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Revision as of 00:10, 1 April 2009

Autoformatting responses

Please remember before adding your opinion that this section deals with the autoformatting of dates, not date linking.

Please indicate your support vote under ONE option, accompanied by a concise explanation for your choice. Your explanation is important in determining the community consensus.

I support the general concept of autoformatting

1. Support. While I don't care much about having a user preference to make all dates into one format, something like {{#formatdate}} combined with a {{DEFAULTDATEFORMAT}} magic word to set the default for the whole page is necessary to avoid either forcing all date-handling templates to have a "dateformat" parameter on every use or forcing all date-handling templates to allow any arbitrary garbage in their "date" parameters and forgo any possibility of date manipulation. I also see no point in not allowing those who want the feature to have it, and frankly the "arguments against" above reek of FUD and logical fallacy with no real substance. Anomie⚔ 23:14, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

   Concur with Anomie, autoformatting is preferential in most cases where possible, even in a few areas outside of dates. — neuro 23:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

   Sleeping on this, I think I made this comment too quickly. — neuro 00:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

2. Support. I find it much nicer and easier as a reader to have dates autoformatted into a single style. I find shifting formats much more distracting than spelling variants like -or v. -our or -ize v. ise. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Support. I support partially per Anomie, but also because marking up dates with metadata lets us do interesting things that we can not do otherwise. Too many of the arguments against autoformating are actually against datelinking. dm (talk) 00:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Support. I set my date preference to display dates in U.S. format, so I expect dates to display as such. Also, autoformatting helps prevent edit warring.-Jeff 00:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Support per above. I prefer US format at all times. Unlike other cultural differences (such as UK vs US spelling), this is something which can easily be implemented, as that's how it's been done. Last month, I was partially involved in a rather silly feud in whether to use one format or the other. I think it left some people unwilling to contribute anymore. That is totally unnecessary IMO. --♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 00:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Support. Agree with Anomie, I think much of the issue would be fixed simply by setting a different default (currently the default is to not format it all, resulting in inconsistency) that would be seen by anons and new users. I believe it would be a simple configuration change. Mr.Z-man 00:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Support Autoformatting could be useful when moving templated citations from one article to another: one could copy or share the citation without having to change its date formats. It seems less useful in main text, but for citations it seems worth having. Eubulides (talk) 01:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Support autoformatting without autolinking. (This nullifies most of the "Oppose" !votes.) Makes it easier to maintain a consistent date format within an article and may make it easier to collect metadata. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Support - it doesn't matter to me overmuch, but painful experience says that we will be flooded with complaints if we don't do this. However, any autoformatting solution should not result in automatic linking, should allow linking intentionally, should allow casual readers to set a viewing preference (this doesn't mean Special:Preferences especially, just a way to set a cookie), and should allow per-page setting of "correct" (per topic/location) defaults for date display. If we don't do all of these, we'll just come back to the whole ugly fight again. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)#Support, per Anomie and Gavia immer.-gadfium 03:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Support, not necessarily with auto-linking, although proper handling of metadata is possible without this, it facilitates the process. The move to formatted articles with reusable data is a necessary development generally. Given the number of wikignomes and the ingenuity of bot programmers, there should be no great difficulty in implementing it. DGG (talk) 03:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Support, especially given that the developers have already added the capability for link-free autoformatting to the system. Many of the other concerns expressed against DA can easily be addressed; for example, the "#formatedate" expression can easily be invoked through the use of a template with a much shorter name, such as "{{D}}". It is also a means to present a more professional look, as opposed to the mix of formats we now offer. (The multiple-date-format guideline is at odds with most other professional publications, which choose one or the other; when viewed as a collection, our articles appear inconsistent. When was the last time you saw Britannica or the Times use a mix of DMY and MDY?) --Ckatz_spy 04:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Support, per Eluchil404. I would also support a spelling regionalisation autoformatting. AKAF (talk) 06:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
13. Support. Before autoformatting was introduced, there were lengthy rows about how to format dates. This seems recently to have come back, just as some started delinking dates. -- User:Docu
14. Support. Autoformatting makes sense for the reader. I'd probably have voted against if the link-free option were not available, though. YLee (talk) 09:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
15. Support. Please leave as is (or was). This, that and the other 09:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
16. Support. With the understanding that the autoformat feature prevented debates and potential conflicts over date format. --Born2flie (talk) 09:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
17. Support The possibilities of metadata of dates. Joy. There will still be no compulsion to special format dates, plus what bots undid, surely they can redo. Spurious arguments don't wash. -- billinghurst (talk) 10:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
18. Support for all the reasons given in the advantages, this is far too simple to be considered "complicated" as those opposing would wish us to think. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
19. Support. Using this feature is hardly a burden on editors (I use it all the time for dates I add), and is a handy way to resolve perpetual US vs UK date format edit warring. Strongly opposed to the unilateral delinking campaigns by bots and other editors. --DAJF (talk) 11:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
20. Support. The environment may be mixed but Misplaced Pages is a single unified project. I can live with reading mis-matched date formatting, even if on the same article, but it would be better if all of Misplaced Pages adheared to a standard.  æron phone home  12:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
21. Support. Formatting for dates is minor, but it is very important to have a standard format across the whole project.--Unionhawk (talk) 12:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
22. Support. Per DAF. I was one of the user who objected to the "unilateral delinking campaigns by bots and other editors", and was treated quite rudely by the other side, with odd accusations of "elitism" being hurled, among other things. There seems to be some deep-rooted reasons against autoformatting that have nothing to do with autoformatting itself. I'm glad to finally see a project wide poll on this, though I am at a complete loss as to why this was not done first! I also support measures to ensure that dates are displayed consistently to unregistered users. - BillCJ (talk) 13:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
23. Support. Being able to express dates in a consistent way across the encyclopedia is important. To be able to do that without choosing one cultural convention to use everywhere is a really nice feature, and I think in the best spirit of Misplaced Pages. I could be convinced that there are technical reasons not to do it, but I haven't yet seen what they are. Tim Pierce (talk) 13:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
24. Support. The general formatting of all dates gives a consistent output for all articles. The improvements proposed in the software to allow/not allow the date to be linked when autoformatted makes it an even more attractive solution so that people do not have to worry about what is actually in the article text they see it the way they want. Keith D (talk) 13:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
25. Support - the benefit gained from consistency across articles outweigh the potential problems in my opinion. Camw (talk) 13:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
26. Support - At the end of the day it is so much easier to read the dates when they are presented consistently across all articles. It will stop people editing articles to change the date to their personal preference, which I often see. Most importantly, wikipedia is about providing articles for the reader, not about providing a hobby for editors, as such arguments about extra key strokes and technical reasons are a bit mute. Martin451 (talk) 14:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
27. Support, if only to easily enforce consistent date formatting on an page (I don't have date preferences set myself). If the formatting function has shorter syntax like {{#date:...}} it will be easy to use, easy to understand, will make transcluding templates with dates in them easier, and only one person has to worry once about the proper date format on a given article instead of every editor who adds a date. --Amalthea 14:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
28. Support. I'm a user of this – ISO dates for me, please – and I'll miss it if it goes. The statement against does nothing to make me think otherwise. — the Sidhekin (talk) 14:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
29. Support, date autoformatting can provide a consistent look across articles for users with either preferences or a default. This feature has been around and used, albeit unfortunately tied to date linking previously. Technology concerns can be overcome once agreed upon as a feature and the community decides on exact behaviour and markup. Additionally, feature facilitates easier use of citation templates. —Ost (talk) 14:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
30. I want date and time to be displayed as I like. --Morten (talk) 14:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
31. Support — Bellhalla (talk) 15:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
32. Support - I support for various reasons. 1) For users that don't all look at dates the same way 2) Because it saves extraneous codes (not a lot, but it can add up, trust me). Plus, when the autoformatting was removed, we were left with dates in articles that looked like this (2007-02-03 or 2007-30-11). I think it was ill planned when it was first removed to begin with.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
33. Support - Autoformatting without wikilinking seems to be a good solution to me. --TreyGeek (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
34. Support the general concept but not the way it was implemented. I think autoformatting without wikilinking, and somehow bringing in either user date preferences or region preferences rather than just relying on 0.5% of readers changing their settings and the rest of us assuming they have. Orderinchaos 15:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
35. Support autoformatting without autolinking, mainly for its use in metadata. However, I will consider removing my date preference so I can see pages as IPs see them, even if the default format is not my favourite. Certes (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
36. Support autoformatting because there needs to be consistency because it is sometimes confusing if you mix them up, say 03/03/2009 means the third day of the third month of year 2009, and occasionally I do get confused. DeMoN2009 16:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
37. Support - While I recognize that virtually all English speakers recognize a date in any common format, date formatting is an issue that rarely occurs to editors, and it does look sloppy to have various different formats in one article. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
38. Support. I can't help feeling this wouldn't even be an issue had the #formatdate implementation come first, rather than overloading this function onto linking. Frankly, I didn't know #formatdate existed until I saw this poll, but I always thought something like this was the best approach. I have generally delinked dates in the past in the course of doing other edits to articles; now I can reformat instead. This is progress. Rklear (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
39. Support. Readers may well be familiar with both "3 February 2009" and "February 3 2009" (and I have no strong preference for either format), but auto-formatting can help avoid the abominations that are "3/2/09" and "2/3/09", both by formatting as either "DD MMM YYYY" or "MMM DD YYYY" (i.e. not "DD/MM/YY" or "MM/DD/YY") and by encouraging editors to specify dates using the template. Consistency throughout an article is a big plus, and the option for readers to see date formats based on their browser or OS locale is a bonus. In the future auto-formatting could even be used to wikilink months and years, making dealing with the outcome of the two discussions below relatively trivial. Cheers, This flag once was red_deeds 17:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
40. Support. I agree with flag's point above. It's much faster for me to see the dates in a way that I see everyday and can recognize. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 17:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
