Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Proposed replacement of "Strong national ties to a topic"

Given the state of tempers, I thought I would discuss this here, rather than being bold. I propose that we replace the "Strong national ties to a topic" section as follows. I use a level-3 section head to indicate a return to commentary.

Choosing a format

While the decision must be made by the editors of each article, the following principles should be observed.

• If a Wikiproject has achieved a consensus for the date format to use within a subject area, that format is strongly preferred.
• When the sources for an article predominantly use one format or the other, the predominant format is preferred.
• Otherwise, articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use whichever format predominates, assuming that one does.
  • For the United States of America, use the month-before-day format.
  • For most other English-speaking countries, use the day-before-month format.
  • Canada uses both about equally, so either may be used.
  • Many non-English-speaking countries use a format that is very similar to one of the two acceptable formats. In such cases, the closer of the two should be used

Discussion

The concept that uniformity of date format will somehow increase Wikipedia's prestige strikes me as misguided. If we wanted uniformity, we would prescribe a particular variety of English and enforce its use in all articles. Exceptions would be limited to quotations and references to dialectical usage. Instead, we use various national varieties, including the use of "Indianisms" in some cases. The train has left the station, been boarded on ship, and the ship has sailed and is in International Waters.

Wikipedia covers a lot of fields. If the best sources in a field use a date format consistently, we want to follow the sources in style as we do in content. The best judges of that are active subject-matter Wikiprojects. Failing that, the matter is best left to the editors on an individual page. If having a link the reader from seeing "the color of the sulfur" to reading "the colour of the sulphur" is acceptable, I don't see why taking him from "April 1" to "1 April" is one iota worse.

As for a comprehensive list of countries, I see no need and little purpose. If the result is obvious, there is no need. If the result is not obvious, I do not see that this little band is more qualified than the editors of an article to make a decision. Robert A.West (Talk) 16:25, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• I object to the last clause. There is no reason why articles on Sweden should use 22 September, just because Swedish uses 22 september; the only Swede to have commented here expressed puzzlement that we should do this. The Swedish WP is another matter. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:29, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that last clause is really just proposing something that's already been firmly rejected. The others may have some sense, but is this continuous debate over a triviality really what Wikipedia needs?--Kotniski (talk) 17:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no reason why articles on Sweden should use 22 September, just because Swedish uses 22 september. Ummm. That's actually a reason TO use it. I think you'd have to come up with a pretty good reason NOT to use Sweden's preferred format, all else being equal.

Not if the Swedes don't see it as one; we are not helping them or anybody else. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, make up your mind - you say they use 22 September in one breath, and then dispute yourself in the next. Easily solved - just set your computer preferences to Swedish and see what the preferred format is. That's something any computer user can do for themselves. The Swedes don't use American date format, so please don't insult our intelligence by implying that they do. --Pete (talk) 01:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

What Jao said was

The idea that "13 September 2008" should somehow feel more natural than "September 13, 2008" because I consistently read and write "13 september 2008" in my native Swedish never crossed my mind. Why would it?

That seems clear enough; why would it indeed? Adopting the forms of Language A into Language B, when they are not natural in both, is a sign of incomplete mastery of one or the other. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

You two obviously feel the need to defend your preferred date format. So far as I can see you are both causing a lot of unecessary disruption over something that's pretty trivial really. Wikipedia is an international project. You should get used to working with people from diverse backgrounds.

On the contrary, we support letting editors of various backgrounds use their preferred formats; Skyring has been continually revert warring to have this page dicountenance that. Then again, Skyring has been doing nothing but Date Warring for his preferred all over article space for some time now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

As for the wording of the proposal above, it's just common sense and courtesy. I like it. --Pete (talk) 18:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It is neither. But I note the appeal to that all-prevailing rationale: WP:ILIKEIT; at base, Skyring has no other. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me add mine to the many voices urging you to contemplate this as a useful source of guidance. --Pete (talk) 01:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The rejection is here. That was Option D. By my count, 38 voices; 7 approved it, 5 were willing to tolerate it, 26 rejected it .

On the substance: we have the present text (R), which sets a firm rule for only some articles, those with strong ties to English-speaking countries. We had three alternatives which extended it to a rule for all articles (B resembled R, but was longer and differed in detail):

• A would have required all articles in a national dialect of English to use the corresponding date format.
• C would have required that all articles not strongly tied to the United States, US possessions and Canada use the British format.
• D is a wording almost identical to West's clause.

A and C did best, although none had a majority. There was then a runoff, which rejected A and had a hairline majority for C; C has then polled against the present text, and failed - despite widespread canvassing by Pete - to win even a majority.

It may be worth tweaking the present text to insert

• If a Wikiproject has achieved a consensus for the date format to use within a subject area, that format is strongly preferred.
• When the sources for an article predominantly use one format or the other, the predominant format is preferred.

although the first will run into objections from those who regard Wikiprojects as bumptious, with no right to object to the project-wide guidance here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at WP:CONSENSUS, I think you are reading to much into interpreting polls. I've summarised above the areas where we have consensus and where we don't. We've still got a way to go. --Pete (talk) 18:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So can you at least please stop edit-warring on the policy page until we have consensus to change it. I've explained above why the word "English-speaking" that you keep removing is desirable; please at least answer the reasoning before continuing to repeat the change (I know it's not only you this time, but the same applies to others).--Kotniski (talk) 18:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• And there is no particular reason why we need those claims of fact at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
• I don't think we need them for the rule to operate; editors will determine which format is prevalent in Canada, or Jamaica, the same way they tell whether those countries use color or colour: by knowing the local variant of English. We should not decide that; as has been pointed out, we don't know the answer for Jamaica, and the answer for Canada has been questioned in the course of the discussion. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, I hate to be picky, but knowing the local English variant in Canada doesn't give you the date format. Canada bats both ways. English-speaking nations aren't a problem anyway. The current discussion revolves around how we treat non-English-speaking nations in Wikipedia. It's easy enough to determine the date format used in a specific - just set your computer preferences from the list provided and see what comes up. Anyone can do this. --Pete (talk) 19:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me, but this appears to be a suggestion that Microsoft (!) is a reliable source. Tell it to the Marines. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm using a Mac. --Pete (talk) 09:16, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

• Skyring is, as often, seeing what others say through his idée fixe. We have said nothing more than that a rule which has no majority can scarcely be consensus (rules which do have majorities may or may not be) and that if a rule has no consensus, MOS should not require it. (Again, consensus claims may or may not belong here.) In short, we discuss necessary, not sufficient conditions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not strongly attached to the point. I consider the national-preference clause to be better than a coin-flip, but not by much. The previous discussion and polls were quite lengthy, and I obviously misread them. I am strongly attached to following relevant scholars, so I regret muddying the waters with this point. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Wikipedia is an international effort, but en.wikipedia.org does not bear the responsibility for the internationalization of all of Wikipedia. This is the English version of Wikipedia. See the list of all the other Wikipedias. To continually bring up formatting matters concerning non-English speaking countries in English Wikipedia is trying to broaden the responsibility of this MOS beyond it's scope. I'm sure the hundred(s) of other Wikipedias have some MOS guideline for their use, and highly doubt they debate imposing the English Wikipedias methods upon their editors. So why do we continue to debate this point? It has been rejected by previous consensus and to keep rehashing it distracts from improving the current wording of MOS on date formatting as it applies to English Wikipedia.--«JavierMC»|Talk 23:12, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I've struck that part out of my proposal. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:35, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Mr. West's proposal contains "When the sources for an article predominantly use one format or the other, the predominant format is preferred." I can't agree with that, because (1) it can cause flip-flopping of the date format as sources come and go, and (2) if the sources are not online, no single editor may have access to enough of the sources to determine what format predominates. Also, one can probably argue that newspapers are a major source for almost any topic, and UK newspapers often use the mdy format (or so some editors have claimed in this discussion), so this proposal could be disruptive.

A variation of this proposal that I would support in an individual article, although it may not need to be in the guideline, is that if an article contains extensive quotations that use a particular format, it would be appropriate for the unquoted parts of the article to use that format too. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I would take the clause as applying to articles like Frederick North, Lord North, which should not be sourced from newspapers. Predominant should prevent switching; if the sources are so evenly divided that a few sources would overturn the balance, neither side was "predominant" to begin with. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:48, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the "Frederick North" article is a fine example. There are five sources, only one of which is online, and the online source is from 1867, so is not a good guide to date format in modern writing. If a question arose about the appropriate date format for the article, few editors would be able to determine which format predominates in the sources. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, all five sources are at Google Books. The American Tuchman is the only one to use the European style, presumably because her book is about more than the eighteenth century. But this is a reason to leave the question to the judgment of the editors who have actually consulted the sources; I would prefer acknowledging that they may wish to diverge from the norm to any rule permitting kibitzers to switch dates on their arbitrary judgment. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Both fair points. How about, "When the scholarship on a subject predominantly uses one format or the other..."? That is more to my meaning in any case. As to the subject of quotations, I agree that it is reasonable to harmonize an article's style with its quotations, but that could lead to the sort of flip-flopping that Mr. Ashton so properly deprecates. Robert A.West (Talk) 18:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I would think the word "predominantly" in "When the sources for an article predominantly" should be enough to assuage Gerry's otherwise valid concern - would adding the words When "the most notable" scholarship ... help? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

This would have the interesting effect of making many British articles use American dates, as English-language newspapers, including The Times, typically use American-format dates. I think a lot of people would find this confusing. --Pete (talk) 19:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

If British newspapers predominantly use "American" format, on what basis do we say that "International" usage predominates in the U.K.? I would think that newspapers would be strongly motivated to use the format preferred by their readers. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:25, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is hard to phrase. I would go along with an individual article using the format that predominates in all the modern English-language scholarly sources on a topic, but not on which predominates in the subset that happens to have been cited in a particular article. Any editor who embarks on editing a decent article should consult several good sources (which might not be the ones that have been cited so far) and if one format really does predominate the field, the editor will see that. One problem with expanding this point from consensus on an individual article to a guideline for all articles is that some topics are just ignored by scholarly sources, and I shudder to think what the predominant date format might turn out to be for sources on those articles.

As for extensive quotes, I suspect that will only come up when the subject of an article is a document, and most of the quotes will come from the subject document. Since the subject document won't change, there won't be a concern with flip-flopping. And anyway, I really think that should be decided by consensus for a particular article. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

My concern is that if we leave "national ties" as the one guiding principle, and note that they are the reason to change an article's format, we may prevent just the sort of per-article consensus that should evolve. That result would make Wikipedia worse. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:35, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

• How about When the sources on a subject predominantly use one format or the other, the predominant format is preferred? The minor premise that the sources actually used tend to represent the whole universe of sources will usually be true, but not always. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

  This sounds constructive. I agree with Robert West's comment. As for Pete's - well, this gets back to a point I made a few days ago, what is wrong with listing countries where the official date system is x or y. That is like listing countries where the official religion is x or y. We just do not know whetehr it means that this is the system that the state requires used on all official documents, but is otherwise ignored by most people, or is it really what most people practice? We are giving the word "official" too much credit. Myabe it is all we have .... but lets not pretend that it necessarily means that thi is the only dating system people use, let alkone understand, in a given country. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, Robert, this is really just re-plowing old ground. While your suggestion of devolving the decision to individual Wikiprojects is a novel one, I’m not sure it’s altogether a wise one. First of all, the issue is not intrinsic to any Wikiproject’s purview, but rather it’s a general, encyclopedia-wide one; secondly, it is likely to result in more inconsistency and more edit-warring; thirdly, there are many articles not covered by any Wikiproject (and even more not covered by an active one). The second bullet, if it is meant to be second in importance, basically defaults to a universal “use whichever style was first introduced” and thus obviates the need for the remainder of your points. The last sub-bullet – the one most of those above are pointedly taking exception to – was, of course, the least-preferred option according to the polls (however valid one may feel them to be), despite having a few quite vocal champions. Nor is there likely to be found a scholarly consensus. An American scholar and a British scholar writing on the American Revolutionary War will each use their native style – and neither will be bothered by it. Askari Mark (Talk) 20:10, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, both are likely to use the format presently used in the United States, as with Lord North above; that's the format on primary documents on both sides of the Atlantic. Mark Askari forgets, I conjecture, how recently the European format was introduced in Britain and the Commonwealth. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

No, Askari Mark does not forget how recently the European format was adopted; however, I have read a lot of scholarly works originating from both sides of the “Big Puddle”. There is also the issue that when a manuscript is submitted for publication in a journal based on the opposite bank, that journal’s style guide may call for re-rendering in the local usage. Askari Mark (Talk) 20:23, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I acknowledge my conjecture. Journal style guides would seem to strengthen the case for the proposed language; if one or the other is predominant after that randomization, then it must have been so common in MS. that it would be surprising to see it otherwise. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

With all due respect, Askari, I believe that style is often field-dependent, and that Wikiprojects are precisely the groups that are most likely to make good decisions about style for each field. As for your criticism of the second bullet point, it is a decision based on the universe of sources. That is a far cry from "pick a style and stick with it." You are correct about the last point, and I have already apologized. I've struck it out to avoid having to apologize a third time. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:54, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein that the word "official" should be avoided in relation to date and time formats. As examples of official neglect of the subject, the Gregorian calendar is in effect in the United States because of the the British Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. In Britain, the Parliament has declined to decide whether GMT means Universal Time or Coordinated Universal Time.

I also have share the concerns about this bullet When the sources for an article predominantly use one format or the other, the predominant format is preferred. Does this imply that if the sources used for an article change or that enough sources are added that use a different format that the article should be changed? It seems to me that if a guideline is to be provided it should be one that can not easily be gamed and encourages stability. In many case one date format is no better than another, though all date formats will seem at least unusual to at least some of the editors, and most of the editors will find at least one format unusual. I think something akin to the first format used in article to be as good of rule as any, and makes a concrete point that can be used to prevent edit warring. PaleAqua (talk) 01:32, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Would you prefer sources on a subject, as suggested above? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:51, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

While that and the scholarship versions seem a little better they still seem like they present gaming risks. It is doubtful that the average editor would know most of the sources on a topic, which means that any set of sources revealed could be chosen with bias. Also they may be sources that could have both multiple additions, where versions that agree with a particular editors date format could be chosen. If such a call would be made it seems that a wikiproject involving the articles would be in a better position to make such a ruling, but that's already covered by the first point. I still think something simple that is easily determinable is the best guideline. Something like "If a Wikiproject has achieved a consensus for choosing a date format to use within a subject area, that choice is strongly preferred.", drop the "When the sources..." clause, and add at the end something akin to the retaining the existing format as the final option. PaleAqua (talk) 02:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

While I fully agree with Robert and PMA that journal styles can certainly display usages dominant to a particular field (terminology, specialist definitions, abbreviations, etc.), I cannot recall seeing such with regards to date formatting in particular. It’s an interesting conjecture, but I suspect if there’s a preponderance of use in a field that it may be more a reflection of a larger number of related publications existing in countries using one form vice other. Assuming there are cases that fit this conjecture, I’d recommend caution in formulating this guidance and restrict it to scholarly sources. Otherwise we might, as PaleAqua observes, come to find it being used as a justification for editwarring over the number of citation sources favoring one usage over the other. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have a real stupid question, why not a date template which changes the date per the browser's local settings, ie ((month=9|date=23|year=2008)) which would just show the format as preferred by the browser? Or is this impossible to implement? Paranormal Skeptic (talk) 13:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a sensible suggestion, though I guess it's an extra step for editors to jump through. On balance, I am strongly in favour of this kind of markup, as it would enable "best guess" formatting for anonymous users and the-way-I-like-it formatting for those with accounts — plus no information is lost when converting a date link into date markup.

Comments? —pmj (talk) 04:27, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

This is being discussed below. —pmj (talk) 04:40, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with comments by Kotniski and Anderson above. Let us not forget that many many articles on Sweden-related topics (as an example) are written by Americans of Swedish ancentry. Just what the Swedes do in their own language is far from the equation. This is English—either American usage or another usage. Tony (talk) 05:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

When to change an article

It would seem to go along with my suggestion about that "scholarly practice" should replace "national ties" as the reason for change par excellence. Otherwise, a carefully-made choice based on scholarly practice could be reversed on the basis of alleged strong national ties. Robert A.West (Talk) 19:31, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

While it would be nice to think of Wikipedians as scholars, in general we aren't, unless we accept Borat's definition. Any rules on date formats (or anything else) should have two features:

1. Clear and easily understood by editors
2. Producing consistent results accepted by readers.

The reason for introducing date autoformatting in the first place was so that editors would see dates in the style they preferred. Combined with the strong national ties rule which acted to keep American articles in American format and British articles in International format, this system worked well for years. Making radical changes to a working system is something that should be approached cautiously. --Pete (talk) 20:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

It's already been radically changed, when date linking at all was deprecated, so that a person's Preferences no longer matter. Corvus cornix_talk 20:15, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The system may have reduced edit wars over dates, but it did not do anything for the vast majority of readers, that is, those who are not registered. So it didn't work well for years, it swept the problem under the rug for years. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

So, who are the majority of readers? Are they not Americans? Your argument then should be to require American format. Corvus cornix_talk 21:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

However, the script that is now being used to remove date-linking could easily be modified to make date format consistent, yet still leave date-autoformatting intact. I understand somebody also has a script that could remove date-linking & retain date auto-formatting. --JimWae (talk) 21:05, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

No, that was a patch to the wikimedia software, which was written and proposed, but not adopted. Since date autoformatting is depricated, I think it is unlikely that any date-autoformatting patch will be accepted. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:14, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, the headers for all discussion involving deprecation read "date-linking" and did not read "date-autoformatting" --JimWae (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

We are not by definition scholars, as Pete says, but we do rely on scholars and other notable, reliable sources when writing most articles; that is the point. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:47, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I would venture a guess that the "strong national ties" rule for formatting is unknown to most editors and to essentially all readers who are not editors. We don't make people pass an MOS certification exam before contributing. So long as date autoformatting was the norm, I gave the matter no thought, and I suspect that most editors were like me. As Mr. Ashton points out, that did not improve Wikipedia from the point of view of the unregistered reader, but it is the way it was. As for the casual reader, I would be astonished if more than a handful who link from George III of England to Boston Tea Party look at the difference in format and care one bit. Robert A.West (Talk) 00:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think most of the points above have been made previously in discussion. I thank my fellow editors for reminding me. Most of all I thank those who reminded me of the points that I had made. That was sweet. One new thing I really like is the notion that the various wikiprojects decide how to handle matters of style in articles. Who else is better placed to know themselves, their subject and their readership?

One of the points already agreed upon as consensus is that it doesn't matter which of the two formats is used - no confusion arises as to the date. The date-linking thing arose to prevent conflicts between editors, some of whom, as we can see, are strongly attached to their preferred formats. Using national ties as a determinant worked well. Of course date-linking did not and does not conceal date formats from editors working on an article; we see the raw text when we hit that "edit" button. Problems arise when we get chauvinists attempting to push American date formats, spellings, units of measurement and so on out into subject areas that do not normally use them. And vice versa, of course.

The fact that English-language newspapers commonly use American date formats is a matter of convenience - the major syndicated news agencies all use American format and newspapers do not care to employ people to change one format to another, story after story, hour after hour, night after night. National usage is a different thing, and we don't have to go hunting down official sources to see what format Malaysia prefers - just look at the control panel in our computers, and we can see that Mr Gates, Mr Jobs and Mr Linux have done the work for us. Presumably they have researched their markets and know exactly what computer users in each country prefer.

I'd prefer that the Manual of Style be as simple, fair and practical as possible. That way we minimise friction and disruption between editors. Asking editors to hunt through sources, or balance "ise" and "ize" word endings or trawl through the history is needlessly complex, and ensures that none but the most determined of nitpickers will do it. The most relevant wikipractice concerns which units of measurement we use, and here we use whichever system of units best suits the topic, a practice that works well for all except those troublemakers who wish metres and kilograms on Americans, and vice versa. Minimising conflict and disruption with clear, well-chosen guidelines is what we should be about. --Pete (talk) 01:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer that the Manual of Style be as simple, fair and practical as possible. When did you change your mind? You have spent the past month arguing for complex and impractical rules which would allow you to bully as many articles as possible into your preferred dating format. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Anderson's right. Please give it a rest, Skyring. Tony (talk) 01:30, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Since Skyring/Pete brought up Microsoft, it is worth noting that Microsoft admits that many countries have regional variations, which is why it advises use of API's and permits the user to customize national settings.Robert A.West (Talk) 02:07, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert, that's just good programming practice. There are always people or groups of people who like things a different way and giving them the tools to personalise their experience sells more boxes. The big computer/software companies are excellent examples of internationalism, and we could learn a lot from them.

