Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:49, 28 February 2009

This page in a nutshell: To provide background knowledge to the community, who will be participating in the RfC – many editors will have no knowledge of the date-linking/autoformatting dispute and will not fully understand the concept of date linking/delinking or autoformatting. To provide pros and cons to inform people for individual proposals.

What is date linking/delinking?

I know what it is and you know what it is, but the wider community might not be familiar with the concept. A description of the process and description of the overall dispute should come before any voting/comments section in the RfC.

What is date linking?

Date linking is the practice of linking dates (including month-day fragments, years and other chronological items) that appear in Misplaced Pages articles to articles about those dates (such as 18 December 1477). The purposes usually cited for date linking include: a) to provide historical context for articles, b) to provide another method of browsing Misplaced Pages articles and c) to utilize the date autoformatting system available on Misplaced Pages since 2003. Up until recently it was mandated that all chronological items (dates and years) be linked to take advantage of the autoformatting system.

What is date delinking?

Date delinking is the manual, semi-automated, or fully automated process of removing links to Misplaced Pages articles about chronological items from other articles. These links may be to day/month combinations (e.g., March 26), to years (e.g., 1345), and to "year-in-subject" articles (e.g., 1936 in sports). Delinking may be done for the purpose of addressing overlinking, or for the purpose of removing links that were put in place only because of the system of date autoformatting.

The history of the dispute

In August 2008, a small straw poll was held at WT:MOSNUM. That poll supported the deprecation of date linking for autoformatting purposes. Some editors, including the proponents of delinking, moved forward with the manual, automated and semi-automated removal of date links. Discussion continued at WT:MOSNUM on whether a large enough number of editors had previously participated to accurately represent community consensus. Towards the end of November, two parallel RFCs on the subjects of date-linking/unlinking and autoformatting were launched; they were widely advertised and received input from hundreds of editors:

• links to the RfCs and/or summaries of them

While the RFCs offered some guidance, some editors contend that further input is necessary to clarify under which conditions date linking should be used, and whether a form of date autoformatting is desired.

Month-day markup

Pros

• Provides easy access to date articles.
• Clearly indicates which strings are actual dates (as opposed to, e.g., quotations of dates.)
• Simplifies automated processing of article text (i.e. gathering metadata).
• Populates "what links here" pages with possibly relevant data.

Cons

• A vestige of the old autoformatting system.
• Leads to overlinking, thus diluting high-value links.
• Little proven relevance to the topic of an article, with the possible exception of contexts in which anniversaries are at issue.
• Complicates the syntax for editing pages.
• Possible "metadata" from linking chronological items is unspecified and of unclear value.
• Search box can be used as an alternative to the "What links here" function to generate information for chronological articles; "What links here" often generates many false positives and/or sources of questionable utility.

Year markup

Year markup can be done with a year link (1987) or a pipe (here 1987 links to a topic-specific article).

Pros

• Provides easy access to year articles.
• Clearly indicates which strings are actual dates (as opposed to, e.g., quotations of dates.)
• Simplifies automated processing of article text (i.e., gathering metadata).
• Populates "what links here" pages with possibly relevant data.

Cons

• Leads to overlinking, thus diluting high-value links.
• Year links are often of questionable relevance to the topic of articles other than those on chronological items.
• Complicates the syntax for editing pages.

Full date markup

Some proponents of date linking have suggested links to the full date (i.e. including the day, month, and year in a single link) be used rather than two different links with one to the day-month combination and another to the year.

Pros

• Makes date links more relevant.

Cons

• Requires a larger number of date articles.
• Differs from existing convention
  • Millions of linked dates would need to change.
  • Editors would need to be made aware of the change in convention.
• Complicated editing syntax

Possible exceptions where parties may like to have linked dates (e.g. Birth dates?)

