Miranda Cosgrove

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)

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 6,821,734 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)
        • I suspect there may be some truth in that assertion, but unless and until all those citation templates are de-linked, we have no way of knowing. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:59, 9 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)

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)

There are also masses of dates that have been unlinked not based on editorial judgment, by this bot - the best way to ensure that date linking reflects the judgment of editors is to leave the decision for editors to make an a case-by-case basis. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:32, 9 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)

Comment. I'm glad Lightbot was paused. While I agree that irrelevant years should be de-linked per WP:CONTEXT, it appears that some people believe this means "articles about years should be orphaned". And I don't think a bot can be able to understand whether a link is relevant or not. I did remove the link in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quintic_equation&diff=244401457&oldid=239497393, as the fact that the theorem was published in 1824, rather than in 1624 or in 1924, is totally irrelevant to the point being made (that there is no formula for general quintic equations over the rationals in terms of radicals); on the other hand, linking the year when somebody was born, or a historic event happened, or a book was published, in the article about the person/event/book itself, provides the historical context in which the person lived, etc. -- Army1987 (t — c) 16:59, 10 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)

• What are you saying about TeX, Arthur? $c=299\,792\,458~\mathrm {m} /\mathrm {s}$. -- Army1987 (t — c) 14:29, 10 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 monitors) will run off the right side of the screen without hope of repair if <span> 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)

Greg L asked below, in opposition to the 5 digit proposal, "One other note: en.Wikipedia adopted the U.S. style and standardized on delimiting to the left of the decimal marker using commas. Let’s please accept that nothing in this debate can change that and limit the discussion to the number of digits per group." He also asked above "Can we agree that if we delimit values to the right of the decimal place, that it shall be done in accordance with" BIPM and NIST standards?

My answer is no. It is not appropriate to pick apart the BIPM and NIST standards and use just the parts we like. Either format the whole number with thin spaces (or some span trick that looks like thin spaces) or use commas just to the left. It is not the role of Wikipedia to invent a brand new format. Similarly, it would look really silly to group a number every three spaces with a comma to the left of the decimal, but with a thin space every five digits to the right of the decimal. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:06, 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:

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

The question is whether Wikipedia should standardize on this practice on all mathematics articles. 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 using commas. 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)

  Arthur, you've crossed the line into the area of personal attack. Asking that someone be gagged is a sign that you've lost the debate. I will return tomorrow in support of Greg's points. Tony (talk) 17:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  It may may be that Greg has a point, but, as I and others have pointed out at WT:MSM, where this particular discussion should be taking place even if there is consensus for 3-digit grouping in Wikipedia in general, the real-world consensus in mathematics is 5-digit spacing or no spacing.

  This discussion should be at, and only at WT:MSM. Discussion of whether there in consensus for the 3-digit grouping in Wikipedia in general should be in this article. If Greg wishes to rephrase his proposal to a form appropriate for this style guide, we can attempt to return to civility. It should also be pointed out that I only noticed this because Greg started vandalising Pi. And I do mean, vandalizing, rather than merely making harmful edits. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

  The paragraph starting "Who are you trying to kid here?" indicates that Greg does not have an accurate concept of the real world, or of standards bodies. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose as per User:Greg L and what appears to be normal practice in the real world (i.e. not just mathematicians). - fchd (talk) 17:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Note: I just got off the phone with a Ph.D. mathematician at Gonzaga University and had a nice talk about delimiting numbers and the nature of Wikipedia. These guys’ heads tend to be in a clouds and he had only heard of Wikipedia. Since mathematics is typically symbolic, he didn’t know anything about delimiting high-precision numbers—standard or not. So he gave me the names of the three mathematics organizations that dominate the publishing in that field. I’ve begun contacting the editors at AMS.org, SIAM.org, and MAA.org to get to the bottom of this. It might be that the mathematics world does not follow SI writing style (nor that of the NIST and ISO). It may also be that some of Wikipedia’s math articles are marching to the tune of a different drummer.

As I did over on Kilogram, where I corresponded maybe… 50 times with the guy who is working on the NIST’s watt balance, I’m going to go straight to the horse’s mouth on this one and ascertain the true facts. I just now contacted the publisher, publications manager, and managing editor at SIAM.

I think what may have happened here is that what is often done with pi (breaking it up every five digits for ease of *counting all them digits*) has been misconstrued as some sort of standard mathematical convention for delimiting large numbers across the entire discipline of mathematics. Greg L (talk) 17:50, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

---

Comment – bogus proposal – What sense does it make to consider a proposal written by a person who oppposes it? Let Arthur Rubin or Greg L make their own proposal, instead of one writing a biased case for the other. Dicklyon (talk) 18:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• It’s not complex Dicklyon. Arthur’s allegation is unambiguous and clear: he said the mathematics world has a five-digit convention for high-precision numeric strings (∆ here). And his edit warring on this issue [8][9][10][11] on the Natural logarithm article—which had been stable at the three-digit convention—makes it quite clear that he thinks Wikipedia should conform to his views on this matter. The question is this: is his proposal proper and wise?

  And if you really think I’m putting words in Arthur’s mouth or have a bias here, please examine Arthur’s 14:34, 8 October 2008 post, above, where he wrote “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 I found the underlined portion of his suggestion (my emphasis) to be quite absurd (where nine-digits strings after the decimal wouldn’t be delimited at all), I left that bit of absurdity out of my summation of the proposal as I perceived it to be utterly inane.

  And I completely ignored his suggestion that consideration should given to banning three-digit grouping altogether across all of Wikipedia; I found that to be just posturing. But you are more than welcome to revise the proposal to narrowly reflect precisely what Arthur was suggesting. Be my guest. Greg L (talk) 18:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

As well you know, your convention for using "*" for your replies instead of the conventional ":" on most talk pages (excluding only !votes, I believe) is a probable violation of WP:TALK. I think the tag in your signature violates WP:SIGNATURE, but I'm not sure.