• Yes, and Microsoft's Australian English spellchecker got it horribly wrong with the s/z thing; they still haven't corrected it, so we have to use the BrEng spellchecker. Don't hold them up as an example. Tony (talk) 11:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Just checked, and Microsoft Word 2008 running on my Mac doesn't flag "ise" words as spelling errors. It accepts both as valid, which seems to accord well with current Australian practice. Are ypu sure your software is up to date? I suppose we can do a comparison of the date formats recommended by Microsoft, Apple, the various flavours of Linux, Unix, Solaris etc. I wouldn't expect any great difference between them. I doubt that they pull this stuff out of thin air. Looking at what Mac recommends for Australia, I see:

• Long date: Saturday, 5 January 2008
• Short date: 5 January 2008
• Abbreviated dates: 05/01/2008 and 5/01/08
• Calendar: Gregorian
• Times: 12:34 AM and 4:56 PM
• Numbers: $1,234.56, 1,234.56, 123.456% and 1.23456E3
• Currency: Australian Dollar
• Measurement Units: Metric

That looks about right to me, though I'd tend to write the shortest date as 5/1/8 and I've customized (yes, the Mac control panel uses the "ize" form) the time to use 24 hour clock because that's the way I like it, given my military background. --Pete (talk) 22:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Tony, Anderson is dead wrong. I prefer a simple effective solution. The last thing I want to do is bully anybody. Maybe Anderson feels pressured, but that seems to be SOP for him, looking back over his contributions long before he ever heard of me. --Pete (talk) 09:13, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

• I beg to differ: Anderson's solution is much simpler, which is to respect the way in which an article is begun if it has no strong national ties to an anglophone country. Your system is complicated and requires research and often precarious judgement for many articles (can a Phillipine-related article be in international if the editors want? What about some South American countries? Have a look at the article on date formatting, which is enough to give you the chills—and it's not even referenced.) Besides, why can't US authors write about topics unconnected with other anglophone countries in US English and US date format? It's absolutely unreasonable to upset the apple-cart in this way, and inconsistent with our "first contributor" criterion for Engvar, which works superbly well. Tony (talk) 11:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Upset the applecart? That's just bizarre. We've been using strong national ties for years. The relevant wording remained unchanged for nine months. I've pointed this out before, and anybody may check for themselves. Here's how the wording developed:

• 2004: It's generally preferable to use the format used by local English speakers at the location of the event. For events within Europe and Oceania, that is usually 11 February 2004 (no comma). For the United States it's usually February 11, 2004 (with comma).[1]
• 2005: It is usually preferable to use the format preferred in the variety of English that is closest to the topic. For topics concerning Europe, Australia, Oceania and Africa, the formatting is usually 17 February 1958 (no comma and no "th"). In the United States and Canada, February 17, 1958, (with two commas—the year in this format is a parenthetical phrase) is correct, and in Canada, 17 February 1958 is common..[2]
• 2006: If the topic itself concerns a specific country, editors may choose to use the date format used in that country. This is useful even if the dates are linked, because new users and users without a Wikipedia account do not have any date preferences set, and so they see whatever format was typed. For topics concerning Ireland, all member states of the Commonwealth of Nations except Canada, and most international organizations such as the United Nations, the formatting is usually 17 February 1958 (no comma and no "th"). In the United States, it is most commonly February 17, 1958. Elsewhere, either format is acceptable.[3]
• Early 2007: If the topic itself concerns a specific country, editors may choose to use the date format used in that country. This is useful even if the dates are linked, because new users and users without a Wikipedia account do not have any date preferences set, and so they see whatever format was typed.[4]
• Late 2007: Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should generally use the more common date format for that nation.[5]
• 2008:Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that nation; articles related to Canada may use either format consistently. Articles related to other countries that commonly use one of the two acceptable formats above should use that format.[6]

Anderson changed the wording - without consensus, I might add - and I reverted until I got sick of his disruptive edit-warring. If anyone upset the applecart, with the resulting shitfight you now see, it's Anderson. We were doing just fine until he intervened. The guidelines were simple - use the date format of a relevant country - and there was very little confusion or disruption. The system worked. US editors can and did write about foreign countries using whatever format they wanted. Nobody stopped them doing so. Nobody really cared. I certainly don't mind if someone adds useful information without getting everything exactly as per the MoS - someone is bound to come along and square it away, and if it an article gets to FA status, which presumably is something we want for every article, then we'll have the real wikiwonks come along and get everything into showroom condition. As noted, anybody can check the most common date format used in a country by looking at their computer's control panel. If you are editing Wikipedia, you have a computer right there in front of you.

My preferred wording is simple, fair and practical. Just remove "English-speaking" from the current wording: Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular country should generally use the more common date format for that nation. For the U.S. this is month before day; for most others it is day before month. Articles related to Canada may use either format consistently.

This is similar to the way we handle units of measurement and local currencies - we don't look at the history of articles on non-English-speaking nations and if some editor used yards instead of metres initially, keep that forever. It gets changed to the appropriate unit and nobody bothers. Except for a few chauvinists who seem to think that every time a date or a unit is changed from the American way, it's another star ripped off Old Glory. --Pete (talk) 23:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with that. My problem is with the requirement that unless it's specifically American, non-American formatting must be used. Corvus cornix_talk 23:30, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I certainly don't support compulsion along those lines. In fact there must be a huge range of articles where date formats are not an issue and either format is fine. UN agencies, for example. Or, as Tony has noted, British filmstars who move to Hollywood. Either format is acceptable there. But if an article has a natural and strong tie to a single nation, then why not use the date formats and units of measurement commonly used there? This applies to the USA, France, the UK, New Zealand, the Philippines... --Pete (talk) 23:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

You yourself said, If the date format used in a place where they don't speak English is day before month, then what on earth is wrong with using that format in written English? Am I missing something here? The only reason I can think of why people would edit-war and abuse other editors for the sake of using one date format over another is that they care very deeply about their own personal preference, and that's not the attitude of a reasonable person.. Corvus cornix_talk 23:55, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. What's wrong with that? Using the Swedish date format in an article about Sweden sounds pretty reasonable to me. But if there are good reasons not to use it - through local consensus or whatever - then I certainly wouldn't compel any editor to use a format they are not happy with. --Pete (talk) 00:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Because it's advocating limiting American format to American subjects, which has been my objection all along. Corvus cornix_talk 00:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, no. It's advocating using Swedish format in Swedish subjects and American format in American subjects and British format in British subjects and so on. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Going beyond articles with strong ties to specific nations we have articles on international topics such as Olympics or subjects with no specific ties, such as Commando. These categories have no preferred format and thus stay in the format first chosen. I'm certainly not advocating compulsion on date formats - just a return to the way we've always done things and which worked well. --Pete (talk) 12:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

And it's also something that was soundly rebutted by the last three weeks of discussion, polling and various other methods of trying to get the point through that this is English Wikipedia, not Russian, African, Japanese, Dutch, and a plethora of other Wikipedias, that have and maintain their own MoS, and should not be a consideration for this one. How non-English speaking countries write their date, has no basis for consideration of how the English Wikipedia will address the dating issue concerning articles written about them. It is restrictive, an unnecessary broadening of this MoS's responsibility, and frankly attempting to overly internationalize the English Wikipedia, when the non-English speaking countries have their own Wikipedias for use list. Go to their Wikipedias and try and impose our MoS on them and see how far you get. Lets have not only articles written in English here, but include all languages in this one, and delete all the others. Before I'm accused of balderdash once again, I will stop now. The notion to include, other than English-speaking countries date format conventions in this style guide, has been rejected. Lets move on please. Cheers.--«JavierMC»|Talk 02:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I've yet to see consensus for any one method of dealing with this, certainly not anything that justifies a change to our long-standing, workable and uncontroversial practice. Anderson changed the wording without obtaining consensus and since then it's been one unholy mess here. ---Pete (talk) 12:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Pete, note the evolution from "may use" to "should use" to a virtual "must use". That is a crucial change and one that, manifestly, never had a broad consensus. Robert A.West (Talk) 22:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't see anything saying "must use", though I haven't checked the latest wording "tweak", maybe there is a mob with torches and pitchforks standing by ready to go. I don't support must use for date formats, with the exception that we shouldn't use ISO 8601 dates in written text. Otherwise, the difference between the two date formats is much like hanging your toilet roll underhand or overhand. Either way works perfectly well, but by jingo, you get some zealots on this topic! --Pete (talk) 01:33, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I like the 2004 wording most. We could add that consistency within an article trumps over the "generally preferable", and that, in the case of events located in a place with no significant number of "local English speakers", we should use 5 October 2008 if the article uses Commonwealth English and October 5, 2008, if the article uses American English. (Note the comma after the year in the US format). -- Army1987 ! ! ! 14:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

All this debate, but things would be so much easier...

...if the rule was simply: use the date formatting produced by ~~~~. Teemu Leisti (talk) 08:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

But nevermind. I'm done with this discussion, at least for a few months. Teemu Leisti (talk) 11:47, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Enforcement of MOS:UNLINKDATES

Understanding that I could be trout slapped for this: I've noticed that enforcement of MOS:UNLINKDATES has begun but I can find no consensus on the policy. The main article that should support it is just an essay. Is this being discussed somewhere where the conversation is not forked to the point that it is incomprehensible? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 13:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

See the footnote at the bottom of MOSNUM.--Kotniski (talk) 14:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

That's the discussion where there is no clear consensus. And the new discussion is forked into uselessness. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 15:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

While there's enforcement of a type at FAC and FLC, I see no one at either place raising a finger in resistance—perhaps they're keen for a professional look to their nominations. More broadly, to call the script-assisted auditing of articles "enforcement" sounds a little like spin. Most people see it rather as a service to editors, sparing them the manual labour of removing the square brackets while improving the look of their text and the exposure of their high-value links. Having decided that date autoformatting is undesirable (link available to wide enthusiastic support on request), it's hard to see why people would ever object to date auditing that involves the unblueing of dates, particularly when it involves:

• the correction of faulty DF syntax;
• the ironing out of inconsistencies (widespread, I'm afraid); and
• the correction of wrong choices of DF for whole articles (also surprisingly common; today, NASA was not in US formatting, and neither were several articles on US performers—and vice versa).

This kind of clean-up is long overdue. Tony (talk) 15:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no consensus that it's appropriate. Silence does not indicate consent, and it seems possible that the consensus that autolinking is depreciated (not deprecated) might be revisited. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, silence does imply consent; WP:CONSENSUS is quite clear on that, and says so in its very second sentence! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:07, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

My point is that if someone is citing a policy when they make a cleanup edit, it stands to reason that the policy should exist in a valid form (i.e consensus). I don't have a penguin in this race, but it seems like the way things are, the situation is ripe for edit warring. Cleanup is good, but what if someone objects and reverts - where's the apparatus to remedy that? I'd love to see a bot steamroll every article and iron out inconsistencies. But alas, it can't be done without consensus. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Please point to this rash of edit-warring; links? Tony (talk) 02:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

My concern is in the possibility for edit warring because of lack of consensus, not a current rash of edit warring. Good fences make good neighbors. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 13:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated MOS:UNLINKDATES and MOS:UNLINKYEARS for deletion as they do not reflect consensus. Corvus cornix_talk 02:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

That is absurd. The community has clearly decided that date autoformatting (if that's what you're referring to) is undesirable). Why is a completely separate imprimatur required to implement what the Manual of Style says? So, shall we start requests for consensus to enable people to correct (in whatever way) every single clause in MOSNUM and MoS? Over to you: it will take a lot of headings; we're waiting ... Tony (talk) 02:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Where does the MOS say to delete links? Corvus cornix_talk 02:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Corvus cornix, your position amounts to "Nobody should do it, but if somebody does it, nobody should undo it". I'm pretty good at reading even very intricate maps with lots of twists and turns, but I am having a very difficult time trying to fathom how that position could possibly seem at all logically defensible to you. I think you face a very difficult sale here (and in your deletion proposals), but perhaps I'll be proved wrong. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 03:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Corvus says: "Where does the MOS say to delete links?" Two things: (1) where does it say not to do so? It would be a peculiar state of affairs if the MOS deprecated something and banned people from removing instances of it to comply with the deprecation. (2) Where does it say to delete the "p.m." from the 24-hour time "14:45 p.m."? Does it have to say explicitly that this should be done, as well as saying "24-hour clock times have no a.m., p.m., noon or midnight suffix." What you propose is a revolution in the writing and interpretation of our style guides. I'd like to see you post a proposal for this sudden necessity to double-up every single provision with an explicit "OK, do it" clause.

More likely, this is just another case of I don't like it. I'd prefer to engage with you as to the benefits of the change rather than waste time contemplating an entirely new double-up speak for our style guides (and policy pages, indeed). We've had remarkable success in convincing people who are initially cautious about the benefits of ridding WP of this cancer. You're welcome to continue the conversation on our talk pages, where it won't clutter more important business on this page. Tony (talk) 04:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

MOS:UNLINKDATES as a shortcut name is a kind of double-speak itself. The general question of unlinking dates is entirely separate from the autoformatting issue. The shortcuts should be more specific (off the top if my head I can't think of one, but I'm sure somebody can) so that people can continue the good work of unlinking the "deprecated" autoformatting-type dates while remaining aware that there is as yet no consensus for unlinking all dates. Scolaire (talk) 07:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems reasonable that calling something UNLINKDATES would lead to the misunderstanding that policy exists that calls for the unlinking of existing dates. Is this what we want? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 13:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing "double" about the shortcut. The community, after long and detailed discussion, has made a decision that has wide support. You happen to question it, which is fine, but I think your strategy is disruptive and your reasoning circular, as Schein points out above. What is double-speak is the notion that we should have a strong guideline based on consensus, but balk at implementing it. Bizarre. Tony (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely wrong. There's consensus that dates (day-of-year) should not generally be linked, because of the autoformatting. There is now a consensus established, at your (probably improperly introduced) RfC, that dates should be unlinked. There's no consensus established for years. I'm not even sure there's consensus that years should not be linked without a particular reason, only that years should not be linked without a reason. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:19, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Where is this RfC? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 15:27, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tony1 — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:53, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I read that RfC conclusion as saying that Tony1 was not going against procedure by de-linking, but I'm still looking for the place where it was decided that dates should not be linked, without reference to auto-formatting. If there is a consensus other than the AF consensus, why is it so d****d hard to link to it? Scolaire (talk) 16:56, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

MOS:UNLINKYEARS and MOS:SYL are much, much older than the recent MOS:UNLINKDATES. This MOS had a stable "Date elements that do not contain both a day number and a month should not generally be linked; for example, solitary months, solitary days of the week, solitary years, decades, centuries, and month and year combinations. Such links should not be used unless following the link would genuinely help the reader understand the topic more fully; see WP:CONTEXT." clause for a long time, only removed a month ago (presumably because it wouldn't be needed with the new, more general date unlinking). -- Jao (talk) 10:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of dates and years should be unlinked. I'm fine with that. But as far as I can tell, there's certainly no consensus that no dates or years should ever be linked. Is that correct? -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Your understanding matches mine. TTBOMK nobody advocates a blanket prohibition on linking dates or years. The MOS entry says dates should not be linked, unless there is a particular reason to do so. —Scheinwerfermann (talk) 13:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Linking of dates of birth and death

Proposal: to add the words

These dates should normally be linked.

to the section WP:MOSDAB#Dates of birth and death, and to link the example dates, so the section would read

At the start of an article on an individual, his or her dates of birth and death are provided. These dates should normally be linked. For example: "Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was a British ..."

• For an individual still living: "Serena Williams (born September 26, 1981) ...", not "... (September 26, 1981 –) ..."
• When only the years are known: "Socrates (470–399 BC) was..."
• When the year of birth is completely unknown, it should be extrapolated from earliest known period of activity: "Offa of Mercia (before 734 – 26 July 796) ..."

...

