similar to that provided by Java's Virtual Machine, but the mechanism is different.

Implementations
I've repositioned the implementations section to logically follow Standardization and Licensing. A question regarding MS .NET FW there: why is it called 'commercial' if it's available for free download? --tyomitch 08:45, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I labelled it as such because it is a heart of their commercial .NET offering, and to emphasize the fact that it's a closed-source implementation Microsoft uses for profit. Hope that makes some sort of sense. :) -- Foofy 18:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Implementations / CLI and CLR
I'll address this on the project page, but the CLI is a spec, and the CLR is an implementation of CLI plus libraries, etc., so it makes more sense to put the implementations in the CLR article. -- Foofy 18:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Foofy! Long time! Does Foofy got something to do with Footbal fan?! ;) I suggest that the section to be kept as it is and develop it in the CLR article. We can add later on a reference to that from here. Cheese -- Svest 18:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC) Wiki me up™
 * This article says that the CLR "contains aspects outside the scope of the specification" however the CLR article says that the CLR is an implementation of the CLI. Those statements seem contradictory to me. 76.87.181.194 04:24, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

patents
Can we get some more information about the patents held on the Common Language Infrastructure? They're pretty significant for projects like DotGNU and Mono. Is there a chance these projects will one day be attacked my Microsoft and forced to stop? Herorev 00:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * This open question was finally answered with Microsoft putting C# and the CLI under the Microsoft Community Promise

There is still a lot of doubt over/room to misinterpret the CP, especially regarding Mono. The absolute statement that programming with it has been made completely safe is anything but definite, and should probably have a dubious tag. C# for instance is only protected by the standard for an older implementation, and the CP doesn't include quite a few things, like Windows Forms, needed for some functionality. Raider480 07:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

sentence
While Microsoft and their partners hold patents for CLI, ECMA and ISO require that all patents essential to implementation be made available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms."

does that sentence make sense? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.152.52.113 (talk) 08:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Common Language Specification
The page Common Language Specification linked to in the Overview has only the same information as the Overview's paragraph. Should the page be removed, with a redirect to the Overview? Also, should it have an inline link to MSDN's page onCommon Language Specification and/or the link in the References section?Tagus (talk) 05:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've redirected it. - MrOllie (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic typed languages
"No Support For" is a bit misleading? Iron Python is a CLR implementation of Python, which is a Dynamic typed language. So I guess you don't need support for dynamic typed languages in order to support dynamic typed languages.

Whatever. It just doesn't seem like a clear statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 07:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Mention CLR
The page should mention the relationship between CLI and CLR. Encyclopedant (talk) 19:58, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Common Language Infrastructure


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Cricket World Cup

The Cricket World Cup (officially known as ICC Men's Cricket World Cup) is the international championship of One Day International (ODI) cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), every four years, with preliminary qualification rounds leading up to a finals tournament. The tournament is one of the world's most viewed sporting events and considered the "flagship event of the international cricket calendar" by the ICC. It is widely considered the pinnacle championship of the sport of cricket.

The first World Cup was organised in England in June 1975, with the first ODI cricket match having been played only four years earlier. However, a separate Women's Cricket World Cup had been held two years before the first men's tournament, and a tournament involving multiple international teams had been held as early as 1912, when a triangular tournament of Test matches was played between Australia, England and South Africa. The first three World Cups were held in England. From the 1987 tournament onwards, hosting has been shared between countries under an unofficial rotation system, with fourteen ICC members having hosted at least one match in the tournament.

The current format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase. In the tournament phase, 10 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation, compete for the title at venues within the host nation over about a month. In the 2027 edition, the format will be changed to accommodate an expanded 14-team final competition.

A total of twenty teams have competed in the 13 editions of the tournament, with ten teams competing in the recent 2023 tournament. Australia has won the tournament six times, India and West Indies twice each, while Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England have won it once each. The best performance by a non-full-member team came when Kenya made the semi-finals of the 2003 tournament.

Australia are the current champions after winning the 2023 World Cup in India. The subsequent 2027 World Cup will be held jointly in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

History
The first international cricket match was played between Canada and the United States, on 24 and 25 September 1844. However, the first credited Test match was played in 1877 between Australia and England, and the two teams competed regularly for The Ashes in subsequent years. South Africa was admitted to Test status in 1889. Representative cricket teams were selected to tour each other, resulting in bilateral competition. Cricket was also included as an Olympic sport at the 1900 Paris Games, where Great Britain defeated France to win the gold medal. This was the only appearance of cricket at the Summer Olympics.

The first multilateral competition at international level was the 1912 Triangular Tournament, a Test cricket tournament played in England between all three Test-playing nations at the time: England, Australia and South Africa. The event was not a success: the summer was exceptionally wet, making play difficult on damp uncovered pitches, and crowd attendances were poor, attributed to a "surfeit of cricket". Since then, international Test cricket has generally been organised as bilateral series: a multilateral Test tournament was not organised again until the triangular Asian Test Championship in 1999.

The number of nations playing Test cricket increased gradually over time, with the addition of West Indies in 1928, New Zealand in 1930, India in 1932, and Pakistan in 1952. However, international cricket continued to be played as bilateral Test matches over three, four or five days.

In the early 1960s, English county cricket teams began playing a shortened version of cricket which only lasted for one day. Starting in 1962 with a four-team knockout competition known as the Midlands Knock-Out Cup, and continuing with the inaugural Gillette Cup in 1963, one-day cricket grew in popularity in England. A national Sunday League was formed in 1969. The first One-Day International match was played on the fifth day of a rain-aborted Test match between England and Australia at Melbourne in 1971, to fill the time available and as compensation for the frustrated crowd. It was a forty over game with eight balls per over. The success and popularity of the domestic one-day competitions in England and other parts of the world, as well as the early One-Day Internationals, prompted the ICC to consider organizing a Cricket World Cup.

Prudential World Cups (1975–1983)
The inaugural Cricket World Cup was hosted in 1975 by England, the only nation able to put forward the resources to stage an event of such magnitude at the time. The first three tournaments were held in England and officially known as the Prudential Cup after the sponsors Prudential plc. The matches consisted of 60 six-ball overs per team, played during daytime in the traditional form, with the players wearing cricket whites and using red cricket balls.

Eight teams participated in the first tournament: Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the West Indies (the six Test nations at the time), together with Sri Lanka and a composite team from East Africa. One notable omission was South Africa, who were banned from international cricket due to apartheid. The tournament was won by the West Indies, who defeated Australia by 17 runs in the final at Lord's. Roy Fredricks of West Indies was the first batsmen who got hit-wicket in ODI during the 1975 World Cup final.

The 1979 World Cup saw the introduction of the ICC Trophy competition to select non-Test playing teams for the World Cup, with Sri Lanka and Canada qualifying. The West Indies won a second consecutive World Cup tournament, defeating the hosts England by 92 runs in the final. At a meeting which followed the World Cup, the International Cricket Conference agreed to make the competition a quadrennial event.

The 1983 event was hosted by England for a third consecutive time. By this stage, Sri Lanka had become a Test-playing nation, and Zimbabwe qualified through the ICC Trophy. A fielding circle was introduced, 30 yd away from the stumps. Four fieldsmen needed to be inside it at all times. The teams faced each other twice, before moving into the knock-outs. India was crowned champions after upsetting the West Indies by 43 runs in the final.

Different champions (1987–1996)
India and Pakistan jointly hosted the 1987 tournament, the first time that the competition was held outside England. The games were reduced from 60 to 50 overs per innings, the current standard, because of the shorter daylight hours in the Indian subcontinent compared with England's summer. Australia won the championship by defeating England by 7 runs in the final, the closest margin in the World Cup final until the 2019 edition between England and New Zealand.

The 1992 World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, introduced many changes to the game, such as coloured clothing, white balls, day/night matches, and a change to the fielding restriction rules. The South African cricket team participated in the event for the first time, following the fall of the apartheid regime and the end of the international sports boycott. Pakistan overcame a dismal start in the tournament to eventually defeat England by 22 runs in the final and emerge as winners.

