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Having surveyed many year-pages, all I can say is that they're poor. When they approach the standard of [[1345]], we might start to promote them in the project. But for the most part, they're rag-tag threadbare lists of fragmentary facts. The quandary raised by [[1345]] is that it sucks in much of the suitable information for the surrounding years, too. What ''would'' be more suitable is decade articles before the last few centuries. They could make a fascinating addition to WP's historical articles. But the chance that this will happen is slender, I suspect. I note PMA's arguments above, and apologise for not yet responding. Surely the exceptional year-link is allowable under the current guidelines ("not normally"), where editors want to put a case for the benefits? I'm referring to odd years such as 1776 ''in the context'' of the American revolution, and years in the two 20th-century world wars. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 15:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
Having surveyed many year-pages, all I can say is that they're poor. When they approach the standard of [[1345]], we might start to promote them in the project. But for the most part, they're rag-tag threadbare lists of fragmentary facts. The quandary raised by [[1345]] is that it sucks in much of the suitable information for the surrounding years, too. What ''would'' be more suitable is decade articles before the last few centuries. They could make a fascinating addition to WP's historical articles. But the chance that this will happen is slender, I suspect. I note PMA's arguments above, and apologise for not yet responding. Surely the exceptional year-link is allowable under the current guidelines ("not normally"), where editors want to put a case for the benefits? I'm referring to odd years such as 1776 ''in the context'' of the American revolution, and years in the two 20th-century world wars. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 15:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
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:::*How can an editor feel motivated to improve a year article if they know that someone will quickly step in to almost turn it into an orphaned article, thus the good work done becoming invisible to the readers? How can someone feel motivated to improve an article that people don't even want to see links towards it. De-linking dates means keeping them in their current poor state forever. This is unwiki. [[User:NerdyNSK|NerdyNSK]] ([[User talk:NerdyNSK|talk]]) 22:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC) |
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*I'm content with ''not normally'', provided FA and GA will listen to cases for the benefits. [[User:Pmanderson|Septentrionalis]] <small>[[User talk:Pmanderson|PMAnderson]]</small> 17:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
*I'm content with ''not normally'', provided FA and GA will listen to cases for the benefits. [[User:Pmanderson|Septentrionalis]] <small>[[User talk:Pmanderson|PMAnderson]]</small> 17:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC) |
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Julian dates and templates
I have an interest in dates on Wikipeida, in relation to birth (and death) dates for hCard and start and end dates for hCalendar microformats.
Is it not possible that the existing date templates could be used,; modified so that, if a date before a certain point is entered, a prominent warning is generated, requiring a "calendar" flag be set, and, depending on the flag, the date be rendered as "DD MM YYYY (Gregorian) or "DD MM YYYY (Julian), using any DD-MM-YYYY order/format as suits the user? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Not everyone edits articles with the edit box, so it wouldn't be possible to raise an interactive warning flag. All that could be done is to refuse to save edits that don't meet requirements. Also, indicating Gregorian or Julian with every date in an article would be excessive. A single statement of the convention followed in a certain article would suffice. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- There can be on-page warnings, like those generated, say, when coordinates are entered wrongly. Perhaps the indication could be shorter - say "DD MM YYYY (J)"? We don't seem to have a problem with repeating "BC" (or whatevr0 in articles. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- We probably should not; on such articles as Pericles, where there is no possible question on almost all of them, one BC per section or less would be enough. But it is sufficiently short and commonplace (and, above all, does not interrupt the syntax) that it is not deeply intrusive. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- There can be on-page warnings, like those generated, say, when coordinates are entered wrongly. Perhaps the indication could be shorter - say "DD MM YYYY (J)"? We don't seem to have a problem with repeating "BC" (or whatevr0 in articles. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- Possible, yes: but that's in the sense that a Turing machine can perform any computable operation. Several widely supported requests have been made to the developers to change autoformatting in various ways; none have been acted on.
- Prominent warnings can be produced without affecting the software, although one which is triggered by an unlinked July 15, 1581 would be difficult to imagine.
- But is this desirable?
- It would not affect dates between 1582 and 1752 in the English-speaking world, which are a large proportion of the problem, and which may actually need clarification.
- It would not affect dates which mention only October 14 with the year understood,
- On the other hand, it would force parenthetical explanations on every date in Battle of Hastings which mentions the year. This is bad writing, especially if there is a footnote explaining the calendar, as some articles have. Even without, who ever imagined that October 14, 1066 was not Julian? (Some readers have never considered the question, but they are merely confused; they will in all likelihood remain confused by the parenthesis.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
- "Several widely supported requests have been made to the developers to change autoformatting in various ways; none have been acted on." — for the record, I have acted upon every single technical request that has been pointed out to me, usually within a few hours. I have submitted three patches to modify the behavior of date autoformatting, all in response to requests made here or on the bugzilla site. The WikiMedia system administrators (who are not properly called "developers" though most of them also happen to be developers as well) will no doubt be happy to put in place whatever patches the community decides are appropriate. The problem is (and always has been) getting a broad consensus on what should be done. Stop blaming the developers and/or system administrators for the inability of editors to come up with a sensible plan. --UC_Bill (talk) 23:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Using templates for dates and date ranges
In line with the concerns over mass-delinking of dates that would leave such dates difficult to relocated via computer searches (not impossible, just difficult), I really think we should consider the replacement of dates in articles with a templated version which provides many benefits. The template itself should be simple/stupid: {{d|2008|9|13|int}}, for example, as to make it easy to type as well. Use of the template is not required, but as shown by the benefits below, it can easily help an article maintain an article-consistent date format per MOS. An equivalent template can be made for date ranges. (Note that this is not an ISO date, the date is entered as described in the correct calendar format per the MOSNUM section).
The template would not have to link dates so we don't have over-linking, and the template would have a field for the date format specifier so that regardless of how it is determined what date format to use for an article, the template can put out dates in either format; such a format could also be easily changed in one shot in an article via automated tools like AWB and so forth (just by changing the template parameter in all dates in an article). No DA would be used at all, so the end page results are still the same for anon user and logged in user. The template can be used in main and footnote areas as to normalize the date format (the "cite" template family would need modification for this, but it needs modification anyway for date format equilivalence between text and footnotes). Bots and script tools that are already stripping dates can likely be easily modified to replace linked dates with the template version.
The key benefit is that very likely, if a DA solution is found that addresses all the concerns that others have against it (nonlinking result, anons are shown date format best suited to them (geographical-based or article-based), etc.) only the template has to be modified to bring in the DA solution. Now, there's a likelihood that a proper DA solution may not work with the template, but now we have the other benefit of using a template: a bot can go through and convert the templates to whatever format the DA needs.
The only drawback for this is that we will have a very widely used template, assuming full usage, at least 2 million times (once per page if not more). It would likely need full protection to prevent IP vandal harm, but that's not a huge concern. --MASEM 13:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Templates are useful in some cases, such as when displaying dates in sortable date columns; otherwise the "date" sorting would actually become alphabetical sorting. For instance, in a table in an article Schengen Agreement, I used the dts template in this manner:
{{dts|link=off|format=dmy|1995|04|28}}
. That produces "28 April 1995", doesn't produce a link, and sorts chronologically when used in a sortable table.
- I understand that you're proposing a new, simpler-to-use date template, which doesn't take a "link" or "format" parameter, since it would never produce a link, and would format the date according to the MOSNUM. Is this correct?
- I do see drawbacks to using this method: (a) It's harder to use it than just typing the date directly in the text. (b) Since no link is produced, nor does it have any other visible benefits, such as sortability in a table, I suspect many editors will not see the point of using it in normal text. (c) If a MOSNUM guide on date formatting that everyone agrees with ever arises, and it says that formatting depends on the article context—or heaven forbid, on what some earlier editor decided was the best date format—then the template will either have to have some sort of articifial intelligence, or a "format" parameter for outputting the date in other than the default format. Some of the simplicity is thus lost, and editing the use of the template takes as much effort as just editing a date expressed in normal text. (d) It will be hard to write a template that can cope with things like "the night of 21/22 September" or "July 15/25" (if giving a date in both Julian and Gregorian), and I suspect using such a template will be difficult, too.
- In conclusion, I think it's a good idea to use date templates in tables, citations, and such; but we already have such templates,
{{dts}}
and{{cite}}
. For dates in normal text, we should just write out the date without markup. I don't really see the extra effort involved in template-ifying every single date being worth it.
- What would be a good idea, in my opinion, would be to make the
{{dts}}
template produce by default no links and an output in the dmy format, making it unnecessary to specify the parameterslink=off|format=dmy
. Also, there should be another output format,shortdmy
or such, that would produce standard month abbreviations in case of the longer months, so the date field wouldn't date up so much space in tables: for instance, "23 Sep. 1879" instead of "23 September 1879". Teemu Leisti (talk) 19:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- To address the drawbacks:
- Yes, unfortunately it is harder to use, but, again, it would be optional, and only what would result with a bot-assisted DA-delinking manner. I would also believe that save for date ranges, as long as bare dates are in the two expected manners, they themselves can be converted to the template form via bot or script-assisted tools; and also vice versa.
- Same issue; which is why I'm pointing out that this would typically be output from a bot or script that could be done on a cleanup pass or the like when reviewing an article. It may become second nature to some later.
- I address this point already. The template right now needs a format parameter since it does not relay on DA. Now, say I wrote an article, all dates with this template using intl format, and the MOSNUM decision decides that it should be US format for this page. Changing this is only a matter of going to a regex-aware editor (AWB or the like), and swap the format parameter in each date, a very simple automated step compared to reversing day and month in every date. (Yes, it would be nice if WP's template system allowed a page-persistent parameter, so that I could have a lead template set the format, and all others get from that, but I don't see that happening without a heavy dose of JS).
- Date ranges (ignoring diffent calender aspects) are not difficult and only require a few more #if checks to reduce characters produced. The calender differences is a tougher solution, and in such cases, may be better just written out directly, or at least see how many such instances are around to warrant a template need. (Technically, it is possible that a template could be written to spit out a date in the G/J calanders - just a bunch of #if statements again, and then add in the proper formatting. Not sure how date ranges would then interfere with all that). --MASEM 13:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- To address the drawbacks:
---
Could we have a date template which, rather than require the specification of YYYY|MM|DD and format as four separate parameters, instead simply wrapped around already fully MOS formatted dates.
The point of this would be for those users who have date preferences set up, so that:
- If user preference was for International date format, then {{dte|May 9, 2001}} would render as 9 May 2001.
- If user preference was set for US format, then {{dte|9 May 2001}} would render as May 9, 2001.
- Ideally I'd like the template name "date" rather than "dte", but "date" is already taken with this buggy thing. Perhaps this could be resolved in future, but I'd encourage keeping things simple for now.
To clarify all the combinations, and to suggest keeping it simple, I'd recommend allowing only the following MOS formats in the template:
Format in template | Rendering for user: | |
---|---|---|
International date preference | US date preference | |
9 May | 9 May | May 9 |
May 9 | 9 May | May 9 |
9 May 2001 | 9 May 2001 | May 9, 2001 |
May 9, 2001 | 9 May 2001 | May 9, 2001 |
Users without set date preferences would of course just get what's in the template.
This way both the user's preferences and the editor's intent (with respect to MOS) would be taken into account.
--SallyScot (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- This would return us to the most unsatisfactory situation where it's almost impossible for WP to manage its date formats properly. Editors need to see what their readers see. And as has been pointed out above, it's a lot of work to key in, and not intuitive. Why all the trouble over whether month or day come first and second in order? Tony (talk) 13:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't follow the argument of how such a template would make it almost impossible for WP to manage its date formats. Could you explain? As I see it such a template's intent would simply be to give editors the option of catering for user date preferences. I'm not suggesting it ought to be mandatory, but I would ask why you'd deny such choice? It's not as if the question of why all the trouble over whether month or day comes first or second is a newly invented issue. The template would simply resolve linking context issues around the pre-existing date autoformatting approach. If anything, the pre-existence of that autoformatting approach, the fact that it was being used despite its linking issues, clearly indicates that some editors would like to be able to cater somehow for user date preferences. --SallyScot (talk) 14:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- Some, perhaps, but the vast majority used it (or had it inserted for them) just because it was the recommended thing to do at the time. Had there been a widespread desire to cater for readers' preferences, editors would have been banging on the devs' doors all these years asking them to implement something along those lines for IP users (which nearly all readers are).--Kotniski (talk) 18:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Again, I don't think I quite follow the argument. I don't see how editors would've been asking for date autoformatting preferences for IP users to be taken into account, because I don't see how such requests would make sense. Maybe I'm missing something, but as I understand it, you'd need to be a registered user in order to have set up preferences. I think this is how most editors would understand the situation, and as such they wouldn't have been banging on devs' doors asking for the implementation of something that couldn't be done for IP users. --SallyScot (talk) 19:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- There are two ways that I could see IP users and users without a preference set handled. One is to support a per-article default. The other is to base it on the country associated with the IP address of the user. PaleAqua (talk) 20:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- What Tony meant is that if there's a way to format dates according to preference, then many editors will use it. I know I did, for four years. That's not a huge problem if there is a default format for unregistered users (possibly on a per-article basis), as PaleAqua suggests. But if "users without set date preferences would of course just get what's in the template" (just as they do in the present, deprecated, system), then we are in a lot of trouble. If an article contains the text "The meeting was held between {{dte|9 May 2001}} and {{dte|May 13, 2001}}" and we, the editors, see "The meeting was held between 9 May 2001 and 13 May 2001" (or the other way around), then who would fix it? Who would know there was even something that had to be fixed? That's exactly the mess where auto-formatting has left us in the first place. If somehow editors could be prohibited from using the feature, then catering for non-editor reader preference might be nice; but how many non-editors have a date preference set? And there would still be the date-range problem and the possibly needed extra comma after middle-endian dates to be addressed. And we would effectively have four date formats to choose between: now each article must either consistently use "9 May 2001", "May 9, 2001", "{{dte|9 May 2001}}" or "{{dte|May 9, 2001}}", as they would all be incompatible, any mixing leading to inconsistent results for at least some users. -- Jao (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Final up/down vote on guideline for writing fixed-text dates
This poll runs for a week, and closes at 15:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC).