Rationale There are some - most vocally perhaps Tony - who believe that pretty much no dates should be linked; and this seems to be what Lightbot was trying to achieve, too. But I don't believe that is the view of the majority. On the contrary, I think the balance of opinion, even amongst those who don't want to see pages becoming a "sea of blue", is that it is useful to have at least some date links on a page, to let people establish a broader context for the times in which a person lived, by clicking their way through the date hierarchy especially via pages like List of state leaders in xxxx or xxxx in the United Kingdom, etc. The proposal that at least the date of birth and date of death in a biographical article should be linked has been made independently in at least four different threads: by Scolaire in the section above #Dates are not linked unless; by Carcharoth in the section above #Concrete examples (year links); by Eleassar, relaying a question raised to him in talk, at WT:CONTEXT#Birth dates?; and by myself at User talk:Lightmouse#Date linking request (birth and death years). It therefore seems appropriate to put up this proposal specifically as a formal well-advertised RfC. Jheald (talk) 11:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support. The date page hierarchy, and pages rapidly linked from it, provides a useful link to historical context for biographical articles. The biographical articles are stronger for such context; and the birth date and death date are the most obvious choice of dates to link. Jheald (talk) 11:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. (1) You're linking an anniversary day and month that is useless to our readers (please demonstrate some that are useful, and not just a magic carpet for discretionary browsers); and many editors will confuse this with the old autoformatting function. (2) Did you mean to "nowiki" the laborious constructions above that are concealed behind the piped linking (([[12 February|12 February]] [[1809]] – [[19 April|19 April]] [[1882]])? I'm sure this will go down very well with editors, who who will not only have to memorise how to do this, but will have to actually do it in every article. (3) You haven't demonstrated why it is worth forcing editors to make a link to a year page (birth/death): while it might be possible in a few rare instances to argue that the year of death page is vaguely useful (e.g., 1963 for the death of JF Kennedy, but even that example demonstrates how the fragmented facts about JFK in that year are better in the JFK article itself, or a daughter article on the assassination). (4) The "year in X" links are fine, except that concealing them behind what looks like a useless year-link is self-defeating, isn't it? Already, at least one WikiProject says not to use them. MOSLINK recommends the use of explicit wording to overcome the concealment. Tony (talk) 11:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • No, this has nothing to do with autoformatting. I'm proposing that such dates - the year, and the day - in the opening words of a bio article should be linked, end of story; something a number of other editors have also raised. The principal value being for the context that these links, and onward links from such pages, allow readers to click through to and explore.
    I'm not talking about "Year in X" articles, I'm talking about the bare year articles themselves. And I'm not intending to particularly mandate the   characters - they were there already, so I just left them. My proposal is very simple: as a rule, the days and years in those opening words should be linked. I want to see where the balance of the community rests on that question. Jheald (talk) 12:06, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose, per many of Tony's comments, and just the fact that these year articles (much less day of the month ones!) don't provide useful historical context, they provide an often enormous list of trivial crap. If a large and well-organized WikiProject were capable of producing actually useful year articles that summarized the truly notable happenings in those years, I could maybe see the linking of years (only) for birth/death/establishment/disestablishment dates (only, for the most part). The problem with this though is that editors will see them linked in the lead sentence and then go around linking them all over the place, and we'd be pretty much back where we started. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support. I opposed delinking dates in the first place and I still do. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose, I've never seen much sense in date linking, and links to day-of-the-month articles result in triviality amost by definition. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• CommentSupport. I agree this is a good question to work out. My question is whether we should use what I think you are proposing, the well known and much disliked, "link to the day of year", "link to the year" (which is why people are asking about autoformatting), or if we should be suggesting {{Birth date|yyyy|mm|dd}} and {{Death date and age|yyyy|mm|dd|yyyy|mm|dd}} which provides protection against lightbot and allows for more flexibility in the future. As for those who oppose the "trivia dumping grounds", I suspect that if the links are to specific types of narrowly defined data (such as Births on January 15, 1900 or People who share a birthday on 15 January) most people would be fine with that. dm (talk) 12:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • As an aside, I changed this to a support. The templates I mention are real templates, and dont need any development. dm (talk) 03:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support. In that case, the first example should be ""'''Charles Darwin''' {{DL|y=1809|m=February|d-12|mode=eng}} – {{DL|y=1882|m=April|d=19|mode=end}}) was a British ...", with the details of the template worked out later. (And yes, if the question is whether the dates be linked in the lead sentence, my answer is strong support.) Disagree with secret links to 1990 births or 15 January birthdays / January 15 birthdays (if, for no other reason, we'd need staff monitoring which of the latter is linked to.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 13:22, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support with comment There are many who do click and want to click on a date link to look at a reference in context, and whether that is trivial, banal or whatever is not my business, nor mine to judge. I can understand that someone may wish to click on a link to find out the context of a date of birth to the world around them at the time. Do I do it? No. Should it be allowable? Yes. For instance a child born during a battle in the local area, or being named Victoria, and that being the date of the coronation of Queen Victoria, or some other event that may have an effect on that person's environment. This information can be quite relevant. So the issue then becomes managing it, and making it useful. Is there 'overlinking' on dates, most definitely, and the information should be most specific, however, the request is specifically for Dates of Life. With regard to the comments about triviality ... for goodness sake, the difference between trivia and excellent knowledge is solely your own virtual framework and environment. If some people thrive on trivia, good luck to them, WP is here for all types. Not asking for extreme, let us find the median position. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Linking some, but not all full dates in the article will be confusing. I don't see birth and death date-linking to be valuable at all. Most biographies do have categories for year of birth and death that would get your average browser to the year page anyway. Karanacs (talk) 14:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Query to Billinghurst: Your assertion that many people click on and want to click on a date link seems unlikely—do you have sources for this? Tony (talk) 14:42, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Thanks Tony. wikt:many Anecdotally from reading, especially the commentary when it was on User_talk:Lightmouse; some (light) discussions with genealogists, who are a little date focused. I too would love to see evidentiary information about date links and whether they are followed or not. If someone has the right wand to produce that data, it would be lovely. To Karanacs the proposal is just Dates of Life, not all dates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billinghurst (talk • contribs)
    • For tony to make such a statement that it is unlikely only proves that he is not paying attention to the comments being made against delinking of dates. I have stated on several occasions (as have others) that I do click on dates (sometime only to see if the article is associated to the date). As for evidence I recommend that someone does a query on the toolserver for all the date articles and see if the hits reduce over the next few months as more and more articles have the dates delinked. I believe we will find a marked reduction in the traffic to those date articles do to their delinking.--Kumioko (talk) 16:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. It adds complexity and I just don't see the value. Haukur (talk) 14:59, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support I never agreed with Tony's 2 dimensional view that date linking is bad. Wikipedia is a 3 dimensional database of articles and is not bound by the 2 dimensional rules of a paper article. If we have an article in wikipedia that is linkable to an article then we should link to it (whether ir directly relates or not). That doesn't mean that it should be linked 4 or 5 times but it should be linked and the birth and death dates to me are reasonable. If we go along with this delinking of dates argument that tony presents then next we will be delinking the city and state of birth, military ranks, allegiances and any other link that is not directly related to an articles content. I think that this date argument sets a very ugly precedent. Additionally, given the volume of arguments for and against this venture it should be obvious to everyone (regardless of how they feel about whether dates should or should not be linked) that this does not meet consensus, regardless of how the vote previously came out.--Kumioko (talk) 15:06, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Strong but partial support I believe linking the year to the bare year articles for births and deaths in bio provides useful context information. I'm actually in favour of linking years (decades etc.) where ever the historical context is significant to the subject of the article, even if the subject itself is not significant to the period of time linked. However, I am not as convinced of the value of linking the month and day, especially since those links would not seem to add much context without the year. PaleAqua (talk) 15:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Two simple points to PaleAqua: (1) Where was the consensus to link these items in the first place? (2) No one is suggesting a slippery slope to no wikilinking; rather, I sense that the motivation is the direct opposite: the encouragement of a stronger wikilinking system through the avoidance of extremely low-value dilutions. Tony (talk) 16:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
    • 1) Rhetorical statements are unhelpful. Where is so much of the information and documentation of templates, convention, etc. Wikis evolve, we are talking about a controlled evolution. 2) No, you are correct, no slippery slope suggested, it was Dates of Life only. Low value to you, statements to the contrary by others that dates of linking are not of low value seem to be ignored or derided as of low value. :-( billinghurst (talk) 17:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support. It certainly does no harm. Also usefull for lovers of trivia. Let readers decide what they want to read. G-Man ^? 19:55, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. One of the dates in the example, 26 July 796, would be displayed to those who have selected the "2001-01-15T16:12:34" date format preference as 0796-07-26. The unique format in the preference menu clearly defines this date as an ISO 8601 date, even though that term does not appear on the menu. Also, the discussion leading to the implementation of date autoformatting makes it clear this format was intended to be ISO 8601. ISO 8601 requires dates to be in the Gregorian calendar, and requires mutual consent before information exchange partners exchange any date before the year 1583. Since the date 26 July 796 is in the Julian calendar, both requirements are violated. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: this discussion is not intended to be about autoformatting. This is about hard-linking of the dates, rendered as written, which is how 99% of readers will see them. If there are bugs in autoformatting, then there are bugs in autoformatting. User beware. But we shouldn't let the tail wag the dog. The question is, regardless of autoformatting, should these dates be linked? Jheald (talk) 20:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
    • You're wrong. Every date linking discussion is always about date autoformatting until the date autoformatting cancer is excised and incinerated. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Just because an article exists on Wikipedia that can be linked to, doesn’t mean it should be linked to. Links should be topical and germane to the article and should properly anticipate what the readership will likely want to further explore. Linking of years (1982), isn’t germane most of the time and should be limited to intrinsically historical articles like French Revolution—in which case, the linked dates would be older, like 1794. What the bot is doing that I find really valuable is the de-linking of dates (October 21). If someone was born on that date in 1982, no one gives a damn if “On this date in] 1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century.” This isn’t not proper technical writing practices. Greg L (talk) 20:25, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
  • I just want to clarify that just because you don't "give a damn" doesn't mean knowone does. If knowone cared then there would be no need to have a On this day section in the main page.--Kumioko (talk) 20:39, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Indeed. Maybe some people are interested in who else shared the same birthday, or that an English rugby union star was born on the feast-day of the patron saint of McDonalds. If WP has these pages, I think it's inappropriate to presume that because WP:YOUDONTLIKEIT, nobody else should be allowed to find them. Jheald (talk) 20:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
      • To Jheald: So you cite WP:YOUDONTLIKEIT. That’s sort of a “if it’s blue, it must be true” argument; if there was a WP:I REALLY REALLY LIKE IT AND IF AN ARTICLE EXITS ON WIKIPEDIA, IT SHOULD BE LINKED TO essay, I might “prove” my point. To Kumioko: I have no problem with the “On this day…” on the main page because all readers know what they will be taken to if they click on a link; they aren’t Easter eggs. And to both of you: This isn’t an issue of right or wrong; it’s a grey area centered around the issue of not desensitizing readers to our blue links through excessive linking. These are links to trivia. Too few readers, after they’ve stepped on these date land mines, want to bother with them any more. Greg L (talk) 21:24, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
        • I agree that date and year links can be land mines and unhelpful to readers. Let's make that clear first. However, I seriously doubt that links that are clearly birth and death years will mislead readers in your "land mine" sense. Take this example: "Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was a British ..." In my view, people may wonder what the links are, but when they click on them will realise "ah, an article on the year, that makes sense". They will then know this when they see it on future articles, and either click through as desired, or ignore them. What they won't do, in my opinion, is click on the link and think "oh, I was expecting an article on this person's birth" or "oh, I was expecting an article on this person's death". i.e. when clearly linked in a specified and limited context (birth and death years), year links are not Easter egg "land mines", and they are not excessive linking (two links per biographical article). Carcharoth (talk) 04:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
          • I have observed that articles tend to be more heavily linked in the lead section; birth and death dates also tend to be the first to appear after the subject's name. Linking to these date articles would strongly contribute to the strong sea of blue in the opening paragraphs. While death dates may be consequential in certain cases, the only possible exception birth dates being generally a non-event is Jesus Christ, and nobody knows JC's exact birth date or year anyway, so I think this is a red herring of a debate. 219.78.19.154 (talk) 15:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
            • Well, Alfonso XIII's birth was probably an event... Anyway, your overlinking argument is a good one. If we are to link some dates in a biographical article, then it would make sense to link birth and death dates, but doing it in the lead is not very good. If we say "do it only in an infobox", plus get rid of the autoformatting, then I like it better. -- Jao (talk) 15:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
              • Actually, Darwin's birth did involve a minor event; it was the same day as Abraham Lincoln's. I should prefer to have this trivium availabe behind a link to restarting the proverbially WP:LAME edit war about whether it should be in the lead...
                More seriously, the year of birth does provide context, and would provice more if the year articles were better. On medieval articles, it is often of some interest on what saint's day a given person is born; and so on. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support - While I believe that most dates should not be linked, I believe that, in biographical articles, dates of birth and death would serve as helpful links. We link to the biographical articles of persons born on a particular date on that date's article, so why not link back to the date from the biography? – PeeJay 20:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - I don't see the value of linking the dates of birth and death. The previous objections to all date linking still seem to apply. Day-of-the-month linking is still trivial even when the date is someone's birth date EdJohnston (talk) 21:17, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - extremely low value links. If someone is interested in the "context" of who else was born on September 12, they can type those few characters into the search box themselves. These are trivial connections that clutter articles needlessly. Ground Zero | t 21:42, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

*Oppose - I have yet to see any argument that comes close to convincing me that these date links provide any sort of relevant context. Yes, they provide context, but the context is so general that it seems useless to me. And yes, I have heard the argument that "just because it seems useless to you, doesn't mean it's useless to everyone." This is a valid argument, but only to a point. Linking every word in every sentence to Wiktionary would probably be more useful than this, in my view. And I don't think that one would get any massive rash of support, either.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 22:31, 29 September 2008 (UTC) (Changed !vote: see below)

• Oppose That would just makes everything more complex. Besides, I have yet to read a convincing argument on why date-of-birth and date-of-death links are necessary to aid the reader's understanding of the article's subject matter. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support linking of birth and death years once at the appropriate place in an article (with the second option being a formal written support in the manual of style for using the birth and death year categories). Oppose linking of dates as these are, in my opinion, trivial links. This was my position in an earlier thread quoted above, though I may not have made it clear enough. I obviously disagree with those who think birth and death year links are trivial in biographical articles - it is my opinion that birth and death years are integral metadata information for biographical articles. Currently, such information is found either as: (a) plain text in the lead sentence, with some articles still having the dates linked; (b) birth and death date categories; (c) entries in the infobox; (d) entries in the Wikipedia:Persondata metadata information. Until the Manual of Style specifically mandates that the information for birth and death years needs to be in a form that can be analysed by computers (ie. metadata - and yes, linking is a form of metadata when used correctly), then delinking birth and death years without checking for the existence of the other metadata is a destructive process. I support reduction of overlinking, and avoiding a sea of blue links, but also support the retention of some form of clickable links to take the reader from biographical articles to our chronology categories and articles. Carcharoth (talk) 03:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• I'd only support this as a reversion to the policy of all date linking, in other words linking dates of birth and death are no more or less valuable than any other date links. Either the standard should be to link all or to link none. - fchd (talk) 05:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
  • How so? Can you provide an example? I think the article with wikilink dates, eg. "He was promoted to Captain on 1 March xxxx ..." shows that THE date has only has relevance within the article itself, not to the world events at the time.
    At the moment, the issue with much of the discussion is the value judgments rather than relevance or usefulness. Many say it is of low-value where it means it is of low value to them. Whereas many of those supporting, say they find it useful, and they find it is of relevance for their research. I understand my biases, I would like the nay sayers to consider that it this is about relevance and perspective, not their values. --billinghurst (talk) 08:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Firstly, we already have consensus that wikilinking of dates is deprecated, so having this as part of the guideline would be a seriously retrograde step, and make a mockery of it, IMHO. Secondly, I would would be somewhat horrified at extensive wikilinking of birth and death dates: the vast majority of biographies I have come across have had these dates linked, and I just feel that these links add nothing to any of the articles. What I am talking about includes EIIR, where the only date I would probably retain is the date of coronation; I might also consider linking the dates of death of Mao Zedong and John F. Kennedy and other leaders who died in office, or other world figures who died at the height of their influence - for example John Lennon. However, we already have articles on the Coronation of the British monarch, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and Death of John Lennon, which renders the linking unnecessary in the examples given, also proving Tony's point. I would say that even Albert Einstein's birth and death dates are but biographical facts which add little significance to the world if linked to date and year articles. If somebody really wants to look up 18 April 1955 for a context surrounding Einstein's death, they can just as easily type it in the search box or the address bar. It seems to be rather bureaucratic to oblige editors to add wikilinks to these whilst removing all the other wikilinked dates, when there is so much to do here on WP. Ohconfucius (talk) 10:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Consensus was only reached after being repeatedly opposed. Tony simply kept resumbitting it until it reached consensus. I have been editing for a couple years on WP and I have never seen any change that has been so hotly contested as this. Your right though in that consensus was reached, now it is up to all of us to refine the details of the decision so that it best supports the project overall. I can live with the decision that dates should not be linked (although I don't agree with it per se) but I do think that certain key dates such as birth and death should be allowed.--Kumioko (talk) 18:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support I use birth and death links all the time , as well as links in other key dates to get an historical context to what I am reading. Wikipedia year articles give a continuous timeline of what else was going on in the world at the time an event happend. They provide useful context and background and allow the reader to get immersed into a particular historic point in time. They are an invaluable resource unique to Wikipedia. Removal is a retrograde step. Lumos3 (talk) 12:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Weak support. Clearly some readers do find these useful, and the wide support for doing it can be seen in the fact that it has been so widely done. (If it had been introduced by bot, of course, this would not follow, but I see no sign that it has been.) We encourage multiple ways of linking articles together; categories and nav templates and links; this is merely another. I would much more firmly support weaker wording; but it is already established that normally means most people do, but you don't have to even for FA and GA, which should be weak enough. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support, in the cases described by Carcharoth above. A less obvious way I have found links useful is to use them to see what is linked to a given article & the birth/death dates are one important way this works. Further, until this latest push to delink all dates, no one ever raised the issue that linking birth/death dates was unnecessary. I believe it deserves an exception -- & the spirit of ignore all rules more than justifies us to make an exception to any rule when the exception improves the encyclopedia. -- llywrch (talk) 18:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
• Qualified oppose. I don't have a strong opinion on the autoformatting question. Personally, I've always thought that our readers were smart enough to correctly read a date whether it was presented as 19 Jan 2008, Jan 19, 2008 or 2008 Jan 19. But I know that others disagree and I don't feel strongly enough about it to argue.
  On the more important question of whether the links are useful as links, I think they should pretty much all be removed. Linking a birth or death day to a page about that day of the month is invariably trivia. While many books publish such trivia, I do not consider that to be a proper function for an encyclopedia. There is nothing encyclopedic about the subject of the biography that the reader can learn by following the link to a page of other trivia that happened on all the other 19 Jans in time.
  The argument for linking years is better but still not strong enough in my opinion. The general argument for it (repeated by several people above) is that it provides historical context and can provide a path to the events which influenced the subject of the biography. I consider this a weak argument because the degree to which a newborn can be influenced by events outside his/her immediate family is trivially low. Child-development specialists will tell you that influences in the first 5-8 years are almost entirely domestic or, at best, highly local. The appropriate link for developmental context would be to the appropriate decate article covering the ages somewhere between 10 and 30. Likewise, a link to a death year tells almost nothing about the person's life except in the rare case where the death itself was a cause for notability.
  My opinion is also influenced by the observation that the "year" pages are massively overlinked. The odds of finding anything useful either on the page itself or by following "what links here" is miniscule. I've never yet followed one of those links and learned anything useful. Rossami (talk) 19:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
  • There are at least two uses for these links on birth/death dates. The first is an example of data management -- to maintain the Categories "X births" & "Y deaths". Not everyone who creates or improves an article remembers to include biography articles in these kinds of categories. The second is an example of user friendliness -- it helps end users to determine who was born or died on specific days. There are a lot of people out there who want to know who was born -- or died -- on a given day, & these links help them to research this information. While the Persondata information could offer the same information, so far Persondata is manually created & not yet present in all biographical articles. -- llywrch (talk) 03:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support - It's clear that not everyone finds these links useful, but it's equally clear that some do find them useful to a degree, myself included. Jheald's proposal seems like a fair compromise. I'm confident that linking a date or two in the lead won't turn the rest of the article into an indecipherable sea of blue. --Bongwarrior (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Bongwarrior: OK, “some” find the [year] links useful. Is that the test you think should be used here: (“some”)? Or do you think it is more than just some, and that the body of readers who would actually want to read through lists of trivia in “year” article are sufficiently numerous to merit yet more blue links in our articles? Greg L (talk) 22:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
    • My impression from the above is that those who find the year links useful are coming more from the metadata side of things, rather than the trivia side of things. It would also be nice to have some acknowledgement that birth and death years are less trivial (though some people do clearly see them as still trivial) than a random mention of a year in a random article. And also that linking birth and death years does not contribute to a "sea of blue (links)", but is actually limited to a specific place (at the start of the article) and to two specific links. To expand on the metadata side of things, I'd be happy if a sustained effort were made to bring biographical articles into compliance with some standard style, ensuring that all the articles had Wikipedia:Persondata (currently woefully limited in its application - to respond to Kaldari's point below), that all biographical articles had birth and death year categories (or the 'unknown' equivalents) and the "biography of living people" tag (where applicable) and that all biographical articles had {{DEFAULTSORT}} correctly applied (to aid the generation of a master-index, as well as categorisation). If half as much effort went into that as into whether to link birth of death dates or not, then some progress might be being made. As it is, biographical articles account for around 1 in 5 of Wikipedia's articles (and, I suspect, a significant fraction of newly created articles), but only a small fraction use Persondata, thousands and thousands of biographical articles are not sorted correctly in the index categories, and many lack birth and death year categories. Many biographical articles also lack the {{WPBiography}} tag on their talk pages. This is one reason why I feel as strongly as I do about not just removing birth and death year links until a proper audit of the biographical articles has been carried out (you can, if you like, think of it as the "date audit" clashing with plans for a similar "biographical audit" and the "date audit" removing metadata links that might have been parsed by the "biographical audit"). To take that one step further, I wonder if the contributions log of Lightbot can be analysed to reveal how many birth and death years were delinked on biographical articles where no birth and death year categories were present? I presume such an analysis would be possible? Carcharoth (talk) 23:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC) I asked Lightmouse here if he can help.
      • I suspect that the actual readers click on links much less than we think they do. There's no evidence for their popularity. The concept of wikilinking is great, but needs to be rationed carefully. No studies have been conducted on readers' attitudes or behaviour in relation to them (for example whether readers tend to read through as much of an article as they're ever going to and then consider hitting a link, or whether they divert on the spot), but common sense tells me that the utility is fragile. Tony (talk) 02:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
        • You are probably right. I would say it would depend on a combination of factors: (1) Whether the reader understands the term or knows about the object/event/person linked {information/definition); (2) Whether the article contains sufficient context to explain things and avoid the need for a reader to click away to another article (insufficient article context); (3) Whether the reader is bored by the article they are reading and whether any particular link looks more interesting (diversionary browsing); (4) Whether the reader (after reading the whole article) wants to read up further on a particular topic (discretionary browsing). It depends on the reader to a large extent. What we, as editors, can do, is ensure articles have sufficient context to reduce the need to link, keep articles interesting, keep metadata separate from linking, and try to ensure high-quality linking (linking to good articles and to the correct articles) and to avoid overlinking. If there was ever a push for levels of linking, then one good metric would be "if a fact in article A is mentioned in article B and vice-versa, then that is a primary link", with other links being "background" or "definition" links. Trouble is, there is such a spectrum of reasons for linking, that levels of linking just allows for edit warring. If some software thing like "there is a reciprocal link" could be enabled to turn a link a different colour, that might work, but then too many different colours makes things silly as well. Maybe a preference to only have reciprocal links display? Carcharoth (talk) 03:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
          • Wow. Tony, are you saying we should unlink everytihng, not just dates or a few countries, but everything? Links aren't popular? We need to ration them? This certainly explains some of your underlying motivations. dm (talk) 03:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
            • It’s not too complex Dmadeo. Links should be judiciously used. They should be highly topical and germane to the subject matter. They should invite exploration and learning for the intended audience. Linking to electron is perfectly fine for the Atom article but would be boring and desensitizing to readers reading up on Planck units; the majority of the visitors reading that article already know what an electron is. The litmus test shouldn’t be whether or not some readers will find it interesting, but whether a good number of the target readership would find it interesting enough to click on. For too long, too many links have been added to Wikipedia’s articles because an article existed and could be linked to. But with 6,826,335 articles on en.Wikipedia, hundreds of them nothing but date-related trivia, plus even more on Wiktionary, the number of articles to link to is now astronomical and our articles have become excessively linked, effectively turning them into giant, boring, blue turds. Tony is right. We don’t need links to mind-numbing list of randomly-generated trivia nor to common countries. Nor to Manhole cover in the street out in front of Greg L’s house (it’s at a latitude of 47° 39′ 9.1″ for those who would actually be interested in that). It’s not that nobody is interested in clicking on all these links; it’s just that not enough readers are interested in clicking on them. IMO, the reaction to often strive for in readers when we provide links should be “Oh, WOW. I didn’t know they’d have an article on that too!”. Greg L (talk) 04:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
              • Precisely. As an aside, you should subst that 'number of articles' template, otherwise in a year's time it will show the number of articles at the time someone reads the archives, not when you wrote this - what do you mean, "no-one reads the archives"? :-) Though there could be a useful distinction, I think, between levels of information on an article and what to link to. Not everyone reading the Planck units article will know what an electron is - that is why you could link it once at the first appearance, and then not link it again (which is normal practice anyway). Consider the reader who wants to click "electron" but can't. They will either edit the article and add a link, or they will look "electron" up by searching for it. But they will be thinking as they do so "why didn't they give me a link to click on?!". But even relevant links are uninteresting to some. The first link on Planck units is units of measurement. I have no interest in clicking on that, but because it is relevant, it stays. So relevance is probably more important than whether a link is interesting. As for links to common countries, there are exceptions to every rule. If you have a list of countries, sometimes it makes sense to link all of them, rather than just some of them. Your "oh wow" point is one viewpoint (and something I agree with). The other is the semantic web - see WP:BUILD. Going too far one way or the other (overlinking and underlinking) could be very damaging. How would you propose to avoid underlinking? Carcharoth (talk) 05:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
                • I get the overlink problem, and it seems like a theoretical problem, but not really one in practice. I think it's a lot better to deal with a particular problem article with a simple MOS guideline and involved editors actually editing the articles. Trying to prescribe exactly how to do this in the MOS devolves into lists of what's acceptable and what's not (ie: unlink the United States, but not Australia). I've seen others describe this as overinstruction or instruction creep and I'm starting to feel that there's a small number of vocal people who really like the idea. I find it offputting. dm (talk) 08:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
          • This is exactly what I was afraid would happen, in Tony's opinion above wikipedia should be nothing more than a publically updated encyclopedia britanica with a few links sprinkled in the article for certain key events. Tony, THIS IS NOT A 2 DIMENSIONAL DATABASE, stop trying to force your narrow views on everyone else. I agree that many articles are overlinked and I understand what you are saying, but having the links is useful and they generate trafic to other articles perpetuating the cycle of publically updated information. If we start stripping off links then one of the primary selling points of wikipedia is lost and we might as well buy the paper set when the salesman comes to the door.--Kumioko (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
• I have to respond when my views are being misrepresented. I'm sure people aren't deliberately making things up, so I wish they'd check their facts first. (1) I see little value to the readers, and much unnecessary blue in prominent positions, in the linking of common country names, especially English-speaking countries. Just why every single popular culture article should have a link to "British", "UK", "American", "United States", "Australian", "Australia"—I've counted seven to one country in a single article—is quite beyond me. This includes such little-known entities as "India", "China", "Russia", and some European countries. If it's a world map our readers require, they should be made well aware of its existence on the main page, since these country articles swamp the linking reader with huge amounts of information, most of it unrelated to an article topic. (2) It's easy to accuse me, in an exaggerated and frankly quite unfair way, of wanting to strip away all or most links; but in reality, I'm pro-wikilink; I believe people who complain about the notion of a more selective approach to linking are, without their realising it, working against the wikilinking system by diluting the valuable links to such an extent that they are ignored by most readers. It's a great way to kill of a great system. I'm trying to make it more effective. Tony (talk) 15:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • …there! Another link to mindless trivia. Why? I link, therefore I am. Greg L (talk) 20:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • P.S. I agree completely when Tony wrote “I believe people who complain about the notion of a more selective approach to linking are, without their realising it, working against the wikilinking system by diluting the valuable links to such an extent that they are ignored by most readers.”  Well said. Greg L (talk) 23:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
    • It may surprise you, but I agree with what Tony said as well. We just draw the line at different points. People will always have different ideas about what to link and what not to link. If you want to successfully persuade more people to reduce overlinking, it might be worth expanding WP:CONTEXT to explain things in more detail. I also think part of the problem is that editors often think "do we have an article on this?", and then try a wikilink to find out (using preview). When it turns out to be blue, they check it (hopefully) and then leave the link there because they are pleased that we have an article on whatever. The pleasure at seeing a wikilink work is such that it can be very hard to consciously remove it. By the way, thanks for the essay (I'm sure I've seen a similar essay somewhere before). It makes some interesting points, even if I think putting vomit in the "see also" section is a bit over the top and faintly insulting, as is linking to insanity, but it's your essay. I would add some footnotes to the essay, giving examples of "fascinating" trivia from the October 16 article (I didn't read all of it, but I did skim it), but that might not be appreciated. Seriously, have you ever thought of putting articles like October 16 up for deletion? You sound like you would be happy if they were all deleted. Finally, thanks for the photo of a sewer manhole cover. I've placed this photo in the sanitary sewer article - might as well use the picture to improve an article as well (did you know some people actually collect pictures of manhole covers? See here. There is also some interesting history behind some manhole covers. But then if you are recoiling in horror at the thought of this, then I guess you wouldn't appreciate things like Station Jim either. Carcharoth (talk) 23:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Carcharoth: When you write “Seriously, have you ever thought of putting articles like October 16 up for deletion? You sound like you would be happy if they were all deleted.”. Perhaps I might come across that way but, no, I wouldn’t want them deleted. Just de-link them.

