Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:40, 16 September 2008

Manual of Style

This page falls within the scope of the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style, a collaborative effort focused on enhancing clarity, consistency, and cohesiveness across the Manual of Style (MoS) guidelines by addressing inconsistencies, refining language, and integrating guidance effectively.Manual of StyleWikipedia:WikiProject Manual of StyleTemplate:WikiProject Manual of StyleManual of Style This page falls under the contentious topics procedure and is given additional attention, as it closely associated to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style, and the article titles policy. Both areas are subjects of debate. Contributors are urged to review the awareness criteria carefully and exercise caution when editing. For information on Misplaced Pages's approach to the establishment of new policies and guidelines, refer to WP:PROPOSAL. Additionally, guidance on how to contribute to the development and revision of Misplaced Pages policies of Misplaced Pages's policy and guideline documents is available, offering valuable insights and recommendations.

Archives

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This page has archives. Sections older than 5 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Date format

There has been much discussion recently about matters connected with dates. The main issues are as follows:

• What to do about autoformatted dates. These are linked dates of the form January 19, 1988 or 19 January 1988, which have traditionally been used in Misplaced Pages articles, purely for the purpose of making the autoformatting tool work (this allows logged-in users to select a preference as to how such dates are displayed). This has now been deprecated (i.e. it is no longer the recommended style). The manual of style page itself currently states the reasons for this decision (basically it's because the benefits are minuscule, and it leads to massive overlinking) and also contains a reference to the discussions which led to the decision to deprecate. Please do not come here asking when or why this happened unless you have trouble understanding that information.
• What format to use for dates. With the deprecation of the autoformatting links referred to above, people came to realize that we don't have very clear guidelines on what date format should be used in articles (basically whether - and in what situations - month should precede day, as in January 19, or day precede month as in 19 January). Discussions and polls on this matter can be found at /Archive 110.

Summary of date format polls

My proposal is that this polling (at /Archive 110) now be closed and we decide how to proceed next. This is how I personally would summarize the results of the polls (others may differ):

• The idea that our date formats should depend on the date format used in non-English languages (option D in the poll) has been rejected.
• The idea of making date format an element of English variety (so that - to simplify - June 1 goes with American spelling and 1 June goes with UK spelling) was well supported (option A), slightly more so than what is effectively the status quo (option B, which allows date formats to become established in articles independent of US/UK spelling).
• The most popular (though not overwhelmingly so) approach was (option C) the idea of preferring the day-month style in all articles which do not have a specific connection to the U.S. (or other English-speaking countries which do it the other way). This will be considered a radical move in some quarters (which haven't necessarily been fully aware of the implications of this poll).

I would suggest the most logical way forward would be to establish first whether there really is community consensus for this last option. A well-publicized and precisely-worded proposal would do it. If such a proposal fails (unfortunately I suspect it will, though who knows...) then we could come back and look at option A again, which (being relatively uncontentious) might well gain consensus.--Kotniski (talk) 08:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the polls, they are well-supported, and the tabular format worked well. There were some attempts to influence voting and interpret results, but there is a clear winner in Option C, which led with an average of 2.26 over the runner up (Option A) on 1.75. The run-off poll shows an even larger winning margin.

Accordingly, I think we can insert the strongly supported text into the MoS. However, the wording needs work, though not to the extent that it transforms into a less-popular option. --Pete (talk) 11:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Of course you do; but this was not a vote. There is no consensus for your crusade, and only one of these perpetual polls even shows a slight majority preferring your chosen option over an alternative. Concentrating on it alone, with its flaws, is cherry-picking. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Why don't we move the discussion to the subpage, as the text at the top says? Teemu Leisti (talk) 15:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Because it doesn't. Kotniski's question is "what do we do now?" and should be answered here, if not somewhere even more public. This concerns a lot of articles, and should be done in the light. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:05, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Fine. Also, see new section #Archived /Date format as /Archive 110 below. Teemu Leisti (talk) 17:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

• Teemu Leisti: 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 Misplaced Pages’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 Misplaced Pages 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.

Very well, I see your point. Teemu Leisti (talk) 17:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Concealed links

The music project says:

• Do not use piped links to years in music (e.g., do not write: The Beatles Please Please Me came out in ]). Instead, sparingly use parentheses after years mentioned in the article, such as The Beatles released Please Please Me in 1963 (see ]).