The 1996 championship was held in the Indian subcontinent for a second time, with the inclusion of Sri Lanka as host for some of its group stage matches. In the semi-final, Sri Lanka, heading towards a crushing victory over India at Eden Gardens after the hosts lost eight wickets while scoring 120 runs in pursuit of 252, were awarded victory by default after crowd unrest broke out in protest against the Indian performance. Sri Lanka went on to win their maiden championship by defeating Australia by seven wickets in the final at Lahore.

Australian treble (1999–2007)
In 1999, the event was hosted by England, with some matches also being held in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Netherlands. Twelve teams contested the World Cup. Australia qualified for the semi-finals after reaching their target in their Super 6 match against South Africa off the final over of the match. They then proceeded to the final with a tied match in the semi-final also against South Africa where a mix-up between South African batsmen Lance Klusener and Allan Donald saw Donald drop his bat and stranded mid-pitch to be run out. In the final, Australia dismissed Pakistan for 132 and then reached the target in less than 20 overs and with eight wickets in hand. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya hosted the 2003 World Cup. The number of teams participating in the event increased from twelve to fourteen. Kenya's victories over Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, among others – and a forfeit by the New Zealand team, which refused to play in Kenya because of security concerns – enabled Kenya to reach the semi-finals, the best result by an associate. In the final, Australia made 359 runs for the loss of two wickets, the largest ever total in a final, defeating India by 125 runs.

In 2007, the tournament was hosted by the West Indies and expanded to sixteen teams. Following Pakistan's upset loss to World Cup debutants Ireland in the group stage, Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room. Jamaican police had initially launched a murder investigation into Woolmer's death but later confirmed that he died of heart failure. Australia defeated Sri Lanka in the final by 53 runs (D/L) in farcical light conditions, and extended their undefeated run in the World Cup to 29 matches and winning three straight championships.

Hosts triumph (2011–2019)
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh together hosted the 2011 World Cup. Pakistan was stripped of its hosting rights following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, with the games originally scheduled for Pakistan redistributed to the other host countries. The number of teams participating in the World Cup was reduced to fourteen. Australia lost their final group stage match against Pakistan on 19 March 2011, ending an unbeaten streak of 35 World Cup matches, which had begun on 23 May 1999. India won their second World Cup title by beating Sri Lanka by 6 wickets in the final at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, where the Indian captain M.S. Dhoni along with the spinning all-rounder Yuvraj Singh chased 273 with notable performances from Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli, making India the first country to win the World Cup at home. This was also the first time that two Asian countries faced each other in a World Cup Final.

Australia and New Zealand jointly hosted the 2015 World Cup. The number of participants remained at fourteen. Ireland was the most successful Associate nation with a total of three wins in the tournament. New Zealand beat South Africa in a thrilling first semi-final to qualify for their maiden World Cup final. Australia defeated New Zealand by seven wickets in the final at Melbourne to lift the World Cup for the fifth time.

The 2019 World Cup was hosted by England and Wales. The number of participants was reduced to 10. New Zealand defeated India in the first semi-final, which was pushed over to the reserve day due to rain. England defeated the defending champions, Australia, in the second semi-final. Neither finalist had previously won the World Cup. In the final, the scores were tied at 241 after 50 overs and the match went to a super over, after which the scores were again tied at 15. The World Cup was won by England, whose boundary count was greater than New Zealand's.

Australian resurgence (2023)
The 2023 Cricket World Cup was hosted by India. Ten teams participated, including The Netherlands, which returned to the tournament after a 12 year absence. The tournament was structured as a single group round-robin, with the top four advancing to the semi-final knockout stage. India were unbeaten in the group stage and defeated New Zealand to advance to the final; Australia lost twice during the group stage before defeating South Africa in the semi-finals. Afghanistan had their most successful World Cup, with four wins during the group stage, including over defending champions England; they also came close to defeating Australia before Glenn Maxwell's double century turned the match around. In the final, Australia defeated the 10-match unbeaten India to clinch their 6th World Cup.

Qualification
From the first World Cup in 1975 up to the 2019 World Cup, the majority of teams taking part qualified automatically. Until the 2015 World Cup this was mostly through having Full Membership of the ICC, and for the 2019 World Cup this was mostly through ranking position in the ICC ODI Championship.

Since the second World Cup in 1979 up to the 2019 World Cup, the teams that qualified automatically were joined by a small number of others who qualified for the World Cup through the qualification process. The first qualifying tournament being the ICC Trophy; later the process expanding with pre-qualifying tournaments. For the 2011 World Cup, the ICC World Cricket League replaced the past pre-qualifying processes; and the name "ICC Trophy" was changed to "ICC Men's Cricket World Cup Qualifier". The World Cricket League was the qualification system provided to allow the Associate and Affiliate members of the ICC more opportunities to qualify. The number of teams qualifying varied throughout the years.

From the 2023 World Cup onwards, only the host nation(s) will qualify automatically. All countries will participate in a series of leagues to determine qualification, with automatic promotion and relegation between divisions from one World Cup cycle to the next.

Tournament
The format of the Cricket World Cup has changed greatly over the course of its history. Each of the first four tournaments was played by eight teams, divided into two groups of four. The competition consisted of two stages, a group stage and a knock-out stage. The four teams in each group played each other in the round-robin group stage, with the top two teams in each group progressing to the semi-finals. The winners of the semi-finals played against each other in the final. With South Africa returning in the fifth tournament in 1992 as a result of the end of the apartheid boycott, nine teams played each other once in the group phase, and the top four teams progressed to the semi-finals. The tournament was further expanded in 1996, with two groups of six teams. The top four teams from each group progressed to quarter-finals and semi-finals.

A distinct format was used for the 1999 and 2003 World Cups. The teams were split into two pools, with the top three teams in each pool advancing to the Super 6. The Super 6 teams played the three other teams that advanced from the other group. As they advanced, the teams carried their points forward from previous matches against other teams advancing alongside them, giving them an incentive to perform well in the group stages. The top four teams from the Super 6 stage progressed to the semi-finals, with the winners playing in the final.

The format used in the 2007 World Cup involved 16 teams allocated into four groups of four. Within each group, the teams played each other in a round-robin format. Teams earned points for wins and half-points for ties. The top two teams from each group moved forward to the Super 8 round. The Super 8 teams played the other six teams that progressed from the different groups. Teams earned points in the same way as the group stage, but carried their points forward from previous matches against the other teams who qualified from the same group to the Super 8 stage. The top four teams from the Super 8 round advanced to the semi-finals, and the winners of the semi-finals played in the final.

The format used in the 2011 and 2015 World Cups featured two groups of seven teams, each playing in a round-robin format. The top four teams from each group proceeded to the knock out stage consisting of quarter-finals, semi-finals and ultimately the final.

In the 2019 and 2023 editions of the tournament, the number of teams participating dropped to 10. Each team is scheduled to play against each other once in a round robin format, before entering the semifinals, a similar format to the 1992 World Cup. The 2027 and 2031 World Cups will have 14 teams, with the format same as the 2003 edition.

Trophy

The ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy is presented to the winners of the World Cup. The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships, and was the first permanent prize in the tournament's history. Prior to this, different trophies were made for each World Cup. The trophy was designed and produced in London by a team of craftsmen from Garrard & Co over a period of two months.

The current trophy is made from silver and gilt, and features a golden globe held up by three silver columns. The columns, shaped as stumps and bails, represent the three fundamental aspects of cricket: batting, bowling and fielding, while the globe characterises a cricket ball. The seam is tilted to symbolize the axial tilt of the Earth. It stands 60 cm high and weighs approximately 11 kg. The names of the previous winners are engraved on the base of the trophy, with space for a total of twenty inscriptions. The ICC keeps the original trophy. A replica differing only in the inscriptions is permanently awarded to the winning team.

Media coverage
The tournament is one of the world's most-viewed sporting events,  and successive tournaments have generated increasing media attention as One-Day International cricket has become more established. The 2011 Cricket World Cup was televised in over 200 countries to over 2.2 billion viewers. Television rights, mainly for the 2011 and 2015 World Cup, were sold for over US$1.1 billion, and sponsorship rights were sold for a further US$500 million. The ICC claimed a total of 1.6 billion viewers for the 2019 World Cup as well as 4.6 billion views of digital video of the tournament. The most-watched match of the tournament was the group game between India and Pakistan, which was watched by more than 300 million people live.