This is the final step in choosing the MOSNUM guideline to assist editors in determining the most suitable fixed-text date format to use in Wikipedia’s articles.
The results of the runoff poll, as of the vote by Pete, are as follows:
A = 1.31
C = 2.48
e = 1.48
So option C advances with a clear super-majority among the two options that laid out a specific proposal. Option e (each editor suggest an alternative solution) had a variety of opinions and no consistent theme. However, many editors voted with a non-zero value on e but did not add a ref-comment as to what they specifically had in mind. It seems that many treated e as “do nothing”, which would be applied as “keep the current wording.”
The next step is an up or down vote. Now that subsections on Talk:MOSNUM has been archived and the past voting moved to a subpage, we have freed up a lot of room here. The best venue for this next, critical step, is to keep this poll in this high-profile venue so the maximum number of editors can participate. One of the shortcomings of Wikipedia’s procedures is how controversial discussions have in the past been moved to remote backwater venues where it tends to drop off editors’ radar. That’s not good. The more controversial the issue, the more we need to foster the greatest participation by the Wikipedia community to ensure we are getting a good measure of the community’s mood. So let’s keep the voting here, well out in the open where the maximum number of editors can voice their opinion and discuss this matter.
Most everyone in the runoff poll did a great job of registering nuanced votes (a surprising number of 1, 2, and 3 votes), posted thoughtful and constructive vote comments, and debated without rancor. The general consensus in the previous voting, debate, and discussion was that option C was preferable to the other new options. But is option C better than what we currently have? Let’s see if we can push this to a natural conclusion and arrive at a general consensus now.
The options are as follows:
(C) Default to international unless U.S. and its territories—listed countries for editors’ convenience:
- For articles on, or strongly associated with, the U.S. or its territories (or countries listed in this guideline that use U.S.-style dates: Micronesia and Palau), editors should use the U.S.-style date format (“February 2, 2008”), otherwise, editors should use the international date format (“2 February 2008”) in articles.
- New articles on or strongly associated with Canada should use the international format but, for existing articles related to Canada, whichever format was used by the first major contributor shall be retained.
(R) Retain present guideline: (This is the current wording. There will be no editwarring on MOSNUM to fight battles over this poll.)
- 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.
- If an article has evolved using predominantly one format, the whole article should conform to it, unless there are reasons for changing it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic.
- In the early stages of writing an article, the date format chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used, unless there is reason to change it on the basis of strong national ties to the topic. Where an article that is not a stub shows no clear sign of which format is used, the first person to insert a date is equivalent to "the first major contributor".
Is the proposed text better than what we have now? This is an up-or-down vote. No “0–4” values for voting; just an “X”.
- Please cooperate. Do not add new columns and options to this table. We started with a four-option poll, then a three-option poll. A clear consensus can not be determined unless we have a simple two-option poll here. The question is whether or not to replace the current guideline on this issue with option C. If you have another idea, start your own poll. Alternatively, wait for the outcome of this poll and, if you don’t like what gets posted to MOSNUM, come here to this discussion page to rally editors to your way of thinking to go with your even-better idea.
This poll runs for a week, and closes at 15:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC).
SUPPORT FOR OPTION | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Editor | C | R | |||
Greg L | X[1] | ||||
Septentrionalis | X[2] | ||||
JavierMC | X[3] | ||||
Teemu Leisti | X | ||||
Headbomb | X[4] | ||||
Woodstone | X | ||||
Jeandré du Toit[5] | |||||
Pete | X[6] | ||||
Mr.Z-man | X | ||||
JimWae | X[7] | ||||
GregorB | X[8] | ||||
Mdcollins1984 | X[9] | ||||
Gerry Ashton | X | ||||
Twas Now | × | ||||
Askari Mark | X[10] | ||||
erachima | X[11] | ||||
Arnoutf | X[12] | ||||
AliceJMarkham | X[13] | ||||
dm | X[14] | ||||
Christopher Parham | X[15] | ||||
Truthanado | X | ||||
Rrius | X[16] | ||||
Bzuk | X | ||||
Fullstop | X[17] | ||||
PaleAqua | X[18] | ||||
Ohconfucius* | X[19] | ||||
Robert A West | X[20] | ||||
NerdyNSK* | X | ||||
SharkD* | X[21] | ||||
MJBurrage* | X[22] | ||||
Danorton* | X[23] | ||||
Necrothesp* | X | ||||
Hiding* | X[24][25] | ||||
ChrisDHDR* | X | ||||
Occuli* | X | ||||
Tom94022 | X | ||||
Arthur Rubin | X[26] | ||||
Calliopejen1 | X | ||||
gadfium | X | ||||
Dtobias | X[27] | ||||
Orderinchaos | X[28] | ||||
Fnagaton | X[29] | ||||
Tomas e | X | ||||
Carewolf | X |
- Vote solicited by User:Skyring/Pete.
Vote statements
- ^ The new wording (option C) seems to me to be much clearer and less ambiguous than the present wording. The guideline is simple as it gives a very simple test: if the article is closely associated with specific countries listed right there in the guideline, use U.S.-style dates, otherwise default to international dates. Under the current wording, if I had used U.S.-style dates in Kilogram (and I used American-English too), that article would have been “grandfathered” in with American-style dates. Fortunately I didn’t. As an American, I use American-style dates in daily life. But in writing for an internationally read encyclopedia, I use international-style dates in articles not closely associated with the U.S. And, of course, I use U.S.-style dates in articles closely tied to the U.S. Whatever is most natural for the most readers who will be reading the article. I think this guideline will be easier for editors and will be better for our readers as it is better optimized to be sensitive primarily to the subject matter of the articles. And like Pete noted below, the philosophy underlying this guideline is similar to how MOSNUM recommends which will be the primary unit of measure in articles and which should be the parenthetical conversion:
In general, the primary units are SI (37 kilometers (23 mi)); however, [editors should use] US customary units … [as] the primary units in US-related topics.
- ^ The present language does not have the implication Greg suggests: it says exactly 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. Kilogram does not. We should therefore stay with the format it now possesses, which happens to be the European style.
- ^ There is no ambiguity between the two date formats of month-day-year and day-month-year. An article without strong national ties to an English speaking country should be allowed to be written in either format consistently. Defaulting to the international style, when no clear tie exists, may alienate our American editors or other editors who use the "American format" and feel more comfortable with it. The same would, more than likely, be true if we defaulted to an American style. I see our ultimate goal as providing consistency in an articles format and preventing format edit warring. When I write an article, my choice would be to use the style I was taught. Of course, if it was about a subject with a strong tie to a specific English speaking country, I would use the relevant style.
- ^ Simpler option, easier follow, avoids the problem of finding out what's the convention for that specific country etc...
- ^ None of the above vote and column deleted. During the mass delinking, the more important issue may be the breaking of consistent formatting per preferences.
- ^ This follows the same convention we use for units of measurement. I'd like to see the date format guideline follow the same simple pattern, thus: In general, Wikipedia uses international date format (1 February 2003); however, US format (February 1, 2003) is used in US-related topics
- ^ Let Canadian articles use whichever, as long as consistent with first contributor. Nearly every major Canadian newspaper uses MMMM dD, YYYY - it is not up to wikipedia editors to decide what is predominant style in Canada.
- For a MoS entry that would involve all editors, complex choices were removed far too quickly in previous polls. Those polls also did not state when they would be closed (nor did this one for far too long).
- Calling dD MMMM YYYY "international" (or even worse "International" as a proper name) unfairly privileges that format. "US" format is also used by other nations (hence, it too is an "international" format); however, calling it "US format" is at least unambiguous. Just as it is OK to call "MMMM dD, YYYY" "US format", just because dD MMMM YYYY is used outside Europe is not a valid argument that calling it "European format" is a misnomer. Google "international date format" and nearly all the hits are ISO 8061 (YYYY-MM-DD). Google "European date format" and you will get dD MMMMM YYYY. Use of "International" or "international" for dD MMMM YYYY trades unfairly on an ambiguity.
- The situation with dates is NOT the same as with "units of measurement". With units of measurement, it is clear what the customary and/or legal units are within each country, AND there is a clearly International system. With dates, there are several countries that commonly use more than one system , but more importantly, neither date-system discussed here is truly "International" (with a capital letter).
- (I actually prefer YYYY-MMM-DD and want to use preferences to display in that format. Preferences can be made to work.)
- ^ No need to repeat arguments by myself and others. Ultimately, I like this option because it is less restrictive: generally, it does not prevent editors from using whichever format they please when writing anew about international subjects. If all editors choose the international date format, then we'll effectively have option C, and I'm perfectly fine with that too.
- ^ I'm hoping that this a vote to decide on the basic text for the way forward, and then to give us the opportunity to tweak the wording. As I said when not voting on the run-off poll, to allow scores of 3 (Support but could be better), to my mind, means that there will be a change to improve them, before the leading 3 or 2 get put to another vote with the same wording. That said, the current format (R) broadly suits my view.
- ^ Sorry, but I really don’t like how sloppily these polls have been handled. For one thing, the actual descriptions of the positions have been vague and changeable, leaving people in some cases to misperceive just what they were voting for or against. Furthermore, I believe options A and B were essentially the same thing with but one minor tweak which could itself have been better resolved by a separate two-option poll; the result split votes between them that might otherwise have rendered their general approach preferable to the one that has been carried forward.
- ^ In addition to my strong personal stance against any rule which cuts the domain of individual editorial judgment without a very good reason (legislated inconsistency is not a good reason), I believe that this sort of elimination voting is exactly not how we're supposed to handle problems on Wikipedia. Let's trust the editors to be reasonable. In the minority of cases where they aren't? Well, in my experience, the people who get worked up over such a trivial issue as date formatting are already the type of hair-trigger editors who start into disputes over every misunderstanding. At least formatting arguments let them burn their fuel on something that doesn't hurt Wikipedia's audience.
- ^ I don't see any problem with the old version, while the new version is imposing all kinds of constraints for trivial issues on good faith editors.
- ^ I still favour a solution that formats dates on-the-fly based on user or browser prefs, but in the meantime the retention of the existing guideline appears to be less likely to cause significant disruption than the proposed change.
- ^ people are overthinking this. the current language is good enough. I think everyone needs to walk away from this for a while and take a couple of deep breaths, maybe even edit some articles or something :)
- ^ This version is less complex and the replacement has nothing to recommend it.
- ^ The other will be ignored by some and cause edit wars among others. I also agree with erachima that this very structured process of elimination is an odd way to handle the issue since polls are not consensus.
- ^ Might as well generalize articles related to Canada may use either format consistently to articles related to an anglophone nation where both formats are equally common may use either format consistently. We don't have to pick on Canada as an example of a country within the "other" sphere of cultural influence. Caribbean countries as well as the US territories in the western Pacific are similarly influenced by the "other" spheres.
- ^ Agree with the suggestion as given by Fullstop about generalizing the Canada case. I would still rather see some form of auto formating perhaps with a per-article default.
- ^ Because WP is an encyclopaedia with international pretentions, I think it actually preferable to universally use International dates. This has the advantage that the consistency could be completely automated through use of bots. Anything else would involve manual or scrip-assisted maintenance. However, due to the strong American presence, I believe that they should have an "opt-out" and use mm dd, yyyy in US-related articles, so I back C for pragmatic reasons. I do not believe that date format is necessarily related to US/British spelling, so MOSNUM should be abandoned. The 'first major editor' clause may be too subjective in application by editors seeking to unify/audit dates to avoid edit warring over dates.
- ^ I think that even the current phrasing sounds too prescriptive. With few exceptions, uniformity of style within an article is crucial. With few exceptions, uniformity of style among articles is not. So long as we don't force to convert 25 Fructidor or to disambiguate "11-09-01", what difference does it make which format an article uses? If we want to be taken "seriously" (assuming that train has not already left the station) our first consideration what the sources for an article use, not some arbitrary rule of our own contrivance.
- ^ However, I believe all articles with strong ties to Canada should use the international date format, regardless of their age.
- ^ I also believe all articles with strong ties to Canada should use the international date format, regardless of their age. Along those lines I would further support just making "day month year" the standard for all of Wikipedia (except tables, where yyyy-mm-dd fits better and is easily sortable), since "day month year" is just as easy to understand for Americans (and is increasing used by them as well), but also understand the resistance for established American articles, and am pragmatic enough to simply argue for a consistent date format for all other articles. And for the record, I am an American editor.