        There are just too few people who are reading up on, for instance, Hugh Beaumont (actor), who are really going to read more than the first two entries after they click on a date link. I’d bet that 99.9% of the time, the typical reaction is “Hmmm… that’s what these links do” and then they click their browser’s ‘back’ button. Even with my challenge in the essay, it will be interesting if anyone can ante up and actually read only two of those trivia articles.

        By better anticipating what readers to a given article will be interested in further exploring, we increase the value of the remaining links. If someone is in a mood for long lists of historical trivia, it’s easy enough to type them into the search field.

        And I agree 110% with you when you write about the litmus test many editors use in deciding whether to link or not: if it can be linked to, then link to it. Greg L (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

        • Thanks for the reply. I must admit that when I wikilink an article without wikilinks (sometimes a badly written one - the lesson there is that it is better to rewrite the article before wikilinking), I have tended to add links to find out if we have articles on certain things, and only then winnowed the links down to those that are most relevant (and sometimes not even that). I will, in future, be trying consciously to increase the quality and 'impact factor' of any wikilinking I do. I still think that wikilinking tries to do too much - acting as (among other things): a dictionary/glossary; a 'related topics' section; and a further reading section. Carcharoth (talk) 02:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support, I think the above comments provide a variety of compelling reasons why editors might want to link dates. What I would actually prefer is for editors to be given explicit discretion in whether to link these dates on any given article. Within the context of the rest of the MOS I think the proposed language is closer to that ideal than the existing text. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I have five articles in mind already for an insertion of a link to Greg's essay on the sewer cover outside his house. Seriously. Link as much as you can, wherever there's a tiny opening to do so; after all, in today's world, everything can be related to everything else by one, two or three steps. it won't hurt the valuable links.Tony (talk) 02:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
    • The October 16 article has nigh on 12,000 incoming links. The same article has some 260 lines/events listed. The 364 links to other date articles created by {{months}} hardly dents the total. There is a serious imbalance here. 'October 16' is only one of 366 such articles with a very similar problematic. I am not saying that all articles should be back-linked from the date page, or that the majority are related to biographical d-o-b or d-o-d, but I would contend it is one valid perspective on the rather pandemic overlinking to date articles. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
      • If one looks only at links from article space and further exlude the 1199 lists, 1403 titles of the sort "2008 in medicine", 366 days, and 12 months, the count drops to 7425. Still high, but less outrageous. Looking closer at, say, XACML we see it is only linked by the date on a cited reference. I see no reason for linking citation data that is already well-structured, as in this date= field of a cite tag. On the wild assumption that only 2/3 of those are date= or accessdate= instances, that gets the number into a reasonable range.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. For the same reasons as other opposition. Lightmouse (talk) 13:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
• Come on… At least a couple of you “Support” editors ought to be taking me up on my challenge. If you can actually read four whole date and year articles, you can be the first recipient of your very own Sewer Cover Barnstar. Are there no takers? Greg L (talk) 03:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I looked at your four date articles. I'm sure it's not going to convince you, but they didnt seem that bad. Someone had gone through and organized them enough to make them interesting. They arent going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm not sure why you're so offended by them either. I suppose suggesting you just don't look at them won't help either. dm (talk) 23:43, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Dmadeo, when we, as editors, are deciding on whether or not to link a word or topic in an article we are writing, I would suggest setting the bar a bit higher than, “that didn’t seem so bad.” I might even be so bold as to suggest that we set the bar a bit higher so that in many cases, the reader’s reaction to seeing a blue link would be “Way cool… I didn’t expect they’d have an article on that too!” Greg L (talk) 00:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
      • With respect, I'd suggest setting the bar at whatever level makes you feel like contributing to articles. That level will be different for me and for anyone else, but thats fine. I encourage you to link however many words you'd like, as long as you dont mind when I do as well. dm (talk) 01:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. As illogical, fussy and confusing as when we decided after prolonged discussion not to autoformat, just a short while ago. 86.44.28.60 (talk) 18:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose as confusing, since the policy is now *not* to link dates without particularly compelling reasons. "saving some curious readers the trouble of typing a year/date into the 'seach' gizmo" just doesn't seem sufficiently compelling. Sssoul (talk) 17:22, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support linking years at least once. It is a powerful way to update and expand the year pages to use the 'what links here' button and see what pages refer to a particular year. Jcwf (talk) 00:23, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• I don't know if this has been mentioned above, but there is a very relevant CFD discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_September_30#Category:Deaths_by_age. Some people, who seem to be in the majority, want to create a series of categories, automatically generated, of Category:Deaths at age 28, Category:Deaths at age 29, and so on. Whether they need the links being discussed here I don't know. Johnbod (talk) 00:59, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't see the relevance. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Not needed, per very many above. Johnbod (talk) 00:59, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support (changed from oppose): I've changed my stance here because, while I frankly still can't see how linking of dates is useful, it is clear to me that there is a significant minority of editors who do find it useful. If it's useful enough for even a few editors, then it is something which we should be linking.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 04:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support the proposal. I find it useful. Deb (talk) 13:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Infobox templates

• BTW: up to this point it's 14 support and 13 oppose (if I counted right and ignoring any weak/partial distinctions). Sounds to me like there's no consensus either for or against this particular point. But it does point out that there is a large contigent of people who do want limited date linking, especially for something such as birthdates. As far as I know, lightbot is not unlinking the {{Birth date|yyyy|mm|dd}} and {{Death date and age|yyyy|mm|dd|yyyy|mm|dd}} templates, so perhaps we can say "In biographical articles, limited use of {{Birth date|yyyy|mm|dd}} and {{Death date and age|yyyy|mm|dd|yyyy|mm|dd}} may be helpful" dm (talk) 08:27, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong comment: What this tells me most clearly of all is that we have lots of !votes from incoming parties totally unaware of the rest of debate (over three years worth) and thus largely-to-totally unaware of the negative aspects of date autoformatting. As just one example among many, I doubt that more than a handful of them have considered the fact that around 40% of surveyed articles had inconsistent date formats in them. This is largely because editors assume that the autoformatting just "handles it", and forget that 99.99% of Wikipedia's users are IP address readers, not editors, with no date preferences to set, who are all seeing "3 July 1982" in one sentence and "August 7, 1983" in the next – all because autoformatting ensures that most editors themselves simply don't notice the difference. This is happening in nearly half of our articles. That alone is enough to end this debate right now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Do these templates render the dates in bright blue and have all of the disadvantages of the date autformatting system? Tony (talk) 08:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Don't you mean the *advantagees* of date autoformatting? - fchd (talk) 08:40, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Um, no, he meant disadvantages. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
  • One or other of the two "birth date" templates MUST be used in infoboxes, if the birth-date is to be included in the emitted hCard microformat. Whether or not they link those dates does not affect this; and can be set according to whatever is the final community consensus. One or other of the two "death date" templates will be needed, when the hCard spec is updated to include "death date".Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't have the expertise to understand this. What I can tell you is that it's great that many of the infobox templates have recently been modified so they don't augoformat the dates. Tony (talk) 10:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
      • In short: the templates are needed for technical purposes (related to metadata). It doesn't matter (for those purposes) whether they link the dates, or not. But people shouldn't be discouraged from using them, because of formatting, as not doing so will break one of the functions of the infoboxes in which they're used. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
        • For the record, these templates are currently not emitting links (since 1 September). Jheald (talk) 11:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
          • The birth and death date template age calculation may be wrong for a person who was born under the Julian calendar and died under the Gregorian calendar. They also provide no way to indicate what calendar was used for the dates. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:42, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
            • Those are valid concerns (and are being discussed elsewhere, I believe) but are unconnected to the issue of linking; also, such cases seem to be vastly in the minority. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
              • Not being a template programmer, I don't know if the concern can be fixed. I am reluctant to recommend a template that cannot fulfil its intended purpose, and might not be repairable. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:07, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
                • Forgive me for jumping in here, but can you explain something in simple terms to me? What is the purpose of the metadata, and the parsing thereof? I have seen countless mentions on this talk page that if dates were linked, such as birth and death, the collection of metadata would be made easier (am I right here - even if this can be achieved through plain text). This maybe the case, and several editors above wish it to be so, but I don't understand why. Maybe this issue isn't relavent here, but could somebody humour me. Dates should/would/could/may (whatever) be linked to allow for the easy collection of metadata. But why? (I'm not criticising metadata, or those who use it - I just don't understand it's purpose.) In anycase, for birth/death dates, is that not what {{persondata}} is for?–MDCollins (talk) 21:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
                  • It should be possible to generate a list of every biographical article on Wikipedia, along with the biographical data (where known). To do that, you generally need mature and comprehensive metadata coverage. Unfortunately, the maintenance of metadata on Wikipedia (en-Wikipedia at any rate) lags severely behind the rate of article creation (persondata, as you say, is one of the places where metadata should be placed, but as there are other places as well, such as the hcard format Andy mentioned above, and since persondata is used in only a small fraction of articles, there are problems). Wikilinks are sometimes analysed as a form of metadata, and certainly a mature and well-developed system of date markup would allow for applications. Geographical co-ordinates are given in a standard way - maybe dates should be as well. It is possible to go too far with this, though, since Wikipedia is primarily an encyclopedia, not a database (yes, I know the underlying software uses database tables, but I'm talking about the content here). It's a question of getting the balance right. I'm perfectly happy for dates and years to be mostly delinked (with a few exceptions), but the metadata concerns also need to be addressed. Carcharoth (talk) 23:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
    • No one was talking about removing those templates, anyway. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
• Greg's sewer cover: actually, it's a damn classy pic, and worth visiting just for that. Did you pay a professional photographer to visit, Greg? <smile> Tony (talk) 06:03, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks Tony. I indeed lucked out with the lighting. There were three sewer covers to choose from when I went outside: one was completely in the shade, another was completely in the sun, and the one I settled on was half-covered in shade (from a pine tree). While taking the picture, I could see that the partial shade gave it a bit of *something* one doesn’t get from the standard “all-sun” lighting typically used for this subject. Three minutes later, and it would have been completely in the shade too. Although I rotated the image a half degree in Photoshop to get the word “SEWER” perfectly aligned, I pretty much blew that picture out my butt as an example of ultra-trivia. Funny: only two hours after I posted it in my essay, Carcharoth added it to Sanitary sewer. Greg L (talk) 21:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Well, it got added to the sewer article because it was a good picture (the composition, mainly the visual symmetry, is excellent). If it had been a poor-quality picture, I probably wouldn't have bothered. I think the fact that you made the effort to sweep the pine needles off the cover was also helpful and made the picture better than it would have been with pine needles on it. Some photographers I know would have missed that trick. Hmm. It's depressing how poor our composition (visual arts) article is. It covers some bits well and totally fails in other areas. Carcharoth (talk) 21:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
      • You could eat eggs off that sewer cover, to use a favourite phrase of a long-deceased aunt. I envisage an army of city employees continually buffing and polishing with motorised machines. Have you alerted Category:Sewer Cover to the existence of the pic? Tony (talk) 00:32, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Please re-markup dates

It doesn't have to be as links, but leaving dates in the wikicode as "plain text" makes life extremely hard for any automated parsing of those; plain text should be plain text, and dates are, I think, still being reformatted.

Seriously, this is, IMHO, an incredibly wrong thing to do: plain text should be passed through unchanged all the way to HTML; only marked-up section are changed. Plain-text-like dates just don't fit nicely into that: the markup isn't recognisable, it's unclear what the effect of <nowiki> would be, and we lose a lot of those links that are most useful, to me, at least, in parsing articles.

Can we please find some way of leaving in that useful information? I'm sure a date-matching regexp would run into things that look like dates but aren't meant as such quite often. Template syntax would work, and the main criticism of the Blue Sea would be avoided by, uh, not colouring date links blue. 5-minute change to the code, avoid millions of changes to the articles?

RandomP (talk) 20:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the concept of a "5 minute change to the code". Quick and dirty code changes are what got us into this mess to begin with. I think proper date markup would include the following elements:

• The ability to set defaults by article, for example,
  • All dates in a certain article are AD but "AD" is not to be displayed
  • Any date after 14 September 1582 in a certain article are Gregorian, earlier dates are Julian.
  • For a certain article, dates are displayed in the format day-month-year.
• The ability to override the article defaults for a particular date.

It seems to me that when half-baked "solutions" are implemented, people go off and write software that depends on the "solution", that software gets garbage as input, and produces garbage as output. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A template solution works, save for having a single point where the date format can be set in an article, though this can be easily changed by a regex tool (AWB). The only qualification is that the Gregorian/Julian date issue cannot be handled without major template programming; we need to make sure that dates, when entered, followed the above requirement. --MASEM 22:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I would support (and use) a proper date markup system (for the metadata as RandomP says), but I'm unclear why article defaults are needed. The most editors will want to do is either explain what the date is in plain text (ie. write "Julian" or "Gregorian" or "AD" or "BC" somewhere) or use a date template. New editors will invariably use plain text and any date markup system needs to be simple to use, otherwise people just won't use it, or will be discouraged from editing. Article defaults sounds like an extra option that might just make the system a bit less usable for some. Articles that use both Gregorian and Julian dates could have a standard template warning that the article uses both Gregorian and Julian dates. I'm presuming here that the Gregorian/Julian date issue only affects a small proportion of articles, though still a large absolute number. Also, there are more date systems that just the BC/AD and Julian/Gregorian ones - any date markup system would have to incorporate those. Someone mentioned an ISO standard above - would it not make sense to pick a an up-to-date standard and work with that? Carcharoth (talk) 04:31, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If there are no article defaults, then there must be encyclopedia-wide defaults. In the absence of any defaults, then we must specify everything for every date, and the markup for today might look like {{adate|2008|9|30|AD|disp-era=n|cal=g|fmt=dmy}} which is too much typing.

Also, since we have no effective mechanism to reach an agreement with our readers to use years before 1583, we cannot use ISO 8601 for any year before 1583 or after 9999. Even if we could reach such an agreement, we would always have to use the Gregorian calendar with that standard. That being the case, I have more use for a pile of horse manure than I do for ISO 8601 dates. (This statement is the literal truth.) --Gerry Ashton (talk) 05:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I would like to support keeping date markup as well. From the discussions above and elsewhere it's clear that no consensus for conversion to plain text exists. Perhaps not enough time was given in the poll, or perhaps not a broad enough audience was sought, or perhaps polling doesn't work in the first place, I don't know, but I think the version as it stands now is controversial to begin with and will make changing over to specific date formatting in future MediaWiki versions as well as manipulating dates from user scripts significantly harder. It also ignores the reader's date format preference, even when specifically set, forcing the editor's preference down the reader's throat. Shinobu (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I try to stay out of these continued repetitive debates about date linking out of concern for my sanity, but I can't help feeling what's being proposed is not very good solutions to non-existent problems. Parsers ought to be able to recognise dates when they see them to at least the accuracy you can ever achieve by extracting anything from WP. Primarily WP is written by humans for humans, and we shouldn't be making extra work for editors and complications for readers in order to make some theoretical parsers work better. It would be more helpful for automatic text analysis to write other types of information in a standard way - something like {{capitalof|Paris|France}} would generate "Paris is the capital of France" - but that's clearly not going to happen, and nor should we adopt a similar unnatural policy with regard to dates. Let people type what they want readers to read - with links if there's some real reason for those links, but usually there isn't - and worry about more important things.--Kotniski (talk) 13:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

First off, the parsers aren't theoretical: I have one. Second, we already do have the information you gave as an example (Paris being the capital of France) in an easily-extractable format: templates.

Most importantly, though, if you let "humans" write dates in the variety of formats they use in plain text, you end up with an unrecognisable and unusable mess. There simply is no option of not having a standard form for English dates, because the most common standard forms, month/day and day/month, are often ambiguous. If we're going to have a standard form, why not throw in template markup to make people realise they're writing in a restricted syntax?