Selection of hosts
The International Cricket Council's executive committee votes for the hosts of the tournament after examining the bids made by the nations keen to hold a Cricket World Cup.

England hosted the first three competitions. The ICC decided that England should host the first tournament because it was ready to devote the resources required to organising the inaugural event. India volunteered to host the third Cricket World Cup, but most ICC members preferred England as the longer period of daylight in England in June meant that a match could be completed in one day. The 1987 Cricket World Cup was held in India and Pakistan, the first hosted outside England.

Many of the tournaments have been jointly hosted by nations from the same geographical region, such as South Asia in 1987, 1996 and 2011, Australasia (in Australia and New Zealand) in 1992 and 2015, Southern Africa in 2003 and West Indies in 2007.

In November 2021, ICC published the name of the hosts for ICC events to be played between 2024 and 2031 cycle. The hosts for the 50-over World Cup along with T20 World Cup and Champions Trophy were selected through a competitive bidding process.

Results

 * Notes

Tournament summary
Twenty nations have qualified for the Cricket World Cup at least once. Six teams have competed in every tournament, five of which have won the title. The West Indies won the first two tournaments, Australia has won six, India has won two, while Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England have each won once. The West Indies (1975 and 1979) and Australia (1999, 2003 and 2007) are the only teams to have won consecutive titles. Australia has played in eight of the thirteen finals (1975, 1987, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2015 and 2023). New Zealand has yet to win the World Cup, but has been runners-up two times (2015 and 2019). The best result by a non-Test playing nation is the semi-final appearance by Kenya in the 2003 tournament; while the best result by a non-Test playing team on their debut is the Super 8 (second round) by Ireland in 2007.

Sri Lanka, as a co-host of the 1996 World Cup, was the first host to win the tournament, though the final was held in Pakistan. India won in 2011 as host and was the first team to win a final played in their own country. Australia and England repeated the feat in 2015 and 2019 respectively. Other than this, England made it to the final as a host in 1979. Other countries which have achieved or equalled their best World Cup results while co-hosting the tournament are New Zealand as finalists in 2015, Zimbabwe who reached the Super Six in 2003, and Kenya as semi-finalists in 2003. In 1987, co-hosts India and Pakistan both reached the semi-finals, but were eliminated by England and Australia respectively. Australia in 1992, England in 1999, South Africa in 2003, and Bangladesh in 2011 have been host teams that were eliminated in the first round.

Teams' performances
An overview of the teams' performances in every World Cup is given below. For each tournament, the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown.

Legend

 * – Winner
 * – Runner up
 * – Semi-finals
 * – Super Six (1999–2003)
 * – Quarter-finals (1996, 2011–2015)
 * – Super Eight (2007)
 * GP – Group stage / First round
 * Q – Qualified, Still in Competition

Overview
The table below provides an overview of the performances of teams over past World Cups, as of the end of the 2023 tournament. Teams are ordered by best result then by appearances, then by winning percentage, then by total number of wins, total number of number of games, and then alphabetically:

Note:
 * The Win percentage excludes no results and counts ties as half a win.
 * Teams are sorted by their best performance, then winning percentage, then (if equal) by alphabetical order.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Cricket World Cup


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Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting  (CHOGM; or) is a biennial summit meeting of the governmental leaders from all Commonwealth nations. Despite the name, the head of state may be present in the meeting instead of the head of government, especially among semi-presidential states. Every two years the meeting is held in a different member state and is chaired by that nation's respective prime minister or president, who becomes the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office until the next meeting. Queen Elizabeth II, who was the Head of the Commonwealth, attended every CHOGM beginning with Ottawa in 1973 until Perth in 2011, although her formal participation only began in 1997. She was represented by the Prince of Wales at the 2013 meeting as the 87-year-old monarch was curtailing long-distance travel. The Queen attended the 2015 summit in Malta and the 2018 summit (delayed by one year) in London, but was represented again by the Prince of Wales at the 2022 meeting (delayed by two years) in Rwanda.

The first CHOGM was held in 1971 in Singapore and there have been 26 held in total: the most recent was held in Kigali, Rwanda. They are held once every two years, although this pattern has occasionally been interrupted. They are held around the Commonwealth, rotating by invitation amongst its members.

In the past, CHOGMs have attempted to orchestrate common policies on certain contentious issues and current events, with a special focus on issues affecting member nations. CHOGMs have discussed the continuation of apartheid rule in South Africa and how to end it, military coups in Pakistan and Fiji, and allegations of electoral fraud in Zimbabwe. Sometimes the member states agree on a common idea or solution and release a joint statement declaring their opinion. More recently, beginning at the 1997 CHOGM, the meeting has had an official theme, set by the host nation, on which the primary discussions have been focused.

History

The meetings originated with the leaders of the self-governing colonies of the British Empire. The First Colonial Conference in 1887 was followed by periodic meetings, known as Imperial Conferences from 1907, of government leaders of the Empire. The development of the independence of the dominions, and the creation of a number of new dominions, as well as the invitation of Southern Rhodesia (which also attended as a sui generis colony), changed the nature of the meetings. As the dominion leaders asserted themselves more and more at the meetings, it became clear that the time for 'imperial' conferences was over.

From the ashes of the Second World War, seventeen Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conferences were held between 1944 and 1969. Of these, sixteen were held in London, reflecting then-prevailing views of the Commonwealth as the continuation of the Empire and the centralisation of power in the British Commonwealth Office (the one meeting outside London, in Lagos, was an extraordinary meeting held in January 1966 to co-ordinate policies towards Rhodesia). Two supplementary meetings were also held during this period: a Commonwealth Statesmen's meeting to discuss peace terms in April 1945, and a Commonwealth Economic Conference in 1952.

The 1960s saw an overhaul of the Commonwealth. The swift expansion of the Commonwealth after decolonisation saw the newly independent countries demand the creation of the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the United Kingdom, in response, successfully founding the Commonwealth Foundation. This decentralisation of power demanded a reformulation of the meetings. Instead of the meetings always being held in London, they would rotate across the membership, subject to countries' ability to host the meetings: beginning with Singapore in 1971. They were also renamed the 'Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings' to reflect the growing diversity of the constitutional structures in the Commonwealth.

Structure
The core of the CHOGM are the executive sessions, which are the formal gatherings of the heads of government to do business. However, the majority of the important decisions are held not in the main meetings themselves, but at the informal 'retreats': introduced at the second CHOGM, in Ottawa, by Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau, but reminiscent of the excursions to Chequers or Dorneywood in the days of the Prime Ministers' Conferences. Only the head of the delegation and their spouse and one additional person attend the retreats. The additional person may be of any capacity (personal, political, security, etc.) but only has occasional and intermittent access to the head of the delegation. It is usually at the retreat where, isolated from their advisers, the heads resolve the most intransigent issues: leading to the Gleneagles Agreement in 1977, the Lusaka Declaration in 1979, the Langkawi Declaration in 1989, the Millbrook Programme in 1995, the Aso Rock Declaration in 2003, and the Colombo Declaration on Sustainable, Inclusive and Equitable Development in 2013.

The 'fringe' of civil society organisations, including the Commonwealth Family and local groups, adds a cultural dimension to the event, and brings the CHOGM a higher media profile and greater acceptance by the local population. First officially recognised at Limassol in 1993, these events, spanning a longer period than the meeting itself, have, to an extent, preserved the length of the CHOGM: but only in the cultural sphere. Other meetings, such as those of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, Commonwealth Business Council, and respective foreign ministers, have also dealt with business away from the heads of government themselves.

As the scope of the CHOGM has expanded beyond the meetings of the heads of governments themselves, the CHOGMs have become progressively shorter, and their business compacted into less time. The 1971 CHOGM lasted for nine days, and the 1977 and 1991 CHOGMs for seven days each. However, Harare's epochal CHOGM was the last to last a week; the 1993 CHOGM lasted for five days, and the contentious 1995 CHOGM for only three-and-a-half. The 2005 and subsequent conferences were held over two to two-and-a-half-days. However, recent CHOGMs have also featured several days of pre-summit Commonwealth Forums on business, women, youth, as well as the Commonwealth People's Forum and meetings of foreign ministers.