That being said, I was explicitly requesting this as a convention in mathematics articles, even if there were a guideline for 3-digit grouping for long numbers in Wikipedia in general. In fact, there is not such a guideline, only a weak consensus from February, which was never specifically proposed as a guideline here. In fact, I'm proposing that long numbers in mathematics articles be spaced every 5 spaces after the decimal point (with "long" being subject to debate, but certainly anything longer than 15 digits, and possibly 10.) Greg quotes standards organizations, but no books which actually use a lot of numbers, journals, or journal guidelines. He also fails to note that the IEC standards for KiB, etc. were actual standards, and accepted by IEEE, but not by any of their authors. Even if he is able to find editorial standards which mandate 3-digit spacing, it might still not be relevant to the real world, without evidence those standards are actually followed.

Still, I'm saying that Greg is welcome to propose guidelines here, and I will continue to support my proposed (draft) guidelines at MT:MSMWT:MSM. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I look forward to reading his replies from the math organizations he claims to be contacting above. I was considering contacting them myself, but I'm sure that Greg wouldn't believe my statements as to what they said. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:53, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

---

• Here’s what the publisher at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics had to say about their practices in an October 8, 2008 12:03:26 PM PDT e‑mail to me:

Greg:

We do not delimit. I can't speak for others, but that is our policy.

Best regards

Given that the Ph.D. mathematician I spoke to this morning didn’t even understand the concept of delimiting, I suspect that the other two journals will have the same style guide.

Arthur, the *fluidity* of your above 18:45, 8 October 2008 proposal (“…anything longer than 15 digits, and possibly 10” ) makes it increasingly clear to me that this ‘standard in mathematics’ never came out of the professional mathematics world but is instead an accidental invention of some Wikipedians who noted that pi is often grouped that way (for demonstration purposes with a uniquely famous number) and went on a roll with it.

So now the issue is how, when high-precision numbers are used here on Wikipedia, they should be delimited. Is there any reason mathematics-related articles should be any different from the rest of the world? Numbers with high-precision on the integer side of the decimal marker (like 65,812,016) are already delimited because 65812016 is hard to parse). The same can also be said about numbers with high precision on the fractional side of the significand, such as e = 2.718281828459, which is much easier to parse when it is delimited (2.718281828459).

I think we’ve come down to two questions here:

1. Given the apparent fact that professional mathematic journals don’t delimit to the right of the decimal point, should Wikipedia do so in its mathematics-related articles? I would say that with nasty-ass big numbers, “yes.”
2. If, for ease of parsing, Wikipedia’s mathematics articles do use delimiting, should Wikipedia adopt a special practice just for its mathematics-related articles that departs from what is prescribed by the BIPM (and the NIST and the ISO) and what is used in the applied world such as physics? I would say “no.”

Notwithstanding Arthur’s healthy skepticism that anyone in the world actually bothers to follow the SI-compliant practice of delimiting digits to the right of the decimal marker in groups of three (a notion most well-educated Europeans would find utterly laughable), it is actually followed throughout the world (NIST example here). After all, much of what is in the SI is just the memorializing of long-standing practices. For him to evince a skepticism on this fact betrays, in my opinion, a serious lack of knowledge of how the applied mathematics world (physics and engineering) works—either that, or a disingenuous debate tactic that backfired.

I will relent on the issue where this dispute started: I would propose that Wikipedia’s Pi article should stay with 5‑digit groupings because that practice is quite common with Pi (Google book search of pi in 5‑digits). The number pi is unique and many readers are particularly interested in counting its digits and marveling at its irrational nature. For instance, in Wikipedia’s article on pi, the text just before the value says “The numerical value of π truncated to 53 decimal places is…” When the focus is on a specific number of digits, five-digit groupings has its virtues.

But for most everything else, like e, where an arbitrarily chosen number of digits are shown and there isn’t a special emphasis on counting them, there are plenty of easy-to-find examples showing that the mathematics world is no stranger to the standard three-digit convention familiar to any European or anyone who is familiar with how to use the SI (Google book search of e delimited in 3‑digits). I see no reason for Wikipedia to stray from standard, SI-compliant practices here.

And finally, when we do delimit really big numbers, I would propose that we recommend that editors use the hand-coded <span>-based technique until character-counting parsing functions become available for tools like {{val}} and {{delimitnum}}, which are limited as to the number of digits they can handle. The virtue of using spans, like so…

2.718<span style="margin-left:0.25em">281</span><span style="margin-left:0.2em">828</span><span style="margin-left:0.25em">459</span>)

…is readers can copy and paste values into Excel, where the first sixteen digits will be treated like a real number without the necessity of hand-deleting any non-breaking spaces. Greg L (talk) 21:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

If ability to copy and paste numbers into spreadsheets were really relevant, we would need to avoid using commas to delimit thousands (or we would need to use some magic to make them disappear when copied and pasted), and we would need to avoid using notation like 6.02 × 10²³ (or we would need to use some magic to make it become 6.02e23 when copied and pasted). -- Army1987 (t — c) 15:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

---

For the corresponding digits of e (mathematical constant) (16-25 for 5-grouping and 16-24 or 3-grouping), the results are:

• 5: 2640 web, 184 books, 13 scholar
• 3: 805 web, 19 books, 2 scholar (one of which doesn't appear to be "E", actually, but intended as a random string of digits)

I can't find a way to get google to search for a substring of an unspaced string. I don't deny that 3-digit grouping is used for short numbers, and have no objection to it being used. I'm suggesting that in mathematical articles where the number has over (somewhere bewteen 10 and 15, TBD) digits past the decimal point, 5 digit spacing should be used, and that 5-digit spacing is allowable for shorter numbers in those articles.

(If possible, I'd also like to see the nested span approach be deprecated; I have less objection to the code suggested here than to the code you inserted in pi, which might possibly fail if a browser is unable to handle a stack of 18 spans (in addition to whatever styles are inserted normally).