41. Support as I found it very useful and interesting to be able to click a date and see what other events happened then. Yes, there were (and still are) a lot of articles linked to specific dates (as happens in a world with a long history), but I think that argument is irrelevant. All this worry about articles having too many links to them is pointless worry as we will have more and more articles linked to each other as the encyclopedia grows. Are we going to start limiting the number of links which can be placed into articles when we reach 5 or 10 million articles just so we don't have "too many links" to any given article? That's just absurd. We're going to have to accept that many articles on main topic are going to have hundreds, thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands of links to them. In the case of dates, it's likely they will be on the high end of things, but that's what happens when an online encyclopedia grows. And the argument that someone is going to have to go put back the links that someone removed is absurd. Just run the same bots again, only in reverse. It certainly won't be any more difficult than it was to remove them all. I also think the date formatting part is very helpful, and it wouldn't be difficult to set the default for anonymous users (and those who haven't changed it) to something like "3 June 1934". ***日本穣 17:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
    1. Making additional comments as SIllyFolkBoy doesn't seem to think my comments above are focused enough. Autoformatting would be extremely useful (as I pointed out above) in order to create a consistent formatting for dates, and it wouldn't be difficult to set the default format to something which is useful to everyone (such as the example I gave above. As I think the easiest way to implement this is the already existing date linking using square brackets, I included the comments regarding the usefulness of doing that, as well as my opinion on the absurdity of the "but it creates too many incoming links to the article" argument. ***日本穣 19:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
42. Support. Providing a consistent date format would be beneficial to the look of articles and wikipedia. Presumably IP tracing could also be used to provide MDY for North American readers and DMY for others even if not registered users. It would also negate the need for date linking as a way to autoformat which dilutes wikilinks and is generally of little use. Please at least implement the code so there is the option of using autoformat which can be determined, as with reference styles, by consensus on individual articles. |→ Spaully† 18:07, 30 March 2009 (GMT)
43. Support I am a US user who reads and edits mostly US articles, but I hate the US standard for date formatting, much preferring the European standard. It's nice that Misplaced Pages can offer everyone the option to format dates as he prefers. I think the system was working fine until someone got a bee in his bonnet about "unnecessary" links. Ntsimp (talk) 18:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
44. Support giving user a choice. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
45. Support it's worth having it there as an option. I would note that removing autoformatting from featured articles wasn't debated - it was simply done. I voiced opposition then, on the basis that it didn't improve things, but got the feeling that it wasn't worth pushing for. Since then, it's been _a single_ user pushing it. That said, a system that is totally automatic would be much better, particularly if it could also handle timezones (which is a much bigger issue than date formatting). Mike Peel (talk) 18:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
46. Support autoformatting. I prefer DMY, don't really mind MDY but I really hate YMD format. It is just so ugly and looks unprofessional to my eye. Mjroots (talk) 19:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
47. Support per User:This flag once was red --Cybercobra (talk) 19:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
48. Support. Simply better. Ideally choosable via (in order of priority) (i) user option (ii) article option (iii) site-wide default & others. Mr Stephen (talk) 19:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
49. Support. I think the autoformatting is good but if there is a problem with the software allowing users to choose which way they want to see the date displayed then the developers should fix it so we can stop voting on it--Kumioko (talk) 20:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
50. Support This removes the potential complication of later trying to unify the styles so that all dates are uniform. Why have them appear differently on different articles, or try to agree on one method (which would never happen), when we can make it a user preference? JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 20:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
51. Support- Why not let users choose how dates are displayed? --Jackieboy87 (talk * contribs) 20:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
52. Support, tho MediaWiki automatically formatting dates with extra markup would be better, with nowiki for exceptions. -- Jeandré, 2009-03-30t21:23z
53. Support the benefits of automated time lines/this day in history pages could be big. Brandonrush Woo pig sooie! 21:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
54. Maybe I'm OCD, but I put a high emphasis on customizability as an integral part of usability. The new software update provides a great middle ground. –Sarregouset (talk) 21:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
55. Support though I don't think it's a big deal. Should be automatable enough not to be a big burden. Offers scope for (e.g.) searching for every article that references a particular date which, despite the handwaving in the Statement Against, doesn't currently appear to be possible. Consistency for readers is good. Gareth McCaughan (talk) 21:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
56. Support. Misplaced Pages should be written for the readers, and providing logged in users with a consistent display of dates enhances their experience without detracting from the information provided to a non-logged in user as they would still see consistent formatting within an article. -- Whpq (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
57. Support. I'd prefer to have autoformatting without autolinking, but I'll take it either way. RossPatterson (talk) 22:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
58. Support. Consistency and reader customisability are important factors here. Julianhall (talk) 22:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
59. Support. Being a web programmer involved in many i18n debates myself, any way to provide users (readers moreso than editors) consistency in displayed data is helpful. --MikeVitale 22:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
60. Strong Support With the new parser function and the possibility for a default, the main reasons for opposition are solved. In addition, there is no reason why we should provide anything less than the most convenient viewing experience possible Alexfusco 23:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
61. Support. I'd rather have the possibility to choose the date format that I'm most familiar with.--Le Petit Modificateur Laborieux (talk) 01:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
62. Support Convenience. Also, it keeps the same style as before...autoformatting is helpful. Daniel Benfield (talk) 01:15, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
63. Support autoformatting, it's important for collections of articles to be consistent in date formatting, and the current method allows awkward mismatches between articles. Autoformatting also allows user preference, making Wiki more universal and less centric on the culture of the article's editor(s). Chuckiesdad/Talk/Contribs 01:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
64. Strong Support Consistency within and across articles and user choice are important to many people. If it is not important to you, then why are you voting at all? hulmem (talk) 03:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
65. I also support autoformatting without autolinking. shoy (reactions) 03:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
66. Support needed for reliable semantic data retrieval Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
67. Support: Despite my fear of the effort involved to implement the system, I like the autoformatting proposal as a way to help readers. To the best of my knowledge, printed encyclopedias don't flip flop between date formats, so why should Misplaced Pages? (Apologies for lumping the different types of encyclopedias into one category) If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 06:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
68. Support: Localisation and personalisation is the future. Misplaced Pages needs to get on board. — D. Wo. 06:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
69. Support More based on the conformity and uniformity argument than anything else. bahamut0013_deeds 07:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
70. Support. Autoformatting is a good thing, especially because most editors refuse to write dates in the format I find easiest to decode. With autoformatting all can be happy at the same time. Seriously, who could object to that? Most of the "oppose" votes here seem to argue against the linking of dates, which is indeed disturbing, but is not what this poll asks about either. –Henning Makholm (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
71.  – iridescent 13:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
72. Support. Autoformatting is neutral in appearance, while being adaptive to users who do want a preference in date style.GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:39, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
73. suppoet Bubba73 (talk), 15:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
74. Support Used to work transparently and effectively to give logged-in users the date preference of their choice. --Old Moonraker (talk) 16:18, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
75. Support I think that date linking/metadata is by far the most interesting aspect. Getting a uniform date format would be a nice bonus, and lets support the Buddhists! The arguments against read like Luddite propaganda, of course the template should be as user friendly as possible. I don't really understand the argument against ISO what is so hard about 20090331? No seriously. Unomi (talk) 16:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
76. Support. Avoid arguments over which format to use for a particular article. Bluewave (talk) 16:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
77. Support. A date is an essential element to record and archive data, information, and knowledge. Format is an important aspect for time and date stamps. The format should be consistent across the community. After all, are we not a community? Unfortunately, many of the arguments against are not persuasive; these appear more like anarchist propaganda versus constructive comments or opinions about the topic under discussion. If we, as a community, are unable to set a basic expectation for dating records, then why do we have all the other rules and guidelines in place? PatientSafetyGuru (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
78. Support. It is essential we get this consistent to avoid something like 1-2-2009/2-1-2009 which is ambiguous. A lack of standardization is just sloppy and makes articles appear to lack any credibility. Given the power of wikibots, auto formatting everything should not be an excessively difficult undertaking.--Analogue Kid (talk) 17:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
79. Support. This is the way to do it, because it is very effective. Showtime2009 (talk) 18:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
80. Support. I understand that it might be a pain to reconfigure pages using templates or parser functions, but I don't think that's a reason for limiting a users choice. Couldn't a bot be written to do this anyway (or maybe written into AWB)? And is typing 10-20 extra characters really that big a deal? Daniel J Simanek (talk) 18:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
81. Support. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to allow date auto-formatting. Also, any opposition with rationale given against date linking should be disregarded; we shouldn't be counting the votes of people who've clearly demonstrated that they don't understand the proposition. The argument that there's no problem to solve is something of a non-sequitur too, if all you're saying is that you personally aren't that bothered switching between different date formats then that's not a reason to block the choice of others. Objection on the basis that it causes you more work is possibly valid if you really feel you can't be doing with the extra keystrokes. Personally, I'd prefer a shorter syntax than e.g. {{#formatdate|March 31, 2009}}, something like {{d|2009-03-31}} could work, as others have suggested. --SallyScot (talk) 19:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
82. Support. For the price of four brackets (]) around dates and no more than ten hours of programming time from an experienced PHP developer (I know this because I already wrote the code once) we can have consistent date formats across the project, the ability to have per-article defaults that override the site-wide default, support for date ranges, and the ability for registered users to specify their date format and date linking preferences independently of each other. This would completely eliminate the need to ever argue about date formats or date linking again, and allow almost everybody to have what they want. --UC_Bill (talk) 20:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
83. Strong support. Date formatting should be seen as an obvious first step towards the more general goal of showing Misplaced Pages readers article content presented in the way the individual reader finds most useful. We ought to do this for something as small as date formats now. We could do this for something as large as English language spelling variations. We should hope to one day be able to do it for much more than that. (sdsds - talk) 20:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
84. Support Standards are a wonderful thing - problem is there are so many to choose from - Now we have the solution to one instance of that problem - date auto formating ;) ClemMcGann (talk) 21:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
85. Support Its really confusing if you're editing an article in one format and your display is in the other format Nessie (talk) 21:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
86. Support But please, let's all support whatever we decide, and leave it that way. This is a monumentally boring topic. We should all get back to writing and researching. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 22:51, 31 March 2009 (UTC).
87. Support Letting users see dates as they prefer adds to the user-friendliness of Misplaced Pages. I also note that many of the opposing votes are complaining about links and the "sea of blue", which are irrelevant to the proposed solution, and should therefore be discounted. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 22:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
88. Support User (i.e. reader) preferences should take priority over editorial decisions. I'd rather that date formats (and linking) be specified in preferences, than dictated by a small group at MOSNUM. --Sapphic (talk) 00:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose the general concept of autoformatting