Issues

During the 1980s, CHOGMs were dominated by calls for the Commonwealth to impose sanctions on South Africa to pressure the country to end apartheid. The division between Britain, during the government of Margaret Thatcher which resisted the call for sanctions and African Commonwealth countries, and the rest of the Commonwealth was intense at times and led to speculation that the organisation might collapse. According to one of Margaret Thatcher's former aides, Mrs. Thatcher, very privately, used to say that CHOGM stood for "Compulsory Handouts to Greedy Mendicants." According to his daughter, Denis Thatcher also referred to CHOGM as standing for 'Coons Holidaying on Government Money'.

In 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron informed the British House of Commons that his proposals to reform the rules governing royal succession, a change which would require the approval of all sixteen Commonwealth realms, was approved at the 28–30 October CHOGM in Perth, subsequently referred to as the Perth Agreement.

Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009 despite the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's (CHRI) finding that "the state of governance and human rights in Rwanda does not satisfy Commonwealth standards", and that it "does not therefore qualify for admission". Both the CHRI and Human Rights Watch have found that respect for democracy and human rights in Rwanda has declined since the country joined the Commonwealth. There have been calls  for the Commonwealth to stand up for democracy and human rights in Rwanda at the 2022 CHOGM.

Agenda
Under the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme, each CHOGM is responsible for renewing the remit of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, whose responsibility it is to uphold the Harare Declaration on the core political principles of the Commonwealth.

Incidents
A bomb exploded at the Sydney Hilton Hotel, the venue for the February 1978 Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. Twelve foreign heads of government were staying in the hotel at the time. Most delegates were evacuated by Royal Australian Air Force helicopters and the meeting was moved to Bowral, protected by 800 soldiers of the Australian Army.

As the convocation of heads of governments and permanent Commonwealth staff and experts, CHOGMs are the highest institution of action in the Commonwealth, and rare occasions on which Commonwealth leaders all come together. CHOGMs have been the venues of many of the Commonwealth's most dramatic events. Robert Mugabe announced Zimbabwe's immediate withdrawal from the Commonwealth at the 2003 CHOGM, and Nigeria's execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others on the first day of the 1995 CHOGM led to that country's suspension.

It has also been the trigger of a number of events that have shaken participating countries domestically. The departure of Uganda's President Milton Obote to the 1971 CHOGM allowed Idi Amin to overthrow Obote's government. Similarly, President James Mancham's attendance of the 1977 CHOGM gave Prime Minister France-Albert René the opportunity to seize power in the Seychelles.

Current member states

 * 🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda
 * 🇦🇺 Australia
 * 🇧🇸 Bahamas
 * 🇧🇩 Bangladesh
 * 🇧🇧 Barbados
 * 🇧🇿 Belize
 * Brunei
 * 🇨🇲 Cameroon
 * 🇨🇦 Canada
 * 🇨🇾 Cyprus
 * 🇩🇲 Dominica
 * Eswatini
 * 🇫🇯 Fiji
 * 🇬🇦 Gabon
 * 🇬🇲 Gambia
 * 🇬🇩 Grenada
 * 🇬🇾 Guyana
 * 🇮🇳 India
 * 🇯🇲 Jamaica
 * 🇰🇪 Kenya
 * 🇰🇮 Kiribati
 * 🇱🇸 Lesotho
 * 🇲🇼 Malawi
 * 🇲🇾 Malaysia
 * 🇲🇻 Maldives
 * 🇲🇹 Malta
 * 🇲🇺 Mauritius
 * 🇲🇿 Mozambique
 * 🇳🇦 Namibia
 * 🇳🇷 Nauru
 * 🇳🇿 New Zealand
 * 🇳🇬 Nigeria
 * 🇵🇰 Pakistan
 * 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea
 * 🇷🇼 Rwanda
 * 🇰🇳 Saint Kitts and Nevis
 * 🇱🇨 Saint Lucia
 * 🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
 * 🇼🇸 Samoa
 * 🇸🇨 Seychelles
 * 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone
 * 🇸🇬 Singapore
 * 🇸🇧 Solomon Islands
 * 🇿🇦 South Africa
 * 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka
 * 🇹🇿 Tanzania
 * 🇹🇬 Togo
 * 🇹🇴 Tonga
 * 🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago
 * 🇹🇻 Tuvalu
 * 🇺🇬 Uganda
 * 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
 * 🇻🇺 Vanuatu
 * 🇿🇲 Zambia

Former member states

 * 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe (1980-2003)

List of meetings
* The 1986 and 2023 meetings were special sessions that fell outside the usual timetable. The 1986 CHOGM convened to discuss the issue of apartheid and only involved a handful of heads of government. The 2023 meeting (billed as 'Commonwealth Leaders' Summit') was an extraordinary session on the occasion of the Coronation of King Charles III and consisted of a leaders meeting at Marlborough House and a reception at Buckingham Palace. Heads of State were also in attendance and the position of Chair-In-Office did not transfer to the prime minister of the United Kingdom. According to a statement issued by the Commonwealth Secretariat "After their meeting with the King, leaders from the Commonwealth's 56 member states then met privately to discuss issues of mutual interest, including initiatives to support the empowerment of young people, as this year has been designated the Commonwealth Year of Youth."

The 25th CHOGM was originally scheduled for Vanuatu in 2017 but the country rescinded its offer to host after Cyclone Pam devastated the country's infrastructure in March 2015. The meeting was rescheduled for the United Kingdom in the spring of 2018 which also resulted in the 26th CHOGM, originally scheduled for 2019, to be rescheduled for 22–27 June 2020. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 26th CHOGM was again postponed to 2022.


text:
Chinese classics

The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves an abridgment of the Thirteen Classics. The Chinese classics used a form of written Chinese consciously imitated by later authors, now known as Classical Chinese. A common Chinese word for "classic" literally means 'warp thread', in reference to the techniques by which works of this period were bound into volumes.

Texts may include shi (史, 'histories') zi (子 'master texts'), philosophical treatises usually associated with an individual and later systematized into schools of thought but also including works on agriculture, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, divination, art criticism, and other miscellaneous writings) and ji ( 'literary works') as well as the cultivation of jing, 'essence' in Chinese medicine.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Four Books and Five Classics were the subjects of mandatory study by those Confucian scholars who wished to take the imperial examination and needed to pass them in order to become scholar-officials. Any political discussion was full of references to this background, and one could not become part of the literati—or even a military officer in some periods—without having memorized them. Generally, children first memorized the Chinese characters of the Three Character Classic and Hundred Family Surnames and they then went on to memorize the other classics. The literate elite therefore shared a common culture and set of values.

Loss of texts
According to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, after Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, unified China in 221 BC, his chancellor Li Si suggested suppressing intellectual discourse to unify thought and political opinion. This was alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought, with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism. According to the Shiji, three categories of books were viewed by Li Si to be most dangerous politically. These were poetry, history (especially historical records of other states than Qin), and philosophy. The ancient collection of poetry and historical records contained many stories concerning the ancient virtuous rulers. Li Si believed that if the people were to read these works they were likely to invoke the past and become dissatisfied with the present. The reason for opposing various schools of philosophy was that they advocated political ideas often incompatible with the totalitarian regime.

Modern historians doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later. Regarding the alleged Qin objective of strengthening Legalism, the traditional account is anachronistic in that Legalism was not yet a defined category of thought during the Qin period, and the "schools of thought" model is no longer considered to be an accurate portrayal of the intellectual history of pre-imperial China. Michael Nylan observes that despite its mythic significance, the "burning of books and burying of scholars" legend does not bear close scrutiny. Nylan suggests that the reason Han dynasty scholars charged the Qin with destroying the Confucian Five Classics was partly to "slander" the state they defeated and partly because Han scholars misunderstood the nature of the texts, for it was only after the founding of the Han that Sima Qian labeled the Five Classics as Confucian. Nylan also points out that the Qin court appointed classical scholars who were specialists on the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents, which meant that these texts would have been exempted, and that the Book of Rites and the Zuo Zhuan did not contain the glorification of defeated feudal states which the First Emperor gave as his reason for destroying them. Nylan further suggests that the story might be based on the fact that the Qin palace was razed in 207 BC and many books were undoubtedly lost at that time. Martin Kern adds that Qin and early Han writings frequently cite the Classics, especially the Documents and the Classic of Poetry, which would not have been possible if they had been burned, as reported.