The film project referred to the music guideline and suggests formulas like:

• Foo is an American political thriller that was ] and starred...
• Snatch is a ] ...

Now the aircraft project is discussing the same issue at: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft#Template:Avyear. The music project and film project suggestions are not specific to just music or films. I think they have good suggestions that MOSNUM readers may find useful as options. Does anybody agree? Lightmouse (talk) 20:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd be pleased for advice to be written into MOSNUM that the practice of piping to what looks like a single year generally be avoided. A few examples of how such pipes can be reworded might be provided, so that editors see that there are more skilful ways of linking. I'd also like MOSNUM to point out that it's unnecessary to link more than one or two "year in blah"s, since all years in blah can be accessed through just one. Tony (talk) 04:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

A similar issue is present in Brian Boru, where years link to YYY in Ireland. I think it would be better to write in a style that gives readers a better idea of what they will find when they click on the link. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

A good general rule is to make sure a masked link includes more than one word or term in the text, so that users have some reason to believe they're not just going to be transported to the article 963 or whatever. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Good point, Anderson. Maybe that should be included as advice in MOSNUM. Tony (talk) 04:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Strong support, as it were. I do this all the time (see my edits last night/this morning (depending on your time zone) to Steve Davis for an example. — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 21:29, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Would anyone like to add this now? Lightmouse (talk) 09:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Support Tony's, Gerry's, and Pmanderson's suggestions. Teemu Leisti (talk) 05:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Text formatting math section merge proposal

Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (text formatting) serves no purpose at all, as it is simply rehash of WP:MOS (and in one place WP:MOSNUM). To the extent it may say anything distinctive that point should be added to MOS/MOSNUM, but otherwise this is just a blank-and-redirect-to-MOS. See also the closely related discussion at WT:MOS#Text formatting merge proposal. The merge-from page is inconsistent on many points with both target pages, and its talk page is evidence of a great deal of confusion being sown among editors as a result of this break-away "guideline"'s existence. — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 05:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

PS: I have edited a few bits of it to comply better with MOS/MOSNUM, but much of it is still messed up. There are probably a few points in it not presently in either of the controlling guidelines (which is why I suggested merges instead of just wiping it). One of the most important of these (one that I just added) is that variables should be marked up with <var>variable</var> (variable), not ''variable'' (variable). They both will typically visually render the same (depending upon user-side CSS), but the former actually has a semantic meaning, while the latter is just presentational hooey (notably, by the time it hits the user's browser, MediaWiki has converted the latter into <span style="font-style: italic;">variable</span>, not <i>variable</i>, because it has zero meaning at all from a content/semantics point of view). As with much else in MOS*, the average editor will ignore it and do what is convenient, but math editors (definitely not me) and cleanup gnomes (definitely me) should get this right. — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 06:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Any objections? — SMcCandlish ‹(-¿-)› 21:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't look like it. I support the merge, and so do all others who have commented on the MOS talk page. Teemu Leisti (talk) 06:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Moving the provision here seems reasonable. I have seen a good many math articles, and I strongly expect that any requirement of <var></var> will be ignored; math editors will contine to use '' in-line and <math></math> for full-line formulas as they always have. The chief purpose of wiki markup is presentational hooey; and any effort which depends on regularity in the production of such hooey is likely to fail. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I object to this undiscussed change of a policy that belongs in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (mathematics) and not in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and I will revert it if I don't get a reply very very fast to my objection expressed on the manual's talk page. "SMcCandlish", you really need to take this discussion to Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style (mathematics) and also to Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Mathematics. It's already being discussed on the latter page. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

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)

• 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)

But why bother with all of this palahva? What is wrong with WYKIWIG (what you key-in is what you get)? Tony (talk) 13:28, 15 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 parameters link=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)

---

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)

Archived /Date format as /Archive 110

I've done some archive-related changes in the last hour or so.

The newly created subpage "/Date format" had some discussions that were unrelated to the subject. Some of them seemed finished, with no updates in the last couple of days, so I moved them to /Archive 109. Some others had updates in the last couple of days, so I moved them back to this main talk page.

Even after these moves, "/Date format" remained huge. I thought it would be best to archive it as /Archive 110, even though the latest updates to some of the discussions were within the last couple of days. If anyone finds it necessary to continue on any of the individual discussions of that page, perhaps they could copy the text they wish to discuss back to this talk page. In any case, the poll among four choices had been closed, and the runoff poll hadn't been updated for over a day.