1. Oppose If Brion thinks that Autoformatting should be removed, that's good enough for me. I think the benefits of autoformatting do not outweigh the trouble implementing it will cause, such as tagging millions of dates with a marker to allow autoformatting. Steve Crossin /₂₄ 23:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Oppose Per all of the arguments against. We don't need more options. Neither of the accepted date styles are difficult to understand. I think we should continue to move away from the ISO style and we shouldn't be relying on autoformatting for consistency. Rambo's Revenge (How am I doing?) 23:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Oppose: This is complicated software, don't let anyone persuade you it's a piece of cake. If they haven't been able to get it right in SIX YEARS, nothing makes me think they will get it right any time soon. Of course Brion Vibber knows what he's talking about. While people say 'no pain, no gain', this is just sooo much pain for little gain. Applying lipstick to a pig doesn't change the fact it's a pig. Ohconfucius (talk) 23:21, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Weakly oppose. If this issue were to arise now, we would solve it by permitting both formats, along the lines of WP:ENGVAR. Autoformatting was a failed effort at a technical fix to a behavioral problem, and it faces irresoluble grammatical difficulties about whether a comma comes after the date. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:23, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Oppose per PMAnderson. --John (talk) 23:34, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Oppose. The bugzilla analysis is generally against it. Most users can understand both major formats (DMY and MDY). I see no point if it's not going to be retro-fitted, but that's likely to be a nightmare - and automating it would be very risky, as the bugzilla analysis identifies types of cases where automated retro-fitting would be wrong. Finally if making it work requires a template or any other extra mark-up typing, I'm totally against it - WP is so prone to WP:CREEP that it would probably become a MOS requirement in a few years, and I know no mechanism by which we could legislate now that MOS should never require it. -Philcha (talk) 23:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Oppose There is no "problem" to solve. As it has been noted, WP:ENGVAR works well for English variants, so why not dates? Dabomb87 (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Oppose. -- Donald Albury 23:53, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Oppose: What problem are we trying to solve by this? seicer | talk | contribs 23:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
10. As a featured contributor, I have found no reason for it. --Der Wohltempierte Fuchs 23:57, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Oppose. The "pro" arguments are not convincing at all, but the "contra" arguments describe very real problems. All the disadvantages just to give a few people the option to display an article with US spelling in UK date format or vice versa? This is obvious feature bloat. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Oppose - Most Misplaced Pages users are readers, not editors, therefore most features should be designed for them. Datelinking devalues useful links. It also necessitates useless extra work for editors. Awadewit (talk) 00:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
13. Oppose autoformatting. I hate that meaningless blue mess of overlinked dates. And isn't it rather odd that people from the US and UK are supposed to be befuddled by each other's practically identical date formats, when the rest of the world with their much more wildly variable date formatting is quite capable of understanding both of them? Bishonen | talk 00:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC).
14. Oppose, I don't really see this as needed, I'm not convinced there's a problem that needs this as a solution. Raven1977_{My edits} 00:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
15. Oppose I would have thought this had been settled the first, second, and third time around. Now we’re at it a fourth time. No, autformatting is not desirable. Nor is it necessary. Just chose the format most appropriate for the article (based on MOSNUM guidelines), write it out in fixed text, and be done with it. Jumping through all these hoops just so a handful of editors can be spared the shock of seeing a date format they disapprove of is something they will survive; I guarantee it. Greg L (talk) 00:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
16. Oppose. If Misplaced Pages readers are smart enough to handle "colour" vs "color" and "aluminium" vs "aluminum", they can handle "30 March" vs "March 30". On that premise, I would apply the KISS principle and avoid the added complexity. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
17. Oppose: there is no need for autoformatting. As already mentioned, it enhances the differences between the registered and unregistered uses, masking any potential inconsistencies. Every article should be consistent, using WP:MOSNUM and WP:ENGVAR.—MDCollins (talk) 00:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
18. Per Tcncv. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 00:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
19. Oppose. Editors seeing a different output than the readers is a recipe for disaster. I appreciate autoformating, it is nice to have (international format FTW), but when I first became aware of its shortcomings, I stopped using it. Ever since, I've seen a great deal of articles being inconsistent because of this. Articles that have been fixed because I turned the feature off. The only way I would support autoformatting is if ALL articles would have the SAME ouput for unregistered users, preferably international dates (DD MM YYYY) as we are addressing an international readership. AKA, no tagging individual pages with magic words specifying in what format dates should be displayed, that's just asking for having endless revert wars until the end of time. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
20. Oppose: the pros pointed out benefit only those who are logged in. For those who are not logged or are not registered users, they might see dates of varying formats. Autoformat does not promote consistency; the actual text is still inconsistent (and as pointed, obvious to those not logged in). Without autoformat, editors would readily spot any consistency errors in the date formats for an article. Jappalang (talk) 01:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
21. Oppose - The readers should see the same thing a logged in editor sees, and we shouldn't have to jump through a million hoops to make that happen. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
22. Oppose The autoformat system links a date to an article about that date not necessarily about the specifics that were identified in the original article. I see them also as a blur of blue on an article, which serves only to completely confuse a newcomer trying out each of the wikilinks. As to seeing the format in the date of preference, merely write the article for the audience especially if the article is substantially about a European subject where the day-month-year standard predominates or in military articles. Again, this is a solution looking for a problem to solve. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 01:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC).
23. Oppose: Marking up millions of articles for the benefit of few editors is definitely not worth the effort .SteveB67 (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
24. –Juliancolton |  02:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
25. Oppose: there are so many reasons—the costs are horrendous and the benefit little (frankly, nothing, since day-month/month-day order is trivial); the risks are high that things will go mucky or that we'll be left holding a very smelly puppy; it breaks a basic principle that simplicity is best (if at all possible, and it is the reality now). I hope WPians do the cautious thing and throw this one out for good. Tony (talk) 03:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
26. Oppose: too much monkey business. dates should be entered in a consistent format throughout articles, and logged-in editors should see the same thing unlogged-in readers see. Sssoul (talk) 04:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
27. Oppose. This seems like a lower priority than spelling autoformatting ({{#formatword|color|colour}}), and would make the edit boxes just as hard to read.--Srleffler (talk) 04:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
28. Oppose—Chris! _ct 05:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
29. Oppose, Pmanderson puts it rather well. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
30. Oppose As the previous arguments pointed out this issue is MoS & behavior related not technical. --KrebMarkt 06:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
31. Oppose The argument against summarizes the point perfectly. This will create a ton of work for a ton of editors for very little gain. Oren0 (talk) 07:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
32. Oppose Extra typing and proofreading for no real benefit. bridies (talk) 07:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
33. Oppose Agree with the arguments against. Dougweller (talk) 08:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
34. Oppose. Autoformatting forces mass medication down the throats of healthy people, just because a few people don't like to sneeze. Lightmouse (talk) 08:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
35. Trivial and unnecessary expansion of bandwidth. DrKiernan (talk) 08:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
36. Oppose Completely unnecessary. The next thing could be "auto-shift-between-US-and-English-English".--HJensen, talk 09:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
37. Oppose Marking up every date in every article (millions of them) - just so that people can choose between day-month and month-day? Madness! Colonies Chris (talk) 09:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
38. Oppose Honestly think this is alot of work for very little gain. dottydotdot (talk) 10:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
39. Oppose. Tcncv (talk · contribs) puts it nicely. — TKD::{talk} 11:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
40. Oppose. For all the same reasons as every other time we've been asked the same question. Utterly pointless function that provides extra work and complication for editors and developers, while providing nothing of value for anyone (especially our readers who won't see it anyway). Will also damage Misplaced Pages, since if editors use this tool then they won't see dates as readers see them, and so will leave certain errors (punctuation, format consistency) uncorrected.--Kotniski (talk) 11:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
41. Oppose. I do understand the difference between autoformatting and linking. I can see many problems resulting from autoformatting. Anyone who has cursed at MS Word (as I do when using someone else's machine) should oppose an extension of nannydom. (I use OpenOffice.) Peridon (talk) 12:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
42. Oppose. They look silly, often link to completely unrelated pages and devalue important links in "difficult" articles. I have contributed three FAs and I see absolutely no value in having linked dates. When I first discovered Misplaced Pages, I clicked on those silly linked dates thinking that additional information on the subject in question could be found. I am sure others have done this. Graham Colm 13:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
43. Oppose it's a "solution" to a "problem" that is not serious, and implementing it would be just add another never-ending task for Misplaced Pages. (New users won't necessarily know how to autoformat dates, so we would be constantly having to clean up after them.) rʨanaɢ /_contribs 13:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
44. Oppose given the extra work for minimal benefit. --NE2 13:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