RandomP (talk) 14:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

How are "30 September 2008" and "September 30, 2008" ambiguous? It's not like we're advocating numeric dates, we spell out the month. -- Jao (talk) 19:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If I may summarise:

1. clearly, no consensus exists for ripping out all date markup the way bots currently are doing
2. even Wikipedia software, in expanding ~~~~, generates dates that are not of the form the mythical perfect parser would have to recognise
3. that parser would have to know the names of the months at least in English (including the common English word "may", the name "april", the somewhat common word "march", and the occasionally-used adjective "august")
4. the parser would have to guess whether numbers are year numbers or not, including small numbers. ([[70]] appears surprisingly often in historical articles, for example, and is probably currently being changed to an unrecognisable instance of "70").
5. as evidenced by ~~~~ expansion above, the parser would also have to detect incorrect date formats: those are already quite common, even with redlinks to highlight them. Without redlinks, I see very little to stop a free-for-all as far as date formatting is concerned.
6. year links are actually useful in some instances: 70, 1066, 1453, 1945, September 11 are all occasionally used as shorthand for the event they are identified with. Changing those exceptionally-useful links to plain text that the reader can't even click on, in the standard WP reaction of "this is a term I don't understand, and it's blue, so I'll click it to find out what it means", seems problematic to me.

I propose a solution that's about as simple as it gets for users: [[April 25]], [[2009]] should become {{April 25, 2009}}, a template which usually expands to "April 25, 2009" without any highlighting. No loss of information in wikicode, a couple of thousand template pages would have to be created, we retain warnings for incorrect date formats, and it'll remain relatively easy to extract metadata, either by CSS/JS or by an automated parser. Furthermore, I suggest that ~~~~ start using that template as well.

Dates are not plain text: depending on dialect, at least one of the numbers in them is usually read differently from the standard reading of that number, for example, and many speakers find it more natural to reverse order as well. While the things you can do with a date in an encyclopaedia are somewhat limited, wikicode should be universal: universal for all languages (so "May" shouldn't be a magic word that triggers the parser into attempting to identify it as a date), but also universal for what it's used for: a business wiki used for scheduling meetings would probably want to use dates as metadata quite extensively.

Quotes are going to contain unusual date formats in English and unrecognisable ones in other languages: not having any way at all to mark those up seems an unnecessary loss. Usage examples themselves are another source of strings that would look like dates but aren't meant as such.

Lastly, maybe it's worth remembering that it was the change from implicit, plaintext-like links (based on capitalisation) to explicit marked-up links that allowed Wikipedia to become readable, multilingual, and successful. Going the other way for no better reason than "we find it too difficult to assign a subtle link class to links to very-frequently-linked-to articles and there's too much blue on my screen" seems rather ill-advised to me.

RandomP (talk) 14:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Quite - The counter-suggestions seem to do nothing but make the wiki less useful for purely abitrary style reasons or to provide new ways to obfuscate the dates so badly that I was, prior to your post, about to propose that we date everything prior to 1970 in negative Unix time. Please don't, though. Please? MrZaius^talk 15:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

After reading the above, and going back through the various proposals and what seems like a very weak consensus, I'd now be in favour of restoring the auto-formatting of dates (via the user's preferences), and by association, the linking of date/month and year pairs. - fchd (talk) 18:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me also say that going back to the status quo ante is perfectly okay with me. Auto-format dates, including making them black rather than blue if that's what the user wants. But there is no strongly-defended consensus for what is currently happening, at least in this thread, so far. RandomP (talk) 19:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think basically because most people have got fed up talking about this over and over and over again, so the only people left are those with an axe to grind or who missed the previous (very extensive) discussions. Autoformatting never worked and will never work for the vast majority of our readership, and can hardly be said to provide any significant benefit to those who used it, so it should be ignored as a red herring. If you type linked dates in the old autoformatted style but then ask the software not to link them, it means editors are prevented from linking dates in those less usual instances when they might wish to. OK if you really think it will be useful you can make a date template as has been suggested already, something like {{d|2001|9|11}} with an extra optional parameter for format, and then existing autoformat-linked dates could be converted to that. But asking human editors to use such unnatural constructions when they can perfectly well just write out dates directly seems entirely unreasonable. Parsers ought to be able to pick up dates anyway with a very low error rate (the occasional phrase like "On December 1, 2008 peeople were killed"; but considering the density of factual errors already present in WP the significance of that kind of thing must be negligible).--Kotniski (talk) 09:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

My guess is most people haven't heard about the change. It's a huge and radical change, affecting more than 10% of links in my "core" set. If you want radical change, but don't feel strongly enough to defend it a couple of days after people hear about it first, that's probably a very good indication you shouldn't go ahead with it.

We're not asking human editors to change what they're used to: we're sending out bots to go over the markup human editors already put in, removing it, rendering dates hardly-recognisable plaintext.

It's interesting how you appear to be simultaneously saying that dates should be "natural", which I take to mean "in natural language", and easily picked out by parsers. Sorry, but parsing natural language is hard. For a start, it requires you to know the language you're parsing, while my parser is currently perfectly fine all by itself looking at the French Wikipedia, and I can never remember what they call February ...

"Existing" date links cannot be converted to anything anymore, because many of them have already been destroyed. If your point is that "most people" were aware of that, shouldn't it surprise you that you just implied it hadn't happened? If you weren't aware of the bot-assisted markup deletion, clearly it wasn't discussed enough.

Have a look at articles relating to 1st-century history: a lot of numbers occur with no context whatsoever to identify them easily as years, and are now lost. That that's a relatively small proportion of date links makes it less bad, but what makes it worse is that it's also a systematically biased subset. I see no way to distinguish "2000" as a common product name component in the 1990s, "year 2000" as a date reference, and "year 2000" as part of a phrase relating, say, to the Y2K problem.

It's not an easy problem to solve with a parser. It's an easy problem to catch, maybe, 80% of links, which still means I'd have to spend several days looking at numbers in my data set and deciding whether they're years to get back to the quality of information I have with year links.

RandomP (talk) 10:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a few points:

1. With the {{April 25, 2009}} solution, are you suggesting that we create these templates separately for all dates in history (and future) about which something can conceivably be known? (We also need a line of {{25 April 2009}} templates.) I'm not saying it can't be done or will cause problems, just pointing out that that's not a couple of thousand templates, but more like a couple of million. Would we also want {{April 2009}} and {{2009}}? What if an editor is writing a plot synopsis for a novel that takes place on April 25, 6009, and nobody had anticipated that? Should that editor create that template?
2. If the markup is invisible to editors (which, for better or worse, are human), then how will we know which dates are correctly marked and which ones need to be fixed?
3. "even Wikipedia software, in expanding ~~~~, generates dates that are not of the form the mythical perfect parser would have to recognise", I don't understand? If the parser were capable of recognizing non-marked dates, why shouldn't it recognise "30 September 2008" as a date? That's as regular as it gets.
4. "year links are actually useful in some instances: 70, 1066, 1453, 1945, September 11 are all occasionally used as shorthand for the event they are identified with", this I definitely agree with, and nobody is suggesting the delinking of these. True though, sometimes mass delinking cathes too much, and that is a problem.

Also, could you tell us a little more about how you are using your parser? I understand that this proposal is not about that specific example, but a real example of how automatic date detection is useful to a real person would probably make us understand your points better. -- Jao (talk) 19:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If you are just parsing articles for birth and death dates, that's what the {{persondata}} template is for. What other need do you have for "automated parsing" of dates? Kaldari (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think he is parsing articles for more than just birth and death dates. As for persondata, that is currently used on between 25,000 and 30,000 articles, which is only a small fraction of the biographical articles (though hopefully it is used on the more "notable" articles). Looking here, we see that there are 542,884 articles with the {{WPBiography}} template (though that does, for historical reasons, include music groups and other 'group' biography articles). Using the handy category totals (remember that these include the odd template or Wikipedia namespace pages), we see that Category:Living people has 306,001 articles, Category:Biography articles without listas parameter (an approximate equivalent, assuming people keep the listas and DEFAULTSORT parameters usage synchronised [a big if], to the number of articles lacking DEFAULTSORT) has 332,367 articles (if someone can tell directly how many biographical articles lack DEFAULTSORT, that would be great, but I've tried asking and no-one seems to know how to do this). Unfortunately, it is not possible to do the same calculations for Category:Deaths by year and Category:Births by year because the articles are split up. If anyone could provide a total figure for how many articles have birth and death categories on them that would be wonderful. Ultimately, this would lead to a list of those biographical articles lacking birth and death categories. It's a lot of number/list/category-crunching , but would almost certainly produce something as useful as delinking or linking birth or death years. Is Lightmouse reading this? Could his bot be used to do this, or should I do a separate bot request? [I'll leave a note on his talk page anyway - done]. Carcharoth (talk) 23:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notes. You are right that the ~~~~ date format is indeed listed as a correct date format now; on the one hand, that invalidates my point about even that getting it wrong. On the other hand, that makes parsing, again, even harder.

I've done a number of things that I've used year links for; let me stay with a simple example, which was simply to select a list of "core" articles in order of core-i-ness, if you will, select the years, and see how they're distributed: this worked because core-i-ness, as it happened, used links. That experiment surprised me, in that 70 showed up way before some years even, if I recall correctly, in the 17th or 18th century.

With the rules as currently written on the project page (but not yet implemented widely), that experiment would just fail. In fact, it's extremely likely a parser would treat a lone appearance of "70" as a reference to a year at all, because it's such a small number; indeed, I probably wouldn't even have thought of that, and missed the surprise.

I realise that my personal little experiments are hardly an incredibly strong argument; but then, is "I don't like to see too much blue" one? Furthermore, shouldn't it count for something that changing the colour of links to dates is a simple exercise in javascript, would solve what appears to be the main (visual) argument against date-linking; while, if date linking is abolished, I need to teach my parser to dig into plain text, learn the English (and French, and German, and Italian, ad infinitum) rules for date formatting, and still lose out on corner cases.

I did not want the markup to be invisible to editors. In fact, as I've said before, I think it's extremely valuable in that someone just hitting "edit this page" gets a good demonstration of what a wikilink is: a standard term which there is more information about, such as a year number, enclosed in [[]].

And, indeed, it doesn't really count for much that some very few date links are still available (for a while, at least, until the plaintext nature of the new-style dates leads to editors using just any date format, including ambiguous and unparsable ones) through templates. I'm in no way restricted to birth/death dates.

RandomP (talk) 10:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I could add that I'm tiring of fixing the syntax errors in date autoformatting: they are plentiful, and solved during my date audits. Tony (talk) 10:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(reply to Random after ec) I'm not sure I understand all your points (but "I don't like to see to much blue" is a strong argument when it's the long-held opinion of the Wikipedia community at large - see WP:OVERLINK and various ancient discussions on that topic). However the recent change in the guidelines about linking related only to day-month or day-month year dates, not to solitary years, which have long been subject to delinking anyway (by hand or by bot). I appreciate it's hard to pick out a solitary 70 as a year, but in the context that concerns us here, namely 1 June 70 or June 1, 70, it ought to be much easier. In any case, Wikipedia isn't written for parsers, and dates are in no way a special case of information that could be made more parsable if marked up by hand.--Kotniski (talk) 10:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Re invisible to editors: if it doesn't show in the HTML, it will be invisible to editors. Granted, if an editor spots something else to change in an article, he will click "edit this page" and then he might see date markup problems, but that's a big "if" and a big "might". That's exactly how raw date formats were invisible to editors when most dates were autoformatted and most(?) editors had a preference set. -- Jao (talk) 15:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

All that the presence of a date in an article tells you is that something (could be anything) related (in any possible way) to the subject of the article happened on that date. That's pretty low-value metadata, definitely not worth marking up all dates just for that. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Let me summarise again: Please re-markup dates. It doesn't have to be as blue links, a template (such as fixing Template:Date is fine). Structured dates are parsable, and while some people think they're of low value, others (or "other", if it's just me) think they are of significant interest. There is no strong consensus for, as is currently happening, removing markup that adds value, losing information and prohibiting editors from adding markup or templates that add value, which would add information.

I'm perfectly okay with a policy that says you don't need to bother marking-up dates that you add to an article; someone else, who cares, will eventually be along to do it.

However, unstructured dates also lead people to think that just any date format is okay. This might be part of the reason that ambiguous dates are being added to Wikipedia (I didn't go out looking for that one, just stumbled over it because the template also isn't closed).

Don't want them blue? okay, let's make that the template's default behaviour. Want them blue and automatic weekday calculation? Write a little javascript.

But let's keep useful (even marginally useful, if you wish) information in the wikicode, even if it doesn't show up in the HTML. Let's stop bots from removing useful information for superficial reasons.

At this point, it's not even clear to me whether the bots are still removing markup, or have finished doing so, or what. If you're going to radically change Wikipedia by removing every tenth link, wouldn't it make sense to at least provide updates about how that's going on the talk page of the policy that was changed?

RandomP (talk) 20:58, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

RandomP, just go ahead and revert any of these changes you disagree with. The people currently unlinking dates have no authority to do so, and there certainly isn't consensus for their actions. Your preference to keep them (which several others share, including me) is just as valid. --UC_Bill (talk) 20:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment: replacing linked dates with templated dates would be fine with me, although I don't think creating a separate template for every date is practical. However, a template that takes a date as an argument that gives something like <span class=date>...</span> would work, don't you think? That still allows people to change their date format (if ambiguous formats are properly tagged) or even link them using a user script or gadget. Alternatively, we could do something like {{October|3|2008}}, that looks sort of normal, whatever that is, and only requires twelve templates. Even a more logical format like {{3|October|2008}} would be possible, the number templates don't do anything useful anyway, except {{24}} which would have to be renamed. But all in all I still think a single template would be more practical. Shinobu (talk) 01:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

WP:Update

Quick questions to help me finish WP:Update.

• this page used to say to add an &nbsp; on the left of an en-dash; now it says to do it only if "necessary for comprehension". WP:MOS says not to do it, so one or the other should change. When is it necessary for comprehension, and can't we just write the devs asking them to break lines in front of en-dashes? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • My view is that we should put in a hardspace only if the line does break and someone finds the line beginning with endash hard to follow. One point here is that the line will rarely break before the dash; normally the dash and space will fit on the higher line. If somebody sees a given break as a problem, then we should clarify. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Um, we can't actually determine if the line does break, since that is dependent upon monitor resolution, font size, window width, and (notably) browser behavior. The only case where we could be absolutely certain is when some form of no-wrap code ({{nowrap}} or manual coding) is applied around the passage in question. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Dan: Frankly, I don't really care either way, but MOS trumps sub-MOS pages, so go with what MOS says unless/until it says something different. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• Can someone summarize where the IEC prefix debate is and whether it's likely to change? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

As to you second bullet: There is no active debate that I am aware of (although, your question and my response may change all that). Editors shall not use the IEC prefixes—kibibytes (KiB) and mebibits (Mibit or Mib)—to routinely denote the capacity of computer storage. The only exception is for articles that directly discus the IEC prefixes, in which case, they may be used as examples to illustrate the concept. As to whether this policy is likely to change: When the rest of the computing world sees the wisdom of the IEC prefixes and adopts the IEC’s proposal, then most computing magazines will start using them. That’s when Wikipedia should follow suit. Greg L (talk) 23:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much, Greg. I dreaded trying to sort out the changes for the monthly update. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(For once lately) I completely concur with Greg L on this one. I understand the rationales of the IEC-promoters, and even side with them from a standards advocacy position off WP, but this is a WP:SOAPBOX issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with Anderson: where a spaced en dash occurs towards the start of the first line of a paragraph, it's pointless inserting a hard-space. I don't think hanging dashes are major problem, in any case. Tony (talk) 04:59, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

A very special case

I've been editing WP for 5 years, with a lot of attention to bios, and never thought about this until the last 24 hours. DYK that WP has a Dab Francis, Dauphin of France? Would you have imagined that for half of the individuals appearing there, his YoB and YoD are equal? (I hasten to defend the notability some such people: being heirs to a throne, their birth may be the abatement of an ongoing political crisis, and if even if their death is not the resumption of such a crisis, it may be the beginning of a crisis of confidence, by focusing attention on monarchies' perpetual question of succession.)
I have found two approaches to stating such people's vital stats in use:

1. The year (or full date) stated once, as (1466) in the abovementioned Dab.
2. "Born and died", as (born and died 1466) for that François's father's bio

   and imagined two more:

3. The same year (or month or full date) stated twice, as (1466-1466)
4. "Died in infancy", as (died in infancy, 1466)

All of them bear the burden of being so rarely needed, as to require at least a bit of head-scratching.
I don't like any but 2: In option 1, that extra thought may run

Is that YoB? No, that'd be '(born 1466)'; well then ... no, the same logic rules out YoD; i guess i can't make any sense of it other than 'born and died in 1466'. Hmm ... or an accidental erasure... of which year?".

In option 3, it's

"1466-1466"? That's not a range of years; you'd never say "lived from 1466 to 1466". Is it a slip of the keyboard, getting confused and copy-and-pasting the same year twice instead of one each? ... And if so, did he die, or get born in that year?

In option 4, (altho based on the 1st meaning in the dictionary, infancy does end at the first birthday),

OK, died after a week or so in 1466, ... but maybe born 1465 and died 6 months later in 1466? Wait, when does infancy end, could he have been born in 1464 or 1465 and died in 1466 at the age of 18 months?

Of course even option 2 is a little bit annoying, with a third of your attention perhaps on "who felt the need to accompany the date with words and quadruple its length?"
So i propose this approach (but not this language):

Where it makes sense to mention two distinguishable dates, everything takes care of itself, e.g., May - June 23, 1492
Avoid confusion in the following situations with the corresponding formats:

1. Only the year in which both birth and death occurred is known, or the context does not call for providing a specific day of that year -- use, e.g., "(born and died 1492)".
2. The year and month in which both birth and death occurred is known, more detail than the year is desirable, but neither the day of birth nor that of death is known -- use, e.g., "(born and died May 1492)".
3. The day on which both birth and death occurred is known, and the context calls for more detail than the year -- use, e.g., "(born and died May 19, 1492)".

The actual language i contemplate is:

In rare cases, someone dying in infancy is notable enough for vital-stats information to appear, but no sentence or clause devoted to vital stats is called for. The combination of the precision of what is known, and the amount of detail that the context makes desirable, may indicate mention of two dates; otherwise, one of the following formats is likely to cause less confusion than any alternative:

1. (born and died 1492)
2. (born and died May 1492)
3. (born and died May 19 1492)

--Jerzy•t 23:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This is much longer than the other bullet points in the relevant section. Is there some reason we can't leave this special case to IAR? Or, perhsps say: if the date of birth and death are the same, only one has to be stated, with one to three of the above examples? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I find the ‘born and died’ formula clearest. When this is not possible, perhaps ‘born 12 March 456, died 7 August later that year’ (or ‘in that/the same year’ can be used. Shinobu (talk) 01:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

WP:DATED merge

Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly has no reason to exist as a standalone mini-guideline. It is about nothing but date-related issues. It can be significantly compressed and simply merged into WP:MOSNUM. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. Thanks for identifying this, Stanton. Have you posted a tag? Tony (talk) 05:03, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - yes he has. Johnbod (talk) 10:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 11:29, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

But the redirects, as a section link, should be retained. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Er, that page is long out-of-date. The most current page seems to be Wikipedia:As of (which states that links such as As of 1990 are deprecated) and the current set-up can be seen at Template:As of (which has been set-up that way since July 2008), which outputs plain text and puts pages into a hidden category (the change in software that allowed this previously controversial issue to be revisited). See also Wikipedia:Updating information, which also seems in need of merging. But please don't merge stuff too quickly without finding out what has been done and what is linking to where. See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Congregation Beth Elohim for an example of where confusion and misunderstandings occurred over this. I know merging will help avoid future confusion, but let's not add to the confusion either. I think Wikipedia:MOSDATE#Precise language is the section that people want to merge to. I pointed this out to User:Ikara, who posted a link to the July 2008 village pump discussion. I will point them here as well. Carcharoth (talk) 20:27, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I also found Template:Update after and Template:Update and Template:Out of date. It is rather a sprawling system, so any merge will have to do a lot of updating to make sure we are not introducing inconsistency across pages. Carcharoth (talk) 20:30, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, this was my next plan of action after the WP:As of update two months ago, and it looks like someone got to it before I did. I fully support merging WP:DATED into another project, it is not particularly substantial by itself, and since the update half of it is wrong anyway. However I propose merging to a new, more detailed "Precise language" section within WP:As of, especially as the relevant section in WP:MOSNUM points editors to that page already. The technique discussed on WP:As of relies on precise language, and situations requiring precise language usually warrant the implementation of the "As of" technique, so it is a good target candidate for the merge. WP:As of could then be treated as a sub-project or see-also for the current "Precise language" section of MOSNUM. WP:Updating information is less relevant to precise language or WP:As of, but may be a potential merge candidate at a later date. If there is any reason not to merge to WP:As of, I still support merging DATED into MOSNUM as proposed above – Ikara ^talk → 22:34, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

What is going on here w/r/t linked dates?