- ^ "First-major-contributor" preference without allowing for subsequent correction is absurd.
- ^ I don't like the caveat for Canada in C. Were the wording for Canada the same as in R I would support it, but will not as it stands. User:Hiding, about 9:46 UTC on Wednesday the 17th September, 2008.
- ^ Apologies. I intuitively reasoned that the original wording came first in the poll, and that C stood for current and R for revision.
- ^ C is unacceptable. Period. I said it in both polls above, and I'm saying it again. I don't think I've ever seen such a bad multi-choice polling methodology.
- ^ The current guideline is a reasonable compromise, similar to the rules for using American vs. Commonwealth spellings... it ain't broke, so why fix it?
- ^ Agree with Pete's formulation (no.6), should also extend to East Asia. I would have said Canada too, but the fact Quebec uses international date format confuses things there. The confusion in articles about Australia, which unambiguously uses the date format dD MMMMM yyyy, and occasional strange attempts by American editors to impose their date preferences are a big factor in my thinking here - we need consistency and professionalism, rather than ad hoc solutions.
- ^ After reviewing the contributions this seems like the only sensible option presented thus far
Discussion of votes and the guideline
Septentrionalis: With regard to your vote comment, come-on, we can read. The current guideline states “articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country…” Now clearly, the Kilogram article is about the kilogram. It could be argued that the French invented the thing, but France is not an English-speaking country and the article is not about France. So the article clearly has no “strong ties to a particular English-speaking country.” Accordingly, the current guideline requires that “the date format chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used”. So if I had used American-style dates, those would have been grandfathered in. That was the point of my vote comment: if I had used an inappropriate date format, the article would have been stuck with American-style dates under the current guideline, which is ill-advised and needs, IMO, to be updated. It’s not all about we editors. The style in articles should be more strongly based on what is most natural for the likely readership. That’s all. Greg L (talk) 16:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC
- And where does the present language, which is one of the alternatives I support, suggest that Kilogram should be changed? As for your hypothetical, it is much more simply dealt with by limiting the last clause to unless there is reason to change it.
- The hypothetical case involves articles which have almost entirely written by American editors who have not seen reasons to use European dates: kilogram is not one of these, and those which are usually have reasons, weak or strong, to use the format they do. Solving this hypothetical (are there instances?) by imposing the International style on almost all articles is opening an egg with a sledgehammer. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Please read and understand my point. I’m an American editor. I use American English. I use American-style dates in daily life. If I had used American-style dates, the current guideline says those would stay. Right? That’s not best editorial practices for making the best-reading articles on Wikipedia. We need a simple guideline that says “if the article is specifically about these listed subjects, do this.” All very simple. And it makes articles that read best for the greatest possible number of readers throughout the world. Greg L (talk) 16:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- To quote another American: "For every problem, there is a solution which is simple, direct, obvious, and wrong." If this were cost-free, we would be doing it now; changing the date format on hundreds of thousands of articles to address a hypothetical problem is a recipe for intergroup strife. As it is, consensus on any article can ignore MOS; all we need do here is to acknowledge this, as we should do more widely. I'll go do that; this poll can then be closed. If we need to refine the section on not date-warring, we can return to this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- In addition, the assertion that it serves the majority of readers begs a question. We exist for readers of English, and the majority of Anglophones live in North America (the talk page includes much discussion that we go too far, and September 13 is customary in Canadian English; certainly it reads as well as the alternative); native speakers of other languages are best served by their own Wikipedias - that's why we have them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well, as a native speaker of another language, I have still always felt welcome here, and quite frankly I practically never use sv; although it's one of the larger, it simply cannot compare with en. I think we're quite a bunch who reason this way. Anyway, your conclusions still work on me. When I first signed up and assumed that setting an autoformatting preference would be a good idea, I chose the month-day format. Why? Well, pin it down to American "cultural imperialism" or the sheer fact that most professionally-written English probably emerges out of North America, but that's what I was used to seeing in English. 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? -- Jao (talk) 17:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Then do you favor the imposition of 13 September 2008 on all but a handful of articles? If you do, support the proposal; if not, oppose it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, I don't care much either way. Encyclopedia-wide consistency would be nice, but that would mean Elizabeth II being born on April 21, 1926, or John F. Kennedy being shot on 22 November 1963, and I don't see that happening. We have to be inconsistent, and what rules we use for that inconsistency doesn't really bother me, as long as the decision isn't made on account of assumptions on what people like me should find natural or not. I'd note though that both proposals need a clear list of English-speaking countries. Currently only Canada is listed, and for all other countries "the more common date format for that nation" is guesswork for most of us. Easy guesswork in the case of the U.S., more difficult when it comes to Australia, India, Jamaica or Belize; I don't think we can assume little-endian dates are more common just because they are Commonwealth countries. Calendar date#Usage issues and Date and time notation by country are both almost entirely unreferenced, so apparently Wikipedia doesn't know, in most cases, which format is most common. -- Jao (talk) 19:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Then do you favor the imposition of 13 September 2008 on all but a handful of articles? If you do, support the proposal; if not, oppose it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well, as a native speaker of another language, I have still always felt welcome here, and quite frankly I practically never use sv; although it's one of the larger, it simply cannot compare with en. I think we're quite a bunch who reason this way. Anyway, your conclusions still work on me. When I first signed up and assumed that setting an autoformatting preference would be a good idea, I chose the month-day format. Why? Well, pin it down to American "cultural imperialism" or the sheer fact that most professionally-written English probably emerges out of North America, but that's what I was used to seeing in English. 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? -- Jao (talk) 17:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- And why do you think Americans are less likely to be reading about kilograms than anyone else? (Incidentally, I'm not participating in the poll since I really don't mind which option is chosen, but I'm not sure if the poll itself is a great idea, presented as it is. We need to ask the editing community at large the question: are we ready to abandon our traditional impartiality between the two date styles, in favour of one which is felt to be more appropriate for international articles. And make sure everyone knows about it. And put it on a separate page, or this one will get overwhelmed by this issue again.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Please read and understand my point. I’m an American editor. I use American English. I use American-style dates in daily life. If I had used American-style dates, the current guideline says those would stay. Right? That’s not best editorial practices for making the best-reading articles on Wikipedia. We need a simple guideline that says “if the article is specifically about these listed subjects, do this.” All very simple. And it makes articles that read best for the greatest possible number of readers throughout the world. Greg L (talk) 16:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Kotniski, to address your question “and why do you think Americans are less likely to be reading about kilograms than anyone else?”: You know full well that’s not the premiss of my position. The facts of who reads en.Wikipedia have been well established on this page by others. Greg L (talk) 19:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't imagine what format JimWae is referring to when he says he prefers an International ISO format. I am not aware of any ISO format that allows the display of Julian calendar dates, or dates before 1582. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- If I choose that format in my preferences, I think I can make the mental adjustment quite well myself, thank-you--JimWae (talk) 20:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- I absolutely refuse to condone, or collude with, calling a format that presents Julian calendar dates "ISO" or "ISO 8601". As far as I'm concerned, JimWae still has not told us what format he is talking about. If he wants to present his favorite format as an option, the first thing he needs to do is find a legitimate name for it. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Discussion over the nature and necessity of the poll itself
- Please look up the word supermajority and see what it means. Two plans were under discussion at that poll; the present text is neither of them. 8 !votes opposed A and supported C; 4 supported A and opposed C. 2 !votes supported A and C and chose between them. 5 !votes opposed both of them. 10-9 is the best claimable here, and to call that a supermajority is to deprive super of all meaning. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Kotniski, regarding your 16:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC) post, this poll needs to stay here on this page, Kotniski, so as to not be moved off the radar screens of editors. This poll needs the widest possible input from Wikipedia’s editors. No matter how much attention this issue receives here, this topic couldn’t possibly grow this page to anything remotely as large as it’s been on many occasions in the past. And to address your question “and why do you think Americans are less likely to be reading about kilograms than anyone else?”: You know full well that’s not the premiss of my position. The facts of who reads en.Wikipedia have been well established on this page by others. Greg L (talk) 16:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I object to the refusal among the "poll constructors" to even consider a country-blind option. Every single proposal that has been "voted" on has included language requiring certain formats for certain articles based on associations with particular nations. No opportunity has been given to register an objection to that requirement. Powers T 17:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I see with some bemusement that Greg L simultaneously wants this poll to stay on this page so it can get "the widest possible input from Wikipedia’s editors", and objects at great length to an RfC, which is the traditional tool for securing such input. I await an explanation which is consistent with good faith. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Septentrionalis. Stop accusing me of bad faith. You’ve already complained about the runoff poll in an ANI and that went nowhere. In case you haven’t noticed, most editors want to participate in this, notwithstanding your insistence to try to prevent that. And stop re-writing MOSNUM in an effort to game everything to your suiting. There will be no editwarring on MOSNUM (or here for that matter). Why can’t you just express your voice here and sit back and see how others feel? Greg L (talk) 17:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- The purpose of discussion is to find compromises which will meet the needs of as many as possible. If we can do this by tweaking two clauses to permit editors of a Kilogram article to decide which format best suits their needs, why not? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- And where is the explanation? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:58, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Your bias blinds you to the reality of the situation. Stop being disruptive. The explanation is above. In case you haven’t noticed, people want to participate in this. Do you want to stop that? If so, you offer a good-faith explanation as to why everyone else here can’t participate as they’d like to. If it is because you fear the consensus won’t be to your liking, that’s too bad. Wikipedia isn’t about you. Greg L (talk) 18:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- No, I want to encourage participation. It is you who object to publicity for this poll. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- OK, this is too weird. I’m going back to my Universe now. Stop being disruptive. Your moves remind me of China shutting down Internet chat rooms because their citizens are (OMG!) discussing Tiananmen square. This isn’t MOSNUM, where guidelines are posted; this is a talk forum where ideas are exchanged. Stop trying to shut it all down with your ANIs and RfCs and rushing back to MOSNUM to rewrite what it says there. Is there any trick you haven’t tried? Greg L (talk) 18:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- While you are looking things up, you might want to read WP:RfC: A policy or guideline RfC is for requesting comment on proposed policies and guidelines or proposed revisions to existing policies and guidelines. A style RfC is for requesting comment on style issues spanning multiple articles, or for proposals on new or revised recommendations in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Policy and proposals are also sometimes discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Encouraging wider discussion is what RfCs and the Village pump are for; they don't reflect on conduct. If you don't object to wider discussion, please remove your complaints. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
“ | So option C advances with a clear super-majority among the two options that laid out a specific proposal. Option e (each editor suggest an alternative solution) had a variety of opinions and no consistent theme. However, many editors voted with a non-zero value on e but did not add a ref-comment as to what they specifically had in mind. It seems that many treated e as “do nothing”, which would be applied as “keep the current wording.” | ” |