I also am stating again' that this discussion is misplaced and amounts to Greg making a WP:POINT. I admit to not having been ready for a specific proposal, but I wanted to counter Greg's edits to insert his preferred notation in stable mathematics articles against consensus, even if there were a Wikipedia guideline to use 3-digit spacing. There's no such guideline agreed to. If Greg wants to propose the guideline, then I want to make it clear that Mathematics articles should have their own guideline, which is properly discussed at MT:MSM, regardless of a general guideline here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:08, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I refuse to discuss any style issue at MT:MSM because this is the English Wikipedia and that page is in some other language. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:28, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

That was a typo -- try WT:MSM. Dicklyon (talk) 02:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

But so are the articles in question. Perhaps we should move them to the math.en or en.math Wikipedia.  :) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Since Arthur Rubin insists the issue should be discussed in a foreign language, I will disregard all his views about grouping numbers. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case, the mathematics articles should, under Wikipedia guidelines, disregard any guideline established here. I would ask you to reconsider. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:11, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

As for Greg, I think I could propose a guideline appropriate for this discussion which we could all (except, apparently Gerry), live with. But I don't want to put words in his mouth. I ask him to make a proposal for style guideline which he would accept, noting that (almost) all style guidelines can be overriden by subject-specific style guidelines, and we can go on from there.

Oh, and, since no one has spoken in favor of this guideline in this venue, this section should be dropped. I spoke in favor of it (as well as requesting helpful modifications) in MT:MSM, where the discussion belongs. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Instead of making claims about Wikipedia guidelines which he fails to cite, perhaps Arthur would like to explain why this should be discussed in Maltese. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

He obviously meant WT:MSM (since he has referenced it several times before) and it was a typo. Also, not that "authority" has much weight with the WP crowd, but Arthur Rubin is certainly more qualified to address issues of standards in mathematical publications than anyone else in this discussion. He has an Erdos number of 1, for crying out loud! --Sapphic (talk) 00:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Well I know as much or more than probably anyone around here about PEM fuel cells and I don’t even bother to edit that damned article—I’ve barely even looked at it, much less read it. I fear I’d go try to fix something and would get into an editwar with someone who got everything he knows out of Popular Mechanics. But I did try to be somewhat informed about competing energy technologies (solar for instance) so I could be well prepared to deal with the real world and help design products that fulfilled a real marketing need.

  I also try to be thoroughly familiar with all things SI and metric; it’s a classy system of units. And I’ve authored enough patent papers and white papers to actually know how to be SI-compliant when doing so. What’s got me skeptical here about Arthur’s take on this issue—and just pardon me all over the place for thinking this—is that Arthur has busied himself here denying that the SI way of delimiting numbers every three digits to the right of the decimal point is a standard that is remotely observed in the real world. He even equated this to the lack of adoption of the IEC prefixes (mebibyte, etc.) and challenged me to cite proof that the SI method is actually adhered to in the real world. While Arthur may be an exceedingly wonderful fellow to drink beer with, the above facts tell me he is certainly not coming into this argument with a sufficiently sophisticated world view and, further, that too much education on the essential facts is needed just to bring him up to speed. His arguments, that Wikipedia needs to stray from the SI on an issue that the professional math journals are silent on are… less than persuasive. Greg L (talk) 00:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

  P.S. I see he’s down below, expanding on how he can find no evidence that the real world follows the rule of the SI. Breathtaking. Greg L (talk) 00:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

←
This isn’t complex, Arthur. It’s quite clear that professional mathematics journals don’t typically deal with big numbers—it’s all mostly symbolic—and when they do, they’d don’t bother with delimiting. If Wikipedia is going to be delimiting big numbers for readability (which we probably should do), then we should do so in a way that is SI-compliant. I can see no absolutely no reason why numbers would be delimited every three digits to the left of the decimal place and then start being delimited every five digits on the right. The SI is clear that one delimits in groups of three regardless of which side of the decimal marker you are on. The only exception is in cases where you precede very special numbers with wording like “Here are the first one-hundred digits of…”. In that case, go ahead and do it groups of five. Greg L (talk) 23:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is complex, because you keep changing stable articles such as pi. > Several times now, I’ve stipulated that because of it’s unique nature, Pi should stay with five-digit groupings and it’s been a day since I even argued the point on Talk:Pi. See the above post; it’s short enough for those with even short attention spans. Don’t you even read posts before responding to them? You’re relying again on fallacious arguments. Greg L (talk) 00:47, 9 October 2008 (UTC) < May I suggest the following modification of whatever 3-digit grouping rule you come up with.

In any article about a mathematical constant or constants, where at least one is known and stated to 15 places, and (almost) all are less than 10, any grouping of digits to the right of the decimal point should be in groups of 5, and breaking spaces (thin or not; I don't know if there is such a thing as a thin breaking space, although one could probably construct one out of a thin non-breaking space and a non-displaying optional line break character) should be used. If, instead, these are only known and stated to 8 (or more) places, this format is optional, if such spacing is frequently used in that field.

I'm perfectly willing to accept suggestions such as changing the "15" to "20", or the "8" to "10", but guideline as a whole should stand.

Careful study shows that all the articles pointed to by the pseudo-template in square root of 2 (and I don't know why it isn't a real template) meet that condition (except for the obvious readablility requirement that breaking spaces be used if a (word, formula, or number) is likely to be wider than a page), and the entries in mathematical constant#Table of selected mathematical constants. I would rather have the condition be that mathematical constants in mathematical articles be so formatted, but it's not really important to me if there is an article about the constant. I also point to the article illegal prime which uses 5-digit spacing for an integer, but that's only formerly a featured articles, and the standards may not have been as precise back then, and it may not have been featured at the time the number was present. (And it may be illegal for Wikipedia to have the number.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

As for the "real world", the only cases in which large numbers are grouped ("delimited" seems incorrect), in papers that that I've read, are:

• REALLY long numbers, likely not to fit on a line (spaced in groups of 5).
• Long tables of numbers with approximately the same number of digits (some spaced in 3-digit groups, some in 5-, one in 4-digit groups, believe it or not. If this were the only case, I wouldn't be able to assert it's usually spaced in 5)
• Abramowitz and Stegun (in which not only stand-alone numbers, and numbers in tables, but also numbers in formulas are spaced in groups of 5. However, the physical constants page are spaced in groups of 3.).