• If a general reader is likely to be suprised that a date even exist(ed), it may be linked (e.g. February 30, January 0).
• Articles/templates about chronological items should be able to link to other dates (e.g. templates may have navigation for 1309 and 1310, or for April 1 and April 2.)
• See also sections (e.g. Other significant events in 1944)

Autoformatting

What is date autoformatting?

Date autoformatting is a system which reformats marked-up dates into a specified format.

The current system of date autoformatting allows registered users who have logged in to set a date format preference (for example, dd Mon YYYY or Mon dd, YYYY). Unregistered users and registered users who have not specified a preference see dates in the format that was entered in the article. Dates that are entered in plain text (without markup) are not changed by the date autoformatting system.

Cons of the current system

• Use of the YYYY-MM-DD format can cause confusion when this format is understood to be ISO 8601-compliant. ISO 8601 compliance implies use of the proleptic Gregorian calendar which might not be the case in all uses.
• According to various style guides, full dates written in MDY format included in running text should always be followed by a comma, so as to make the year parenthetical. Dates written in DMY format require no such comma, and so automatic conversion between these formats can result in grammatical errors.
• Date ranges currently require a cumbersome (and repetitive) syntax. (See: Misplaced Pages:Date formattings#Date ranges.) For example, date ranges must currently be written as ] – ], ] rather than the otherwise preferred ], ].
• Because anonymous readers (or registered users who have selected "No preference" in their date settings) see dates in the format in which they appear in the raw article text, they may be presented with an inconsistent format within a given article. Registered users who have set a date format preference do not see these inconsistencies, and are not likely to fix them.
• There is currently no way to have a date autoformatted without also having it linked.

Cons of autoformatting in general

• Any form of autoformatting (other than those already ruled out by Brion VIBBER) would require that dates be identified by marking them up with some kind of special syntax.
  • This complicates editing syntax and presents an obstacle to new editors.
  • The current system uses a category-style (or "link" style) syntax, which confuses some editors.
  • Autoformatting only works on dates that use the special syntax. Many articles do not currently have dates wikilinked (either because editors were unaware of the need for the special syntax, they did not understand the special syntax, or because the dates were delinked to reflect the guidance at MOSNUM), thus autoformatting will not work on all articles.
• Some of the problems with the current system will affect most autoformatting systems:
  • The problem of proleptic Gregorian calendar dates will affect any system that outputs ISO numerical dates.
  • The terminal comma problem may affect any system that converts MDY into DMY; it must decide whether a terminal comma is parenthetical or required by the syntax of the whole sentence.
    • This can be avoided by special markup, something like "On ], ],, the World Trade Center...", which uses a double comma for a parenthetical and syntactical comma, but unintuitive markup is itself a cost.

Proposed default date formatting system

Several editors have been working with one of Misplaced Pages's developers to develop a revised date autoformatting system. This developer has established a test wiki at dates.xoom.org to demonstrate a proposed software patch that would replace the existing date autoformatting function. (Note that this site is not affiliated with Misplaced Pages or the Wikimedia foundation; please exercise caution when submitting personal information to a third-party website, or creating an account on any such system.)

The new system is intended work similarly to the current date autoformatting system. However, unregistered readers would see a default date format, tentatively similar to 19 February 2009, rather than a potential mismatch of formats.

Pros of the proposed default date formatting system

• It presents a consistent date format to anonymous readers, while allowing registered users to customize date display and turn date links on/off via Special:Preferences.
• It uses the existing date autoformatting syntax, but automatically unlinks all dates currently linked while adding support for dashed dates and date ranges.
• It retains the ability to create intentional date links where consensus dictates.

Cons of the proposed default date formatting system

• The proposed system uses the standard wikilinking syntax to mark up dates, but by default does not actually create a link; an additional step is required to force wikilinks to dates that consensus considers useful.
• Since formatted dates would no longer display as blue text, it will require an extra step for editors to determine if all of an article's are properly autoformatted.
• There are no specifications, a critical problem in the development of any software—particularly complicated software.