- An artful wording; many opposed both proposals, and only 10 out 19 endorsed C. Details further on. The present text contains neither proposal. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- In this case, I must support Septentrionalis/Pmanderson: we do want a wide input on the subject, and posting an RfC is a valid way of going about it. I did it myself at an earlier stage of this process. As a matter of fact, this vote should be advertised at the Village Pump, too—perhaps with the promise that we're now finally attempting to settle the matter? Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- It has been; Greg L complained about that too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm getting rather weary of all this. First to Greg, thanks for setting this polling up and doing your best to keep things calm. I might not agree with everything you've done, but it's plain you've acted in good faith throughout. Anderson, this whole dispute erupted because you changed the long-standing wording in MOSNUM without consensus[1] and then engaged in edit-warring to keep your preferred view. After a long discussion and two votes a fresh position emerged with strong support, but again you changed to your preferred wording[2] without consensus. Looking at the discussion above, I see the same arguments that we've already seen many times before. Rather than bloat out yet another discussion page, why not leave the poll to run its course, let editors make new points rather than rehashing old ones, and quit being disruptive? Is that so very hard? --Pete (talk) 19:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Without consensus? The text was changed on the basis of this discussion, in which Skyring was the only voice to defend it out of half-a-dozen. The rest of this is similar exaggeration. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:33, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Pete, your poll comment, "In general, Wikipedia uses international date format (1 February 2003); however, US format (February 1, 2003) is used in US-related topics", in bold print no less, is a factual misrepresentation. Wikipedia does not use that format in general and appears to be an attempt to sway the poll to international date format by making it. I would hope that editors would not make such statements without verifiable statistics to back up such a BOLD view.--«JavierMC»|Talk 19:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Noted. I've clarified the wording to show that it's a proposal. Thanks. --Pete (talk) 20:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- could I suggest that it be reduced to italics, and that it is more correctly called "European" not "International". --JimWae (talk) 20:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- European and African and South American and Oceanic and (mostly) Asian. The overwhelming majority of nations use day month year order. The US and China and a handful of other nations use different formats. I see date format as being most closely akin to units of measurement - we use SI in all versions of Wikipedia except in this English one, where we use American units in American articles. We call day month year order International because that's what it is. --Pete (talk) 20:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- "International" is ambiguous - and the "US" format is also the predominant format in Canada (thus it too is "international" [lower case]). I also add that there is no convention that units be spelled in British format in non-US articles, as the use of "meter" in the kilogram article makes clear. It is only the article names for units that use British spelling --JimWae (talk) 20:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Let's not get overly prescriptive here. It's just a talk page, and it's easier to use terms such as U.S. format, international format, and ISO without having to define them each time. Everyone knows what is meant, and if we started to call U.S. format international format because it's used by more than one nation, then we're going to have confusion all round. This thing is already difficult enough without making it confusing. --Pete (talk) 21:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Noted. I've clarified the wording to show that it's a proposal. Thanks. --Pete (talk) 20:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Septentrionalis: You’ve voted. You’ve posted your vote comment. You’ve had more than your fair share of complaining and commenting here. Will you please just sit back and let others have a chance to voice their opinion without you revising MOSNUM and revising the structure and nature of this poll and what is being considered, and deleting run-off polls, and threatening more ANIs and RfCs and every other trick up your sleeve? Can any human possibly be more disruptive? Greg L (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- I don't get the bundling of the RfC with the ANI thing; they seem to be entirely separate. How can "requesting the discussion to have community-wide attention" be considered a threat? -- Jao (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Obvious anti-Americanism run rampant yet again. There was nothing wrong with the previous way things worked, and this is going inevitably to lead to edit warring by Americans who feel that they're being discriminated against, or else there will be zealots attacking Americans who have the temerity to use American date formats in articles which are not specifically about American subject matter. Let me state clearly here and now: I will not bow down to date fascism, and will format dates in whatever format I damn well please. Corvus cornixtalk 20:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- Anyone attacking other editors should be dealt with appropriately under WP:NPA. By and large, the "previous way things worked" was to recommend the date format actually used in the country, which pretty much means using International format except for U.S.-related articles. In practice, editors contribute dates in whatever format they want to, and that's not going to change. In practice, we have gentle reminders rather than "datenazis". If we have anything at all. Mostly editors work quietly away at improving Wikipedia. Adding content, uploading photographs, tidying up, and we all get along pretty well. --Pete (talk) 21:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- No, the previous way things worked was that unless the article were country-specific, you would leave the format the way it was initially created. Now, the fascists are requiring that only US-specific articles use US format. What's next? A mandate that all non-US articles be written in "International English"? Corvus cornixtalk 21:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think it's helpful to talk about "fascists". But in any case, is it a problem if (say) the United Nations article uses International date formats? Or Basket-weaving? Or Inferiority complex? --Pete (talk) 21:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- It's a problem when well-intentioned editors get "warnings" that their edits are being reverted because they didn't use the Wiki-mandated formatting, even though it's not the format that over 300 million Americans know. It's a problem if two editors get into an edit war over which format to use. It's a problem if somebody decides to write a bot, or even take it on themselves to manually edit every non-US specific article to change it to the anti-American version. Corvus cornixtalk 21:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- You'd have to have a lot of free time for that last! Seriously, if there are any behaviour problems, Wikipedia has ways of dealing with them. If you really care about the date format used in the (say) Anthropodermic bibliopegy article, then you might want to ask yourself, why? --Pete (talk) 21:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- See Alexf (talk · contribs)'s edits from last night. He was going through lots of articles removing date links. Why wouldn't this proposal give editors the impetus to do just what I'm saying will happen? Corvus cornixtalk 22:01, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- You'd have to have a lot of free time for that last! Seriously, if there are any behaviour problems, Wikipedia has ways of dealing with them. If you really care about the date format used in the (say) Anthropodermic bibliopegy article, then you might want to ask yourself, why? --Pete (talk) 21:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- It's a problem when well-intentioned editors get "warnings" that their edits are being reverted because they didn't use the Wiki-mandated formatting, even though it's not the format that over 300 million Americans know. It's a problem if two editors get into an edit war over which format to use. It's a problem if somebody decides to write a bot, or even take it on themselves to manually edit every non-US specific article to change it to the anti-American version. Corvus cornixtalk 21:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think it's helpful to talk about "fascists". But in any case, is it a problem if (say) the United Nations article uses International date formats? Or Basket-weaving? Or Inferiority complex? --Pete (talk) 21:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- No, the previous way things worked was that unless the article were country-specific, you would leave the format the way it was initially created. Now, the fascists are requiring that only US-specific articles use US format. What's next? A mandate that all non-US articles be written in "International English"? Corvus cornixtalk 21:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- One last comment, then I've finished discussing this, since I refuse to let it be forced upon me. Linking dates is now a no-no, even though we used to be able to put a particular format into our preferences, and now we've got "you must use the non-American date format in all but a small subsection of articles." In other words, "fuck you, Americans". Corvus cornixtalk 21:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- It is a style guideline, Corvus cornix. Your language is over the top. Fascism? "Fuck you, Americans"? Get a grip. Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Indeed it is; but one of the purposes of MOS is to discourage proposals which send editors over the top. One of the chief arguments against C is that it will tend to so; if proposing it gets this reaction, what will happen if we try to enforce it on hundreds of thousands of pages? Are its tenuous benefits worth the trouble they will cause? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- It is a style guideline, Corvus cornix. Your language is over the top. Fascism? "Fuck you, Americans"? Get a grip. Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Hello, I am just looking into this item in MOS, and I know there has been a lot of history, so I apologize if this seems out-of-place or a late addition to the discussion. It seems to me that a firm rule (as opposed to good counsel) on this subject is just asking for silliness: a commodity too common on Wikipedia. It matters little to ordinary readers whether one uses 4 July 1776 or July 4, 1776: any reasonable reader will understand. While the current rule about national tendencies is probably 80% right, there are significant issues not discussed. In particular, if the scholarly sources for an article use a particular format, Wikipedia should use that format, even if it runs opposite to the rule currently given.
Two examples: Modern military history tends to use the "European" form even when written in the U.S. Contrariwise, the current "U.S." form was common British practice in the late 18th century (a fact that should surprise no one). Some secondary sources modernize the usage except when quoting, and others use the older format throughout. It would strike me as useless to complain if the editors of an article decided to adopt the older format throughout. While Septentrionalis is correct that the MOS can be overruled by local article consensus, I think it would do not harm, and much good, for the text to add
- Where the scholarship in a field dominantly uses a particular format, the article should follow that format.
- Articles that extensively quote primary sources may read better if harmonized with those sources.
Regards. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Those are entirely reasonable concerns. When the present poll (have you an opinion?) is closed, some consideration should be given to looser language, either by including a generally or making these points expressly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Major problem
Looking more carefully at the instructions for this poll, I see two options, first is a less verbose Option C, and the second says, Retain present guideline: (This is the current wording. There will be no editwarring on MOSNUM to fight battles over this poll. The problem is that the current wording has no consensus - it's merely PMAnderson's edit-warred version of the long-standing wording here. I grew tired of restoring the existing wording, believing that with broad discussion and polling underway, we'd get consensus, and Anderson wasn't heeding the warnings to cool it anyway. Now I find that Anderson's persistent edit-warring is taken to be the current wording, and we're voting for it or the winner of both the primary poll and the run-off. This is bizarre, especially given Greg's warning against edit-warring.
In fact, Anderson's wording has been rejected already - it is the rejected Option B of the first poll here. See for yourself:
- "Current" wording: 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.[3]
- Rejected Option B: For articles on, or strongly associated with a particular English-speaking country, use the most common date format used in that country. Where there is no tie to an English-speaking country, the "first major contributor" rule applies.[4]
(The note about Canada is non-contentious, and the existing guidelines in the MoS describe the "first major contributor" rule.)
So my objections are threefold:
- Why are we voting on something that has already been rejected twice over?
- Why are we apparently legitimising PMAnderson's edit-warring?
- How long does this go on?
I'll accept that Greg is acting in good faith, and doing his best to shepherd this thing to a satisfactory conclusion, and nobody's perfect, but in the light of these concerns I really must ask for an explanation.
What we should really be doing, I suggest, is recognising that Option C won twice over and instead of voting yet again, we should be working on the wording, forming it into something we can work with. I note that several (presumably American) editors have expressed concern over compulsion and "fascism". I'd like to ensure that the agreed wording addresses these concerns. --Pete (talk) 05:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I haven't been able to follow all the ins and outs of what has happened with the MoS, but if what you say is true, then I think it has this implication: The absence of a clear consensus cannot mean simply returning to the existing wording. If the existing wording is under dispute, and there is no clear earlier non-disputed alternative, then we must find a non-disputed alternative, or at least a majority-supported alternative, here on the talk page.
- And since this is not a complex argument about politics or philosophy, where the "correct" answer is an elusive concept, but rather one where only a limited number of choices are available to us, I think voting is a perfectly valid way to arrive at an answer acceptable to the maximum number of people.
- In other words, if a choice other than the disputed one currently on MoS wins, but not by a huge majority, "lack of consensus" shall not be a valid argument for rejecting the winner. Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Without meaning to sound condescending, nothing but an outcome of "return to status quo" could reasonably be expected here because of the vote format. Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion (and its predecessor Wikipedia:Voting is evil) have been longstanding principles on Wikipedia not because there's anything inherently wrong with the democratic process but because we as a community are horrible at it. And we will remain so unless we instate some form of officially sanctioned voting system where the outcome becomes policy, period. Remember Wikipedia:Attribution? Or how about the old userbox debates? And then of course there is everyone's favorite from the fiction category, our guideline on spoiler warnings. Every one of these issues tried to decide the situation by reasonable discussion, which failed, then widescale polling, which again failed, returning us to a paradoxical non-consensus status quo that everyone hated but the majority disliked less than any of the perceived solutions. Each of those situations were eventually resolved when one side chose to unilaterally enforce their view, and the community at large decided they cared less about the cries of "fiat accompli!" than they did the problem being resolved. I expect a similar outcome here.
- While I hate to admit it, there are points at which our standard decision-making model spectacularly fails to produce an agreeable solution. In these cases, the community invariably supports whatever solution requires the least additional time and energy from them, whether that's abolishing the rule and allowing anything as long as it doesn't start fights, deciding the status quo was "good enough" even though everybody hated it, or just caving in to whichever editor brought the biggest sledgehammer.
- I suppose this sounds like the usual rigmarole that a lot of disgruntled project editors put on their user pages as their last edit before retiring, but I don't consider it a bad thing. I used to, but after seeing so many problems resolved this way I've realized that we owe quite a lot to the members who are willing to force a solution even if everyone hates them for it, and consider it an example of the WP:SOFIXIT mindset which serves Wikipedia so well. (I do deeply dislike how the usual method of quieting the losing side of the debate is to sacrifice the problem solver to them, though. We've lost a lot of good editors that way.) --erachima talk 08:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I understand your point of view, and agree with you that if no real consensus can be found over a change in a policy, then the previous policy should be kept. However, in this case, what Pete says is that what's in the MOSNUM now, i.e. the "previous policy", is not actually the real previous policy, because someone (Septentrionalis/Pmanderson) has gone and changed the MOSNUM guideline before a consensus was formed on what the new wording should be. So this introduces a further complexity into the question: what exactly was the previous policy?
- We're not substituting polling for discussions, as you can see by perusing, for instance, /Archive 110. There's been plenty of discussion. We're trying to find a choice with the most support, and the vast majority of editors have been happy to participate in the voting, or straw polling, or whatever you want to call it. If there are only one or two editors who are unhappy with this approach, I don't think that's reason enough to abandon it. Teemu Leisti (talk) 09:19, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I'm aware there's been plenty of discussion in the past, but the fact that we are currently trying to use a poll to resolve what reason couldn't is exactly why I'm confident the resolution process is going to flop. It's the typical historical pattern in these cases. A better, if rather longwinded, name for the new VIE guideline would be Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion, much less an effective fallback when discussion fails.
- As for what qualifies as the status quo in this case, if we wish to be completely uncontroversial we will use the last version to indisputably "stick": the wording prior to when the current editing dispute began. The most recent edit to remain untouched for over 24 hours (for reasons other than page protection) was this revision from August 18 by User:Philip Baird Shearer, which stated in the relevant portions (which had not been edited by him or anyone else for some time) that
- "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 guidelines above should use that format."