45. Oppose without repeating the reasoning for the gazillionth time in yet another poll (and noting that most of the Support reasoning is faulty). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
46. Oppose. How many more polls on this issue are we going to take? — Emil J. 13:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
47. Oppose. What matters the most is internal consistency in articles (as in the language question), and autoformatting is not needed for this purpose. Punkmorten (talk) 13:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
48. Oppose. While not having a strong or informed opinion either way, the idea does not stike me as a good one. Adds complexity where none is needed and seems to invent a problem and fix it. JBarta (talk) 13:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
49. Oppose With autoformatting forbidden, editors will see what readers see, and thus do a better job creating content for readers. The typical reader is not logged in and has no preferences. In addition, both options for implementing autoformatting are problematic. Linking creates link cruft that hides value added links for readers. Using templates will make it harder for us to get new editors, as it becomes one more piece of syntax for them to learn in order to make a change that should be simple. GRBerry 14:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
50. Oppose I am against anything which further increases the differences between registered and unregistered users - Dumelow (talk) 14:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
51. Oppose There is no need for it. I understand both date formats, and (almost?)everyone else that can read English does too. And it's not exactly hard to figure out if you aren't familiar with one of the date formats. Rreagan007 (talk) 14:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
52. Oppose I have opposed before and i will do it again.--SkyWalker (talk) 14:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
53. weak oppose I do not see how the benefits muster up against the expended resources. Had some type of standard been in place before the content of Misplaced Pages had burgeoned so, perhaps, but trying to retrofit seems silly.-- The Red Pen of Doom 14:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
54. Oppose The crux of the question is, for whom is Misplaced Pages intended – the relatively small number of registered editors or the millions of unregistered readers who use it as an online encyclopedia? All of the arguments in favor of auto-formatting dates are irrelevent to the vast majority who read a Misplaced Pages article without registration. Unlike options such as bold and italic text or section headers, which appear to registered and unregistered alike, special markup does not "enhance the presentation of articles" for unregistered readers, nor does it help achieve "a consistent format across the entire publication" at all. In fact, auto-formatting only benefits registered editors and its removal actually enhances the presentation of articles to the unregistered viewer by eliminating the distraction of annoying and confusing blue date highlighting.  JGHowes  15:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
55. Oppose In some fields, e.g. history, the format of a date can be an important element of its information content. To be sure, an opportunity for autoformatting is not the same thing as the automatic use of autoformatting. But an opportunity for the content to be changed by something other than the thoughtful decision of an editor seems intrinsically dangerous to the accuracy and authenticity of encyclopedic information. Maybe it would be different if the autoformatting would work only conditionally, e.g. if a special flag is both entered into some article's wikitext, and actually turned 'on' -- to reflect a conscious decision by an editor that date-formats are not of intrinsic importance in this article. Terry0051 (talk) 15:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
56. Oppose The effort isn't worth it, since, as noted, we really have no problem recognizing and understanding these dates regardless of the format. We need this no more than we need special markup so that words end consistently with -or or -our, or so that they end consistently with -ize or -ise (but in words where the usage varies!), or so that serial commas do or don't appear, or so that primary quotations are delimited by single or double quotations marks, according to our preferences. —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
57. Oppose. Who is Misplaced Pages for, the readers or the editors? The vast majority of our users never edit and are not registered. And from the perspective of an unregistered user, autoformatting makes our articles worse, not better, because it encourages editors to format their dates without regard for the way dates are generally formatted in the article concerned. A simple extension of WP:ENGVAR solves the problem. Pfainuk talk 15:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
58. Oppose any type of autoformatting that requires that dates (or pages) have special syntax. This is a barrier to entry for new/inexperienced editors which does not appear to by justified by the negligible benefit it provides to registered users. I would be surprised if there were many editors who did not understand that 2 March and March 2 are the same date. I also oppose automatic autoformatting of all dates on a page because that would negatively impact quotations, which should have the date in the format that it was used in the source. Karanacs (talk) 15:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
59. Oppose Not worth the effort. Alan16 15:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
60. Oppose <sigh> Congratulations to Ryan P and all others who've tried to keep this going in a civil manner, but this topic is tiresome. Autoformatting brings no benefits and has downsides. --Dweller (talk) 15:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
61. Oppose --JBC3 (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
62. Oppose Not worth the effort and would reduce the readability of the wiki source. Plastikspork (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
63. Oppose, way too much complexity for most users, and zero benefit for the vast majority of our readers. --Laser brain (talk) 16:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
64. Oppose I honestly don't see the point - dates are more than readable as they are. It's just making extra wok for minimal gain. Whilst I can see the interest on forums, I think Misplaced Pages should just leave its style be. Greggers 16:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
65. Oppose PMAnderson summarises my views exactly. --RexxS (talk) 16:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
66. Oppose, this seems to be creating more work and problems with very little benefit. We have some amazing programmers who can help us through any perceived problems. Our readers deserve better articles and we really have spent a lot of energy on these discussions and project-wide on this issue. -- Banjeboi 16:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
67. Oppose: Others said it well, namely Pfainuk, Greg L, Largo Plazo, and GRBerry. An extension of WP:ENGVAR is applicable to the issue of date formats, and far preferable to encouraging editors to observe only their local formats. We have no trouble recognising the different variations and might as well autoformat serial commas or whatever other myriad of variations are lurking in the English language. I vote for focusing on perfecting content and having internally consistent articles, instead of creating loads of work to allow an editor-only preference which half would never bother "turning on" anyway. Maedin\ 16:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
68. Oppose Violates KISS principle and also, Autoformatting is an excessive approach for such a minor aspect: All our readers perfectly understand both MD and DM. Have you ever seen a child look at MD/DM dates and say "what does that mean"? Too much of the community's time has been taken up with this already. We all have better things to contribute to/improve Misplaced Pages. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 17:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
69. Oppose As long as dates are consistent within an article there is no problem c.f. other international variations. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
70. Unnecessary concession to people who get worked up over nothing.--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
71. Oppose autoformatting It seems unimportant and prone to problems. I also oppose further iterations of this issue-that-refuses-to-die. The "losing" editors should start acting like adults and accept the fact that the community consensus is against them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
72. Edit Conflicted Oppose I'll first point out the all-knowing nature of devs (see link). This understood, I agree with Brion that it doesn't need to be done and that we tend to make things harder than they need to be on WP. I see benefits, but the cons certainly outweigh the pros. hmwithτ 17:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
73. Oppose I think it's difficult to decouple autoformatting from autolinking - currently, you have to make a link or use a parser function. The former is distracting when you view an article, the latter when you edit an article. I don't think the feature is worth the hassle. The resultantly simpler wikitext syntax will benefit new editors and performance, by making the code (slightly) less complex. RupertMillard (Talk) 17:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
74. Oppose per others. TheAE talk/sign 18:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
75. Oppose. Better to embrace the international diversities than use the User prefs to snub them. One should become accustomed to seeing the differences just like you would at your bookshelf. That is part of the learning experience.
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 18:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
76. Oppose. Autoformatting, even if it could be made to work properly, offers very little advantage but has very significant disadvantages, as others have drawn attention to above. --Malleus Fatuorum 19:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
77. Oppose. Liffey (talk) 19:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
78. Oppose, solution without a problem. -- Earle Martin 19:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
79. Oppose ... always have and always will 21st CENTURY GREENSTUFF 20:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
80. Oppose. Lots of extra work for everyone for a trivial benefit for a tiny minority. Let's get back to improving the encyclopedia. —Remember the dot 20:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
81. Oppose Alohasoy (talk) 20:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
82. Oppose Minor gains in readability for some people who have issues with date formats cross-articles are not worth the effort to format all dates everywhere in the encyclopedia. Even americans can learn to read DD/MM/YYYY. Kellen 20:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
83. Oppose I can really see no clear reason for doing this; it just isn't that much of a problem. If it applied to everyone, maybe, but just for logged in users... nah. Anaxial (talk) 20:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
84. Oppose As long as dates are entered in a consistent format throughout each article, there is no real problem. WP:ENGVAR works well for English variants, dates should be just an extension of this. CS 21:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
85. Oppose since autoformatting would apply only to the minority of readers who are also registered editors. I would support a technical autoformatting solution that would allow a given format to be applied to an individual article (with exceptions for dates in quotations and the like) for all readers, but that doesn't seem to be what's being discussed here. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