This applies not only to US publications, but to such as Fundamenta Mathematica at the time I published there. But all of these are over 20 years old. I haven't seen a mathematical paper with grouped digits since then.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:29, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

(Reply to interpolated comments). All articles about mathematical constants should have 5-digit spacing, not just Pi. Pi is just the only one Greg has attacked. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh for God’s sake, Arthur. Abramowitz and Stegun was first printed in 1964 and it is just a humungous tabular list of numbers. It was a jointly produced with the help of the NIST, which is infinitely clear as to the proper, modern way to express numbers that are included as part of standard prose (More on Printing and Using Symbols and Numbers in Scientific and Technical Documents: 10.5.3, Grouping digits and NIST example of proper use). Is this part of why you think “mathematics is five-digit groupings?” Perhaps if Wikipedia had mind-boggling lists of purely tabular data, they too should use five-digit groupings. But that is not what we’re talking about here. Wikipedia needs to be SI-compliant. It’s that simple. It’s quite clear from having spoken to a Ph.D. mathematician at a university this morning and having read your writings here, that neither of you guys would recognize SI-compliant writing if it bit you on the butt!

And please stop insisting that “mathematics does it this way or that way.” I just communicated this morning with a mother of all mathematical journals and they’re completely silent on this issue. And now you’re here saying we should ignore the way it’s done in the applied sciences (and the way even semi-educated Europeans do it and the way the NIST and the BIPM prescribe) because you can dredge up reference books of tabular numbers that show them that way. Greg L (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Wrong. Abramowitz and Stegun is "tabular" in a sense, but it's the same sense a properly formatted HTML document is tabular; Chapter 1 may contain sections 1.1, 1.2 (table of physical constants), 1.3, 1.4 (table), 1.5, 1.6, etc.; Section 1.1 may contain formulas 1.1.1 through 1.1.10, table 1.1.11, subsection 1.1.12 which contains formulas 1.1.12.1 through 1.1.12.5, etc. It contains many tables, but as far as I can tell, all numbers other than physical constants are spaced in 5-digit groups, while physical constants are spaced in 3-digit groups. You can't say that wasn't intentional. (Well, you can, but it would be strange).

Google books and Google scholar confirm that many more books and papers use 5-digit spacing for precise values of mathematical constants than 3-digit spacing, at least for representations of π and e of at least 25 digits after the decimal point. (I chose "25" to be fair to the 3-digit representations; 25 digits for the 5-digit and 24 for the 3-digit.) I can't get google to search for unspaced constants, so that may be more prevelant.

• Oppose None of the proposals from Arthur Rubin actually help the situation and plenty of other suggestions are much better. Fnagaton 13:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose – I acknowledge that it is more or less common to format long numbers that run over several lines in groups of five. But I doubt the need of such deviation from a consistent guideline here on WP. I also suggest to always use spans for spacing. Template:spaced could easily be expanded to work for long numbers. —Quilbert (talk) 14:14, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Dueling proposals

After consideration, I propose that 5-digit spacing be used in articles about mathematical constants known precisely. You can propose that the (not exactly SI)-standard form (modified to use commas left of the decimal point) be generally used, but you really haven't done that yet, so we can't say there's a consensus to do it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:05, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• My proposal is extraordinarily simple: Bring virtually all delimited values on Wikipedia into compliance with the SI, which underlies pretty much everything done here on Wikipedia. Period.

  There are some exceptions to this principle of adherence to the SI; for instance, the SI prescribes that a space be inserted before the percent symbol (e.g. 75 %). But Wikipedia wisely ignores this and follows the common practice observed in the real world. This is not the case with your suggestion that we flout the SI and delimit with commas every three digits to the left and every five with gaps on the right. The BIPM (and NIST and ISO) don’t mention any exception for “articles about mathematical constants known precisely”. Further, compliance with the SI has the virtue of following how the real world in real, every-day life in Europe works: delimiting in groups of three—regardless of which side of the decimal point you’re on.

  But I would stipulate that in cases where the text preceding very special numbers has wording that invites readers to count digits, such as “Here are the first fifty digits of…”, then in that case, go ahead and do it groups of five. The same should apply for large tabular seas of numeric values, such as high-precision trigonometric tables. Greg L (talk) 02:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I support Arthur Rubin's as representative of typical published typography for long digit sequences, and oppose Greg L's as an unnecessary change to a narrow class of items, those mathematical constants that people want to see lots of digits of. The break point is around 10 digits, or between physical and mathematical constants. For example, 299,792,458 m/s, but 3.14159 26536. Which is how it has been for quite a while, and nobody but Greg L is seeking to change it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I would support Greg's proposal in the paragraph before Dicklyon's if I thought we could pull it off; unfortunately, I don't think we could get it adopted. If the proposal were adopted, WP:MOS#Large numbers would change as shown:

• CommasThin spaces are used to break the sequence every three places (2 900 000).

Interestingly, the rule about not grouping digits to the right of the decimal is hidden away someplace away from where comma-grouping is discussed, making it difficult to find.

Please interpret my version of the new rule only in terms of how it appears to the reader; the mechanism to create the appearance is still up in the air. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• For an online readership of our range and type, I fully support Greg's line on this matter. I find the agressive stance here by [unnamed] to be odd given Greg's experience in the editing of engineering and mathematics topics. Tony (talk) 08:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support 5-digit grouping for very long numbers because that's the way I've always seen them grouped in the real world. Long numbers doesn't really fall under the scope of SI and NIST guidelines; these rules are meant for measurements, which are never known with more than a dozen significant figures or so. Trying to shoehorn mathematical constants and long numbers into the SI is not helpful. --Itub (talk) 09:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Any such standard needs to allow valid exceptions. For instance, geographic coordinates are usually quoted to six decimal places (and can have more, or fewer), always with with no spacing: "52.342345,-23.765134". Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
• This has to be one of the lamest disputes I've seen in a long time… I pinch myself, but editors really are arguing about whether to write 3.141 592 653 589 793 238 46…, 3.14159 26535 89793 23846… or just plain old 3.14159265358979323846…! Actually, I note that not one editor has proposed the third option, despite the fact that this is what is used in the article. Neither has any editor commented on the lamentable state of most of the articles about "special irrational numbers", nor about the fact that the infoboxes in such articles give the "binary" form (if such a beast really existed) before the decimal form, and also include ludicrous translations into hexadecimal notation. Oppose all proposals as WP:CREEP, lacking in consensus and an obviously serious distraction of editors from the task of improving articles. Physchim62 (talk) 13:55, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• No, you are wrong, Itub, when you wrote “Long numbers doesn't really fall under the scope of SI and NIST guidelines”. Let’s get our fact here straight. The BIPM’s SI style guide has a section, 10.5.3, dealing specifically with long numbers. It calls for groups of three digits. Period. This simply reflects the European’s centuries-long practice of grouping in threes to the right of the decimal marker. Further, that practice is a logical extension of how delimiting is always done to the left of the decimal marker in groups of three wherever you live; one doesn’t suddenly change to groups of five just because one is to the right of the decimal point. This issue also clearly falls with in the “scope” of the NIST (splendid example here), as they too have a style guide that calls for SI compliance. So too does the ISO.