Came here from the autoformatting subsection, where I left some comments, only to find that the apparent "consensus" behind altering the date/year linking policy is only Tony's cherry-picked talk page (in short, it strawmans his opposition; downplays the opposition clear on the subsection page and here; and blames date linking for errors caused by autoformatting, which are far more efficiently solved by removing preference autoformatting if it's a legitimate problem.) Has the only vote so far been about British v American date formatting?

What gives? Is there really no consensus? And if so, why is the policy changing and why are bots being developed to auto"correct" existing pages? -LlywelynII (talk) 22:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I second this, and have argued with Lightbot's owner about this before. Linking dates allows readers to use "what links here" on dates to find out what occurred on that date, and lets readers quickly see concurrent events worldwide for a given article's scope. This bot shouldn't be running until there's consensus. If the changes aren't noticed right away, it can be a real pain to undo it's efforts. -- Kendrick7^talk 18:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Autoformatting of dates is a pile of crap. It has been extensively debated for months. If Tony has a talk page that you don't think is convincing, that is a straw-man argument. Whether Tony's talk page is convinding or not, the concensus to not autoformat dates exists. Just read the talk page archives for this guideline. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:46, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I do not agree with not linking the dates either and I would like to point out that the consensus was reached only after the 3rd or forth time of being no consensus.--Kumioko (talk) 19:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

About using "What links here" to find out what happened on a date: With autoformatting, "What links here" will pick up every reference published or accessed on that date, making it impossible to use autoformatting to find articles related to specific dates. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:45, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

That really only applies to dates from the 20th century on, maybe the 19th. There's no reason for this bot to be running around delinking dates from the fourth century, etc. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

"What links here" on 5 October 427 can only show you links to "5 October" or "427", it can't show you links to "5 October 427" specifically. All the centuries are mixed together, making it very difficult to use linking to find events that happened on a specific date. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 22:17, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

You can get pages mentioning 5 October 427 from the intersection of sets of "what links here". Gimmetrow 03:46, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

From 5 October 419 through 7 November 427 .... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Your point? You could get every article linking to any date in any range by getting every article lining to every date in the range. Gimmetrow 04:11, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Arthur's point is that if you take the intersection of what links to October 5 and what links to 427, you'll include an article containing that text: "From 5 October 419 through 7 November 427", although it has absolutely nothing to do with 5 October 427. -- Jao (talk) 18:06, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The intersection may include other articles, but it will include every article you want. Gimmetrow 18:20, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I know that, Remember. Still: a reader might want to know what else was occurring in 427 so they can get a wider historical context to the article they are reading, and linking it let's them do that in one click. Why is that such a terrible thing? -- Kendrick7^talk 20:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with depreciating autoformatting. The question is w/r/t linked dates, particularly years. That seems very much not approved by consensus. Tony's arguments regarding "high value links" are rather silly. People may only click a few links upon visiting a page, but they don't click any of them by accident. If they click through the date, it's because they want context. More often, no one will click the dates, but it's useful information for those improving or examining year pages.

It boils down to reducing Wiki's information and functionality for aesthetics; personally, I'm against that. -LlywelynII (talk) 13:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

The old version of this manual used to encourage everyone to wikilink every single date. Your attempt to edit the manual can easily be interpreted as "go ahead and go back to the old policy of editing every single date, if that is your preference". This approach has been clearly rejected and your edit should not be allowed to stand. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:21, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Plus the old policy was to only wikilink all full dates, which was done for the sake of autoformatting. For sole years, or month-year, the policy has always been to wikilink only when called for by WP:CONTEXT; thus, there has never been any consensus to wikilink all dates for the sake of linking. I'm not saying consensus can't change, just pointing out in what direction it would have to change, as many seem to be unaware of that. -- Jao (talk) 22:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

There's still no consensus that all year links should be removed, so Lightbot should be decertified as a bot, and those who unlink all dates using AWB or other automated systems, without checking each link for applicability, should be decertified for use of automated tools (after a warning). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I second that removal of years has not been shown to be approved by concensus and decertifying Lightbot is an excellent idea, although I don't know where to go about saying so. Feel free to link to my support from the appropriate page. -LlywelynII (talk) 13:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree that Lightbot should be decertified and anyone de-linking dates en masse should stop. --UC_Bill (talk) 14:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

And another agree here. Under the current discussion, Lightbot is well out of order. - fchd (talk) 16:00, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• First, this argument that year links are necessary for the editors of year pages to orient themselves—to find leads to appropriate information to include on these pages, is utterly bogus. Has anyone heard of the search box? If you need to rely on WP itself rather than outside sources for your stimulus, just type in a year. Second, can someone point to the consensus for linking years in the first place? Tony (talk) 16:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• There is no requirement to find consensus to allow for the linking of years and dates. Consensus would be required to enforce either always linking them (which no one is suggesting) or never linking them (which is what Lightbot is enforcing). There is no demonstrable consensus that these links must be removed, and given the concerns that continue to be raised it's continued use to remove all linked years is disruptive. Shereth 16:15, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• Granted I may be paranoid that my keyboard will break but I don't like the idea that a subset of articles should be reachable only via the search box. — CharlotteWebb 16:16, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• I realize that you think that these links should not exist. However, I think it is clear that there is no consensus for these mass edits. Please see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters_2#Fait_accompli for why you should not being making these sorts of edits on a large scale without forming a consensus first. It feels like you're just trying to wear all of the opposition down by refusing to acknolwedge it and simply persist in making the edits until it's the status quo. -Chunky Rice (talk) 16:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• This, I think, is what has me worried about this entire approach, and the Fait accompli from that ARbCom is exactly right. I've been watching the debate, and I completely understand and agree with the point of delinking dates and all that. However, this last step, completely depreciating date linking, was brought to the community (across many boards, appropriately), but only a 7 day period elapsed with maybe.. 20-odd editors responding during that time, and suddenly it was "consensus". I am not saying the consensus isn't there for this change, but clearly there needs to be more discussion of the issue. The matter should have been brought up via an RFC or a watchlist-details notice or some other means to invite a much larger discussion; this might have prompted different solutions (maybe the MediaWiki devs would have been kicked into gear to give us a usable autoformatting solution, but there have been other practical solutions such as templates as well after this change was made that seemed to have support) The end result would have likely been the same, but personally a result I would be more comfortable with it once a much larger discussion was made given the wide impact date linking has on WP. --MASEM 17:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. Watchlist notification was discussed on 10 September but nothing was done. RFC was suggested on 13 September but it all seemed to get confused (Greg opposed RFC for a reason that seems to be of a personal nature, although he himself always said he wanted a larger input, did I get that right...?) and nothing was done there. No idea why, really. Of course, Tony's arguments have been visible in quite a few places, not only on MOSNUM, but still most people must have missed it (which would have been the case after an RFC or VP announcement as well, I'm sure; watchlist notification would reach more people). -- Jao (talk) 18:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• I can't fault Tony on trying to spam (in a good way) as much as possible to get the word out, but the spamming was never really to a point of requesting input in a typical RFC fashion; I know when it was posted to WP:VG, it was more confusion on the point as opposed to any discussion. --MASEM 18:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, Tony, if you only want year articles to be accessible via the search box, and not through links, the natural conclusion is that that should be the default for all links. - fchd (talk) 17:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between links that pass WP:CONTEXT and links that don't. We write "A demo version was released via download on May 1, 1999" and "the game received positive reviews from gaming websites" (examples from today's featured article), and nobody complains that the reader who suddenly feels an urge to read more about downloads, reviews or websites has to type those words in the search box. Why would a reader be more likely to wish to visit May 1 or 1999 than any of those three? -- Jao (talk) 18:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

For me it comes down to whether the year is "within living memory" or not. 1999 is within living memory, whereas an article dealing with events 70+ years ago is not, because a reader is increasingly unlikely already know the historical context of the article's subject or to have learned it from elders over the course of their lifetimes, and increasingly likely to need to know to really understand the article the further back in time we go. -- Kendrick7^talk

I'd like to point out a fundamental difference between linking years and linking other terms. After a short time, everyone gets to know that we have articles on most years. This is not so with other terms, such as dummy load. So linking some terms serves to alert readers that an article is available on a topic, when it isn't obvious this is the case.

I advocate using infoboxes or templates for significant dates, and I don't mind if the years are linked within those infoboxes or templates. I also don't mind having the first instance of a year linked in an article, if the year is significant. Obviously years that are present in the reference list are seldom significant.

As for the degree of scrutiny needed before using a semiautomatic tool to delink the dates in an article, I believe a person should skim the article and get a sense of the state of the dates in the article. The use of a semiautomatic tool is justified when there are a number of inconsistent date formats in the article, or when nearly all the dates are linked. The use of a semiautomatic tool is not justified when the dates are in a consistent format and only a few dates are linked. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Lightbot paused

I have paused User:Lightbot (at least if it behaves according to the instructions) per the above concerns. I would like to see some sort of consensus here that the task of de-linking dates has any kind of consensus prior to resuming the bot's work. Thanks, Shereth 16:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• I can’t profess to be unbiased on this issue. I think linking to material that is unrelated to an article is unwise. I’ve written an essay on the matter (here) and expanded on that essay here on my talk page.

  Evidence for a consensus is unclear at this point. The above poll and discussion showed opinion was about evenly split (17 to 15) to no longer link the dates of births. I also believe there has been a developing consensus lately that the linking of calendar days (like March 12) is worse than linking years. Linked years is more of a grey area since there are more circumstances (like history-related articles) where the judicious linking of years is thought by many to be appropriate.

  There also seems to be an intertwining of issues. By de-linking calendar days/years, the bot was also removing autoformating. Autoformatting, which produced *prettier* results only for A) registered editors, who B) set their user preferences, was deemed as unwise by a consensus and has been deprecated.

  The complexity now, is that linking of dates is part of autoformatting and this won’t change until the developers disable the autoformatting function of the links. As a necessary consequence of delinking, Lightbot was replacing them with fixed-text dates in a specific format (Euro/International, or US). This aspect alone brings out passions and opinion is all over the map on how to choose date formatting in articles. A guideline that would key the date format to what is most appropriate to the subject matter failed and the current guideline is weighted towards defaulting to what the first major editor used. So formatting of dates after Lightbot has visited is intertwined with the issue of delinking dates.

  I would propose that we all get onto the same page as to whether there is any meaningful difference between linking of dates and autoformatting of dates (for simple years, like 1987, there isn’t), and try to progress forward from there. Trying to arrive at a consensus is made more complex by the fact that many editors arrive here late to the discussion after articles have been affected by Lightbot; we have to start from square-one with these editors. Greg L (talk) 19:41, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

  • We can wikilink dates without invoking autoformatting: [[March%2012]], [[2008]] will give March 12, 2008. Mind you, I strongly suggest a template form for this instead of hand-writing it. --MASEM 20:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Greg, you wrote:

• the bot was also removing autoformating and Lightbot was replacing them with fixed-text dates in a specific format

Lets be clear about one thing. Lightbot does not delink autoformatted dates. Many people would be delighted if it did, but it does not. Lightmouse (talk) 21:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• • I have to say, it would be great if you would write up a description of what Lightbot does on it's user page because right now, there's no way to tell, as far as I can see. -Chunky Rice (talk) 21:45, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• Indeed. Let’s get it from the horse’s mouth. I’ve struck the contested text. What are the true facts here Lightmouse? What is your bot doing that has editors’ nickers so in a bunch? I’ve clicked on some of your activity as assisted by some AWB software and the result was the deletion of double brackets around dates. Of course, I completely agreed with what you were doing there and think it improves Wikipedia. And I think you properly read the general consensus when you made your move with AWB. But now I’m confused. Are there two kinds of computer-assisted activities going on here? Note further that by taking away the brackets, the dates get locked into their raw way they were coded. For editors who were looking at the world through their damned date preference setting, many would think AWB was changing the date format. The effect of AWB is confusing to some and this is aggravated by the thoroughly moronic action of autoformatting, which gives only some editors a special, rose-colored view of editorial content that no regular user sees.

  There is no point revisiting the issue of what date format to use in articles; that was thoroughly hashed through, starting here in Archive 110, via two run-off-style polls. It hasn’t even been a month since then, so it is unlikely the mood has changed.

  So task at hand is to push for a clear consensus on the circumstances under which it is appropriate to employ links to calendar days and years. Not too many editors disagree with the premiss that links should be sufficiently topical and germane to any given subject to merit being linked to; the issue is where to draw the line and how to memorialize the nuances in an easy-to-follow, clear guideline. Any bot activity should narrowly limit itself to whatever that guideline calls for. Greg L (talk) 21:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• Whatever comes of this (or any related) discussion, I'd also like to see the question of whether or not bot or script-assisted removal of wikilinks to dates/years is appropriate finally put to rest. Shereth 22:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
• (EC)Thanks to an idea in your sig, we can nowrap the "faked" date to prevent it moving about. (see User:Masem/datetest for an example). Again, this needs to be simplified via a template, but its doable. Just that the template needs to know what format to pump out. --MASEM 22:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I am always a little surprised when I come across the assertion that Lightbot delinks autoformatted dates. It delinks any date except autoformattable dates. That is it. A solitary year is not autoformattable. I personally like the phrase 'date fragments' but some people didn't like that. The issue was extensively discussed in the bot approval. The bot user page (User:Lightbot) provides links to its three separate approvals, look at the bullet points in the one called 'Lightbot 3'. I wrote it in bullet point form in an attempt to make it clearer. If you are still uncertain about what a date that isn't autoformattable means, come back to me. Lightmouse (talk) 22:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe we are talking about two different bots. What about this example, Lightmouse? Let’s agree on the simple facts here. Greg L (talk) 22:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

← And we come to the crux of the issue, Masem. There are nice ways to link fixed-format dates that circumvent autoformatting and gives all visitors to Wikipedia the same date format. On Sept. 16, we settled on the date format editors should use in articles. So now the issue to settle is the circumstances under which dates should be linked. Here’s my take:

If someone is reading up on the famous architect Frank Gehry, providing a link to beautiful architecture, like Falling Water, is a good idea. But…

We devalue links and bore most readers of that article by providing a 1929 link to an article that says “March 3 - Revolt attempt of Generals José Gonzalo Escobar and Jesús María Aguirre fails in Mexico.”

• The issue is not whether or not these lists have any socially redeeming value whatsoever; it is whether or not they are sufficiently topical and germane to any given subject to merit being linked to; that’s all.

  The nearest thing to a completely random list that has been successful is the Guinness Book of World Records. But, given the nature of what’s in that book, and the fact that is is organized into classifications (natural disasters, human feats, etc.), it can actually be read rather linearly with some measure of enjoyment. Wikipedia’s random lists of who-knows-what come up quite short of “compelling reading.” I don’t buy into the implicit argument that ‘since nearly everything is in date articles, they are suitable links to put into any article.’ To rebut that attitude, I submit How to Bore People in Five Simple Steps.

  Links to years in truly historical contexts are appropriate: in an article on the Great Depression, judicious use of links like 1929 make sense and do a good job of exploiting the promise of hyperlinking, as first envisioned by Paul Otlet in his 1934 book, Traité de documentation (Treatise on Documentation) as interestingly covered here on YouTube.

  But for general-purpose uses like birth years? I don’t think so; if visitors are reading a Wikipedia’s article on, for instance, Frank Gehry, they are most likely there because they are interested in famous architects and beautiful architecture. Accordingly, we add value to the Frank Gehry article and encourage learning and exploration by providing a link to Falling Water, not by linking to 1929 (the year Mr. Gehry was born). But if there was an article on Notable architectural events of 1974 (the year of his first major design), then by all means, let’s provide a year link to that article.

  As for specific calendar days, like like March 12, so few readers would be interested in wading through any of these lists, we would only diminish the value of links and desensitize readers to them were we to link to them.

  I also think Wikipedia’s Fairness In Advertising policy ought to be better applied. For specific calendar days (which ought to be quite rare) links would work as follows:

Pearl Harbor was attacked December 7, 1941 (list of random events throughout history on Dec. 7).

There’d be far fewer of date links being clicked on after that. In all seriousness, I suggest that year links be aliased so they better disclose to the reader what they will be taken to. I suggest as follows:

The Great Depression followed “Black Thursday” which occurred on October 24, 1929 (other notable events of 1929).

Greg L (talk) 22:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, a date that will live in infamy, but apparently not be linked. Maybe we should just say that Pearl Harbor, by amazing coincidence, occurred on Pearl Harbor Day. I think birthyears should be linked, because the world a person is born into tells you a lot about their life, and the year articles exactly provide that. -- Kendrick7^talk 02:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

• I can see what it was approved to do - which appears to be whatever it wants. What I want to know is what it actually does. Please write a short summary. -Chunky Rice (talk) 22:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

To answer Greg's question... you are not referring to Lightbot. You are referring to Lightmouse. Lightbot can run when I am asleep, Lightmouse can't. The Lightmouse contributions often involve a script and my fingers pressing 'Save page'. I find it difficult to answer the request by Chunky Rice because it does a lot, there are hundreds of lines of code. Think of the list of all things that might be called a 'date', then think of a list of all things that might be called a 'valid autoformatted date', then subtract the latter list from the former list and you will have a list of all the things it might delink. For example, in its last edit, it removed one link to '1961' and one link to '1968'. You can see from its recent contributions that it is mostly solitary years because that is what most non-autoformattable dates are. Lightmouse (talk) 22:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• Maybe the simplest way to convey what Lightbot does is to provide four links here that illustrate its typical activity with dates. Greg L (talk) 22:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I am confused by that request. There are over 380,000 examples. You can pick any one of them just by going to the contributions. Why are we doing this? Lightmouse (talk) 22:58, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

• The problem I have is that the approval includes "other edits," which aren't specified, to edit dates/numbers etc. as "part of general MOS guidance", which is also very vague. I don't have a good idea what this bot does. Just a sentence saying, "This bot unlinks non-autoformatted dates." would be helpful. Right now, there's no way to tell what it's doing. -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:00, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot unlinks non-autoformatted dates. Lightmouse (talk) 23:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

And that's the entirety of what it does? -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:02, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It is also approved to edit units of measure in a variety of forms. Note that approval might not translate into activity. Lightmouse (talk) 23:09, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

If you want to know what it is approved to do, see:

• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3 and the two other approvals (links on that page)

If you want to know what it actually does, see:

• Special:Contributions/Lightbot

it is currently focussed on delinking solitary years because people believed such links as inferior to autoformatting links. There seems to have been a flip flop in that belief. Lightmouse (talk) 23:15, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there is not so much a flip-flop in belief, as a change in which belief is being discussed. Towards the beginning of the discussion it was brought up that many editors saw that full dates and calendar dates were linked to enable autoformatting, so they just linked every year in incorrect imitation of what they saw. It think that's true, that's what really happened. Now the discussion has shifted to "what about the years that were linked deliberately?" Of course, Lightbot can't tell the difference. Perhaps if Lightbot could search an article for unlinked years, and not operate on any article that contains an unlinked year, that would reduce the problem. After all, if some years are unlinked, that would imply that the ones that are linked were deliberate. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Lightbot can't do that, it can only work with a few characters and sometimes a whole line. Even if it could, that would mean that the four useless links to '2003' in The Escape Engine would not be unlinked because the year '2002' is not linked. Or the useless links to '2009' in Upcoming Telenovelas could not be unlinked because there is an unlinked year '2008' (that article is definitely overlinked because it also contains linked solitary months). Lightmouse (talk) 23:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but that sounds like an even stronger case for Lightbot to be dropped. While I generally support delinking of individual years as I believe the links have limited value (and I've delinked a number manually when making other edits to articles), it is clear from the above debate that a significant proportion of the editors here do find value in them. Also, when and if Lightbot is re-started, and all it is doing is delinking standalone year links, perhaps a more informative edit summary than "(Date links per wp:mosnum/Other)" might be in order? - fchd (talk) 05:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

... in case a newcomer's perspective is of any value: as Gerry Ashton wrote: "many editors saw that full dates and calendar dates were linked to enable autoformatting, so they just linked every year in incorrect imitation of what they saw." having gone through that exact phase not very long ago, i really welcomed the new policy deprecating date-linking because of its beautiful clarity. as you can see from my edit history i was unlinking/reformatting dates manually for a while, then tried a script for a day or two; and i'm deeply dismayed to learn that the policy is still so controversial. but reading the arguments being presented here ... it seems people agree that the autoformatting needs to be either abandoned or changed to template form; it seems people agree that not every date should be linked; it seems people agree that some dates (mainly years) do deserve to be linked. the trick is to formulate a rule that's clear (including to newcomers).

it's simplistic but: what about putting links to the date pages that people consider important/valuable in "see also" sections, rather than making them "in-line" links? Greg L's suggestion that such links should be identified as (for example) {([[1929|other notable events of 1929]])}} would work very nicely in the "see also" sections, as would "1978 in music"-type links. and it seems like it would be clear enough (even to people who haven't read the policies) that not every date mentioned in an article needs to be listed there. Sssoul (talk) 09:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