    FYI, we are discussing that; the recent changes to the system now allow autoformatting to apply a default format for unregistered users, and there is a patch in the works (I'll try to get the Bugzilla link ASAP) that would add the "per-page" option you've mentioned. --Ckatz_spy 21:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC) Um ... no, Josiah is talking about autoformatting in the sense of allowing a few privileged editors to select a month-day or day-month order. A consistent fixed-text format for IP users is the reality in the thousands of article that have dispensed with autoformatting. Tony (talk) 08:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

86. Oppose Only because of the variations in formatting will not satisfy everyone. As we do with spelling, I believe the US articles should be allowed to maintain the May 9, 1957 format - while the UK, Aussie, and other outside US articles should be allowed to use the 9 May 1957 format. If we can (or will be able to) set our preferences as a default, and this becomes a non-issue, then I would then support. — Ched ~ /_© 21:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
87. Oppose There is no problem to solve here and this will create more problems - Ahunt (talk) 22:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
88. Oppose I see no reason for it. Aside from unnecessarily complicating things, I can't see what this would accomplish. faithless () 22:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
89. Oppose. A lot of busy work for no extensive gain. Wildhartlivie (talk) 22:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
90. Oppose - ugh, another RFC? How many times are we going to go through this? --PresN 23:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
91. Oppose. There is no ambiguity in understanding the two formats allowed. A lot of effort for a purely cosmetic issue. Same issue as regional spelling differences and should be treated exactly the same way. --NrDg 00:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
92. Oppose - There's no reason why general readers should see something different than a few logged-in users who have preferences set. Giants2008 (17-14) 00:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
93. Oppose, serves no purpose link wise as the links do not go anywhere useful, adding excessive blue links everywhere (by default, automatically "overlinks" article as dates are usually repeated multiple times. Also negates the purpose of even formatting dates in articles, and can be confusing to IP and new users who see one thing in the article, decide to edit, and see something totally different. Write them as text, and leave it at that. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 01:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
94. Oppose. Auto-formatting is a "solution" looking for a problem. It's not even a good solution as it cannot address every date format currently used on WP; and there is no indication that a technical solution can even be found for all the issues raised during the debate. If a technical solution is implemented, its syntax promises to be complex enough to place it beyond the reach of the average editor. A real solution to the date-consistency "problem" is to simply enter dates in a consistent manner—using plain text. All other significant issues simply disappear with the "plain text" strategy.  HWV258  02:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
95. Oppose. Computer software should be as simple as possible. Once you begin complicating it you always get into trouble. VikSol 02:32, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
96. Oppose Auto-formatting. No good reason to have to bother with this. Hmains (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
97. Oppose autoformatting. This is a technical solution that lacks a problem to solve. Tempshill (talk) 03:04, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
98. Oppose: It looks like a solution in search of a problem. There is a significant penalty in terms of making the markup more complicated and intimidating to new users. Keep it simple. Hawthorn (talk) 03:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
99. Oppose. I don't care if my date is formatted one way or the other. It's like color vs colour. I can read and comprehend both. RainbowOfLight 03:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
100. "Welcome to Misplaced Pages, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit." What I have always liked about Misplaced Pages is that the biggest thing you need to learn to contribute is how to make a wikilink. Basic information like dates shouldn't require formatting more complex than that. Misplaced Pages has developed a culture that does discourage new users and old alike and there's no need to code the site to be in synch with that exclusionary culture.otherlleft 03:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
101. Oppose Autoformatting served no rational purpose and wasted the time of writers and editors. I don't want it to return. Finetooth (talk) 03:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
102. Oppose so-called autoformatting. It is really unneeded and overly complicated for editing the raw text behind every article. Too much markup intimidates everybody. Well, it intimidates me. Sincerely, a friend to all, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
103. Oppose Simply too trivial to be worth the expenditure of any amount of time or keystrokes by editors or developers. Fixed-text dates of any format are equally useful to readers. --Clay Collier (talk) 05:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
104. Oppose Correct me if I'm wrong in assuming the vast majority of users, which means all the readers/editors that never register an account, do not have date formatting turned on. The usefulness is so superficial that it becomes actually not useful considering the small minority that use it. I was very initially opposed to the mass delinking when it first started just because I dislike change like any other human, but I think it's a good idea now after thinking about it for a little bit. LonelyMarble (talk) 06:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
105. Oppose Every little added complexity to wikitext mark-up makes it harder to pretend that this is an encyclopdia anyone can edit. Ian Spackman (talk) 07:18, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
106. Oppose: There's no problem that this solves. If dates must be in a certain format, they can be treated similar to British vs. American English: a given format should be used where it is reasonable. NJGW (talk) 07:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
107. Weak Oppose: I'd oppose more strongly if I felt it was an important issue, but I don't see that we should be offering autoformatting if it isn't consistent across all dates in the encyclopedia (including sigs), and it could allow for all sorts of dates in the first place. However, it's a bit of a non-issue, we'd do better to agree a recognised style in the MOS if only that was possible. -- WORMMЯOW  08:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
108. Oppose We need less links on pages. Linked dates clog up pages with blue, reducing readability. They also make pages look less professional. We do not have a linked autoformatting system to 'convert' between US/UK spelling, why should we have it for a dating system that is completely mutually understandable? Autoformatting has been a constraint for Misplaced Pages for years, and should be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Arsenikk 08:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
109. Oppose Autoformatting is not seen by unregistered users, but the datelinks are, and they look like a classic case of overlinking. In fact, for years I wasn't even aware of the autoformat feature and was constantly irritated at these superfluous links. They still seem unprofessional to me, just like you wouldn't link the word "born" in "Barack Obama was born in Hawaii." --Zvika (talk) 08:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
110. Oppose Can create far too many blue links in articles. --JD554 (talk) 11:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
111. Apart from the issue of overlinking, this is one encyclopedia project producing one version of an article for everybody. What's next, allowing users to switch between American/British English? Even if such customization were desirable, it is certainly not worth the effort and complication.  Sandstein  11:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
112. Yay! Options on date formats is just what I'd like to see distract me from writing articles. No problem to solve, leave it alone. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 11:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
113. Oppose The format of the date is an ENGVAR issue like spelling or grammar. An article should be self-consistent wrt all of these. Colin° 12:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
114. Oppose There is no problem to fix, by attempting to fix something which is perfectly fine, all that will happen is that we will generate more problems, for example, over-linking, development issues, etc Spitfire 12:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
115. Oppose --Apoc2400 (talk) 15:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
116. Oppose I was hugely relieved when autoformatting was stopped last summer - For the majority of users, they are excessive and pointless links with very little benefit. Everyone understands what is meant, whether the format used is "Day Month" or "Month Day". As long as we are consistent within individual articles then there is no problem to address.--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
117. Oppose. Just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should, or that we need to. The format of a date in an article is not a significant issue. Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Dates covers the situation well enough. People are quite used to seeing 17 November 1956 and November 17, 1956 - and these do not cause a problem. Both versions are understandable by readers, and most people encounter both versions in everyday life, and will use both versions. It seems totally inappropriate to create work for most editors in order to solve a problem that doesn't even exist. I hope this is the last poll we get on this issue. Four polls within 6 months is rather too much. Each time the consensus is that this is not needed and not wanted. Stop with the polls already! SilkTork * 16:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
118. Oppose Marking up every date in every article (millions of them) - just so that people can choose between day-month and month-day? Madness! WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
119. Oppose this seems like a solution in search of a problem. Something I think people are forgetting is that the vast majority of our readers are unregistered. The people for whom this is supposed to provide the most benefit aren't even going to know it's going on. Leave it as it is, and let an WP:ENGVAR type solution take care of it. Parsecboy (talk) 16:30, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
120. Oppose. Not a problem worth solving. I was concerned about the "metadata" argument, but I thnik it is properly answered above. —Dominus (talk) 16:32, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
121. Oppose There is no problem to solve. I don't think it will ever work for non-logged-in readers, so is not worth doing. It will never work in all grammatical situations. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
122. Oppose There is no problem to fix. There are other ways to deal with date meta-data. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
123. Oppose This is a weak solution without a problem. Most readers are not even logged in anyway. Richard75 (talk) 17:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
124. Oppose I agree with Richard75; I don't think this will accomplish much except put off new editors and make other editors spend time making minor edits, to very minor effect. Ricardiana (talk) 17:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
125. Oppose. Most readers aren't logged in, and the different date formats are easy to understand anyway. In addition, anything that reduces the sea of blue in articles is welcome. This is a solution looking for a problem. SlimVirgin 17:30, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
126. Oppose. What the Statement Against says - specifically, there is no problem to solve. Furthermore the solution is arduous for new editors, and potentially error-prone. David Brooks (talk) 17:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
127. Oppose – TheLeftorium 18:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
128. Oppose - just solving problems that don't exist. We have plenty of real problems to solve and articles to expand. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
129. Per Steve Crossin. --Nemo bis (talk) 18:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
130. Oppose - Seems like making mountains out of molehills, as well as a solution in search of a problem. In general I'm against adding additional layers of complexity (code) to basic things like simple text, which just alienates new users & leads to technical screwups in editing. "March 31, 2009" and "31 March 2009" mean the same thing, and no one needs autoformatting to derive the same meaning from either format. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
131. A few comments: The Template:Date is an intriguing addition to this discussion, and made me think long and hard about this. I've read dozens of the comments in these threads, and agree that many people opposing seem to have the wrong idea that this sub-poll is about 'linking'. I strongly support the idea of obtaining meta-data, without blue links. But, am conflicted about autoformatting - partially because who decides whether mdy or dmy is the default? and partially because more wikicode complexity should be avoided if possible. I (currently) think the styling/formatting of our dates should be treated like ENGVAR (because the world is diverse, and we currently reflect that), like our FAs, like the German-wiki (no dates linked), and that an alternative technical solution should be found for extracting metadata - one that doesn't impact readers or editors at all. So, a weak oppose, I guess. But if no other solution can be developed, then the lure of "automated time lines" generation is enough to make me reconsider in the future. Any demos available for that? -- Quiddity (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
132. Oppose - metadata is important, but this is not the way to do it. Solution in search of a problem. – Quadell 19:39, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
133. Oppose. It has benefited maybe a few thousand users at the expense of thousands (millions?) of man-hours and server resources. Autoformatting is, in simple terms, coo coo bananas. --- RockMFR 19:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
134. Oppose. It's a tiny detail that loads us thousands of links. Moreover, I think it's weird we demand US oriented articles to be written in US spelling and we allow date autoformating. Date format should apply with the spelling. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
135. Oppose. It's a solution seeking a problem, and used as justification for excessive date linking. --Phil Holmes (talk) 20:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
136. Oppose. --DuLithgow (talk) 21:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
137. Oppose. We should stop date linking for the sake of auto-formatting. There may be other, less intrusive, ways to auto-format dates. — Xavier, 21:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
138. Oppose. I think the real giveaway here is that statement that autoformatting has "been an option in operating systems for decades". Yes, this is true, because decades ago most operating systems displayed dates in numeric format where there was genuine ambiguity about the meaning of the date if it was in the first twelve days of the month. This seems to have led to an assumption in nerdland that there there is also an ambiguity/readability issue even when the month is spelt out. We shouldn't be following operating systems, but real-world information sources. I have never come across a web information source or news provider that worries about this enough to give readers an option as to how to display the date, so for us to worry about the issue is to engage in original research. In the English-speaking world outside the United States there is no national preference for formatting one way or another - it's just a matter of personal style or of an individual publication's style guide. Are English-speaking people in the United Kingdom confused because The Times uses MMM DD, YYYY but The Guardian uses DD MMM YYYY? Or in India because The Hindu says MMM DD, YYYY but The Times of India DD MMM YYYY? Or in Australia that The Age uses MMM DD, YYYY and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation DD MMM YYYY? Canada: Toronto Star MMM DD, YYYY, but Canadian Broadcasting Corporation DD MMM YYYY? None of these web sites, or any other that I can find, gives the option for readers to display the date in a different format, but I don't see any wails of complaint. And where are all the reliable sources discussing how Americans going into the armed forces are confused about dates being in a different format? Date autoformatting is a classic case of a solution waiting for a problem. Let's either keep to the current pragmatic standard for style, or, as it seems that it's only in the United States that there's a strong preference for one format over the other, why don't we just say that it's MMM DD, YYYY all round? Phil Bridger (talk) 23:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
139. Oppose. -- So little value added, so much time wasted. Ground Zero | t 23:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I am neutral on the general concept of autoformatting