- and said to use the "first major contributor" rule in other cases. Hope that helps. --erachima talk 10:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I've restored the existing wording on the basis that treating PMAnderson's preferred version would legitimise edit-warring during a time of wide and intense discussion on this exact point. We're supposed to work things out as a community, not battle each other by hitting the edit key. I'm guided by the uppercase warning on the project page: SIGNIFICANT CHANGES, ESPECIALLY IN POLICY, NEED TO BE FLAGGED AT MOS TALK PAGE BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION HERE. Anderson's claims of consensus (or the risible "no consensus to keep") are untrue and show a distinct lack of respect for established wikiprocess. --Pete (talk) 10:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- You will find I think that the present version is not Anderson's preferred version. He wanted to link date format to language variety - he is showing restraint by not attempting to restore that version, even though it did better in the poll than the present version. The wording you keep restoring is the version which was decidedly rejected in the poll, as I've kept saying and no-one (including you) has tried to dispute. In fact there was probably never consensus to add it anyway, and worst of all its meaning its totally unclear. Please stop - this isn't Anderson against the world, it seems to be you against the world.--Kotniski (talk) 13:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I take your point about Anderson's preferred wording in polls, but I'm referring to the MOSNUM wording he edit-warred his way into. Even if you accept that this did better in the polls than Option D, it certainly didn't do better than Option C. So why didn't Anderson change the wording to match that of Option C, twice winner in a community poll? He just ignored the poll, ignored his fellow editors and changed the wording to what he wanted. So what's the point of discussion and voting for options if it doesn't matter a bean - the wording gets decided by who can edit-war their way to victory. Regardless of which wording I personally prefer, the process of change should be as fair and transparent as possible. --Pete (talk) 18:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- You will find I think that the present version is not Anderson's preferred version. He wanted to link date format to language variety - he is showing restraint by not attempting to restore that version, even though it did better in the poll than the present version. The wording you keep restoring is the version which was decidedly rejected in the poll, as I've kept saying and no-one (including you) has tried to dispute. In fact there was probably never consensus to add it anyway, and worst of all its meaning its totally unclear. Please stop - this isn't Anderson against the world, it seems to be you against the world.--Kotniski (talk) 13:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I've restored the existing wording on the basis that treating PMAnderson's preferred version would legitimise edit-warring during a time of wide and intense discussion on this exact point. We're supposed to work things out as a community, not battle each other by hitting the edit key. I'm guided by the uppercase warning on the project page: SIGNIFICANT CHANGES, ESPECIALLY IN POLICY, NEED TO BE FLAGGED AT MOS TALK PAGE BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION HERE. Anderson's claims of consensus (or the risible "no consensus to keep") are untrue and show a distinct lack of respect for established wikiprocess. --Pete (talk) 10:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- OK, then. I don't have the time to go through the history of the MOSNUM page right now to research the history of the edit-warrning. However, it seems that erachima has done that already. I suggest that (a) erachima, being a new contributor and not a party to some of the recent unpleasantness, please restore the version that he or she identified as the last long-standing one on the MOSNUM page, and that (b) we all accept that if we can't reach a consensus on changing that version, then that's the version that will stand. This way, we could get a bit more clarity on this issue. Support? Oppose? Teemu Leisti (talk) 18:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Teemu Leisti, that version (arguably) says to use the date order in a foreign language to determine the date order in an English article; that position finished dead last in the polls, so that is out of the question. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 18:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I wasn't attempting to find the "poll-approved" wording, just which version was uncontroversially status quo. That was the wording prior to the start of this debate, and the wording has been essentially the same since it was added in December 2007 (diff) a few days after the initial insertation of the section.(diff)
- Frankly, this whole debate strikes me as extraordinarily WP:LAME. Positions C and R are tantamount to each other in the vast majority of cases, since whichever we pick, articles with strong ties to specific non-English speaking nations will go with the SI format. This will either be on the rationale that it's the SI format (C) or because that's what most of them predominantly use (R). The only point currently being decided is whether articles on non-affiliated subjects and nations which use predominantly ymd ordering will be made to switch to SI or can stay as they are. --erachima talk 20:42, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- No, the gap is quite wide; C would switch the format on articles which use September 14, 1958 and are about any topic other than North America or United States possessions. The present text would leave the format on almost all of them alone. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- WP:LAME? Well, perhaps gradually getting there.... Teemu Leisti (talk) 21:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- This sounds a lot like the software development aspect of Wiki(media): lots of talk, little gets done. What does get done is whatever is easiest. And, most people eventually learn to live with whatever gets decided. SharkD (talk) 02:40, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- Pete, with regard to your 05:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC) post and your observation that the “current wording” is just some text Anderson put there that you got tired of reverting, that was simply the current wording on MOSNUM at the time we had the runoff poll (I thought). I saw that Anderson had recently further revised it only hours before and I reverted that. What is now there still seems to be the current wording. What else should I have done? I thought the more recent edit of Anderson was further gaming the system and would have none of it. I looked back a day or two, saw the same, unmolested text, and decided that was current enough. Just how far back should I have gone?
As for the less verbosity in option C, I omitted the “there will be no tie to dialect”-sentence. That sentence had been in a version of the text used in the prior votes only to highlight the distinction from the options that did tie the date format to the dialect used in the article (regardless of the subject matter); but as a standalone against the current MOSNUM guideline, it wasn’t really necessary and has zero effect on the proposed guideline. It was rather like, “You are instructed to go up (that means you won’t be going down)”: one doesn’t need the parenthetical caveat except for those who are galactically stupid or stubborn. Greg L (talk) 20:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- The problem is that the "current wording" is the wording PMAnderson edit-warred. For nine months the wording stood, apparently accepted by all. Then on 26 August Anderson deleted the second guideline concerning non-English-speaking nations and precipitated the shitfight you see now. It's been reverted back and forth. I've always restored the longstanding text with the admonition to wait for the discussion to work itself out, but Anderson prefers to edit-war. By choosing his version as the "current wording" and presenting it as an option in this poll, you've effectively legitimised it, short-circuiting all the discussion we've been having. What's the point of having a community of editors if it comes down to whoever is more determined to get his own way?
- Anderson's opinion in this matter is important. As important as anyone else's. I don't want to see him unhappy with the outcome, but nor do I want to see me unhappy. I don't think I'm unreasonable, but I've had all sorts of rubbish thrown at me in this discussion, most of it well wide of the mark. I'm not anti-American, I don't want to force international dates on editors, and I'm not trying to invent some sort of "International English". This is all quite bizarre. I just think that for an International project, we should have international processes in place. The guideline on SI units seems to me to be the most appropriate and has worked extremely well, apart from those who are out of step with the wider world and would like to see feet and yards, pounds and ounces used everywhere. Most of the world uses day-month-year order for dates, just as most of the world uses SI units. We use the terms and units actually in use when we have an article about a place. Looking at the Paris Métro article, the track width is measured in metres, the ticket prices are shown in Euros, and the dates are in the format actually used in France. Is there anything wrong with this? Should we use yards and inches because the first editor was an American? Translate the ticket prices into USD?
- This is important, not because of whether a date is expressed one way or another. As everyone accepts, Americans understand what 1 February 2003 means, and Londoners aren't confused by February 1, 2003. It's important because we are a community of editors and we need to get along with each other. That's what consensus is all about. So yes, I'm annoyed that we've had two polls to select a way forward, we've had a clear winner, but instead of discussing the best wording for the winning proposal, you've started off yet another poll, and made a serious error in the process. --Pete (talk) 04:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- No offense Pete, but based on the way you've spent the last couple days repeatedly reverting the page while complaining about edit warring, I think you need to take a step back from the debate for a bit. It won't matter until the end of the poll comes around anyway, so there's no rush.
- It is true that the old stable version included the second point on foreign usage. However, that is a technicality. The current lack of dissension with the minimalist version (from people other than you), combined with the large number of votes against the more restrictive wording, suggests to me that we have indeed found consensus. Specifically, a consensus against instruction creep.
- There are essentially two mindsets we can take here: The first is to think of the editors as something that must be controlled, expand the manual of style with a new rule every time a conflict emerges, update that rule whenever an exception is pointed out, add a caution to the exception when a wikilawyer starts abusing it, and repeat this cycle ad nauseum. The second is to treat them like intelligent humans and write a manual of style that gives general guiding principles and trusts the specifics to page editors. I, for one, believe Wikipedia is not written by idiots. --erachima talk 05:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- No offence taken. My beef is with the attitude that it's fine to edit-war your way to your personal preference when wide discussion is ongoing. That's why I kept pulling Anderson back to the status quo. It's a behaviour thing. When I get time, I'll look around to see what other sort of tricks he's been up to.
- As for controlling users, I don't think the MoS is about that. Editors write what they want in the way they want it, mostly. It's bots and wikignomes that come along and shake it all into a coherent style. Which is what happens in the real world. Style manuals get ignored, except by those few who really care about stuff. --Pete (talk) 01:12, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- I note and reprehend this threat to wikistalk me. "Tricks" would appear to be projection; it is Skyring who has been editwarring both on this page and on others, for his desperately preferred format.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I am fairly sure that Skyring has been warned about WP:CANVASS before; but the evidence that he has been spending the last day largely appealling to anyone he can think of to vote on his position; including Ohconfucius, NerdyNSK, SharkD, MJBurrage, Necrothesp, Hiding, and Occuli; DANorton seems to have voted against the solicitation. (Two or three have not yet responded.) Skyring has at least learned to phrase more or less neutrally; but mass posting to a partisan audience is disapproved of - it is traditional to give less weight to such !votes, as not a random sample of all interested Wikipedians. In this case, Skyring has contacted those editors who disliked A last time, and none of those who disliked C. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- Speaking of wikistalking... And projection... --Pete (talk) 00:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- I would advise Septentrionalis to better acquaint [him]self with WP:CANVASS, as it appears he may have made a false accusation about the content which was posted on my talk page and elsewhere by Pete. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Let me see: I said the notice was neutrally phrased; but this is not all WP:CANVASS demands. It was selectively placed - only on the talk pages of editors who had agreed with one of Skyring's unvotes, and not on those who had disagreed with him. If OHconfucius sees an exception, do let us know. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- It's not my job to determine who he posts messages to, and I have no reason to consider his posting on my talk page anything other than a friendly notice. However, I have noted that you are one of the very few who seems to be dead set against the various different attempts by others to reach a consensus, and you seem to be doing much heel-digging. I will not speculate if you would do your own share of canvassing if you could - but there may not be enough editors who consistently support your stance, or agree with the rather disruptive way you have been conducting yourself here in this discussion. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Twenty-two editors above seem to opppose the version of "consensus" that amounts to "Me and Skyring get our way; everybody must use the 'international' format." If I were interested in canvassing, I could easily increase that number; I would only have to invite those editors Skyring has omitted.
- What I would genuinely prefer, however, is to have some member of the minority express their case without personal attacks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- In 'stance', I was not talking about which 'side' you or I belong to, but the general approach to seek consensus. You appear to have attempted to stymie each and every attempt. To !vote one way or another is one thing, because it is an individual editor's prerogative. But to go around saying you don't believe in polls and then participating in them in your rather negative way smacks of hypocrisy, and quite frankly, I believe I am just one of many who are fed up to the back teeth of your antics. The personal attacks did not come from me nor from Pete. OH, and I think that you are airing the views of the minority well enough. ;-) Ohconfucius (talk) 06:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- On the contrary; the current wording is the third to have my active support; nor is it my first preference. If the minority were willing to propose something less than almost all articles should use the European format this would never have gone on so long. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- In 'stance', I was not talking about which 'side' you or I belong to, but the general approach to seek consensus. You appear to have attempted to stymie each and every attempt. To !vote one way or another is one thing, because it is an individual editor's prerogative. But to go around saying you don't believe in polls and then participating in them in your rather negative way smacks of hypocrisy, and quite frankly, I believe I am just one of many who are fed up to the back teeth of your antics. The personal attacks did not come from me nor from Pete. OH, and I think that you are airing the views of the minority well enough. ;-) Ohconfucius (talk) 06:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Wake up to yourself, Anderson. Nobody is proposing imposing date formats on articles. It's a guideline. You began this whole ridiculous affair when I had the temerity to make dates within a new article the same uniform format as those actually used in the countries, as per the MoS, and you then edit-warred to get your way there, and you then edit-warred the MoS to remove the longstanding guideline that let me do this. I get a great deal of pleasant and relaxing satisfaction from tidying up Wikipedia, and you're doing your obnoxious best to stop me doing an easy and useful task, creating all sorts of disruption in the process. If there's anyone imposing their petty personal preferences on other editors, it's you. --Pete (talk) 00:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- If C is not intended to impose European style on articles, with a handful of exceptions, it is very badly worded. There is a section below where more reasonable wording can be proposed
- I met Skyring when he was revert-warring to place his format preference on 2008 South Ossetian war, which had and has enough problems.
- There is no consensus that articles on non-English speaking countries should imitate their dates. See Jao's comment above, including opposition by an editor whose native language uses 19 september.