Five Classics
The Five Classics are five pre-Qin texts that became part of the state-sponsored curriculum during the Western Han dynasty, which adopted Confucianism as its official ideology. It was during this period that the texts first began to be considered together as a set collection, and to be called collectively the "Five Classics". Several of the texts were already prominent by the Warring States period, but the literature culture at the time did not lend itself to clear boundaries between works, so a high degree of variance between individual witnesses of the same title was common, as well as considerable intertextuality and cognate chapters between different titles. Mencius, the leading Confucian scholar of the time, regarded the Spring and Autumn Annals as being equally important as the semi-legendary chronicles of earlier periods.

 * Classic of Poetry
 * A collection of 305 poems divided into 160 folk songs, 105 festal songs sung at court ceremonies, and 40 hymns and eulogies sung at sacrifices to heroes and ancestral spirits of the royal house.

 * Book of Documents
 * A collection of documents and speeches alleged to have been written by rulers and officials of the early Zhou period and before. It is possibly the oldest Chinese narrative, and may date from the 6th century BC. It includes examples of early Chinese prose.

 * Book of Rites
 * Describes ancient rites, social forms and court ceremonies. The version studied today is a re-worked version compiled by scholars in the third century BC rather than the original text, which is said to have been edited by Confucius himself.

 * I Ching
 * The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system. In Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.

 * Spring and Autumn Annals
 * A historical record of the State of Lu, Confucius's native state, 722–481 BC.

Up to the Western Han, authors would typically list the Classics in the order Poems-Documents-Rituals-Changes-Spring and Autumn. However, from the Eastern Han the default order instead became Changes-Documents-Poems-Rituals-Spring and Autumn.

Han imperial library

In 26 BCE, at the command of the emperor, Liu Xiang (77–6 BC) compiled the first catalogue of the imperial library, the Abstracts, and is the first known editor of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which was finished by his son. Liu also edited collections of stories and biographies, the Biographies of Exemplary Women. He has long erroneously been credited with compiling the Biographies of the Immortals, a collection of Taoist hagiographies and hymns. Liu Xiang was also a poet, being credited with the "Nine Laments" that appears in the Chu Ci.

The works edited and compiled by Liu Xiang include: • Book of Documents

• Classic of Rites

• Classic of Filial Piety

• Yi Zhou Shu

• Strategies of the Warring States

• Analects

• Xunzi

• Shenzi

• Zhuangzi

• Liezi

• Huainanzi

• Guanzi

• Yanzi Chunqiu

• Shuoyuan (initial compilation)

• Xinxu (新序; New Prefaces) (authorship)

This work was continued by his son, Liu Xin, who finally completed the task after his father's death. The transmitted corpus of these classical texts all derives from the versions edited down by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin. Michael Nylan has characterised the scope of the Liu pair's editing as having been so vast that it affects our understanding of China's pre-imperial period to the same degree as the Qin unification does.

Four Books
The Four Books are texts illustrating the core value and belief systems in Confucianism. They were selected by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) during the Song dynasty to serve as general introduction to Confucian thought, and they were, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, made the core of the official curriculum for the civil service examinations. They are:

 * Great Learning
 * Originally one chapter in the Book of Rites. It consists of a short main text attributed to Confucius and nine commentary chapters by Zengzi, one of the disciples of Confucius. Its importance is illustrated by Zengzi's foreword that this is the gateway of learning. It is significant because it expresses many themes of Chinese philosophy and political thinking, and has therefore been extremely influential both in classical and modern Chinese thought. Government, self-cultivation and investigation of things are linked.

 * Doctrine of the Mean
 * Another chapter in Book of Rites, attributed to Confucius's grandson Zisi. The purpose of this small, 33-chapter book is to demonstrate the usefulness of a golden way to gain perfect virtue. It focuses on the Tao that is prescribed by a heavenly mandate not only to the ruler but to everyone. To follow these heavenly instructions by learning and teaching will automatically result in a Confucian virtue of de. Because Heaven has laid down what is the way to perfect virtue, it is not that difficult to follow the steps of the holy rulers of old if one only knows what is the right way.

 * Analects
 * Thought to be a compilation of speeches by Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held. Since Confucius's time, the Analects has heavily influenced the philosophy and moral values of China and later other East Asian countries as well. The imperial examinations, started in the Sui dynasty and eventually abolished with the founding of the Republic of China, emphasized Confucian studies and expected candidates to quote and apply the words of Confucius in their essays.

 * Mencius
 * A collection of conversations of the scholar Mencius with kings of his time. In contrast to the sayings of Confucius, which are short and self-contained, the Mencius consists of long dialogues with extensive prose.

Thirteen Classics
The official curriculum of the imperial examination system from the Song dynasty onward are the Thirteen Classics. In total, these works total to more than 600,000 characters that must be memorized in order to pass the examination. Moreover, these works are accompanied by extensive commentary and annotation, containing approximately 300 million characters by some estimates.

 * I Ching
 * Book of Documents
 * Classic of Poetry
 * The Three Ritual Classics
 * Rites of Zhou
 * Ceremonies and Rites
 * Book of Rites
 * "Great Learning" chapter
 * "Doctrine of the Mean" chapter
 * The Three Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals
 * Zuo Zhuan
 * The Commentary of Gongyang
 * The Commentary of Guliang
 * Analects
 * Classic of Filial Piety
 * Erya
 * Mencius

Before 221 BC
It is often difficult or impossible to precisely date pre-Qin works beyond their being "pre-Qin", a period of 1000 years. Information in ancient China was often by oral tradition and passed down from generations before so was rarely written down, so the older the composition of the texts may not be in a chronological order as that which was arranged and presented by their attributed "authors".

The below list is therefore organized in the order which is found in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, the encyclopedic collation of the works found in the imperial library of the Qing dynasty under the Qianlong Emperor. The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries classifies all works into 4 top-level branches: the Confucian Classics and their secondary literature; history; philosophy; and poetry. There are sub-categories within each branch, but due to the small number of pre-Qin works in the Classics, History and Poetry branches, the sub-categories are only reproduced for the Philosophy branch.

Philosophy branch
The philosophical typology of individual pre-imperial texts has in every case been applied retroactively, rather than consciously within the text itself. The categorization of works of these genera has been highly contentious, especially in modern times. Many modern scholars reject the continued usefulness of this model as a heuristic for understanding the shape of the intellectual landscape of the time.