1. While I do not oppose the idea of autoformatting (provided that editors have an option to see dates as they are entered in the source, and provided that it uses a simple syntax—something like would be fine, {{#formatdate:|30 March 2008}} wouldn't), I oppose the current system, and oppose implementing any system on Misplaced Pages until it is shown to correctly handle date ranges, commas after year in M-Y-D, and so on. I also don't want it to start a slippery slope towards autoformatting of words and the like (at least until we implement an AI able to decide which meaning of "ass" is used when translating an article from American to Commonwealth English, that is). --A. di M. (talk) 06:18, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

   Would something along the lines of "{{d|30 March 2008}}" be simple enough? Keep in mind that the function "#formatdate" can easily be called from a template with a much simpler name. --Ckatz_spy 06:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

   Considering the millions of times such a template would be called, that would be an enormous waste of server resources; but we could ask that the #formatdate function be renamed to #d, for example. --A. di M. (talk) 08:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

2. I don't support the addition of metadata in this case. I just can't get worked up enough to call my "don't support" an "oppose." It's not really an issue, in my mind. Cnilep (talk) 14:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
3. While I see the advantage of autoformatting, I am aesthetically opposed to seeing link tags all over a page. Beyond that conflict between two lightly-held opinions, I really don't care about the issue. -- llywrch (talk) 16:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Given how much heat vs. light this has attracted, I really don't care about the outcome, just that it gets settled, conclusively, one way or the other. Jclemens (talk) 16:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
5. It sounds useful, but we already have too much wikimarkup in our articles, to the point that an inexperienced user can't edit pages because of infoboxes and references. When the new GUI comes out next year, then it may be OK to add autoformatting. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Tired of this stupid debate over dates. Lets get back to writing articles and improving the substance of the content. Aboutmovies (talk) 21:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
7. What, this still hasn't been resolved? Wait, that's no surprise. What this problem needs is someone proficient in PHP and very familiar with MediaWiki spending about a month working on code covering as many cases as possible, and then coming back and presenting their model + test cases. In the meantime, I could care less, and I have far better uses of my time than arguing over something so utterly trivial. 「ダイノガイ千？！」 22:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Link them, don't link them, how does that matter? I once found that I like the dates being in pretty blue links, but most of the time they don't really serve a purpose. Let's just be done with this discussion so that we can continue to write our articles without linking/delinking dates over and over again. -- クラウド６６８ 07:24, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Comments regarding autoformatting