If anyone hasn't noticed, Lightbot has re-started again. - fchd (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, that appears to be Lightmouse the user rather than Ligthbot the bot. Either way, the end effect is about the same. - fchd (talk) 11:24, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Sssoul's idea sounds like an excellent move. There would be nothing more disconcerting to readers than to see some years bright blue and some black. Consistency in the main will be preserved, and the few occasions on which year pages might be deemed vaguely relevant to a topic may be convered in the "See also" section. Tony (talk) 12:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Putting [[1929|other notable events of 1929]] in 'See also' rather than in the main body sounds good to me. Lightmouse (talk) 14:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion, Sssoul! That sounds like a beautifully phrased compromise. I wholeheartedly agree.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 16:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course the article year X is going to link to notable events in year X, it's WP:COMMON sense. Readers looking for temporal context shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to the see also section; that's a terribly WP:BURO-cratic solution. We wouldn't do something like that for articles providing geographical context (i.e. a link to Azerbaijan), we just use an inline link and everyone is happy. -- Kendrick7^talk 16:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Mostly going to have to agree with the above. The compromise sounds nice at first, but I don't really see it as a solution. "See also" is the appropriate place for related topics that can't be linked in the main body of the text; inline links are always superior, if for no reason other than the fact that readers interested in context should not be expected to scroll to the bottom of the article. If a link to a year (or date) is appropriate to the context of the article, it is appropriate as an inline link. Shereth 16:23, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

In-line links and citations are always better. Perhaps we should reflect on why and when an editor should link to a date, rather than how. A bullet-point list of criteria in the style guide should suffice; and perhaps linking should be the exception rather than norm. Millstream3 (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I still like "within living memory" as a good rule of thumb, which would make most everyone happy, at least from the examples most people are providing against linking, which involve years from 1990 onwards. Links to years even octogenarians can't remember anything about which provide temporal context to the article are OK, links to years less than 70 sols ago are generally to be avoided. If I'm writing an article that involves the year 1058, I insist that this year should be linked, and I'm not going spend the rest of my life reverting LightBot and script-kids every few days. -- Kendrick7^talk 17:25, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

plainly there's a whole range of different views, but a "within living memory rule of thumb" is way too arbitrary to address the main problem i see with the date-linking - which is that unclear/inconsistent policies give too many people the mistaken impression that *all* dates should be linked. and the fact that it can be difficult to decide which geographical place names to link isn't (to me) an argument in favour of leaving excessive masses of dates linked for no reason - which is the current situation.

everyone in this discussion so far seems to agree that currently there *are* too many date links, mainly due to the now-deprecated (?) autoformatting, and to editors who think that since some dates are linked then *every* date should be linked. the bots/scripts were developed to assist in undoing some of that excess. i understand the objection to the bots/scripts - in the course of undoing masses of useless/ill-conceived date links, they've also undone some date links that someone felt were useful. so the point is to find some way to eliminate the excess date links and the confusing principles that mislead people into excessive date linking without doing away with date links that some people consider valuable.

some people who want to keep certain specific date links feel that scrolling down to the "see also" section is too much trouble. but leaving some dates linked creates an ongoing need to undo overzealous date linking - which is *also* too much trouble. so what other compromises do people propose for a clear and consistent policy on date linking? Sssoul (talk) 18:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

ps: Kendrick7 wrote: "Readers looking for temporal context shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to the see also section", and Shereth wrote: "readers interested in context should not be expected to scroll to the bottom of the article." i don't think i understand why not - if someone is interested in the temporal context, skipping to the bottom doesn't seem particularly difficult.

but if that's really too much to ask of interested readers, maybe a template could be created to add a box of "links to dates mentioned in the article" to the "contents" box on articles where there are editors who feel strongly about making it ultra-simple for readers to jump to date pages. Sssoul (talk) 20:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a rule of thumb for articles relating to 70 year old+ events is any more arbitrary than the argument that we can't link to the year 472 because too many articles link to the year 2005. In my opinion, you're alternatives fail WP:CREEP; we can put that in the rules, but no one is ever going to go to this much trouble. -- Kendrick7^talk 20:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

um ... i haven't raised any arguments related to the number of articles that link to 2005. the "70+" idea seems to me pretty arbitrary in its choice of "cut-off date"; but the main problem i see with it is that it will *look* arbitrary - for example in biographies of people whose lives/careers "straddle" the cut-off date. policies that look arbitrary won't be very helpful in alleviating confusion over what dates to link.

as for WP:CREEP, i don't think my proposals would require elaborate instructions. "don't link dates in articles; links to important dates can be added to the 'see also' section" seems pretty straightforward. (yes, a template attached to the "contents" box would call for a few more instructions - that's one reason i prefer the "see also" proposal.)

"no one is ever going to go to this much trouble" ... well, everything is "too much trouble" if no one feels strongly enough about it. i thought the whole point was that some editors feel strongly about making it ultra-easy for interested readers to link to some year pages. if that's not the case, let's go back to the "see also" idea.

anyway to reiterate: the proposals so far seem to be:

• link all years prior to 1939 and unlink all other dates - is that right? (i don't know anything about bots/scripts so someone will have to chime in about whether a date-unlinking bot/script could be taught to do that. i feel this policy wouldn't do much to alleviate the confusion about what dates should/shouldn't be linked, but ... the confused will always be with us, i guess.)
• unlink all dates in articles, and put date links someone considers important in a separate section - either the "see also" section or a box that could be appended to the "contents" box on articles where someone wants it. (i hope date-unlinking bots/scripts could be taught to leave sections like that alone. maybe this is "too much trouble", or maybe it sounds promising.)
• unlink all dates. (bots/scripts exist that can assist with this, but some people protest that certain valuable date links are being or may be unlinked.)

any other ideas? Sssoul (talk) 21:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the best bet is for editors to link dates when they believe that the date provides valuable context, and not link them when they do not. I don't expect editors to have a problem exercising this type of editorial judgment. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

... but the current situation is that there are masses of date links that are *not* based on editorial judgement - they're based on the now-defunct autoformatting policy and on misunderstandings of it and/or of other policies. the masses of ill-conceived links need to be eliminated; the question is how to designate date links that someone feels are genuinely valuable for understanding the article so that those don't get eliminated along with the useless/ill-conceived date links. Sssoul (talk) 07:51, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What we were to only allow year dates to link to "YYYY in field" pages, each of those having a separate table for other "YYYY in field" pages? That is, say I've got an article on a politician (and only a politician); then date links from that page would link to "1999 in politics" (and possibly "1999 in United States politics" if the field is considered too large). If the topic was a crossover, the editors would have to select the best appropriate links, so a politician that may have been a professional athlete before would have both "in politics" and "in sports" year links. In other words, this is sort of a category structure (which it what sounds like people want but keeping it inline). Now, and I would say this is critical, this works under the assumption that we normal avoid surprise links (eg linking to "YYYY in field" but only displaying "YYYY" with no additional context), but if we made this universal across pages, this would no longer be a surprise.

The unfortunate drawback is that this cannot be bot assisted, at least easily. A bot might be able to determine the page's primary field by looking for the first WikiProject on the talk page, but this is going to fail on crossover articles, and there's potential for hit and miss. Individual editors would be needed to standardize this approach Wiki-wide. --MASEM 22:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

well ... does every year that some editor feels is important to link to have associated "YYYY in field" pages? i kinda doubt it. Sssoul (talk) 07:51, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

A technical response to Sssoul's questions about bot capabilities:

• a bot can delink all dates after a 'threshold date' such as 1939
• a bot can delink all dates except those that contain a non-date word such as [[1929|other notable events of 1929]]. But it can't distinguish between [[1929]] in one section and [[1929]] in another because a bot doesn't know about sections.
• a bot can delink all dates (we already knew this)

My other idea: full date linking (autoformatting) is the disease, overlinking of partial dates is merely a nasty symptom that has got out of control and keeps coming back. We could try for consensus for bots to treat the disease rather than the symptom. I am sure many of the pro-delinking people would support that. Lightmouse (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I didn't suggest linking to years mentioned prior to 70 years ago would be mandatory! While I generally agree with Christopher above, if LightBot could be taught the difference between 1939 and 1939 BCE/1939 BC (well, those articles don't exist yet, but you get the idea), I would have no objection to it making a one time pass to de-link all years and decades after 1939. I would guess that would cover 90% of all year links, given Wikipedia's tendency towards WP:RECENTism. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:17, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is easy for a bot to distinguish between solitary years such as [[1939]], [[1939 BCE]] and [[1939 BC]]. I notice that there is increasing acceptance that full autoformatted dates should also be delinked. That could be done at the same time. Lightmouse (talk) 22:44, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

From the RfC above, there is no consensus at all to unlink dates of birth and dates of death at the top of bio articles, whether full or not. And in the absence of a clear RfC that can be linked to, I'd suggest there's not much evidence of consensus to delink any other dates either. Jheald (talk) 23:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

While I think dates should be unlinked, I have to agree with Jheald: there's no consensus for a mass unlinking of anything quite yet.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 04:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree that dates are overlinked (unless we can get the MediaWiki dev's to incorporate geo-presence for formal date formatting), but I'm most unhappy with the current mass unlinking. I'd suggest it stop for now, except by strictly manual methods.

I'm still intrigued by LightMouse's comment on LightBot's method: "I find it difficult to answer ... because it does a lot, there are hundreds of lines of code". Interesting that, bot approval is just a matter of confusing up the code 'til no-one can understand it? Changes in guidelines are immediately enforced with spaghetti code? Trust me, it really does work, honest. Hmmm. Franamax (talk) 08:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Response to Aervanath and Franamax: so it's a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, is it? By that I mean, you just appear to be unsettled by the kind of prompt adaptation of which wikis were built for. The longer the cancer of overlinking and the dysfunctional date autoformatting is left, the harder it is to fix. Every new editor comes to WP and copies the practices they see. It is not practical to make such an important change in slow motion. Were you thinking of a decade-long program? Tony (talk) 10:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, no, I try not to frame my arguments in blue. I do generally accept the overlinking rationale (pending geolocation auto-preference, wherein date-links would make perfect sense). What I'm not comfortable with is the pace and scale, in particular when I see bot-op and script-assisted edits. I worry about what gets left in the dust behind the vehicle. In particular, I'm not clear on when exactly date-linking is appropriate. Did we arrive at a consensus somewhere that it shall never ever occur? Franamax (talk) 10:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

a few people have expressed this greater confidence in date-unlinking that's done manually - which puzzles me some. as long as links are not designated as "this is a link someone thought about and wants to keep", doing the unlinking manually just means it takes longer than doing it with the help of a well-designed script or bot. i don't see the point of slowing down a process if there's agreement that it needs to be carried out. if someone doesn't support the process then i don't suppose they want it carried out slowly *or* rapidly.

moving well-founded links to the "see also" section and "piping" them when necessary - for example [[1965|Other notable events in 1965]] - would be a way of designating them as well-founded, considered, intentional, etc. maybe there are other workable ways to designate them, but that's one suggestion on the table at the moment. Sssoul (talk) 12:08, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Is there such a thing as a 'Search tool'?

A lot of people say that they need to search for articles that relate to dates. I think it would be useful if there were such a thing as a 'Search tool'. For example, the article United Kingdom general election, 2005 does not contain [[2005]]. So it is impossible to find in 'What links here' for the article '2005'.

What we really need is a 'Search tool' where the software automatically finds words. You could put a box in a prominent position at the top left with a button called 'Search' and permit more than one word. Lightmouse (talk) 16:37, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you specify how Special:Search is not useful for this?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 16:49, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Lightmouse is being sarcastic. And it's not especially helpful to the discussion. Shereth 16:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, silly me.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 17:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, let me reword this. The article United Kingdom general election, 2005 does not contain [[2005]] and it is impossible to find in 'What links here' for the article '2005'. So why do people say that links to date fragments are useful for finding articles or for 'metadata' (whatever that means)? Lightmouse (talk) 17:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

They are an aid to searching, not an end unto themselves. I don't think anyone is suggesting that these links are required for the sake of finding articles, just that they expedite the process by providing a handy link as opposed to going over to the search box and typing it in. Is it difficult to use the search box? No. But that is not, in and of itself, justification for disallowing links. Shereth 17:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

When I look at 'What links here' for [[2005]], I see a long list of seemingly random articles. I can keep clicking for page after page (it is more than 25,000 articles long) but I don't know why anyone would do that. We have seen that it doesn't contain 'relevant' articles like United Kingdom general election, 2005 and anyone searching for something in particular will use a search tool. You say it is a 'handy link' to the '2005' article and that is a clear statement. But can we put an end to the myth that 'What links here' for date articles is useful for searching? Lightmouse (talk) 17:26, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Considering Human history covers about 7000 individual years, repeatedly picking years within only the past decade to bolster arguments that none of the other 6990 years should be linked to is a straw man, imo. -- Kendrick7^talk 17:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

OK. I am not tied to the last ten years, the issue seems generic to me. Name another year and we can discuss that. Lightmouse (talk) 17:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I just wanted to snipe my comment in here. I use AWB a lot to do mass edits and I frequently (at least previous to this issue about delinking dates anyway) used the What links here to pull ni a year such as 2008 to cleanse typoes and the like.--Kumioko (talk) 17:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I do that too because it is easy. However, 'Wiki search' and 'Google search' return more articles. I can understand that reason but I don't think our AWB needs have been mentioned in the MOS or in talk as a reason for linking. Lightmouse (talk) 17:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It appears that 1066 has what seems to me a reasonable level of internal content. What links here yields just over 500 entries, many of which are of course other date articles. Even 1492 is tolerable. How does 1500 sound as an arbitrary cutoff threshold for discussion purposes?LeadSongDog (talk) 20:45, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For information, here are the statistics on those dates (mainspace articles):

• [[1066]] What links here: 387
• [[1066]] Wiki search: 972
• [[1066]] Google search: 781
• [[1492]] What links here: 520
• [[1492]] Wiki search: 1422
• [[1492]] Google search: 848

Lightmouse (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For 1066 Whatlinkshere, I got 540 (all spaces) narrowing to mainspace, then removing day, year, list, category and timeline articles cuts it to 279 real articles. But who's counting? ;/p LeadSongDog (talk) 22:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Delimiting numbers

Can we agree that if we delimit values to the right of the decimal place, that it shall be done in accordance with

1. BIMP: 5.3.4 Formatting numbers, and the decimal marker, and per
2. NIST More on Printing and Using Symbols and Numbers in Scientific and Technical Documents: 10.5.3, Grouping digits, and
3. ISO (which follows what the BIPM says)…

…all which require that digits be delimited every three digits to the right of the decimal marker.

This issue was thoroughly discussed in Archive 94 and at least two templates created ( {{delimitnum}} and {{val}} ) were made in conformance to those discussions (and in conformance to internationally accepted convention) in order to make it easier for editors.

There is an editor who has been changing articles from 3-digit delimiting to 5-digit delimiting [7] and states that it “looks better” that way. Well… perhaps; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But, whether it be three or five digits, I don’t think we need Wikipedia flouting the way numbers are delimited because an editor thinks the world ought to work that way; it doesn’t.

MOSNUM is currently silent on this. We should be officially following international standards. Greg L (talk) 23:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

P.S. This same editor also brought this issue up here on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (mathematics). Let’s all get on the same page here on this one. Greg L (talk) 23:21, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no objection to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics) using the mathematical convention of 5-digit groupings, while non-mathematical articles use 3-digit groupings. I think you'll find the de facto standard, both here and in the real world, is 5-digit groups if there are more than 15 digits after the decimal point (where the template Greg refers to fails, anyway). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I see no consensus there, except that the templates don't work for long numbers which are rounded differently to real number format than one would expect. Perhaps there was a consensus in principle before the implementation methods were developed? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

See also the new consensus on KiB / MiB / GiB, where we state that the recognized international convention is not used. Here, we should also recognize that the convention is not used for very long numbers. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, you provided some links above, in a “If it’s blue, it must be true”–fashion. You wrote “I think you'll find the de facto standard, both here and in the real world, is 5-digit groups.” Well, why do you think we’ll find as much? Reading either of your links doesn’t come up with any evidence to substantiate your allegation that the mathematics world decided to flout the rule of the SI. Please provide some evidence by a proper governing body for how things are done differently in the mathematics world.

Criminy, your arguments are weak. The IEC proposal was just that: a proposal. The consensus was to follow the way the world really works. Now ante up with the evidence of how the mathematics world marches to the tune of a different drummer or hold your peace please. Greg L (talk) 23:43, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a copy of Abramowitz and Stegun where I can get to it, but the first 20 pages at http://www.math.sfu.ca/~cbm/aands/ demonstrate my point. 3-digit spacing is used for physical constants (even if known to many decimal places), but 5-digit spacing is used reliably for unitless numbers of 8 digits or longer. It would be hard to find a mathematician who actually works with numbers who hasn't used that reference. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Google scholar 23846 26433 (digits 15–24 of π): 46

Google scholar 238 462 433 (digits 15–23 of π): 15

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:05, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Note that the official SI publications call for a narrow space every three digits on both sides of the decimal point. A proposal that was discussed in the past was to use commas to the left of the decimal, and narrow spaces to the right, which would have been a brand new style invented by Wikipedia. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• I know Gerry. But en.Wikipedia settled on the use of commas to delimit to the left of the decimal marker. Nothing we’re going to be doing here can change any of that. Different cultures you different decimal markers and delimiters. Now we’re talking about how to handle the right hand side of the decimal marker. And it’s quite a specific discussion: whether to abide by the three-digit convention. The issue is whether or not proper, modern mathematics publications also follow the three-digit rule. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts they do. Greg L (talk) 00:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

unindented

• Who are you trying to kid here? I can cite Web sites that say the World Trade Center was brought down by pre-planted explosives. That doesn’t mean it is a mainstream, accepted fact. Providing a Google search that comprises a grand total of 46 Google hit examples of your point falls (a *tad*) short of proving your case; if anything, it supports my theory that the mathematics world follows the rule of the SI. Please do tell: what are the dominant mathematic journals and what convention do they require in their publications? As I said above: Please provide some evidence by a proper governing body for how things are done differently in the mathematics world. Greg L (talk) 00:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  P.S. Will someone please help me here with Arthur? I’ve pretty much run out of patience dealing with him. I’m done for the evening. He edit-warred with me over on Pi and on Natural logarithm—which got me wound up—and now his evidence seems to amount to nothing more than “I like it with five digits and can find examples where others have done it that way before.” That’s not nearly good enough. The issue is whether the mathematics world really (professional publications) flouts the SI and delimits to five digits rather than three. If so, I’m sure there is a style guide for mathematicians that affirms this. I’m pretty skeptical there is. Greg L (talk) 00:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  • Who are you trying to kid. "Governing bodies" are exactly what we cannot use, per KiB, as it was accepted by the standards organizations and IEEE, but rejected by IEEE authors.
  • One wouldn't expect "Google scholar" to have thousands of references for anything.
  • Inserted (this is referring to digits 15-24 of π with 5-digit grouping, and digits 15-23 of π with 3-digit grouping, as noted above. it adds more searches.)
    • 5 digit spacing has 16400 on the web, 481 for books, and 46 for scholar
    • 3 digit spacing has 2820 on the web, 111 for books, and 15 for scholar
  • If you can suggest another search which could be done, please do so. Or you could check the corresponding digits of e or some other well-known constant. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• *sigh* You haven’t proven your case that professional mathematics publications delimit numbers every five digits. And that’s because professional mathematics publications simply follow the rule of SI. Now please stop being disruptive on Wikipedia by edit warring on Natural logarithm (which had been stable for many months). You’ve stated that “I think [5-digit grouping] is both ugly to edit and difficult to read.” Earth calling Arthur: It doesn’t matter what you think is *ugly* or pretty. You will not be permitted to hijack Wikipedia and impose non-standard ways of doing things. Just showing that it is sometimes done that way (notably with Pi, which is a unique case) isn’t proof and it’s absurd you’d think so. In the face of clear, convincing, standards (NIST, BIPM, and ISO) that it is three-digit groupings, then Wikipedia is three-digit groupings.