  The US practice of delimiting with commas to the left has been adopted for use here on en.Wikipedia; we’re not going to be changing that with this discussion. When delimiting is employed to the right of the decimal marker as well, then it should be A) logical (you don’t suddenly change to groups of five), and B) SI compliant.

  And with due respect to Physchim62, style guides—like MOS and MOSNUM—serve a valuable editorial purpose; that’s why all publications, whether it’s the NY Times or the Encyclopedia Britannica, have one. We don’t need editors on Wikipedia inventing new systems here. We don’t need two versions of {{val}}: one called {{val_(SI-compliant)}} and the other called {{val_(for_mathematical_constants_known_precisely)}}. Greg L (talk) 17:05, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• I believe Greg L cited the wrong publication; it is NIST, not BIPM, that has a style guide That style guide (section 10.5.3) says

Because the comma is widely used as the decimal marker outside the United States, it should not be used to separate digits into groups of three. Instead, digits should be separated into groups of three, counting from the decimal marker towards the left and right, by the use of a thin, fixed space. However, this practice is not usually followed for numbers having only four digits on either side of the decimal marker except when uniformity in a table is desired.

[examples ommitted]

Note: The practice of using a space to group digits is not usually followed in certain specialized applications, such as engineering drawings and financial statements. [boldface added]

Notice the use of commas to group digits, anywhere, is clearly contrary to this style guide. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• (*sigh*) Here is the link to the BIPM’s style guide (which the NIST mirrors): 5.3.4 BIPM: SI brochure (8th ed.): Rules and style conventions for expressing values of quantities: Formatting numbers, and the decimal marker. I cited and linked to this in my 23:19, 7 October 2008 post, above, but may have gotten the two twisted in a copy/paste since then.

  Now, Gerry, let’s get real shall we? I’ve mentioned several times above that en.Wikipedia adopted the US convention of delimiting to the left with commas. Nothing we’re discussing here is ever going to change that fact. The people over on fr.Wikipedia will keep doing as they like. As I wrote several times above (it would be nice if you actually read some of the goings-on here because I’m way ahead of you here) this practice of comma-delimiting to the left is far too entrenched in the U.S. and across the Internet for you to change that with your above epiphany. None of us here in this debate on this mote of a backwater discussion is going to change the way the U.S. works in this regard nor en.Wikipedia’s adoption of that widespread convention.

  As I also wrote above, this is an issue of simply adhering to the three-digit practice that is common throughout Europe and which has been standardized for use with the SI. And if you’re point is that we should ignore the entire SI style guide because we ignore parts of it, I reject that as utterly absurd. We already reject the BIPM’s call that a space be inserted before the percent symbol, e.g. 75 % (5.3.7 Stating values of dimensionless quantities, or quantities of dimension one). Why? Because the real world doesn’t work that way. Well, the the real world actually delimits in groups of three and the BIPM and NIST and ISO know that. One doesn’t suddenly change to five-digit groupings to the right (retaining three-digit groupings to the left) just because the article mentions “mathematics” four times in the body text. We don’t need two versions of {{val}}: one called {{val_(SI-compliant)}} and the other called {{val_(for_mathematical_constants_known_precisely)}}. Greg L (talk) 18:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Using commas to group digits, either to the left or the right of the decimal marker, is not compliant with the NIST Special Publication 811 guideline, nor is it compliant with BIPM brochure. If you want to propose something that groups with commas to the left of the decimal marker and spaces to the right of the decimal marker, go ahead, but do not claim it is "SI-compliant". YOUR PROPOSAL IS AN OBVIOUS VIOLATION OF SI. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• You obviously didn’t read or understand what I wrote above, Gerry. Either that, or you are using utterly fallacious arguments that ignore common sense in an effort to justify an inane proposal. The only part of my suggestion that is a violation of the SI is that we not *pretend to* change the United States’ long-standing practice of using commas to the delimit to the left. You’re simply being absurd and childish. And since you seem to have a brain-block on this, 3.141592658 is perfectly SI-compliant. Your implicit suggestion that all that must go out the window with U.S.’s 31,415.926585 is ludicrous. Finally, you’re shouting. As you no longer intend to debate here in a helpful or constructive manner, I will no longer respond to you here on this issue. Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 18:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• P.S. I now see that your response to this is to nominate the {{val}} template for deletion (your nomination notice here). Note that there are articles that use this. At least one of them has been awarded GA status. Do you enjoy being a pain for others? Greg L (talk) 18:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

STOP! Wikipedia has dispute resolution procedures, I beg you to use them now. Otherwise I will refer this discussion to WP:AN: I think that the possible consequences of this dispute are sufficient to justify such a step. All users involved are being silly, but the party's over, sorry, I will not sit by and see the format of scientific and mathematical articles be fought over in this way. Physchim62 (talk) 19:16, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• I consider it prudent to stop the use of badly designed templates that just happen to look ok when their capablilities are not pushed. For example, while 3.141592658 is indeed SI compliant, 86,164.555368 mean sidereal seconds per mean solar day is not. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

←

• It doesn’t matter what just one editor thinks Gerry. Wikipedia would grind to a halt if every editor with strong feelings on a subject flouted the general consensus and deleted whatever he disagreed with. Those two templates you nominated for deletion were extensively discussed and well received on both WT:MOSNUM and WT:MOS (here and here). You were the only holdout and were quite clear that you opposed these templates ([12]). You know full well what the consensus was regarding these templates. You also know full well that the deletion of those templates would be exceedingly disruptive and would damage Wikipedia. One of the articles that makes extensive use of these templates just received WP:GA status. To the others: (Physchim62). No worries. I’ve already filed an ANI here over what Gerry did today. Greg L (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• If WP:MOSNUM#Large Numbers were changed to read substantially as follows:

Large or long numbers

• Commas are used to break the sequence every three places left of the decimal point; spaces or dots are not used in this role (2,900,000, not 2 900 000).Optionally, thin spaces or markup that creates the appearance of thin spaces may be used to break the sequence every three places to the right of the decimal point; commas are never used to the right of the decimal point. Note this convention is unique to the English Wikipedia. except in Technical tables may have a unique format if it aids readability. in quotations where the original does so (such as in scientific publications). Quotations retain the format in the original.