• How much of a huge, bold, flashing editnotice would be enough to convince people that this section is about autoformatting, not linking? Or do we need an AbuseFilter warning on the word "link"? Anomie⚔ 00:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• No-one above appears to have conflated the two. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• A majority of the "oppose" !votes appear to have conflated the two. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• To quote someone I know: "I wasn't going to reply unless an idiotic argument was presented by someone. Congratulations." Ohconfucius (talk) 03:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• Wow. I am currently seeing 3 who mention linking in the rationale as if it was implied by autoformatting, but also give unrelated reasons (Awadewit, Bishonen, Bzuk), 3 who give no rationale (Donald Albury, Juliancolton, Chrishomingtang), and 29 who give a rationale that doesn't suggest they are confused about this. Since when is 3:29 a majority? Perhaps you are confused and think that this is about autoformatting without markup? Then read above under "What is date autoformatting?" It is not presented as an option. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Arthur Rubin is a mathematician, so I'm sure he knows what "majority" means.--otherlleft 03:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
• And why must I give yet another rationale when so many have already been given. This is not something like AfD, where the weight of arguments invoking policy should be decisive, this is a preference poll. -- Donald Albury 12:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• I've stated my opinion several times in the past, so I feel there's no need to provide a rationale. This is, as the title suggests, a poll. –Juliancolton |  19:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• Agree that this is a poll and tons of reasons have been given by others already.—Chris! _ct 20:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, I meant no offence and no rationale is of course perfectly OK. The only problem is that in a situation where some editors give rationales that prove they are confused ("I hate autoformatting because I hate the sea of irrelevant blue links") with no clue how they would have voted if they were not, every vote without a rationale will potentially be discarded by those who don't like the result of the poll.

• Ah, ye of little (good) faith. -- Donald Albury 16:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• GrahamColm (talk · contribs), above, seems to have just mistaken the two as intertwined. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• I'm concerned about this too. If the proposal is defeated, so be it, but it would be a real shame if it were defeated because a large number of editors were still under a wrong impression of the implementation details. Tim Pierce (talk) 13:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Why is it that so many people seem to think that marking up millions of dates requires a great deal of work, but removing markup from those dates is no work at all?-Jeff 01:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Bots can easily recognise and remove double-square brackets around dates. Adding date coding (especially complex coding) must be done contextually (instance-by-instance).  HWV258  01:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'd bet that a lot of the basic markup could be done by bots, if all they have to do is recognize dates and enclose them in something trivial. The actual choice of what format to use would need human intervention, but that could be separated from the markup around particular dates. — Gavia immer (talk) 02:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing with the above. Bots should be able to easily recognize dates, marked up or not, through the use of regular expressions.-Jeff 03:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

(To the above two posts) The edit comment of "Most of the work could be bot-accomplished" is the key. How is most defined? Also, "The actual choice of what format to use would need human intervention" is a whopper in terms of slowing down the process. Anyhow, doesn't change the basic point that bot-removal of date formatting is trivial (to get back to the original post).  HWV258  03:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If you separate the recognition of formattable dates from the format control, it's no big deal - just add a {{DEFAULTDATEFORMAT}} (or whatever name) parameter that works like {{DEFAULTSORT}}, appearing once per article to control the default date display format. Then you can add separate markup to actually set off dates, with an option to set the default display format for that one date. The sticky bit is that dates in direct quotations shouldn't be autoformatted, so a bot solution would have to recognize when to skip marking those up. A bot that got this even 90% right would leave very little work for human editors to slog through. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

With your response above, you've confirmed the validity of my initial response to the original question (you do remember the original question?). Please take this up on a talk page somewhere—we've been discussing these sort of issues for months now. Thanks.  HWV258  06:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• I guess we need to add to the bold flashing editnotice that "unregistered users see inconsistent dates" can be easily fixed, so opposing on that basis is rather … misguided. And edit wars would occur just as often in the absence of a magic word with autoformatting, but they'd be worse because the warriors would be messing with dates all over the article (and possibly missing some each time). Anomie⚔ 02:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Prevention of edit-warring? The notion I see raised above by one or two editors that autoformatting is needed to avoid edit-wars over which format is chosen for an article is, I believe, barking up the wrong tree. Yes, apparently the original system was a response to friction on this matter, but 2003 was early days for the community, and we had established proper rules for neither date formatting nor ENGVAR spelling. We now have well-established practices for both (MOSNUM, MoS), and they are highly successful, by all accounts. Tony (talk) 08:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
    • And yet still not as simple as letting editors enter dates in whatever format they like and letting the system auto format them to what readers prefer... at some point in the chain (editing/reading) you'll have someone using or seeing a date format they don't prefer when it needn't be that way. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
    • With regards to these "well-established practices" for date formatting, if they are really "highly successful", why has Misplaced Pages's Chief Technical Officer called for a rewrite of that guideline to use only one consistent format site-wide? --Ckatz_spy 11:07, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
      • I am on record as wanting a mono-format for dates. Unfortunately, I am in the minority. It's not going to happen, because people believe WP:ENGVAR works, so we have to live with it. Having date-autoformatting could be likened to slicing off part of your feett to fit the new undersized shoes you just bought (in other words, don't make a mistake to compensate for a dumb move. Ohconfucius (talk) 13:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Note that at the time of my comment above, there was only one person alluding to autoformatting as a solution for edit warring (and that in a vague, "it would have helped in this one case" way), while there was one "oppose" specifically claiming that autoformatting with a magic word for setting a default format for the article would directly lead to edit warring over the default format setting with the implication that there would not be such edit warring otherwise. I agree that autoformatting is not needed for edit war prevention; although it would likely prevent some would-be edit warriors from ignoring or fighting over how to apply WP:ENGVAR, I personally regard that as a side effect rather than a major driving reason. Anomie⚔ 12:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• Expansion on my rationale. One of the arguments for autoformatting is to "present a consistent date format". I think we should have consistency, but I don't believe autoformatting is the way forward. Personally, I would love for every article to use the fairly international style of day before month, but I fear that people like arguing about the pointless stuff too much for that to ever happen. Rambo's Revenge (How am I doing?) 13:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Isn't that an argument for auto formatting? Here we have a system that removes the need to argue (ever!) over which format to use, and it's a simple software solution. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• No it is not. If IPs—the majority of Misplaced Pages readers—cannot choose their preference then autoformatting is not a good option. The only way to prevent IPs from getting a horrible mess of different formats is to choose what they see. If we do that, we might as well choose the style for everyone or completely standardise all dates into one format. Rambo's Revenge (How am I doing?) 14:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• Part of the current proposal is that there would be a Misplaced Pages-wide default format setting (most likely DMY) for everyone who has not set a preference, including IP users, and a magic word so a particular article can change the default (i.e. to MDY) when that is appropriate per WP:ENGVAR. Then user preferences override the default for that user. This has been said time and time again, which is why can't in good faith understand why opposers keep claiming IP users will see some sort of mish-mash. I also find a claim that every IP user has to be able to set a date preference spurious, as we have an easy way for anyone to set any preference: register an account. Anomie⚔ 15:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• But the point you are missing is that in order to maintain consistency for all users, every date on a page needs to be coded (in order to be rendered properly based on various preferences). The problem with "every date" is that it is extremely difficult to define rules needed in order to detect all the different types of date formats found on WP. Date ranges and slashed-dates are just two examples, but also difficult is to precisely detect the comma in US date formats. These issues remain unaddressed—after months of debate, and lots of examples demonstrating the problems can easily be found. Many people voting "support" are unaware of the technical issues involved. (Incidentally, I don't blame them so much as these issues are not easily grasped by people who have not been involved with the debate for some time.)  HWV258  00:46, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• Hi, I'm a computer programmer. Are you? The reason I ask is that you assert that "it is extremely difficult to define rules needed in order to detect all the different types of date formats found on WP", which strikes me as a statement that would be made by someone who doesn't actually know what they're talking about. There is no real "detecting" necessary; someone just needs to come up with a syntax for specifying date ranges, slashed dates, trailing commas, and the like. For example, {{#formatdate:1 January 2009/2 January 2009}} could be the format for a slashed date, and output as "1/2 January 2009", "January 1/2, 2009", and so on based on the active format; {{#formatdate:1 January 2009–10 January 2009}} or {{#formatdate:1 January 2009|10 January 2009}} could be the format for entering a date range, and output appropriately (there could even be a preference for "1 January 2009 – 10 January 2009" versus "1–10 January 2009" style output, if people wanted it). With a little more effort, any of the (unambiguous) output formats could also be accepted as input. The need for the trailing commas could easily enough be specified as {{#formatdate:1 January 2009|,}} or {{#formatdate:January 1, 2009,}}. Something else that I personally would like to see is a "{{#formattabulardate}}" function, so people who would prefer to see dates in tables and lists as 2009-01-01 versus 1 Jan 2009 versus the full 1 January 2009 could set a preference for that. It's not particularly hard to do any of that, but why should someone bother when the discussion is full of people (not necessarily you, don't take this personally) who will oppose everything without end, drowning out any other discussion, to the point of WP:POINT? Anomie⚔ 12:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• Actually, I am a programmer (and your question indicates to everyone that you haven't been following the debate over the previous few months). I was the only one who actively push to get a specification for auto-formatting established (here), however nothing came of it (despite a myriad of suggestions in various locations—similar to yours above). You do understand that all your examples above simply will be thrown into a pot—a pot that is already full to the overflowing with similar suggestions—however a pot that has so far failed to provide anything nutritious (or in the least bit edible) for the community. As you have not responded to my point "every date on a page needs to be coded" I'll assume that you have understood that, and are in favour of it. Please consider a page such as this one that has over 700 dates (in many different formats), so to apply formatting to all dates (similar to {{#formatdate:8 January 1705}}) is quite an undertaking (an undertaking that has had no analysis in terms of viability). The people you mention "who will oppose everything without end" are actually people who have thought through all these issues and have come to the considered conclusion that simply entering dates using plain text solves all significant issues, and has no syntactical complexity for the wider editing community. In addition, I belong to the group of programmers who believe it is inappropriate (and downright unprofessional) to commence coding without (at least a functional) specification. A large part of the reason for the mess we are currently in is the (well-intentioned) introduction of code that had no specification, let alone community consensus.  HWV258  23:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• The IPs would not get a bunch of different styles since the feature would provide a standard default for them. Also, developers have mentioned using Javascript to allow IPs to set a preference, though no developer has yet worked on that solution. —Ost (talk) 15:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• *sigh* If you actually read my last post I never claimed IPs will get a mish-mash of styles. I said that the only way to prevent them getting that is to choose their preference for them. I then said that there is no point in choosing a standard style for them, because it would need to be agreed upon. If we can agree a choice for that, we should just implement that choice as the date style across Misplaced Pages without autoformatting, because that would give real consistency. I am well aware of what is going on and am not fond of other users trying to twist my words towards their !vote. Rambo's Revenge (How am I doing?) 16:55, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• You have presented a false dichotomy in assuming that we would have to pick one format for all of Misplaced Pages for IP users, with no possibility of overriding that where WP:ENGVAR calls for another format. So yes, you're not quite claiming "IP users will get a mish-mash of styles"; you're claiming "IP users will get a mish-mash of styles unless we get rid of WP:ENGVAR on this issue". Anomie⚔ 22:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• I'm in favor of the idea of autoformatting, but against the requirements it will make on editor and hardware. Debresser (talk) 16:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• At the present time (61 support, 91 oppose), support #42 and Oppose #3, #12, #13, #22, #42, and #73 think that it's talking about linking. A number of further comments seem think it's talking about things looking different for editors and IPs; which is (1) always true that editors can adjust viewing format, using gadgets, preferences, and Javascript; and is not necessarily true of autoformatting. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