  I can accede to Pi being five digits because people are obsessed with counting all those digits and having a lot of them too. But for virtually all other purposes, three-digit delimiting is standard—it doesn’t matter what the discipline is. Greg L (talk) 00:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Should I try one of the other standard mathematical constants? I probably wouldn't get enough hits to convince you, but I'm sure the ratio would be the same. (The journals I subscribe to seem to have no spacing whatsoever on either side of the decimal point. I see a 37-digit number in a table. I don't know what happens if the number exceeds a line of text.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
• Actually, professional mathematical journals use TeX, and the author doesn't have the choice of formatting the numbers. I don't know why you would expect otherwise. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• If the mathematical journals that you subscribe to don’t employ spaces, then why are you saying five-digit spaces are normal in mathematics? I’m no mathematician; I’m an engineer and know the SI writing style inside and out. And it is now becoming increasingly clear to me, Arthur, that notwithstanding that you are strongly advocating that all mathematics articles on Wikipedia depart from the rule of the SI (because you think the BIPM/NIST/ISO convention is “ugly”), you also have no Ph.D. in mathematics. Perhaps there is a Wikipedian who does have a Ph.D. in mathematics who will weigh in here. One who has had a mathematical paper or two published would be ideal. If no such person has weighed in by tomorrow, I plan on getting to the bottom of this.

  TeX appears to be a software tool for making complex algebraic expressions. Much of math is symbolic and Tex appears to be principally (or exclusively) a tool for dealing with the complex symbolics of mathematical expressions. However, constants still have to be dealt with on occasion and the appearance of these numeric equivalencies in professional mathematics journals will conform to style guides that editors rigorously adhere to when authors submit papers.

  I’m quite sure that when it comes to delimiting numeric equivalencies that exceed a certain number digits in the fractional side of significands, mathematical journals—if they are going to add thin-spaces at all—perceive no need to depart from the rule of SI; that would seem quite odd to me. We’ll see; I’m not holding my breath though. Greg L (talk) 03:59, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

The pi and e (mathematical constant) and golden ratio articles (also Square root of 2, Square root of 3, Square root of 5) have been stable for a long time with 5-digit groups. Greg L didn't get away with changing them to 3-digit groups, so now he's a bit peeved. He ignores the evidence that in books, at least, these numbers are much more frequently presented with 5-digit groups than with 3-digit groups, which basically are too hard to read for so many digits. Proposed standards or otherwise, this is just what's commonly done, and not disallowed by any blanket style rule in wikipedia, so it seems OK to leave it. Noboby but Greg L seems to mind this way. Dicklyon (talk) 06:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

For the benefit of those who wish to know the difference between mathematics and arithmetic: All of the (two dozen, or so) papers I've written, and most of the papers I refer to, have no number over 5 digits past the decimal point (and I think even Greg would accept that 9.23456 is acceptable as written). All the current journals require submission in TeX, so the numeric style can be set by the journal, whatever the author's preference. The online style guides for journals published by the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Society are silent on number groupings. I could download the full set of specialized macros from some journals to determine the style, but that seems to be bordering on {{or}}. Of course, if I ask one of my publishers what their style specification is, Greg wouldn't believe me if they hadn't published their answer, so I don't really see the point in asking.

Very few of the papers I read have real numbers with more than 5 digits (as opposed to integers), and styles of grouping to the left of the decimal point are irrelevant to this issue. I recall one I read a few weeks ago which had a table of probabilities to 12 digits (I think it had something to do with sabermetrics).

I should also point out that someone re-edited the pointer for previous "consensus" Archive 98 (which discussed the problems with the template) to Archive 94 (which shows a proposal, with the apparent guideline consensus of 3 editors). Furthermore, I'm not proposing (yet) that 3-digit grouping be banned, only that the standard in Mathematics articles should be 5-digit grouping for numbers 10 digits or longer. (As for the paste-to-spreadsheet argument, numbers longer than 16 digits won't evaluate properly if pasted, so there's little point.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:34, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

As a further aside, numbers over 100 digits (50 on some old computers) will run off the right side of the screen without hope of repair if the or <nowrap> is used. Breaking spaces need to be used to allow the user to read the numbers. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to delimit long numeric strings in mathematics articles every five digits

Arthur Rubin, above, proposed that long numeric strings in Wikipedia’s “mathematical” articles should be delimited (where a gap is added between groups of digits via a &thinsp; or a <span>) every five digits. Thus Wikipedia would not follow the rule of SI, which requires that delimiting be done every three digits. He has written that groups of three are “both ugly to edit and difficult to read.” (here).

The facts: Currently, the following mathematics-related articles on Wikipedia have the numbers delimited every five digits. The question is whether Wikipedia should standardize on this practice on all mathematics articles:

• pi
• e (mathematical constant)
• golden ratio
• Square root of 2
• Square root of 3
• Square root of 5

Our Natural logarithm article has been stable at three digits (to name one) but Arthur put a {dubious-discuss} tag on it yesterday.

How do others feel about this? Let’s weigh in and discuss this. Whatever the outcome of this is, we need to get it memorialized in an explicit guideline in MOSNUM that in mathematics articles, long numeric strings shall (or shall not) be delimited differently than the rest of Wikipedia.

---

• Oppose The rule of the SI (BIPM: More on Printing and Using Symbols and Numbers in Scientific and Technical Documents: 10.5.3, Grouping digits) is clear that long numeric strings are always broken every three digits. Unless (perhaps) the number is Pi—which is a special case because of the great interest in the long, repeating nature of it and people are especially interested in counting the digits—Wikipedia’s math-related articles should follow the rule of the SI. By the way, different countries use different delimiters. Some use thin-spaces, some use commas, some use periods. Many HP RPN-entry calculators like the HP 41 allow the user to select either comma or period delimiting but the delimiting is always done every three digits, not five. One other note: en.Wikipedia adopted the U.S. style and standardized on delimiting to the left of the decimal marker. Let’s please accept that nothing in this debate can change that and limit the discussion to the number of digits per group. Greg L (talk) 15:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Inappropriate. There is no established consensus for the 3-digit grouping, even though it's generally rational. Discussion for this should be at WT:MSM, as the discussion for the overall 3-digit grouping with spans (which I'd also oppose, but only weakly) should be here. However, natural logarithm and its base should use the same notation. Stability suggests that of the latter article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  Counterproposal. Ban Greg L from commenting on formatting proposals. Even his signature doesn't meet Wikipedia guidelines. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:44, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Intention to implement Sssoul's solution

The discussion above has a bearing on a number of style guide pages; I have no problem that it's being discussed here alone at the moment. Later today, I'll insert links at those pages to this section.

Pursuant to Sssoul's excellent suggestion, I intend to add this suggestion (above) to style guide pages that are relevant (MOSLINK and, until it's merged into MOSLINK, CONTEXT), unless there are good reasons not to. I can't see how anyone could object; there are at least four compelling reasons to support this:

• Inline solitary year links are very unlikely to be clicked on (they're not explicit, and readers soon learn that they lead to unfocused information).
• Related to this, being able to spell out "[[1929|other notable events of 1929]]" is a huge advantage and is likely to attract many more clicks.
• The assumption that inline is superior to "See also" is very doubtful. The opposite argument could easily be run, that readers are more likely to branch out to linked articles after they've read an article, rather than aimlessly interrupting their reading to go elsewhere at important places in the main text. We should not assume that readers have a marijuana bong next to their computer.
• It is long established that the undisciplined linking of every year is undesirable; linking selected years will encourage editors to start linking all of them, which would be a serious backwards step to the move towards selective linking to build the web more strongly.

In summary, it solves the issue that some editors may wish occasionally to privilege a particular year by linking it (1963 in the JF Kennedy article), and provides explicit gateways into the WikiProject Years articles. Since the use of "concealed" year-in-X links are already deprecated, this is an ideal opportunity to address that issue as well.

Accordingly:

Where there is strong reason to link to a year-article, editors are encouraged to insert a piped link into the "See also" section ([[1929|other notable events in 1929]]) rather than linking the item in the main text ([[1929]]). Similarly, a "concealed" year-in-X link ([[1998 in basketball|1998]]) should be avoided in the main text in favor of an explicit link in "See also" ([[1998 in basketball]]). This recommendation does not apply to articles on years, other chronological items such as decades and centuries, and year-in-X articles.

Tony (talk) 03:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Wow! Is there now a consensus for this? This looks great. May I suggest that the guideline explicitly state that if a year gets linked in the body text, that it also be piped? And may I also suggest that we standardize on terminology? I would propose that “date” shall refer to either a “calendar day” (May 12) or to a “year.” There has been confusion during our debates because of the dual meaning of ambiguity of the terminology. If someone else has more suitable terminology that is already well embraced elsewhere on Wikipedia, I’m all for it. Greg L (talk) 04:06, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, I think this is jumping the gun a little. There has NOT been a consensus reached above on Sssoul's solution (no matter how much I like it), and therefore this proposal is premature. We should hold off a bit until the discussions above have reached a consensus.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 04:27, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

likewise - i don't feel enough opinions have been expressed yet. it's my understanding that the current MOS policy about the deprecation of linking dates for autoformatting purposes *is* based on a consensus broader than just a few people - i personally wasn't aware of any discussion of that, but since it's been adopted in the MOS i sure hope it doesn't need to be hashed out again. that consensus seems to me to justify unlinking *most* full dates, as well as excessive/ill-conceived linking of partial dates, but there's no consensus yet on what to do with date links that some editor feels are genuinely valuable to understanding an article, and i feel a consensus on that is important before proceeding.

although it seems premature to implement this proposal, i may as well note, for the record, that i don't think "the same applies to concealed links [[1998 in basketball]])" is very clear/communicative. Sssoul (talk) 06:34, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

That's funny, I thought piped links were deprecated in the "see also" section. — CharlotteWebb 10:24, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

(1) This is simply a more formal and quite transparent attempt to generate the consensus that Aervanath feels hasn't yet been generated. Several encouraging remarks were made in support of Sssoul's notion above, and there appeared to be no opposition thus far. I had assumed that people would write "support", "comment" and "oppose", so I'll start the ball rolling by writing "Support" below.

(2) Concealed links have been deprecated for I don't know how long in MOSLINK, and are strongly discouraged by at least one major WikiProject. Unfortunately, they're widespread in lists and in articles on sports, film, and certain other topics. I suspect that readers just ignore them, which is a pity.

(3) Charlotte, thanks for pointing out the possibility that piped links are deprecated in "See also" sections; however, I can't find mention of this just where you'd expect to, at WP:SEEALSO; nor can I readily see the point of such a deprecation. Tony (talk) 10:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support—This opens explicit gateways to year pages; it's highly likely that inline links to solitary years are rarely clicked on by readers. It is perfectly consistent with the trend on WP towards more careful, "smart" linking to maximise the utility of the system. It's the type of content that our "See also" sections appear to have been designed for. Tony (talk) 10:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Well geez, if solitary year-links are rarely clicked on, doesn't that invalidate the argument that they commonly lead the reader on a path to nowhere? Presumably, the readers clicking the links will be genuinely interested in the other things that happened in 1929, 1941, 1939, 1905, 1968, 1989, 1918 - I'll stop now. Those years are relevant in-line to the article flow - they set the context for the story. Franamax (talk) 11:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm no enemy of year-pages; on the contrary, I'm keen that WikiProject Years be revitalised and that year-pages (and decade pages) be lifted out of their current moribund state. Clearly, the inline carpet bombing of our text with bright-blue years never worked (many readers would have wondered WTF they were). Making links explicit in the "See also" section is a much better way of promoting them as focused secondary articles, and nicely addresses the disadvantages of blue years scattered through the main text, which does not have community support. Tony (talk) 12:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support. Lightmouse (talk) 11:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support - it is, without question, an improvement on the current situation. Millstream3 (talk) 11:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support. I still wouldn't mind date links in infoboxes, but if this proposition can keep them out of article prose, it's for the better. A link to 1963 in the See also section of John F. Kennedy assassination is harmless and might even be useful – there's Category:1963 in the United States and Category:1963 crimes, but categories aren't ordered chronologically and are harder to read. -- Jao (talk) 13:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Jao, note that the link will be piped and contain at least one non-date word. For example, [[1963|other notable events in 1963]] rather than [[1963]]. It will be impossible to implement using automation otherwise. Lightmouse (talk) 13:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, isn't that already part of the proposal? I'm sorry if I was vague, but I meant specifically "a link to the 1963 article", not "a link that looks like 1963". -- Jao (talk) 13:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• I can see this being reasonable when talking about one or two year links, but what if we've got a famous person with events that occur pretty much every year of his or her professional life (say, 40 odd years); Inline, these would not be a problem, but now you've got a spam of them in the seealsos. This is not a easily viable solution to this for multi-year topics. --MASEM 13:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• But very few years are relevant. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has done a lot of stuff, but there's certainly no point in linking to 1949 (the year she moved to Malta) or 1991 (the year she addressed the US congress). There has been a very stable consensus not to link these non-WP:CONTEXTual years at all, so these are not what anyone will (or at least, should) be putting in See also. -- Jao (talk) 13:54, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• They may not be relevant to you but given that we talking about this approach in that someone will be interested in clicking a year link to find other events during that year, there is a likelihood that someone would be interested to see what other events happened in 1949, even if that event is not a significant facet of Queen Elizabeth II's history. Anytime you start talking revelance, it becomes very subjective and leads down the road of edit-warring to no end.
• The way I'm seeing this is that we want to replicate the usability of categories that allow users to jump to other related topics, but not using categories, which.. well, seems to be wasting an existing capability. It might be too grand a scheme now, but I'm thinking that if we plot out a good tree of "Year in XXXX" categories, we can make this all work via templates and categories and be more effective for end users. --MASEM 14:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It's the dilution problem again. The more linked years, whether in the running prose or the "See also" section, the less likely the reader is to bother with any of them. The idea is to be highly selective; that is a much more effective drawcard to encourage reader interest in year articles per se. And remember that year articles, and year-in-X articles, all provide easy passage to their siblings, yes? Tony (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I think before we get decide on this approach (again, I see the validity of it), we need to have a good working understand of what should be highly significant dates that are to be linked in this approach. ("linked" here could mean placed as seealsos or as current inline links). I realize this is not a simple task, and one that is likely better suited by giving a range of example cases which state that this is the case, and similar examples which are not, with cases otherwise not covered to be treated case-by-case. Once we know what the approximate volume of dates will be that we will want to link in this fashion, then a better assessment of which why is better can be made. --MASEM 15:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support with a few minor changes. 1) I would change "chronological item" to "year" as the wording seems to address only years and not dates. For example, there is ongoing discussion above about whether birth/death dates should be linked. 2) I would add that it would also be appropriate to use the template:see also to add year links to a particular section. 3) I think year links on date articles (e.g. links on the March 12 article) should be exempt from this policy and link directly to the year inline. Queerudite (talk) 14:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Queerudite, excellent points one and three; is the wording now clear? I'm a bit wobbly about your second point, since if taken to extremes it would lead to clutter. If there's some way of wording it to yield highly judicious usage of this possibility, it might win support here ("Occasionally, if a year page is of close relevance to a section, the template:see also may be used for this purpose.") I'd be surprised to find whole-year articles that were sufficiently relevant to just a section; it's hard enough to find relevant year articles for an entire article. Unsure; what do other people think? I'm tending to think that this is more trouble than it's worth. Tony (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CREEP. You make all the rules you want, you'll never get 10,000 editors to start doing this. -- Kendrick7^talk 14:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Prescription for no policy or style guidance at all on WP, Kendrick? Tony (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

You'll never get people to remember to make a special exception for just year inlines as opposed to every other kind of inline. It'll simple lead to silly practices, like having to do [[1058 in non-arrivals of Messiahs|1058]] and "merging" 1058 in non-arrivals of Messiahs into 1058. Via la difference. -- Kendrick7^talk 15:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support due to its clarity (for editors who imitate what they see as well as for those who read the MoS) and the ease of implementing it in tandem with the process of undoing ill-conceived/depracated date links. i feel the wording of it still wants some finetuning, though. Sssoul (talk) 14:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

There was an e.c. Please see if it's better; I'd be pleased to hear your further suggestions. Thank you. Tony (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

i'm exhausted right now, Tony, but i'll ponder it later - thanks Sssoul (talk) 15:24, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose both '''[[1929|other notable events of 1929]]''' and '''[[1929 in sports|1929]]''' being encouraged anywhere. Strongly oppose "see also" links unless in the same paragraph as the year named. If at all implemented, the link needs to be something like.

  For other notable events of 1929, see 1929.

• rather than hidden links. (Hmmm. I guess that's support with those changes and those suggested by Queerudite, but strong oppose otherwise.)
• Oh, and year links should be encouraged in the lead (birth and death years) and in the {{Birth date and age}} template. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Nobody is proposing concealing links '''[[1929 in sports|1929]]'''. Quite the opposite. Have you misunderstood the proposal? Lightmouse (talk) 15:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Please re-examine the tweaks to the green proposal. So you mean you don't think readers will be a lot more attracted to clicking on the explicit pipe than a plain old year link? I have to politely disagree. Tony (talk) 15:03, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

As for the paragraph-specificity, that's all good and well, but most years worth linking to would not be restricted to one paragraph. What paragraph of John F. Kennedy assassination would host the {{for|other notable events of 1963|1963}}? Background of the visit? -- Jao (talk) 15:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

For John F. Kennedy assassination, the {{for}} or {{seealso}} should be in the lead, or perhaps should be a specific year link inclusion, in that, for an event occuring at a specific date, the year should have an unadorned link, but only once, and only in the first sentence. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Conditional support so long as this change is strictly limited to a suggestion as worded above and is not to be interpreted as a requirement. User:Masem's concern above that articles with multiple date/year links would wind up having an unwieldy "see-also" section are valid, and other conditions under which this suggestion is not favorable. I would strongly oppose any implementation of the above as a requirement or the use thereof as license to resume de-linking inline wikilinks, as any useful consensus to do either of these things requires broader attention than merely those who have an interest in watching MOS pages. Shereth 15:06, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

adding date links to the "see also" section and simultaneously leaving in-line date links seems mighty redundant. just to make sure i've understood you properly: are you proposing that all current inline date links should be kept, including the masses of ill-conceived/now-depracated ones? (that's what your "i would strongly oppose ... resum[ing] de-linking" sounds like - but i hope i'm misinterpreting that.) either way, i agree that some wider attention/participation in this discussion would be excellent. is an RfC a good idea, or some other means of giving the proposal a wider airing? Sssoul (talk) 15:43, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. As now, inline year-links are deprecated. The example below, although of a concealed year-in-X link, is an illustration; the principle is the same. Tony (talk) 15:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

(reply to Sssoul) - I'm not suggesting that we have both inline and see-also links. What I am suggesting is, as this wording is an encouragement it still leaves it up to the discretion of the editor whether or not to make the transition from inline to see-also, particularly for the cases mentioned above. To an extent calling it a suggestion is redundant - the MOS is a guideline and thus subject to interpretation/exemption. I just want to stress that it should be understood that, as a suggestion, this change remains optional and should not be enforced, especially by bot unless a broader community consensus suggests otherwise. Shereth 16:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, no, that's not part of the deal, Shereth. Too many WPians object to inline solitary year linking. If that causes you to oppose, so be it. Tony (talk) 16:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Too many Wikipedians or too many of the ones who watch this page? This whole debate was sparked by Wikipedians who have not run into this (or prior) discussions showing up to complain because Lightbot removed links on an article they maintain. File an RFC to get broader opinion on the issue of inline solitary year linking - otherwise this conversation is going to come up time and time again with editors wanting to see where the consensus for such an action was formed. Shereth 16:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support This is a nice, encyclopedic way of doing it. It’s a bit more of the elegant, print-way of offering up options for further reading and helps remedy the hyperlinked, blue oceans of body text that have plagued Wikipedia lately. Greg L (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Examples

First example: This is of a concealed year-in-X link ([[1987 in film|1987]]) at the opening of Jaws: The Revenge. In fact, it broke the guideline at MOSLINK against the linking of adjacent items, and occurred in an already densely linked sentence:

Jaws: The Revenge (a.k.a Jaws 4) is a 1987 horror–thriller film directed by Joseph Sargent. It is the third and final sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 Oscar winning classic Jaws.

I've made the year plain black here, which I believe loses no clicks, reduces the detraction from the other links a little, and improves the look:

Jaws: The Revenge (a.k.a Jaws 4) is a 1987 horror–thriller film directed by Joseph Sargent. It is the third and final sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 Oscar winning classic Jaws.

Please now inspect the "See also" section that I've added after the main text, in place of what was a dubious inline link. I do believe, on balance, it's far more likely to attract the interest of the reader. Tony (talk) 15:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Second example: Replacing what might otherwise have been a solitary year link with a "See also" explicit link to a major year in the life of Queen_Elisabeth_II.

Let's pretend that solitary year links were not deprecated, and that the year of her coronation (1953) was linked at the start of the second para here. Now it's not linked, and instead an explicit reference ([[1953|Other notable events in 1953, the coronation year]]) has been added to the "See also" section. Nice, huh?

The two advantages are (1) selective focusing of the reader on a single (or even two or three) major years in her life, from which they can further explore sibling articles, (2) explicitness, and (3) prominent location, even though underneath the main text. As well, it neatly sidesteps all of the complaints of WPians who want a more selective approach to linking in the main text. Tony (talk) 16:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)