I would be much less concerned about the Val template. I don't mind if Wikipedia creates its very own format, as long as the community does so with it's eyes wide open. I would also want some assurance that the problems alluded to in the following passage from MOSNUM have been resolved:

• • {{val}} is meant to be used to automatically handle all of this, but currently has known bugs, principal among them, not displaying some values as typed in the code (see Talk:val). Use with great consideration and always check that it will give the correct results before using it.

--Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• All: What Gerry is saying above is unsupportable. The {{val}} template is intended for making fully SI-compliant numeric equivalencies. Examine these examples:

1. {{val|6.62606896|(33)|e=-34|u=[[Joule-second|J·s]]}} → 6.62606896(33)×10⁻³⁴ J·s  Compare to NIST’s version here
   
2. {{val|1.3806504|(24)|e=-23|u=J K⁻¹}} → 1.3806504(24)×10⁻²³ J K⁻¹  Compare to NIST’s version here
   
3. {{val|1.660538782|(83)|e=-27|ul=kg}} → 1.660538782(83)×10⁻²⁷ kg  Compare to NIST’s version here
   

Note that {val} uses thinspaces to the left and right of the × sign. This was a compromise solution that made everyone happy on WT:MOS.

What Gerry has objected to in the past (it is a bit unclear what he is complaining about here), is that {val} can also be used to make the U.S.-style delimiting on the left-hand side of the decimal point that has been standardized here on en.Wikipedia. Thus:

• {{val|12345678}} → 12345678.

It appears that Gerry would have this written out as follows: 12345678 since that is what the BIPM prescribes for world-wide use. Well, this is en.Wikipedia and delimiting with gaps to the left of the decimal point is simply not in the offering here.  It would be exceedingly naive and unrealistic to expect otherwise. It’s just that simple.

This specific issue (commas to the left) was discussed by very many editors back in February and Gerry expressed his opposition at that time. But Gerry’s views were heard and rejected by the majority as unworkable and impractical. All aspects of {{delimitnum}} (fully embodied in {{val}} ) were thoroughly discussed on both WT:MOSNUM and WT:MOS, the tool was enthusiastically supported, was put forth for being made, and a Bugzilla was posted asking the developers to make the special parser functions necessary to employ it. Gerry disagreed at that time. And he’s agitating here again on the issue.

Note that there is something else that the {val} and {delimitnum} templates do. They don’t use “spaces” to delimit the fractional portion of the significand (the portion of the significand to the right of the decimal marker). Instead, they use what typographers refer to as “pair kerning” via em-based control of margins (e.g. <span style="margin-left:0.25em">). Margin positioning is part of what the Web-authoring community calls span tags, which, in turn, is part of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Effectively, what appears to be a space would really only be a visual effect caused by the precise placement of the digits; the “spaces” wouldn’t be separate, typeable characters.

To see the difference, slowly select the two values below with your mouse:

6.022464342 (via the em-based span tags that {val} uses. Note how the cursor snaps across the gaps)

6.022 464 342 (via non-breaking spaces, note how the spaces can be individually selected)

One might ask “Why is em-based margin control via span tags nice?” Note how, as you select the two values above, the lower version has spaces that can be selected because they are distinct characters. Now try double-clicking on both of the above values. Note how you can select the entire significand of only the top value with a double-click. By using the technique illustrated in the top example, people will be able to select entire significands from Wikipedia and paste them into Excel, where they will be recognized as real numbers! This beats the hell out of the old system, where (as exemplified at Font size) simple regular spaces and non-breaking spaces are used to delimit numbers. These values can’t be copied and used in Excel without first hand-deleting each of the spaces from every value. Until the spaces have been deleted, Excel treats the numbers as text strings upon which mathematical operations can’t be performed. If you try, you’ll just be met with a #VALUE! error.

And there is another bit of attention to detail that SkyLined took care of with {val}. When we hand type a negative exponent, like “-34” we type using the hyphen key on our keyboard. Even if we press the ‘minus’ key on a numeric keypad, we still end up with a hyphen (ASCII character 45). The trouble with the hyphen is it appears rather short when superscripted and looks like 1 × 10^-34. SkyLined’s {val} template substitutes the true minus sign (Unicode &#x2012;) when rendering the expression to produce 1×10⁻³⁴.