- Skyring's "easy and pleasant activity" is a new form of Date Warring. (If he genuinely asked for, and abided by, consensus, it would be less objectionable.) It is no service to the encyclopedia; has elicited numerous complaints; and should indeed stop. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- Wake up to yourself, Anderson. Nobody is proposing imposing date formats on articles. It's a guideline. You began this whole ridiculous affair when I had the temerity to make dates within a new article the same uniform format as those actually used in the countries, as per the MoS, and you then edit-warred to get your way there, and you then edit-warred the MoS to remove the longstanding guideline that let me do this. I get a great deal of pleasant and relaxing satisfaction from tidying up Wikipedia, and you're doing your obnoxious best to stop me doing an easy and useful task, creating all sorts of disruption in the process. If there's anyone imposing their petty personal preferences on other editors, it's you. --Pete (talk) 00:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- It's not my job to determine who he posts messages to, and I have no reason to consider his posting on my talk page anything other than a friendly notice. However, I have noted that you are one of the very few who seems to be dead set against the various different attempts by others to reach a consensus, and you seem to be doing much heel-digging. I will not speculate if you would do your own share of canvassing if you could - but there may not be enough editors who consistently support your stance, or agree with the rather disruptive way you have been conducting yourself here in this discussion. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Let me see: I said the notice was neutrally phrased; but this is not all WP:CANVASS demands. It was selectively placed - only on the talk pages of editors who had agreed with one of Skyring's unvotes, and not on those who had disagreed with him. If OHconfucius sees an exception, do let us know. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Poll running time
No running time has been given for the poll. I think this should be fixed at the start, so there can be no accusations on the person running the poll that they have cut off the poll at a time convenient to them. I suggest one week's running time, and the following note to be added to the poll's instructions: This poll closes at 15:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC). (The edit history shows that Greg L added the poll at 15:48 on the 13th.) Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC) PS. Greg, I am not concerned about you manipulating the poll, simply about the best practice of polls, and avoiding the possibility of accusations of improper behaviour. Teemu Leisti (talk) 07:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- OK, done. Teemu Leisti (talk) 21:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
What a disaster
Corvus cornix is completely right. This is an atrocious waste of time. First, polls are non-binding. Second, a guideline is non-binding. Third, and most important: if you do not have the skills, time, or inclination to research substantive topics so you can write real encyclopedia articles, please do not try to inflate your edit count by busy-body actions that just amount to instruction-creep. Wikipedia is an anarchic community and the only rules that matter are the ones that allow people with diverse points of view work together. Aside from that, WP:BOLD, dudes. Rules which impose one way of doing things on others is the worst idea in the world, it is the opposite of freedom and anarchy and diversity i.e. core values of Wikipedia. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Good points - especially with the waste of time comment. This whole shemozzle began with PMAnderson taking exception to me altering the American format dates in one article to the format actually used in the countries, and attempting to alter the MoS to prevent me doing that. We're getting well into WP:LAME territory now, and nobody thinks big of you for that. Our core business is providing information. However, presenting information is important too, and I quail at the thought of how Wikipedia would look if we hadn't evolved standard ways of doing things. My philosophy is that editors are welcome to add new information or refine existing material, and so long as they get the basics right it doesn't matter how they present it. Because other folk will come along and tidy it up. Another important point, touched upon above, is that we shouldn't become ossified into one way of doing things. Different ideas should be given a free run, and good ideas naturally progress as editors copy and re-use them in other articles. Yang to this yin is that bad ideas are tried and died when they don't work out. Date autoformatting turned out a bad idea. My question is: how do we deal with the random debris of differing date formats now increasingly revealed as the autoformatting tide rolls out?
- Convert every date to one format or another?
- If so, which one?
- Tendentious editors will champion their preferred format. We'll be locked in argument as the weenies wrestle for total victory.
- If so, which one?
- Draw a dividing line? Some articles use one format, others use the other.
- Where do we draw the line? What criteria do we use? National ties? Regional variety of English? First contributor?
- As we currently see, the arguments on how to word the instructions are of mind-melting pettiness.
- Where do we draw the line? What criteria do we use? National ties? Regional variety of English? First contributor?
- Allow open slather?
- So long as articles are consistent in one style or another, does it matter which style is chosen? American editors might feel their manhood shrivel when they see a date like "4 July 1776", but they aren't going to be confused about which day we are talking about. And vice versa: English-language newspapers (including The Times of London) use American format almost universally without too many gentlefolk choking on their kippers.
- Convert every date to one format or another?
- In any case, no matter what course we choose here, most editors will ignore it and do whatever they bloody well want anyway. --Pete (talk) 00:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Side proposals
Two definite questions, and the possibility of a third, have come out of this poll, despite its structural inhibition of discussion. This is not <gesture of aversion> a new poll; these are questions whether tweaking the language in some directions can get general consent. If there is more than one or two voices in opposition to any of these, I will close it (as "resolved: no change") myself; also if there is no outpouring of wider support.
These are questions of what we should do in principle; if you approve changing in that direction, please suggest wording. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:12, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Only Canada?
- Several voices say that Canada is not the only English-speaking country where both methods are commonplace; Powers would include the United States. Should we broaden that exception?
- And if so, on what grounds should we broaden that exception? As pointed out above, Calendar date#Usage issues and Date and time notation by country are both almost entirely unreferenced. If nobody found reliable sources for which format is most common in various countries (Australia? Jamaica? Belize?), then how do we know? -- Jao (talk) 18:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- You using a computer? Go to your preferences page and somewhere there will be a list of countries. Select one at random and it will provide examples of formats in date, time, currency and so on. On Mac 10.5 it's at Preferences:Personal:International:Formats. I doubt that there is any great difference between manufacturers as to which countries swing which way. However, I notice that Apple sees Canada as using January 5, 2008 in written form and 5-Jan-08 as abbreviated. --Pete (talk) 00:15, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Good reasons to switch?
- Several voices say that there are good reasons to switch other than strong national ties; most detailed is Robert A West, who points out that present American military usage and the usage in Commonwealth historiography are both often contrary to the usual national custom. Should we acknowledge this, and what should we say? (This can vary from in general to West's explicit bullet points.)
Compromise?
- I do not see that this poll shows any consensus for version C's imposition "of one way of doing things on others" as SlRubenstein put it. But we can always consider compromise wording. Suggestions? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:12, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Proposal: E-WANDaF
I don't actually advocate this proposal, but since some people seem to want to do it, I wish to bring the issue to a head and accept or reject it.
Resolved
The community of English Wikipedia editors retroactively recognizes the all-numeric date format used by the date autoformatting software (as of 13 September 2008), and names it the English Wikipedia All Numeric Date Format (E-WANDaF).
The format consists of a four-digit year, between 0001 and 9999 inclusive, a hyphen-minus (Unicode hex 002D), a two digit month, a hyphen-minus, and a two digit day-of-month. If necessary, any element is padded on the left to make up the stated number of digits.
Example: 2008-09-12
The format may be used to represent dates in the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar (either the proleptic Julian calendar or the calendar as actually observed in Rome in 45 BC to AD 8 inclusive), or the old Roman calendar. If necessary, any conventional notation may be placed near the E-WANDaF date to indicate whether the date is AD or BC. The calendar used shall be deduced by the reader from the context of the article.
Please express your support or opposition below. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- No. Corvus cornixtalk 21:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- What do you mean by "may be used"? Note that JimWae explicitly only wants this format as an autoformatting preference, not in the source of articles. If and when a new autoformatting system is implemented, the inclusion or exclusion of this quasi-ISO format could be discussed, but otherwise I don't see the point (unless it's simply a POINT). -- Jao (talk) 21:53, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- By "may be used" I mean that a date in any of the mentioned calendars may be represented in this format under whatever circumstances this format is considered appropriate (perhaps on the screens of those who have expressed a preference for this this format in some future date autoformatting facility that is not deprecated, or as plain text in tables and other areas where space is at a premium). I also mean that the format may not be used for dates in calendars other than those listed, such as the traditional Chinese calendar. As for whether this should be supported in a new autoformatting system, such proposals do exist, and an acceptance or rejection of this proposal could serve as guidance for those seeking to advance those new autoformatting systems. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- By the way Jao, I certainly hope you didn't really mean, when you wrote "if and when a new autoformatting system is implemented, the inclusion or exclusion of this quasi-ISO format could be discussed" that a new system should be implemented FIRST, and THEN the format should be discussed; surely formats should be decided upon before implementation. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 22:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- No, I see I was imprecise on that point, but of course I meant after it has been decided to implement such a feature, not after it has actually been done. As for support or opposition of the clarified wording (that is, including "as plain text in tables and other areas where space is at premium"), that's an obvious oppose. I personally like the looks of yyyy-mm-dd in tables, but we probably shouldn't use it, and we definitely shouldn't use it where it's not actually ISO 8601. -- Jao (talk) 23:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
- What is this talk of more techno-garble autoformatting in the future? The community is very happy, overall, without such. Tony (talk) 05:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- While I'd be the last one to force any particular format on our readers, I'd like to note that the yyyy-mm-dd format has served me well in resolving a couple of date formatting disputes before. The articles in question were on Japanese subjects, and while none of the parties involved could be persuaded to give in to the US or International date format, they could be convinced to go with a subject-relevant third option. It's also a necessity in sortable tables, of course. --erachima talk 07:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I thought the entire point of
{{dts}}
was so that numerical date formats would not be a necessity in sortable tables. -- Jao (talk) 10:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Exactly. Teemu Leisti (talk) 21:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
The instructions forThe range is specified, I just didn't see it the first time I looked. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC){{dts}}
are deficient in that they don't explain what range of years is valid.- All right, you lost me. The instructions say that any astronomical year number between -9999 and 9999 may be entered, and that the year number 5 with an additional BC parameter set may be used as an alternative to -4. What's the ambiguity? -- Jao (talk) 22:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- I thought the entire point of
these polls
If we are to have any further attempts to measure opinions on this difficult issue of date format choice for articles related to non-English-speaking countries or to no country at all, I strongly feel that they should involve just two, maybe three, simple, narrow questions, each requiring just a yes or a no. The problem has been that fully-fledged proposals have been put; no wonder people baulk at having to declare a preference for a set of complex principles rather single issues.
On Pete Skyring's recent edit to MOSNUM: I wholly support Kotniski's reversion and edit summary. Your "country-driven" idea has been rejected, having been given a very reasonable airing. No one appreciates the disruption you are causing by slipping it back into the text. Tony (talk) 13:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- How anyone can claim to be able to decipher a consensus for anything (related to date formats) in all the mess above and in the archives is beyond me. I, for one, certainly don't have the time to verify that what you say here is true. Powers T 15:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Tony, see my response to Kotniski above. And I take your point about the "national ties" wording being rejected, so I'm putting in the wording that actually won both the poll and the run-off. If any version has community support, this one does. I agree with you on the "simple questions" poll. Asking people to choose between "fully-fledged" versions is a big ask, especially when they aren't fully formed but whipped up on the fly for the purpose of putting them up as poll options. Much better to choose between a range of principles and then work on the precise wording as a community. --Pete (talk) 18:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Please read WP:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. None of these polls is a vote; we are not majoritarian: it isn't "winning" that counts.
- The runoff poll was between two options, A and C; neither of them the present text. By my count, there were 19 unvotes. Of those, 8 approved of C and disapproved of A; 2 approved weakly of both and preferred C to A; 4 approved A and dispproved of C; 5 disapproved of both. That's 10 approvals at all, to 9 disapprovals, which is not consensus, even in our approximate usage. Both A and C were universally prescriptive; and neither is "widely approved of" as guidelines should be.
- The present text is neither A nor C; it's what A and C have in common. So far it is widely approved of, and is much more popular than C; we will see. It may be possible to win a wider consensus by shortening it still further, but only if there is some interest in that by the Not Contents. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Bots and user pages
I would like to suggest that the bots that happily wander through pages and change wikilinked dates to plain text be prohibited from making any edits to pages in user space. Autoformatted dates work correctly for logged-in users, and if a user specifies a date preference, they should get what they asked for in pages that they control. Put another way, the deprecation of auto-formatted dates should not apply to user space. Truthanado (talk) 20:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Support. Teemu Leisti (talk) 21:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
- Support if true but I have never seen any specific example of a bot changing dates in the userspace. If somebody really did this then it's very very bad. NerdyNSK (talk) 19:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Who would bother running a script (not a bot) on a user page? Tony (talk) 01:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- Truthanado and Teemu, don't worry. You can assume that no bot does such a thing, unless you have a specific example. In any case, autoformatting is not used outside article space. You can see that all the signatures on this page use just one WYSIWG format and users seem happy with that. Lightmouse (talk) 12:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
k versus K for metric/binary kilo
There is a section in the MOSNUM about using K/M/G rather than Ki/Mi/Gi. K is never a proper SI prefix; it should be lowercase k. I changed that, assuming it was an uncontroversial typo correction, but apparently I have to go through a procedure of discussing it here. Well here I mention it; change it or leave it as it is. I'm not wasting more time on it, but in the latter case I will take MOSNUM a lot less seriously in the future. Han-Kwang (t) 20:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- Earlier in the development of computer terminology, some people used k in it's SI meaning of 1000, and reserved K for 1024. Around the same time, some computer displays and printers still lacked lower-case letters, so some people were forced to use K to mean 1000 due to this technology limitation. Later, kilobits and kilobytes came to be seen as so small, they're hardly worth worrying about. Also, the option of switching the case to indicate binary or decimal meaning does not apply to M, G, T, etc.
- All in all, I see no reason we should accept the use of K to mean 1000 in Wikipedia. Although bit and byte are not SI units and therefore are not strictly governed by SI, the prefixes are often extended to non-SI units and I don't see why the method of extension should be any different for bit and byte. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- When this was discussed in relation to using IEC prefixes for the binary meanings, if I recall correctly, the case of the k was mixed. It isn't that easy to find examples since there isn't much call to write about kilobits or kilobytes anymore. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, the IBM 029 didn't do lowercase characters, so it wasn't until keypunches, COBOL, and FORTRAN IV were mostly forgotten that computer users and writers started to pay attention to case. Recall that even after case-sensitive Unix systems had been in use for years MS brought out several case-mangling generations of DOS. General usage was and often still is sloppy. LeadSongDog (talk) 07:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- When this was discussed in relation to using IEC prefixes for the binary meanings, if I recall correctly, the case of the k was mixed. It isn't that easy to find examples since there isn't much call to write about kilobits or kilobytes anymore. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
If you read the technical literature of the 1950s and 1960s you will notice that case did not matter. Frequency was measured in kilocycles and megacycles (this was before hertz). You will see 10 mc and 10 MC for 10 megacycles. Capacitors were measured in microfarad abbreviated as "mfd" or "MFD". Picofarad was not used; micromicrofarad was used instead and abbreviated as "mmfd" or "MMFD". This worked because no one broadcast on 10 microcycles and you could not make a 10 megafarad capacitor. Here are some references to k and K.