After 206 BC

 * The Twenty-Four Histories, a collection of authoritative histories of China for various dynasties:
 * The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian
 * The Book of Han by Ban Gu.
 * The Book of Later Han by Fan Ye
 * The Records of Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou
 * The Book of Jin by Fang Xuanling
 * The Book of Song by Shen Yue
 * The Book of Southern Qi by Xiao Zixian
 * The Book of Liang by Yao Silian
 * The Book of Chen by Yao Silian
 * The History of the Southern Dynasties by Li Yanshou
 * The Book of Wei by Wei Shou
 * The Book of Zhou by Linghu Defen
 * The Book of Northern Qi by Li Baiyao
 * The History of the Northern Dynasties by Li Yanshou
 * The Book of Sui by Wei Zheng
 * The Old Book of Tang by Liu Xu
 * The New Book of Tang by Ouyang Xiu
 * The Old History of Five Dynasties by Xue Juzheng
 * The New History of Five Dynasties by Ouyang Xiu
 * The History of Song by Toqto'a
 * The History of Liao by Toqto'a
 * The History of Jin by Toqto'a
 * The History of Yuan by Song Lian
 * The History of Ming by Zhang Tingyu
 * The Draft History of Qing by Zhao Erxun is usually referred as the 25th classic of history records
 * The New History of Yuan by Ke Shaomin is sometimes referred as the 26th classic of history records
 * The Chronicles of Huayang, an old record of ancient history and tales of southwestern China, attributed to Chang Qu.
 * The Biographies of Exemplary Women, a biographical collection of exemplary women in ancient China, compiled by Liu Xiang.
 * The Spring and Autumn Annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms, a historical record of the Sixteen Kingdoms, attributed to Cui Hong, is lost.
 * The Shiming, is a dictionary compiled by Liu Xi by the end of 2nd century.
 * A New Account of the Tales of the World, a collection of historical anecdotes and character sketches of some 600 literati, musicians, and painters.
 * The Thirty-Six Strategies, a military strategy book attributed to Tan Daoji.
 * The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, a review book on ancient Chinese literature and writings by Liu Xie.
 * The Commentary on the Water Classic, a book on hydrology of rivers in China attributed to the great geographer Li Daoyuan.
 * The Dialogues between Li Jing and Tang Taizong, a military strategy book attributed to Li Jing
 * The Zizhi Tongjian, with Sima Guang as its main editor.
 * The Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue, a historical record of the states of Wu and Yue during the Spring and Autumn period, attributed to Zhao Ye.
 * The Zhenguan Zhengyao, a record of governance strategies and leadership of Emperor Taizong of Tang, attributed to Wu Jing.
 * The Jiaoshi Yilin, a work modeled after the I Ching, composed during the Western Han dynasty and attributed to Jiao Yanshou.
 * The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, a mathematics Chinese book composed by several generations scholars of Han dynasty.
 * The Thousand Character Classic, attributed to Zhou Xingsi.
 * The Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era, compiled by Gautama Siddha, is a Chinese encyclopedia on astrology and divination.
 * The Shitong, written by Liu Zhiji, a work on historiography.
 * The Tongdian, written by Du You, a contemporary text focused on the Tang dynasty.
 * The Tang Huiyao, compiled by Wang Pu, a text based on the institutional history of the Tang dynasty.
 * The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, compiled by Bianji; a recount of Xuanzang's journey.
 * The Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang, written by Duan Chengshi, records fantastic stories, anecdotes, and exotic customs.
 * The Four Great Books of Song, a term referring to the four large compilations during the beginning of Song dynasty:
 * The Taiping Yulan, a leishu encyclopedia.
 * The Taiping Guangji, a collection of folk tales and theology.
 * The Wenyuan Yinghua, an anthology of poetry, odes, songs and other writings.
 * The Cefu Yuangui, a leishu encyclopedia of political essays, autobiographies, memorials and decrees.
 * The Dream Pool Essays, a collection of essays on science, technology, military strategies, history, politics, music and arts, written by Shen Kuo.
 * The Tiangong Kaiwu, an encyclopedia compiled by Song Yingxing.
 * The Compendium of Materia Medica, a classic book of medicine written by Li Shizhen.
 * The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, the largest compilation of literature in Chinese history.
 * The New Songs from the Jade Terrace, a poetry collection from the Six Dynasties period.
 * The Complete Tang Poems, compiled during the Qing dynasty, published in 1705.
 * The Xiaolin Guangji, a collection of jokes compiled during the Qing dynasty.

title: Chinese classics


text:
Call centre

A call centre (Commonwealth spelling) or call center (American spelling; see spelling differences) is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product or service support or information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centres are usually operated for sales purposes such as telemarketing, for solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection, market research, emergency notifications, and urgent/critical needs blood banks. A contact centre is a further extension of call centres telephony based capabilities, administers centralised handling of individual communications, including letters, faxes, live support software, social media, instant message, and email.

A call center was previously seen as an open workspace for call center agents, with workstations that included a computer and display for each agent and were connected to an inbound/outbound call management system, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centers, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputer, servers and LANs. It is expected that artificial intelligence-based chatbots will significantly impact call centre jobs and will increase productivity substantially. Many organisations have already adopted AI-based chatbots to improve their customer service experience.

The contact center is a central point from which all customer contacts are managed. Through contact centers, valuable information can be routed to the appropriate people or systems, contacts can be tracked, and data may be gathered. It is generally a part of the company's customer relationship management infrastructure. The majority of large companies use contact centers as a means of managing their customer interactions. These centers can be operated by either an in-house department responsible or outsourcing customer interaction to a third-party agency (known as Outsourcing Call Centres ).

History
Answering services, as known in the 1960s through the 1980s, earlier and slightly later, involved a business that specifically provided the service. Primarily, by using an off-premises extension (OPX) for each subscribing business, connected at a switchboard at the answering service business, the answering service would answer the otherwise unattended phones of the subscribing businesses with a live operator. The live operator could take messages or relay information, doing so with greater human interactivity than a mechanical answering machine. Although undoubtedly more costly (the human service, the cost of setting up and paying the phone company for the OPX on a monthly basis), it had the advantage of being more ready to respond to the unique needs of after-hours callers. The answering service operators also had the option of calling the client and alerting them to particularly important calls.

The origins of call centers date back to the 1960s with the UK-based Birmingham Press and Mail, which installed Private Automated Business Exchanges (PABX) to have rows of agents handling customer contacts. By 1973, call centers had received mainstream attention after Rockwell International patented its Galaxy Automatic Call Distributor (GACD) for a telephone booking system as well as the popularization of telephone headsets as seen on televised NASA Mission Control Center events.

During the late 1970s, call center technology expanded to include telephone sales, airline reservations, and banking systems. The term "call center" was first published and recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1983. The 1980s saw the development of toll-free telephone numbers to increase the efficiency of agents and overall call volume. Call centers increased with the deregulation of long-distance calling and growth in information-dependent industries.

As call centres expanded, workers in North America began to join unions such as the Communications Workers of America and the United Steelworkers. In Australia, the National Union of Workers represents unionised workers; their activities form part of the Australian labour movement. In Europe, UNI Global Union of Switzerland is involved in assisting unionisation in the call center industry, and in Germany Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft represents call centre workers.

During the 1990s, call centres expanded internationally and developed into two additional subsets of communication: contact centres and outsourced bureau centres. A contact centre is a coordinated system of people, processes, technologies, and strategies that provides access to information, resources, and expertise, through appropriate channels of communication, enabling interactions that create value for the customer and organization. In contrast to in-house management, outsourced bureau contact centres are a model of contact centre that provide services on a "pay per use" model. The overheads of the contact centre are shared by many clients, thereby supporting a very cost effective model, especially for low volumes of calls. The modern contact centre includes automated call blending of inbound and outbound calls as well as predictive dialing capabilities, dramatically increasing agents' productivity. New implementations of more complex systems require highly skilled operational and management staff that can use multichannel online and offline tools to improve customer interactions.

Technology

Call centre technologies often include: speech recognition software which allowed Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems to handle first levels of customer support, text mining, natural language processing to allow better customer handling, agent training via interactive scripting and automatic mining using best practices from past interactions, support automation and many other technologies to improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Automatic lead selection or lead steering is also intended to improve efficiencies, both for inbound and outbound campaigns. This allows inbound calls to be directly routed to the appropriate agent for the task, whilst minimising wait times and long lists of irrelevant options for people calling in.

For outbound calls, lead selection allows management to designate what type of leads go to which agent based on factors including skill, socioeconomic factors, past performance, and percentage likelihood of closing a sale per lead.

The universal queue standardises the processing of communications across multiple technologies such as fax, phone, and email. The virtual queue provides callers with an alternative to waiting on hold when no agents are available to handle inbound call demand.

Premises-based technology
Historically call centres have been built on Private branch exchange (PBX) equipment owned, hosted, and maintained by the call centre operator. The PBX can provide functions such as automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, and skills-based routing.

Virtual call centre
In a virtual call centre model, the call centre operator (business) pays a monthly or annual fee to a vendor that hosts the call centre telephony and data equipment in their own facility, cloud-based. In this model, the operator does not own, operate or host the equipment on which the call centre runs. Agents connect to the vendor's equipment through traditional PSTN telephone lines, or over voice over IP. Calls to and from prospects or contacts originate from or terminate at the vendor's data centre, rather than at the call centre operator's premises. The vendor's telephony equipment (at times data servers) then connects the calls to the call centre operator's agents.