The {val} template is easy to use, produces gorgeous, SI-compliant output (as compliant as possible if U.S.-style commas show on the left of the decimal point), and readers can double-click to select entire significands and paste them into Excel where they will be instantly treated as numeric values without any further editing. Greg L (talk) 00:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Lets not forget to look at another number from the same web site 12906.4037787 Ω, and compare that to NIST's version. Are we to accept not only comma grouping and space grouping in the same article,not but in the same number, without a revision to MOSNUM? Note that the Val template also made a small binary-to-decimal conversion error too, the 699 on the extreme right should just be 7.--Gerry Ashton (talk) 00:59, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Then don’t use {val} for that value if you don’t want to. Values like that are rare on Wikipedia anyway. But if you start using the Euro method of using spaces on both sides of the decimal point, some confused reader is going to change it. Greg L (talk) 01:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Real-world example: the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics has a table of mathematical constants, which is spaced every five digits, and a table of physical constants, which is spaced every three digits. They can be flexible when needed; why can't we? I'd like to see an official publication by BIPM or SI that shows a mathematical constant with more that say 20 figures and is spaced every three digits as a counterexample. --Itub (talk) 05:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• There is tons of evidence in books and papers that math constants like pi and e are much more often printed with 5-digit groups than with 3. Greg L keeps ignoring this fact of such long numbers being treated differently, essentially as digit sequences as opposed to just values, and wants to unify such digit sequences with ordinary numbers. In spite of the NIST/BIPM guide that says one may divide into groups of 3, division into groups of 5 remains widespread for such case. So there's no compelling reason to change how it has long been done in wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 07:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Google books test: 164 hits for "14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279" vs 58 hits for "141592653589793238462643383279" and only 16 hits for "141 592 653 589 793 238 462 643 383 279". Ok, all three styles have seen some use in the real world for 30-decimal pi, but the five-digit grouping is the most popular one and the three-digit grouping is by far the least popular. --Itub (talk) 12:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: similar results are found for e, the square root of 2, and the golden ratio. In one case (I don't remember which) there were zero hits for three-digit grouping while there were a handful for five-digit grouping. Also note that to have a meaningful comparison the numbers need to be at least 15 digits long. --Itub (talk) 15:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• I've felt all along that separating digits into groups of three with thin spaces both left and right of the decimal place would be a hard sell; the only places I knew of that used that standard were BIPM, NIST, and IEEE. NIST couldn't even get the rest of the government to go along with the standard. I have finally found one additional source that follows the standard: Blackburn & Holford-Strevens The Oxford Companion to the Year published by Oxford University Press in 1999, with corrections in 2003. An example from page 805 is "40 929.397 74".

I've always felt it was a choice among bad alternatives; the usual US typography, which is hard to read, the BIPM standard, which is unpopular (or maybe "rare" is a better word), and Greg L's proposal, which is unique to Wikipedia. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 13:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• "In certain subject areas the customary format may differ from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern U.S. military often use day before month, in accordance with usage in that field." The quote is, of course, from WP:MOSNUM! I we can have such a common-sense compromise for dates, why not for numbers? Why not restrict ourselves to saying that number format should correspond to English-language usage in the subject area of the article? That would be ISO 31-0 for the physical sciences, but could be different in other fields. Hence, the speed of light would be 299 792 458 m/s but the population of New York City would be 8,274,527. Physchim62 (talk) 13:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Note that, for the speed of light, the Google hits are about 80,000 for both 299,792,458 and 299792458, as opposed to 18.8 million for 299 792 458. I would hardly call ISO 31-0 unpopular or rare! Physchim62 (talk) 13:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Restricting the search to Google Books, the figures are 2120 for the version with spaces and 651 for the version without spaces. None of the first 150 hits in the search for "299,792,458" actually used commas to separate the groups of digits; all simply had no separation. Physchim62 (talk) 13:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
    • You must have forgotten to put your spaced google web query in quotes, because it is also matching pages where 299, 792, and 458 occur in different parts of the page. Also, google web has very weird rules for dealing with punctuation, so a search for 299,792,458 or for "299 792 458" can return results for 299792458. Google books has different rules, because "299 792 458" doesn't return hits for 299792458. --Itub (talk) 14:33, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • OK, the figures come out about the same for spaced and unspaced versions of the speed of light, both in Google Books and Google Web. Can't say anything about the use of commas, as Google appears to systematically remove them from large numbers. Physchim62 (talk) 15:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• I think the important distinction here is to not look towards reference books filled with tabular data for guidance here on this issue. If Wikipedia had a page filled with lots of high-precision tabular data with values less than 1—such as high-precision trig tables (who uses those anymore anyway?), then we might follow that convention for our tabular trig tables. We might have tables that look like this:

---

90.00°  1.00000 00000 00000

89.99°  0.99999 99847 69129

89.98°  0.99999 99390 76517

89.97°  0.99999 98629 22164

89.96°  0.99999 97563 06074

89.95°  0.99999 96192 28249

89.94°  0.99999 94516 88695

89.93°  0.99999 92536 87414

89.92°  0.99999 90252 24415

89.91°  0.99999 87662 99704

89.90°  0.99999 84769 13288

89.89°  0.99999 81570 65176

89.88°  0.99999 78067 55379

89.87°  0.99999 74259 83907

89.86°  0.99999 70147 50771

89.85°  0.99999 65730 55985

89.84°  0.99999 61008 99561

89.83°  0.99999 55982 81513

89.82°  0.99999 50652 01858

89.81°  0.99999 45016 60611

89.80°  0.99999 39076 57790

89.79°  0.99999 32831 93413

89.78°  0.99999 26282 67498

---

Now that I’ve just made one, I just love the look of the above table. But I think for the purposes of this discussion, we should strictly limit ourselves to how standard numeric equivalences and simple numbers that are used mid-stream in the main body text ought to be expressed. I also don’t think we can even look towards how special numbers like pi are done in books since all these monster-size numbers originally came from computerized sources that adhered to the long-standing practice first used in actual line-feed printouts. I can see that notwithstanding this “source” issue, many books still saw fit to strip out the 5-digit delimiting and format them into the SI-compliant form. We simply can’t look towards the number of books that gush over high-precision values of pi nor reference books.

For most numeric equivalencies and numbers used in in-line prose (those values that don’t invite readers to start counting numbers by using wording like “Here are the first 50 digits of this never-ending number…”), I don’t see why we should simply follow what the NIST and the BIPM and the ISO recommend here. None of them mention a special exception for mathematical constants. What are we to do with “mathematical constants known precisely” if they exceed a hundred-thousand? Is pi¹² to be written like 9,24269.18152 3374 or 9 24269.18152 3374? I don’t think we want to start delimiting on both sides in groups of five nor would we want to mix it up and delimit every three to the left and every five to the right.