- Real, P. (September 1959). "A generalized analysis of variance program utilizing binary logic". ACM '59: Preprints of papers presented at the 14th national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery. ACM Press: pg 78-1 - 78-5. doi:10.1145/612201.612294.
On a 32k core size 704 computer, approximately 28,000 datum may be analyzed, … without resorting to auxiliary tape storage.
{{cite journal}}
:|pages=
has extra text (help) The author is with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. (Note: The IBM 704 used binary addressing, K = 1024.)
- Sonquiest, John A. (December 1962). "Fixed-word-length arrays in variable-word-length computers". Communications of the ACM. 5 (12). ACM Press: pg 602.
The following scheme for assigning storage for fixed-word-length arrays seems to meet these criteria and has been used successfully in working with linear arrays on a 4k IBM 1401.
{{cite journal}}
:|pages=
has extra text (help) (Note the IBM 1401 used decimal addressing, k = 1000.)
- Gruenberger, Fred (October 1960). "Letters to the Editor". Communications of the ACM. 3 (10). "The 8K core stores were getting fairly common in this country in 1954. The 32K store started mass production in 1956; it is the standard now for large machines and at least 200 machines of the size (or its equivalent in the character addressable machines) are in existence today (and at least 100 were in existence in mid-1959)." Note: The IBM 1401 was a character addressable computer.
- Amdahl, Gene M. (1964). "Architecture of the IBM System/360" (PDF). IBM Journal of Research and Development. 8 (2). IBM.
{{cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter|coauthors=
ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) Figure 1 gives storage (memory) capacity ranges of the various models in "Capacity 8 bit bytes, 1 K = 1024"
- Control Data Corporation (November 1968). Control Data 7600 Computer System: Preliminary System Description (PDF).
One type, designated as the small core memory (SCM) is a many bank coincident current type memory with a total of 64K words of 60 bit length (K=1024).
- IBM (1972). "System/370 Model 158 brochure" (PDF). IBM.
All-monolithic storage ... (1024-bit NMOS) This new improvement of processor storage makes system expansion more economical. Real storage capacity is available in 512K increments ranging from 512K to 2,048K bytes.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help)
SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Some newer ones.
- ANSI/IEEE Std 1084-1986 IEEE Standard Glossary of Mathematics of Computing Terminology. October 30, 1986.
kilo (K). (1) A prefix indicating 1000. (2) In statements involving size of computer storage, a prefix indicating 210, or 1024. mega (M). (1) A prefix indicating one million. (2) In statements involving size of computer storage, a prefix indicating 220, or 1,048,576.
- ANSI/IEEE Std 1212-1991 IEEE Standard Control and Status Register (CSR) Architecture for Microcomputer Buses. July 22, 1992.
Kbyte. Kilobyte. Indicates 210 bytes. Mbyte. Megabyte. Indicates 220bytes. Gbyte is used in the Foreword.
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2000). The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms. IEEE Computer Society Press. ISBN 0-7381-2601-2. "kB See kilobyte." "Kbyte Kilobyte. Indicates 210 bytes." "Kilobyte Either 1000 or 210 or 1024 bytes." The standard also defines megabyte and gigabyte. There is a note that an alternative notation for base-2 is under development.
SWTPC6800 (talk) 19:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
The uses cited by Swtpc6800 don't really solve the issue of what Wikipedia should use for kbit when we mean 1000 bits. SI was not created until 1960, and we have to allow a few years for it to catch on, so the only journal article from the list above that tells us anything is the one from 1972, and that refers to the binary meaning (1024 bits). Since there is no clear use in the industry of K for 1000, I believe Wikipedia should use k, and the "Manual of Style (dates and numbers)" edited accordingly. Does anyone disagree? --Gerry Ashton (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- The IEEE Computer Society Style Guide indicates that K means 1024 while k means 1000. I couldn't find anything relevant in the general IEEE Editorial Style Manual or the IEEE Standards Style Manual. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- Han-Kwang, in the real world the uppercase K is commonly used and the JEDEC memory standards organisation, which is followed by nearly all manufacturers of transistorised memory, also states "kilo (K) = 1024"[5], note the uppercase K. For this subject you have to ignore what SI say because for Wikipedia according to WP:RS we use secondary reliable sources for the contents of articles and in the real world the reliable secondary sources mostly ignore what SI has to say. SI is a primary source but according to WP:RS we don't use primary sources unless we have secondary sources to verify that the primary source is notable. Since the SI point of view is in the tiny minority WP:UNDUE also applies where the minority point of view is not given equal weight with the majority common point of view. Basically, Wikipedia reports the world how the secondary reliable sources say it is, not how SI thinks it should be. Fnagaton 02:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- SI is not a source at all, it is the result of an international collaborative process that is very comparable to the peer review process used in the best secondary sources. It is also, strictly speaking, irrelevant, because neither bit nor byte are SI units, and SI only says what to do when applying SI prefixes to SI units. Whether it is OK to borrow the prefixes for other purposes has not been addressed in any universal, authoritative manner.
- Fnagaton is probably right that when K means 1024 bits or bytes, it is usually capitalized. Usage is mixed in cases where k means 1000 bits or bytes; I would suggest using lower-case k in those cases because it agrees with SI and agrees with the IEEE Computer Society Style Guide. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 03:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- While the use of k or K to mean 1000 bits, 1000 bytes, 1000 words, 1024 bits, 1024 bytes or 1024 words is unquestionably widespread in trade press, it is beyond doubt that its meaning is unclear without further amplification. For this reason alone, it should always be amplified for clarity. Surely we've been over this topic enough to establish that.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Fnagaton is probably right that when K means 1024 bits or bytes, it is usually capitalized. Usage is mixed in cases where k means 1000 bits or bytes; I would suggest using lower-case k in those cases because it agrees with SI and agrees with the IEEE Computer Society Style Guide. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 03:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Month abbreviations
It struck me that I cannot see anything (at least obviously) that suggests or disallows use of month abbreviations (eg "Sept." for September), a fact that is often used in tables where there is date information but the table has gotten rather wide. Presuming that in line with "which format", is there a standard?
Namely: if abbreviations are ok, we should fix on one set of abbreviations (either all three letter, or the more common: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug. Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec set.) and make sure what punctuation we should use, eg "Sept. 15, 2008" vs "Sept 15, 2008" and "15 Sept. 2008" vs "15 Sept 2008" (note lack of abbreviation period). If they are not ok, we should be stating this. --MASEM 23:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. Since Wikipedia is an online resource and the most common online date abbreviation convention for months is three characters (Windows, Unix and Linux all use it), I suggest that 3-chars be adopted. Specifically: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Truthanado (talk) 23:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Abbreviations are fine in charts and the like where full months make the thing too big or distract from more important data, but abbreviations in text are informal and produce ugly prose. -Rrius (talk) 04:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed, abbreviated months should only be used if space is a premium, which is pretty much limited to tables. I just think it would be worth while to standardize these. --MASEM 04:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Of course we should only abbreviate when space is a premium; but why should we spend our editors' attention on standardizing these? I commend Erachina's point above:
- We can think of the editors as something that must be controlled, expand the manual of style with a new rule every time a conflict emerges, update that rule whenever an exception is pointed out, add a caution to the exception when a wikilawyer starts abusing it, and repeat this cycle ad nauseum. The other way is to treat them like intelligent humans and write a manual of style that gives general guiding principles and trusts the specifics to page editors. I, for one, believe Wikipedia is not written by idiots. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Point taken, though I do find that we are generally very explicit on punctuation use (moreso in the general MOS than here); irregardless of using 3 or 4 letters in the abbreviation, we should at least make sure if the month abbreviation should or shouldn't be followed by a period (and if that changes when one goes from m/d/y to d/m/y date format). --MASEM 13:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- No thank you; that's a question of idiom, and of the space involved. Periods are more common in American English, which comes under ENGVAR; on the other dimension, if the table has 24 months horizontally, and the entries are single letters, good editors of any nationality will use Jan and Feb because they're short. Where is the necessity to rule on this? Because we can? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- The whole argument against linked ISO 8601 dates was based on usage in prose, yet it has also (predictably) spilled over into citations, where structured metadata unquestionably has value. Whatever goes in should be amenable to automatic parsing in a "date", "accessdate", or similar field. Superfluous punctuation is inconsistently executed by human editors and makes a citation harder to read. The KISS principle still holds.LeadSongDog (talk) 13:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- No thank you; that's a question of idiom, and of the space involved. Periods are more common in American English, which comes under ENGVAR; on the other dimension, if the table has 24 months horizontally, and the entries are single letters, good editors of any nationality will use Jan and Feb because they're short. Where is the necessity to rule on this? Because we can? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Point taken, though I do find that we are generally very explicit on punctuation use (moreso in the general MOS than here); irregardless of using 3 or 4 letters in the abbreviation, we should at least make sure if the month abbreviation should or shouldn't be followed by a period (and if that changes when one goes from m/d/y to d/m/y date format). --MASEM 13:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
LeadSongDog, keep in mind there is a vast difference between a date field and an accessdate field. The timespan covered by date is about 600 times greater than the timespan covered by accessdate, so the date must accomodate dates covered by Julian, Gregorian, and other calendars, some of which cannot be accurately associated with dates in modern calendar systems. They must also accomodate negative years or BC. Also keep in mind that citation templates are entirely optional. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- I get that. I've previously argued that when it might be ambiguous we should explicitly state the calendar used. Almost everything is optional on WP, but well structured content does have more value than unstructured. WP:BUILD is based on this principle. WP is not just a collection of linear text. Anything that strengthens the assisted/automated verification of bibliographic data will ultimately better articles. Who has never clicked through an ISBN or PMID to get to a source?LeadSongDog (talk) 17:30, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Dates are not linked unless...
The last bullet under the Dates section could use some clarification. It currently states "Dates are not linked unless there is a particular reason to do so". What is considered a good "particular reason"? Notable historic events – surely. Birth/death of a notable person – maybe. What else? Should linked dates only include those events back referenced from the date pages?
Also, I noticed that there is a movement by some editors to remove existing date links. For example, this edit to the Usain Bolt article removed a link from the subject's birth date, even though the subject is listed on the date pages. Is it the intent of this policy to remove such links?
I'm sure if I dig through the discussion archives I'll find some answers, but my point is that the specific guidelines should be on the MOS page. Thank you. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:29, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- That's an interesting point. I'd have thought a linked article would be worthy of such because it contained extra information or context about the subject, not a mere mention. If this reference to the subject in the other article is indeed novel, it should probably be included in the article in question. If the larger context in the linked article is important enough for the reader to view as "secondary" information (I doubt it, given the fragmentary lists that make up almost every year page—have a look at them), it might be better to summarise that context neatly for the reader in the article on the subject. That will give greater cohesion and focus to the article, and free up the link space we need to allocate strategically (to avoid dilution) for a high-value link. Tony (talk) 02:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- I already raised this issue not long ago (but it's been shunted into an archive). I've noticed people going around with bots removing ALL date links, which is surely quite wrong. I would argue that dates should be linked in infoboxes, for example, as a link to a date gives the reader the opportunity to see the wider context of what happened on a particular date or year. I'm not sure what is meant by free up link space I wasn't aware that 'link space' was limited? G-Man ? 02:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- "Link space"—the more you link, the more you dilute the individual high-value links. I think we seriously overestimate the number of links that readers actually follow; part of optimising the features of wiki is to use linking strategically—to put it crudely, to ration the links to the good ones. I'm unsure how "June 9" could be a good link. Can you point to a date link in an infobox that adds to the reader's understanding of the subject? I put it to you that in the unlikely event that there was a fact-fragment of the remotest relevance to the subject at such an anniversary date for each year, you'd want to put it in the article at hand rather than sending the one-in-ten-thousand readers who do click on that link through what would be almost a wild goose chase. If the purpose of the link to the date is to facilitate discretionary browsing, I'm sorry, but WP has moved away from bright-bluing textual items for that purpose. Discretionary browsers simply need to type a destination into the search box—it's not hard. The same applies to year-links. There's possibly one exception—the years of the two European world-wars in the 20th century, although again, such a larger context is probably better supplied through a direct link to a world-war article, where it would provide focused information—and probably to a section of one of those articles, not the general article. Tony (talk) 03:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Also 1776, 1789, 1492, 1815....Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:05, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think even the world wars or the French revolution merit a link to the years concerned. If a link is needed, it should be to the specific article on World War 2, on the French Revolution, or what have you. I see very little reason to ever link to a date article or to a year article. Teemu Leisti (talk) 05:44, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- But we are not all editors and are not required to see all reasons. That is why MOS should prescribe only in very clear cases.Robert A.West (Talk) 12:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Wait a minute - I thought the idea of wikilinking a date was to format dates as per user preferences. ++ MortimerCat (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- We are discussing what linking of dates should exist even if autoformatting were to disappear tomorrow. My position is some, but less than there is; we should link to dates, when clicking on them will add significantly to the reader who clicks on them, just like any other word. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Wait a minute - I thought the idea of wikilinking a date was to format dates as per user preferences. ++ MortimerCat (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- But we are not all editors and are not required to see all reasons. That is why MOS should prescribe only in very clear cases.Robert A.West (Talk) 12:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- "Link space"—the more you link, the more you dilute the individual high-value links. I think we seriously overestimate the number of links that readers actually follow; part of optimising the features of wiki is to use linking strategically—to put it crudely, to ration the links to the good ones. I'm unsure how "June 9" could be a good link. Can you point to a date link in an infobox that adds to the reader's understanding of the subject? I put it to you that in the unlikely event that there was a fact-fragment of the remotest relevance to the subject at such an anniversary date for each year, you'd want to put it in the article at hand rather than sending the one-in-ten-thousand readers who do click on that link through what would be almost a wild goose chase. If the purpose of the link to the date is to facilitate discretionary browsing, I'm sorry, but WP has moved away from bright-bluing textual items for that purpose. Discretionary browsers simply need to type a destination into the search box—it's not hard. The same applies to year-links. There's possibly one exception—the years of the two European world-wars in the 20th century, although again, such a larger context is probably better supplied through a direct link to a world-war article, where it would provide focused information—and probably to a section of one of those articles, not the general article. Tony (talk) 03:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Indeed: sadly, date autoformatting is mechanically entangled with linking, and in some respects needs to be discussed in a similar light (i.e., overlinking, dilution of high-value links). I'm trying to get to the bottom of why people would think that dates of birth and death should be linked; the argument appears to be that you can link to day-month article and year article. No one has shown why they're useful to understanding the topic. Anderson, can you point me to an instance where linking "1776" is useful to understanding a subject, and whether it would not be preferable to include any scraps of info in the year page in the actual article at hand? (Perhaps this is possible—it's a good-faith question.) Tony (talk) 13:50, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- For a real example, the quote from Henry Laurens: "presiding officer of that congress from June until March of 1776." It would be off topic to include the political history of South Carolina at this point; but as with WWII, some readers will benefit from checking what was going on. They will find that SC had not yet declared independence, but had made demands to which even the local Loyalists were willing to subscribe; and that the British were about to evacuate Boston.