Virtual call centre technology allows people to work from home or any other location instead of in a traditional, centralised, call centre location, which increasingly allows people 'on the go' or with physical or other disabilities to work from desired locations – i.e. not leaving their house. The only required equipment is Internet access, a workstation, and a softphone. If the virtual call centre software utilizes webRTC, a softphone is not required to dial. The companies are preferring Virtual Call Centre services due to cost advantage. Companies can start their call centre business immediately without installing the basic infrastructure like Dialer, ACD and IVRS.

Virtual call centres became increasingly used after the COVID-19 pandemic restricted businesses from operating with large groups of people working in close proximity.

Cloud computing
Through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), hosted and on-demand call centres that are built on cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) platforms can integrate their functionality with cloud-based applications for customer relationship management (CRM), lead management and more.

Developers use APIs to enhance cloud-based call centre platform functionality—including Computer telephony integration (CTI) APIs which provide basic telephony controls and sophisticated call handling from a separate application, and configuration APIs which enable graphical user interface (GUI) controls of administrative functions.

Outsourcing
Outsourced call centres are often located in developing countries, where wages are significantly lower than in western countries with higher minimum wages. These include the call centre industries in the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India.

Companies that regularly utilise outsourced contact centre services include British Sky Broadcasting and Orange in the telecommunications industry, Adidas in the sports and leisure sector, Audi in car manufacturing and charities such as the RSPCA.

Healthcare
The healthcare industry has and continues to use outbound call centre programmes for years to help manage billing, collections, and patient communication. The inbound call centre is a new and increasingly popular service for many types of healthcare facilities, including large hospitals. Inbound call centres can be outsourced or managed in-house.

These healthcare call centres are designed to help streamline communications, enhance patient retention and satisfaction, reduce expenses and improve operational efficiencies.

Hospitality
Many large hospitality companies such as the Hilton Hotels Corporation and Marriott International make use of call centres to manage reservations. These are known in the industry as "central reservations offices". Staff members at these call centres take calls from clients wishing to make reservations or other inquiries via a public number, usually a 1-800 number. These centres may operate as many as 24 hours per day, seven days a week, depending on the call volume the chain receives.

Mathematical theory
Queueing theory is a branch of mathematics in which models of service systems have been developed. A call centre can be seen as a queueing network and results from queueing theory such as the probability an arriving customer needs to wait before starting service useful for provisioning capacity. (Erlang's C formula is such a result for an M/M/c queue and approximations exist for an M/G/k queue.) Statistical analysis of call centre data has suggested arrivals are governed by an inhomogeneous Poisson process and jobs have a log-normal service time distribution. Simulation algorithms are increasingly being used to model call arrival, queueing and service levels.

Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond queueing, with operations research, which considers a wide range of optimisation problems seeking to reduce waiting times while keeping server utilisation and therefore efficiency high.

Criticism
Call centres have received criticism for low rates of pay and restrictive working practices for employees, which have been deemed as a dehumanising environment. Other research illustrates how call centre workers develop ways to counter or resist this environment by integrating local cultural sensibilities or embracing a vision of a new life. Most call centres provide electronic reports that outline performance metrics, quarterly highlights and other information about the calls made and received. This has the benefit of helping the company to plan the workload and time of its employees. However, it has also been argued that such close monitoring breaches the human right to privacy.

Complaints are often logged by callers who find the staff do not have enough skill or authority to resolve problems, as well as appearing apathetic. These concerns are due to a business process that exhibits levels of variability because the experience a customer gets and results a company achieves on a given call are dependent upon the quality of the agent. Call centres are beginning to address this by using agent-assisted automation to standardise the process all agents use. However, more popular alternatives are using personality and skill based approaches. The various challenges encountered by call operators are discussed by several authors.

Media portrayals
Call centres located in India have been the focus of several documentary films, the 2004 film Thomas L. Friedman Reporting: The Other Side of Outsourcing, the 2005 films John and Jane, Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night, and 1-800-India: Importing a White-Collar Economy, and the 2006 film Bombay Calling, among others. An Indian call centre is also the subject of the 2006 film Outsourced and a key location in the 2008 film, Slumdog Millionaire. The 2014 BBC fly on the wall documentary series The Call Centre gave an often distorted although humorous view of life in a Welsh call centre.

Appointment Setting
Appointment setting is a specialized function within call centres, where dedicated agents focus on facilitating and scheduling meetings between clients and businesses or sales representatives. This service is particularly prevalent in various industries such as financial services, healthcare, real estate, and B2B sales, where time-sensitive and personalized communications are essential for effective client engagement.

Lead Generation
Lead generation is a common operation for call centers, encompassing strategies and activities aimed at identifying potential customers or clients for businesses or sales representatives. It involves gathering information and generating interest among individuals or organizations who may have a potential interest in the products or services offered.

title: Call centre


text:
Charles Messier

Charles Messier (26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) was a French astronomer. He published an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters, which came to be known as the Messier objects, referred to with the letter M and their number between 1 and 110. Messier's purpose for the catalogue was to help astronomical observers distinguish between permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky.

Biography
Messier was born in Badonviller in the Lorraine region of France, in 1730, the tenth of twelve children of Françoise B. Grandblaise and Nicolas Messier, a Court usher. Six of his brothers and sisters died while young, and his father died in 1741. Charles' interest in astronomy was stimulated by the appearance of the great six-tailed comet in 1744 and by an annular solar eclipse visible from his hometown on 25 July 1748.

In 1751, Messier entered the employ of Joseph Nicolas Delisle, the astronomer of the French Navy, who instructed him to keep careful records of his observations. Messier's first documented observation was that of the Mercury transit of 6 May 1753, followed by his observations journals at Cluny Hotel and at the French Navy observatories.

In 1764, Messier was made a fellow of the Royal Society; in 1769, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; and on 30 June 1770, he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences. He was given the nickname "Ferret of Comets" by King Louis XV.

Messier discovered 13 comets:
 * C/1760 B1 (Messier)
 * C/1763 S1 (Messier)
 * C/1764 A1 (Messier)
 * C/1766 E1 (Messier)
 * C/1769 P1 (Messier)
 * D/1770 L1 (Lexell)
 * C/1771 G1 (Messier)
 * C/1773 T1 (Messier)
 * C/1780 U2 (Messier)
 * C/1788 W1 (Messier)
 * C/1793 S2 (Messier)
 * C/1798 G1 (Messier)
 * C/1785 A1 (Messier-Méchain)

He also co-discovered Comet C/1801 N1 (Comet Pons-Messier-Méchain-Bouvard), a discovery shared with several other observers including Pons, Méchain, and Bouvard.

Near the end of his life, Messier self-published a booklet connecting the great comet of 1769 to the birth of Napoleon, who was in power at the time of publishing. According to Maik Meyer:

Messier is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

Messier catalogue
Messier's occupation as a comet hunter led him to continually come across fixed diffuse objects in the night sky which could be mistaken for comets. He compiled a list of them, in collaboration with his friend and assistant Pierre Méchain (who may have found at least 20 of the objects ), to avoid wasting time sorting them out from the comets they were looking for. The entries are now known to be 39 galaxies, 4 planetary nebulae, 7 other types of nebulae, 26 open star clusters and 29 globular star clusters.

Messier did his observing with a 100 mm (four-inch) refracting telescope from Hôtel de Cluny (now the Musée national du Moyen Âge), in downtown Paris, France. The list he compiled only contains objects found in the area of the sky Messier could observe, from the north celestial pole to a declination of about −35.7°. They are not organized scientifically by object type, or by location. The first version of Messier's catalogue contained 45 objects and was published in 1774 in the journal of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. In addition to his own discoveries, this version included objects previously observed by other astronomers, with only 17 of the 45 objects being discovered by Messier himself. By 1780 the catalog had increased to 80 objects.

The final version of the catalogue was published in 1781, in the 1784 issue of Connaissance des Temps. The final list of Messier objects had grown to 103. On several occasions between 1921 and 1966, astronomers and historians discovered evidence of another seven objects that were observed either by Messier or by Méchain, shortly after the final version was published. These seven objects, M 104 through M 110, are accepted by astronomers as "official" Messier objects.