For simple ordinary numbers in regular body text where we aren’t inviting readers to count digits, it make abundant sense to me to just follow what the standard bodies say to do: delimit in groups of three regardless of which side of the decimal marker you’re on. We would then have numbers that look like these: 6.62606896(33)×10⁻³⁴ J·s and 1.3806504(24)×10⁻²³ J K⁻¹ and 1.660538782×10⁻²⁷ kg and e ≈ 2.718281828. This is the right way to do it. Greg L (talk) 20:33, 10 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)

Are they not intended to list related articles by name, similar to disambig pages (one blue link per line and all that happy). This seemed sensible enough I took for granted that it was a guideline already. In any case Wikipedia:Piped link#Intuitiveness should cover it well enough. As I understand it, other than for dissanbiguation purposes piped links should generally only be used when the constraints of the surrounding prose (that is, what does and doesn't flow well in a sentence) leave no other viable option. This is not an issue in appendices such as the "see also" section or Main article: [[{{{1}}}]], and I as a reader would expect these to show the article's proper title, especially if I had the paperback edition. — CharlotteWebb 20:23, 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)

No, but a bot which goes around removing bare year/date links will make those who want a link to consider what the guidelines are, and to work with it accordingly ;-) Ohconfucius (talk) 09:06, 9 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)

Actually, I concur with the proposed text, noting reservations to the reasoning, provided that

1. The suggested location of the {{seealso}} be left unspecified, or noting that acceptable locations include the top of the article (among other {{for}} tags), the #See also section (which, by the way, requires modifying the guidelines for that section), or the section or paragraph where the year first occurs. Deprecate the "[[1929|other notable events in 1929]]" in favor of {{for|other notable events in 1929|1929}}, to be placed in the lead, in the "#See also" section, or in a relevant paragraph.
2. There should be occasional exceptions where a bare link is appropriate (examples being the birth year or death year of a person in an article about that person, or the year of an event in an article about the event) but almost never more than two links per article.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe that these demands for open-ended prominence are unreasonable. I do not recommend them. Tony (talk) 06:44, 9 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)

Shereth, 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)

that objection may be just a mechanistic reaction, without due consideration of the revised MOS guideline. These days, I still come across editors who add date links to articles on my watchlist. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:12, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Exactly -- an RfC, and probably a link in Template:Cent would seem highly appropriate to gain consensus, Tony. I've de-watchlisted this already, but if bots and script kids start mucking around again in historical articles I maintain, I'll be back. -- Kendrick7^talk 16:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to do an RfC. Tony (talk) 16:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't see a consensus against bare year links. (I can only see a consensus against autoformatting, which I actually don't agree with, but I can see the point.) They're usually inappropriate, per the overlinking guidelines, but not always. If this discussion were sufficiently published (RfC + {{Cent}}), and reaches consensus, then we can act on it. Not before consensus is reached. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right on that point. There was a stable consensus to link solitary years per WP:CONTEXT only, but the deprecation of autoformatting or Lightbot's delinkings (or both) seem to have stirred up a lot of new thoughts/emotions on this, and now there are editors pulling both ends on the string, wanting anything from "link all years" to "link no years". (I'd note that the "link all years" crowd is a clear minority, at least if you discount those who would accept some non-wikilinked form of date markup. But the rest of the scale is crowded.) Personally, I mostly agree with Tony and Greg, but I'm not too blind to see that there's no consensus (yet) on the matter. And neither are they: Tony explicitly said that "This is simply a more formal and quite transparent attempt to generate the consensus that Aervanath feels hasn't yet been generated." But yes, it should be done with a larger input. And then, it will look like the birth/death date RfC section above... I'm actually having a hard time seeing how such a consensus can emerge from all this, but the MOSNUM regulars don't seem to despair just yet. -- Jao (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

(@Tony) Create a subpage under WP:MOSNUM (you could do a section here, but likely will make this talk page too long); write up the proposal you wish to add, set up a structure for "Support", "Oppose", "Neutral" and "Comments" for people to provide feedback. Then, at the top of the page, add in {{RFCstyle| section=section name !! reason=a short summary of the discussion !! time= ~~~~~ }} so that it gets listed at the RFC list. Announce that page at the various WP:VP and at WP:CENT and anywhere else you think it might help. I would also consider that this is worthy of a watchlist-notice, but I have a feeling convincing those that hate these that this should be added. --MASEM 17:35, 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)
• Oppose; constrains editors' application of their own best judgment for no reason whatsoever. Linking inline is best for the same reason that every other relevant link in an article is made inline; Tony's logic seems to me to disagree with the general principle espoused elsewhere in the WP:MOS that links should be in the body text, rather than under See Also, where possible. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• This is just one of a large number of examples of editors using their discretion (sic). I would say that this is probably caused by conditioning from years of linking for the purposes of Date auto-formatting, and may be difficult to overcome if in-line linking was left to individual editors without an overall policy of full deprecation with some exceptions. The article may not be from the population of articles you habitually edit, but you should be mindful of some of the problems which exist at this point in time. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Indeed, leaving it up to individual editors risks disorder. As Colonies Chris points out, our newer editors learn by imitating what they read, without the experience to analyse and decide whether their formatting—linking or otherwise—is appropriate. Throwing it to the wind is just what we shouldn't be doing. Parham, I forgot to type in the "Oppose" for you to make it easier. People are probably tired of the predictability in your responses to proposals, especially when your supporting reasons are, IMO, usually spurious. Tony (talk) 08:12, 9 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)

Temperature Units

There has been discussion over on Talk:Mercury (planet) about including Fahrenheit temperatures (along with Kelvin and Celsius) so that the encyclopedia is more readily understandable to readers from the U.S.A. One editor suggested that the appropriate place for this discussion was over here. The opinions presented so far can be viewed on that talk page under the subheading "Editing?" Tuna Night (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• I think a Fahrenheit conversion would be reasonable in Mercury (planet), especially in the lead section. It's the kind of article that school kids read, not just planetary scientists – probably why it gets so much vandalism! In WP:CHEM, we often provide Fahrenheit conversions in articles about common or household chemicals, see acetic acid (featured article) for an example. Physchim62 (talk) 15:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• I don't see any harm in having the conversions available. As Physchim says, the article isn't just read by scientists. --Tango (talk) 16:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• If it's a general article like Mercury, then by all means it should have Fahrenheit in it. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 16:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
• There was a discussion some time back (either earlier this year, or late last year) amongst Astronomy editors which resulted in a decision to to use only the metric values. I'll try to track it down. --Ckatz^chat_spy 19:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Really? And this from a discipline which has at least four widely-used non-SI units of distance! ;) Physchim62 (talk) 19:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)