why are you interpreting Oppose #3 and #73 as "think that it's talking about linking"? i agree that there are a couple of !voters who appear to be confusing the two issues and a couple of "hanging chad !votes", but both Oppose #3 and Oppose #73 appear cognizant that linking and autoformatting are two different issues.

either way it's not a high rate of confusion - that's good! and the "hanging chad !voters" still have time to clarify their views if they care to.

meanwhile, it's right that some !voters are saying they don't want logged-in editors to see different content than unlogged-in users. you disagree with that viewpoint, but that doesn't mean their !votes "don't count". Sssoul (talk) 07:21, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• The "only for editors" claim has been bandied about throughout this debate over the past year, simply because it is an easy rallying cry for the three or four core editors who are really pushing the "delink" campaign. Thing is, there's never been any proof for the numeric claims (despite repeated requests), and never any acknowledgement of the readers who may have registered an account not to edit, but in order to access features such as date formatting, watchlists, and gadgets. (The "only for editors" mantra also fails to mention that IPs can't access any special perks, not just autoformatting.) --Ckatz_spy 02:24, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

+

Responses

• Several users have indicated that autoformatting is the only way to achieve consistency through in one article, and this is simply not true. EDIT: This may be true for for achieving site-wide consistency, but that begs the question of why the way the dates look is such a big deal. We can all look at DMY or MDY or even YMD (2000 January 1) and fairly easily determine what the date is.
• User:This flag once was red, using the ambiguous 3/2/03 type format is not an option anyway.

• I think you've misunderstood me (or I've not been clear) - my thinking is that by using a template for dates it will discourage the entry of dates as DD/MM or MM/YY, not that dates will no longer be displayed as DD/MM or MM/YY. I agree that this problem isn't going to go away completely, but it should be alleviated as editors get into the habit of specifying dates in terms of {{... day=2|month=3| ...}}, instead of just typing "2/3/09" and hoping that whoever cleans up after them magically knows whether the date is DD/MM or MM/DD. Cheers, This flag once was red_deeds 12:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• "Before autoformatting was introduced, there were lengthy rows about how to format dates. This seems recently to have come back, just as some started delinking dates." from docu (talk · contribs); can someone point me to these length rows on date formatting? I haven't seen any. Not referring to linking here.
• "Also, autoformatting helps prevent edit warring" A an over-used argument with little evidence provided. Actually, these edit wars are few and far between.
• To the users who cited metadata as a reason for needing autoformatting, can someone provide examples of how this metadata could be used? Dabomb87 (talk) 02:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Other than imposing a site-wide single format, as the developers have suggested, how do you propose to ensure all articles are consistent with one another? Either we go to a single standard, or we persist with the first-past-the-post "this is American no it's international" methodology. If the latter is the case, it is only prudent to provide some method of presenting a uniform, consistent look. --Ckatz_spy 02:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'll be more clear. I edited my above post. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Most of the arguments against autoformatting seem to boil down to "this would be a lot of work, and there is no advantage in it for me". I fail to see how this is an argument for forbidding those who do care about consistency from doing the work. Why does this have to be framed in terms of either "everybody must use this markup" or "nobody is allowed to use this markup"? That's not the wiki way. The wiki tradition would be to encourage people to contribute even if they can't be bothered to use the more complex markups, and then let others insert advanced markup if they care to.

What active harm do all of you opposers suffer because someone else adds autoformatting? It won't require you to lift a finger either way. –Henning Makholm (talk) 11:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

This is an important point. Why cant autoformatting be implemented and later have a discussion about whether the MOS should encourage its use? The first section to this poll should have been left until after implementation when users can see what it actually involves. I seem to remember that {{cite...}} came about this way, and is probably more difficult for unregistered users to edit and breaks up the text far more than this proposal. |→ Spaully† 12:49, 31 March 2009 (GMT)

Yes but {{cite...}} provides an important - one might even say essential - feature for an encyclopedia. This more than justifies the cost in terms of difficulty of use and so on that the markup introduces. Date autoformatting on the other hand provides at best an extremely minor cosmetic tweak. Most people don't care what formats their dates are written in. They will even use a variety of formats in their own writing or speech without a second thought. The number of people who are actually annoyed by reading a date in a format they don't like must be extraordinarily small. These pedants are considerably outnumbered by those like myself who find needlessly complicated markup annoying, or who are annoyed by the excessive linking and sometimes anomalous results created by poorly implemented date autoformatting. Hawthorn (talk) 23:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry UC_Bill, but you can't have it both ways. You removed the demo page that could have shown the community how date ranges (and hopefully date slashes) would have worked, and then you claim the programming is easy ("10 hours"?). Please re-establish the demo page if you really have got it going, otherwise you'll have to understand why I'm entitled to treat your claims above with a healthy dose of scepticism. To other voting parties, please note that what is proposed is far more than "four brackets (]) around dates" (as even the post before UC_Bill's indicates). I'm not suggesting that you (are you back?) or perhaps other programmers couldn't get something going to handle individual cases, however as has been demonstrated over more than three years, it is increasingly difficult to not only get the basics of auto-formatting right, but seemingly impossible to specify how auto-formatting should work for the many ways that dates are represented on WP.  HWV258  21:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

"I have never come across a web information source or news provider that worries about this enough to give readers an option as to how to display the date"—well spotted; a very good point. In terms of "MMM DD, YYYY all round", there is no need to be so dictatorial, as very often an article will lend itself to "DD MMM YYYY", in which case, that can simply be the format of choice for the page in question. Is it that much of a worry to see dates in the "DD MMM YYYY" format in the England article and at the same time to see dates in the "MMM DD, YYYY" format in the USA article?  HWV258  23:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)