- For a hypothetical example, consider: "In the century and a half from 1620 to 1776, New England [complex statistical claim]". Most readers will understand what the dates are, and why they are being used; some readers will find the links valuable. It may be possible to recast the sentence, but just substituting the settlement of Plymouth and American Revolution may make an already complex sentence unbearable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- As another actual example, I have just come across an offhand reference to an increase of royal control in New England in 1682. One way to find more about this would be to go to 1682 and either find it (which did not happen) or search the What links here for the page; but the second will only work if years are actually linked. (Searching on "New England" and 1682 turns up mostly survey articles broad enough to include both New England and the founding of Pennsylvania.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:05, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- What is the harm being prevented here? How does linking of dates that are significant to the article make Wikipedia worse? Some people like to know what else happened on a date, and especially so when the date is not within their personal memory. If reading about the First Anglo-Dutch War, it might provide a particular reader with useful perspective to see what else was going on in that year. For example, tea, coffee and cocoa all first arrived in London during the year 1652. While there is no immediate relevance to the war, that fact gives some perspective on the growth of world trade in the period. Even if the year article mentions nothing of interest or value now, that should change over time as Wikipedia improves. Obviously, you don't read that way, but Wikipedia is written for the readers, not for us editors. Personally, I think that linking years and dates is a service to readers and should be, if anything, encouraged. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- I also think that linking the birth and death dates would be good and have mentioned that numerous times although I cannot seem to vocalize exactly why. But by this logic then we shouldn't be linking to places of birth, death, burial, etc. Are those to be the next targets of our hatred of overlinking.--Kumioko (talk) 14:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- I would react with some horror at the extensive wikilinking of birth and death dates. The vast majority of biographies I have come across have 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 have chosen to 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, that's probably where I would stop. 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. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- For some readers not wikilinking dates creates problems: for example, I like to know the wider historical state of the world for each date referred in an article, and wikilinking the date allows me to quickly have a look at the date articles, but deleting the wikilinks injures my reading experience, as I cannot as easily check the state of the world on a particular date. I know other users may not be as interested in history, though, and I also accept the fact that too many links make the "primary" high-importance links difficult to distinguate, although I maintain that deleting what some people see as "secondary" links is not a solution. By the way, if you read a recent CACM journal issue, there is an article in there in which a researcher (if I remember correctly then it's someone who is also a Wikipedian here, but I'm not sure whether I remember correctly) found that Wikipedia growth is related to its links, and especially its red links (ie red links make people write an article), which implies that being reluctant to link, especially for red links, could slow the growth of Wikipedia. For years (most of which are existant articles), this would mean that non-wikilinked year articles may receive less contributions than wikilinked year articles (many times reading an article then clicking a date wikilink there allows a reader to spot historical events that are noted in the article but not in the year articles, thus this may enable them to add these in the year article). In general, I believe that the benefits of wikilinking outweight the disadvantages in most situations, if done in the right way. NerdyNSK (talk) 19:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- Of course, our year and date articles could use a lot of improvement. We could use more global perspective (though the prospect of {{globalize}} stuck on every one of them fills me with horror). There are events that we can pin down to a year, but not a specific day, should be listed. Major developments and milestones should be listed on the main year article, and not in "yyyy in xxxxx". But, I suppose I should take that up with Wikiproject years in my "copious" (i.e. nonexistent) spare time. Robert A.West (Talk) 15:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- I also think that linking the birth and death dates would be good and have mentioned that numerous times although I cannot seem to vocalize exactly why. But by this logic then we shouldn't be linking to places of birth, death, burial, etc. Are those to be the next targets of our hatred of overlinking.--Kumioko (talk) 14:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Are there any plans to replace the meta data applications linked dates provide? The mass delinking is breaking those options. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-16t20:54z
- What applications? —Remember the dot (talk) 22:27, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
- Semantic web. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-18t08:31z
Is it actually suggested here that it would be OK for an article (like the Queen's) to consistently use "21 April 1926", "29 May 1926", "6 February 1952" etc., plus one "2 June 1953", which will for some users be presented as "June 2, 1953"? Isn't that a little too inconsistent? (Then, it might get people to turn off preferences, which is probably a good idea anyway.) Also, how about linking to the specific date article for the date when the subject matter occurred, came into being or ceased to exist ("the competition was held on August 9, 2004", or "the competition was held on 9 August 2004")? These articles only exist for a few years however, and whether or not they should exist is probably a question for Category talk:Dates. An article listing the events of August 9, 2004 feels like trivia, but hardly any more so than listing lots of events that happened on August 9 in the main August 9 article. (Note: I'm not saying we should be linking any dates, I don't feel strongly either way about that. Just asking how we should link, if at all.) -- Jao (talk) 16:50, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
- Dates aren't consistently linked now; anybody who autoformats does so at his own risk, for he is choosing to have more dates in his preferred format at the price of inconsistency (and sometimes bad grammar or factual error). The question here is "are any links in dates valuable as links?" I think some are. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
What is the value of a June 2 article or a 1953 article? I presume many people think they are valuable since there are hundreds of such articles. What kind of article should link to them? Self-evidently if all dates are de-linked then all those articles will become orphaned. So back to Tcncv's original point: "Dates are not linked unless there is a particular reason to do so" should be followed by a statement of what constitutes a good reason; and his other point: the dates of events, births, deaths etc. in those articles should always be linked. Scolaire (talk) 15:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Tony1's comment: I haven't seen one good reason why dates of birth and death should be linked. They are linked only because of an appalling decision in the programming design of date autoformatting to entangle it with the linking mechanism. "9 June" etc was never intended to function as a link to the corresponding anniversary article: magic bright-blue buttons for diversionary browsing are discouraged in a serious encyclopedia, for all of the reasons trotted out ad infinitum on this page and its archives). Neither was the other other date fragment in autoformatted dates intended as a wormhole to a year-page, and most casual readers would be unaware that it links separately to such.
Having surveyed many year-pages, all I can say is that they're poor. When they approach the standard of 1345, we might start to promote them in the project. But for the most part, they're rag-tag threadbare lists of fragmentary facts. The quandary raised by 1345 is that it sucks in much of the suitable information for the surrounding years, too. What would be more suitable is decade articles before the last few centuries. They could make a fascinating addition to WP's historical articles. But the chance that this will happen is slender, I suspect. I note PMA's arguments above, and apologise for not yet responding. Surely the exceptional year-link is allowable under the current guidelines ("not normally"), where editors want to put a case for the benefits? I'm referring to odd years such as 1776 in the context of the American revolution, and years in the two 20th-century world wars. Tony (talk) 15:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- How can an editor feel motivated to improve a year article if they know that someone will quickly step in to almost turn it into an orphaned article, thus the good work done becoming invisible to the readers? How can someone feel motivated to improve an article that people don't even want to see links towards it. De-linking dates means keeping them in their current poor state forever. This is unwiki. NerdyNSK (talk) 22:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- I'm content with not normally, provided FA and GA will listen to cases for the benefits. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Greetings,
Let's not forget that the TWO most important things about Wikipedia are that:
A. Anyone can edit, which leads to potential for the most up-to-date information
B. Wikilinks, which allow a user to get from one topic area to a related (but tangential) topic very quickly. In short, Wikipedia has become a collective "brain" of humanity, and building these links increases Wikipedia's brainpower.
Therefore, it doesn't make sense to unlink dates. WHY are dates used? To place events in historical context. Links allow us to investigate that context. No links reduces and devalues one of the two main pillars of Wikipedia's purpose and success.Ryoung122 10:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- And let us not forget that templates like {{Cite web}} and others automagically wikilink dates. I'm sure the job queue will have a heart attack if someone or somebot stats an edit battle over that. — MrDolomite • Talk 11:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- Although I don't mean people to clutter LM's page with comment, there's an interesting little debate on "skilled linking" and solitary year-links at [talk page]. Tony (talk) 14:28, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
this odd "change" box
I've removed it again. I see no consensust for its placement there in the first place. It damages the status of the whole page, sending a message that it's unstable. Policy and style pages are inherently unstable—it'a a wiki. There's no "This is an unstable mess" posted in a huge box at the top of WP:NFC, even though WP:NFCC#8 has gone back and forth and back and forth month after month for most of this year. Tony (talk) 02:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Timing
This article is currently going through a peer review. The point that that all numbers under 10 should be written, but are unsure how "1 minute 23 seconds" should be written as it's referring to time. Should it stay how it is or be written "one minute 23 seconds"? Thanks, --Jimbo[online] 07:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- Jimbo, thanks for your inquiry. Like most style guides, WP's MOSNUM hedges its preference for the spelling out of small numbers with exceptions: there's no easy way out in English (thus five .22-calibre rifles, among many niceties). These exceptions are listed in Numbers as figures or words. Generally, measurements are stated in figures, so your suspicion that "1 minute 23 seconds" should remain entirely in figures is born out. If there were lots of such time expressions in the article, as in a current featured article candidate, one might be tempted to abbreviate to 1'23" (in parentheses on first occurrence); but there aren't lots in that article. Tony (talk) 09:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- What's the best approach at Akira (manga)? If I write 6 volumes rather than six volumes in the lead, it catches my eye as wrong, but by the time I get into the meat of the article, I'm mixing them rather badly. Hiding T 09:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
- There are several considerations. My own rule of thumb, not I think presently represented in the guideline, is to use numerals when the quantity is a lot of something. For anime, from my experience, six volumes is not a lot; 13 might be. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Decades (again)
Call me petty-minded, but I'm still bothered about the fact that some of the decade articles are misnamed. (We've discussed this before, and more or less agreed to make the change, but there were always more pressing things to do.) The problem concerns the decades which begin centuries (or end them, if BC), such as 1100s, 1800s and so on. We know, of course, that in real life 1100s refers to 100 years, not 10, but Wikipedia has decided differently. If you agree (or disagree) that this decision should be reversed (i.e. the decade article at 1100s should be renamed 1100–1109, etc.), then please comment at the discussion I started at what seems to be the most relevant page - namely WT:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Decades.--Kotniski (talk) 12:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- Strong support, replied there. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Move text from WP:JARGON?
At WP:JARGON, we have: "... as a rule of thumb, if expressing an equation requires LaTeX (as most do), do not assume the reader will understand what it means. It is also considered polite (but not always necessary) to explain how the symbols are read, e.g. "A ⇔ B means A is true if and only if B is true". Much of the hassle and redundancy can often be mitigated by providing a link to the extremely helpful table of mathematical symbols and providing a simple warning/disclaimer, such as at the top of the prisoner's dilemma article." I'd prefer that this material be here (in whatever tweaked form we prefer) rather than WP:JARGON because the typical users wondering what to do about numbers and symbols will probably be searching here or at the math MOS, not WP:JARGON. If you guys agree that this is a better page for that, I'll remove it there and we can start discussing it here. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 13:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that's advisable. Richard Feynman's publishers warned him that every equation he included would halve his sales, but that's not the criterion we should go by. This should be merged, if anywhere, with the mathematics MOS; but you should consult the math wikiproject first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- WP:MSM seems to focus on articles about math, rather than on how to deal with math symbols in science- and technology-related articles, but if you guys don't want this, that's my next stop. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- It's the only guide to LaTeX I know about, though. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- WP:MSM seems to focus on articles about math, rather than on how to deal with math symbols in science- and technology-related articles, but if you guys don't want this, that's my next stop. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)