D7 in the archives box on the right also points to /Archive 110.

In any case, it's perhaps better to just discuss things just on this main talk page, to avoid any "hiding" of discussions, as a couple of people have pointed out above. Teemu Leisti (talk) 17:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Way to go. Multiple active discussions were just magically archived. Yet another reason most editors can't be bothered with this page. Gimmetrow 17:44, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Not magically, but manually, and clearly noted here. And as I noted above, before I archived the page, I made sure to move discussions unrelated to the formatting of unlinked dates either to the previous archive (109), if they were inactive, or back to this talk page, if they had had updates in the last couple of days. The discussions now on /Archive 110 (507 kB of it) are all concerned with the formatting of unlinked dates. The contents can be easily referred to by linking, or by copy-pasting text from there to here.

Another reason for archiving: I have noticed that people do not generally want to discuss a subject on a subpage, whether it's a subpage of this talk page, or the talk page of a subpage of the project page. So, it's better to move the old discussions to an archive rather than cause confusion about which page the discussion should be conducted on.

The discussion on the formatting of unlinked dates is still going on here on the main talk page (and might well go on for a few more years, it feels like). However, if anyone feels that I've unfairly archived a particular topic that should be here, please feel free to delete it from the archive and restore it here, or to ask me to do it.

By the way, I notice that (a) no one else is complaining about my archiving, and (b) quite a few editors are bothering with this page. Teemu Leisti (talk) 04:47, 14 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 Misplaced Pages’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 Misplaced Pages’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 Misplaced Pages 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).

Vote statements

1. 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, US customary units … the primary units in US-related topics.

2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Simpler option, easier follow, avoids the problem of finding out what's the convention for that specific country etc...
5. 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.
6. 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, Misplaced Pages uses international date format (1 February 2003); however, US format (February 1, 2003) is used in US-related topics
7. Let Canadian articles use whichever, as long as consistent with first contributor. 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. (I actually prefer YYYY-MMM-DD and want to use preferences to display in that format. Preferences can be made to work.)
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages's audience.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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 :)
15. This version is less complex and the replacement has nothing to recommend it.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.

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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages doesn't know, in most cases, which format is most common. -- Jao (talk) 19:21, 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)

• 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.Misplaced Pages 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)

• OK, I revised what is meant. Greg L (talk) 18:25, 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 Misplaced Pages’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.Misplaced Pages 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 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 Misplaced Pages’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. Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style. Policy and proposals are also sometimes discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy) and Misplaced Pages: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)

• 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 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 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, Misplaced Pages 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. Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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" ). 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)

• 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)

• Greg, I hope you don't mind if I quote you: "The proper response to bad speech is better speech, not censorship". GregorB (talk) 20:35, 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 cornix_talk 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 cornix_talk 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 cornix_talk 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, Misplaced Pages 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 cornix_talk 22:01, 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 cornix_talk 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)

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 Misplaced Pages. 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, Misplaced Pages 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.
• 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.

(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:

1. Why are we voting on something that has already been rejected twice over?
2. Why are we apparently legitimising PMAnderson's edit-warring?
3. 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. Misplaced Pages:Polling is not a substitute for discussion (and its predecessor Misplaced Pages:Voting is evil) have been longstanding principles on Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages: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)

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)

• 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 Misplaced Pages is not written by idiots. --erachima talk 05:29, 15 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)

• Your suggestion seems fine to me. Greg L (talk) 19:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, done. Teemu Leisti (talk) 21:09, 14 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 Misplaced Pages editors retroactively recognizes the all-numeric date format used by the date autoformatting software (as of 13 September 2008), and names it the English Misplaced Pages 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 cornix_talk 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 for {{dts}} are deficient in that they don't explain what range of years is valid. The range is specified, I just didn't see it the first time I looked. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

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)

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 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)

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 Misplaced Pages. 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)

What's used in the computer industry? If K is in widespread and accepted use, then no reason for us to disallow it.--Kotniski (talk) 14:30, 16 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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)

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)

• 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)
  • What is the harm being prevented here? How does linking of dates that are significant to the article make Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages improves. Obviously, you don't read that way, but Misplaced Pages 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)