The objects' Messier designations, from M 1 to M 110, are still used by professional and amateur astronomers today and their relative brightness makes them popular objects in the amateur astronomical community.

Legacy
The lunar crater Messier and the asteroid 7359 Messier were named in his honour.

title: Charles Messier


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Cemetery H culture

The Cemetery H culture was a Bronze Age culture in the Punjab region in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, from about 1900 BCE until about 1300 BCE. It is regarded as a regional form of the late phase of the Harappan (Indus Valley) civilisation (alongside the Jhukar culture of Sindh and Rangpur culture of Gujarat).

Origins
The Cemetery H culture was located in and around the Punjab region in present-day India and Pakistan. It was named after a cemetery found in "area H" at Harappa. Remains of the culture have been dated from about 1900 BCE until about 1300 BCE.

According to Mohammad Rafique Mughal, the Cemetery H culture developed out of the northern part of the Indus Valley civilization around 1700 BCE, being part of the Punjab Phase, one of three cultural phases that developed in the Localization Era or "Late Harappan phase" of the Indus Valley Tradition. According to Kenoyer, the Cemetery H culture "may only reflect a change in the focus of settlement organization from that which was the pattern of the earlier Harappan phase and not cultural discontinuity, urban decay, invading aliens, or site abandonment, all of which have been suggested in the past." According to Kennedy and Mallory & Adams, the Cemetery H culture also "shows clear biological affinities" with the earlier population of Harappa.

Some traits of the Cemetery H culture have been associated with the Swat culture, which has been regarded as evidence of the Indo-Aryan movement toward the Indian subcontinent. According to Parpola, the Cemetery H culture represents a first wave of Indo-Aryan migration from as early as 1900 BCE, which was followed by a migration to the Punjab c. 1700–1400 BCE. According to Kochhar, the Swat IV co-founded the Harappan Cemetery H phase in Punjab (2000–1800 BCE), while the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans of Swat V later absorbed the Cemetery H people and gave rise to the Painted Grey Ware culture (to 1400 BCE).

The DNA revealed that there was no migration or inclusion of any Iran or Central Asian gene into Harappan people. "There is a continuity till the modern times. We are descendants of the Harappans. Even the Vedic culture and (that of) Harappans are same,” Shinde said.

Together with the Gandhara grave culture and the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, the Cemetery H culture is considered by some scholars as a factor in the formation of the Vedic civilization.

Features
The distinguishing features of this culture include:
 * The use of cremation of human remains. The bones were stored in painted pottery burial urns. This is completely different from the Indus civilization where bodies were buried in wooden coffins. The urn burials and the "grave skeletons" were nearly contemporaneous.
 * Reddish pottery, painted in black with antelopes, peacocks etc., sun or star motifs, with different surface treatments to the earlier period.
 * Expansion of settlements into the east.
 * Rice became a main crop.
 * Apparent breakdown of the widespread trade of the Indus civilization, with materials such as marine shells no longer used.
 * Continued use of mud brick for building.

Some of the designs painted on the Cemetery H funerary urns have been interpreted through the lens of Vedic mythology:

For instance, peacocks with hollow bodies and a small human form inside, which has been interpreted as the souls of the dead, and a hound that can be seen as the hound of Yama, the god of death. This may indicate the introduction of new religious beliefs during this period, but the archaeological evidence does not support the hypothesis that the Cemetery H people were the destroyers of the Harappan cities.

Archaeology
Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture, a practice previously described in the Vedas. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.

title: Cemetery H culture


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Corrado Gini

Corrado Gini (23 May 1884 – 13 March 1965) was an Italian statistician, demographer and sociologist who developed the Gini coefficient, a measure of the income inequality in a society. Gini was a proponent of organicism and applied it to nations. Gini was a eugenicist, and prior to and during World War II, he was an advocate of Italian Fascism. Following the war, he founded the Italian Unionist Movement, which advocated for the annexation of Italy by the United States.

Career
Gini was born on May 23, 1884, in Motta di Livenza, near Treviso, into an old landed family. He entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna, where in addition to law he studied mathematics, economics, and biology.

Gini's scientific work ran in two directions: towards the social sciences and towards statistics. His interests ranged well beyond the formal aspects of statistics—to the laws that govern biological and social phenomena.

His first published work was Il sesso dal punto di vista statistico (1908). This work is a thorough review of the natal sex ratio, looking at past theories and at how new hypothesis fit the statistical data. In particular, it presents evidence that the tendency to produce one or the other sex of child is, to some extent, heritable.

He published the Gini coefficient in the 1912 paper Variability and Mutability (Variabilità e mutabilità). Also called the Gini index and the Gini ratio, it is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality within a nation or other group.

In 1910, he acceded to the Chair of Statistics in the University of Cagliari and then at Padua in 1913.

He founded the statistical journal Metron in 1920, directing it until his death; it only accepted articles with practical applications.

He became a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1925. At the University, he founded a lecture course on sociology, maintaining it until his retirement. He also set up the School of Statistics in 1928, and, in 1936, the Faculty of Statistical, Demographic and Actuarial Sciences.

Under fascism
In 1926, he was appointed President of the Central Institute of Statistics in Rome. This he organised as a single centre for Italian statistical services. He was a close intimate of Mussolini throughout the 20s. He resigned from his position within the institute in 1932.

In 1927 he published a treatise entitled The Scientific Basis of Fascism.

In 1929, Gini founded the Italian Committee for the Study of Population Problems (Comitato italiano per lo studio dei problemi della popolazione)  which, two years later, organised the first Population Congress in Rome.

A eugenicist apart from being a demographer, Gini led an expedition to survey Polish populations, among them the  Karaites. Gini was throughout the 20s a supporter of fascism, and expressed his hope that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy would emerge as victors in WW2. However, he never supported any measure of exclusion of the Jews. Milestones during the rest of his career include:
 * In 1933 – vice president of the International Sociological Institute.
 * In 1934 – president of the Italian Genetics and Eugenics Society.
 * In 1935 – president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies in Latin-language Countries.
 * In 1937 – president of the Italian Sociological Society.
 * In 1941 – president of the Italian Statistical Society.
 * In 1957 – Gold Medal for outstanding service to the Italian School.
 * In 1962 – National Member of the Accademia dei Lincei.

Italian Unionist Movement
On October 12, 1944, Gini joined with the Calabrian activist Santi Paladino, and fellow-statistician Ugo Damiani to found the Italian Unionist Movement, for which the emblem was the Stars and Stripes, the Italian flag and a world map. According to the three men, the government of the United States should annex all free and democratic nations worldwide, thereby transforming itself into a world government, and allowing Washington, D.C. to maintain Earth in a perpetual condition of peace. The party existed up to 1948 but had little success and its aims were not supported by the United States.

Organicism and nations
Gini was a proponent of organicism and saw nations as organic in nature. Gini shared the view held by Oswald Spengler that populations go through a cycle of birth, growth, and decay. Gini claimed that nations at a primitive level have a high birth rate, but, as they evolve, the upper classes birth rate drops while the lower class birth rate, while higher, will inevitably deplete as their stronger members emigrate, die in war, or enter into the upper classes. If a nation continues on this path without resistance, Gini claimed the nation would enter a final decadent stage where the nation would degenerate as noted by decreasing birth rate, decreasing cultural output, and the lack of imperial conquest. At this point, the decadent nation with its aging population can be overrun by a more youthful and vigorous nation. Gini's organicist theories of nations and natality are believed to have influenced policies of Italian Fascism.

Honours
The following honorary degrees were conferred upon him:
 * Economics by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (1932),
 * Sociology by the University of Geneva (1934),
 * Sciences by Harvard University (1936),
 * Social Sciences by the University of Cordoba, Argentine (1963).

Partial bibliography

 * Il sesso dal punto di vista statistica: le leggi della produzione dei sessi (1908)
 * Sulla misura della concentrazione e della variabilità dei caratteri (1914)
 * Quelques considérations au sujet de la construction des nombres indices des prix et des questions analogues (1924)
 * Memorie di metodologia statistica. Vol.1: Variabilità e Concentrazione (1955)
 * Memorie di metodologia statistica. Vol.2: Transvariazione (1960)

title: Corrado Gini