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Year-linking responses

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 Option #1 (link only relevant years)

1. Best option out of the four. If the year link is relevant to the article, link it. If not, don't. Steve Crossin /₂₄ 23:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
2. I would prefer absolutely no links at all, because they are hardly relevant and seldom help deepen understanding of the subject. Let common sense prevail. Few links only please. Ohconfucius (talk) 23:25, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Once again only link to the year if it is very relevant to the topic. Links to YYYY in music/film etc. are okay, but even some of those are linked to too much. Rambo's Revenge (How am I doing?) 23:25, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Per WP:OVERLINK. --John (talk) 23:37, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Absolutely. Even when a date is notable in its own right, e.g. 1492, it may be irrelevant to the passage in which it occurs. --Philcha (talk) 23:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Support: We are overlinking enough as is. seicer | talk | contribs 23:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Support. I hope this provision will be construed fairly narrowly. -- Donald Albury 23:59, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Support, the value of these links are way overstated. Year articles are still (mostly) lists of trivia; please note that I am not necessarily saying that these articles are bad, just that they will not help readers of other articles in their current format. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Support, only link the year if it's relevant to the article. Again, common sense and the best way to prevent overlinking, in my opinion. Raven1977_{My edits} 00:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Support. Exactly the same effect as option 4, except there is a chance of less fighting. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC) Just to make sure that nobody reads this as option 4 being my 2nd choice. It is not. It's actually the worst option because it doesn't settle the question. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Support - Date links, like all others, should enhance a reader's understanding of the topic. This can be decided on a case-by-case basis. Awadewit (talk) 00:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Support. When did you last require "easy access to year articles"? I never have. Year articles are breathtakingly useless. And the day—impatiently awaited—that I do want access to one of them, the search box gives quite easy enough access for my needs. Moreover, the famous "metadata" isn't the same as "useful metadata". Bishonen | talk 00:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC).
13. Support This pretty much covers the rare circumstances when years should be linked. The proposed wording says it all: years “should not be linked unless they contain information that is germane and topical to the subject matter”. Enough said. Greg L (talk) 00:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
14. Support as per Greg L.—MDCollins (talk) 00:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
15. Support (Ditto my date linking reason.) I would tend to support the remove guidance option, but I suspect that past tendencies to link all dates would lead to continued overlinking. Guidance is needed to limit date links to those of notable historical significance. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
16. Per Steve, Bishonen, and Greg. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 00:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
17. Support The additional guidance would help avoid overlinking years. Eubulides (talk) 01:38, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
18. Support as this is the closest to my preferred position of link no dates at all. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
19. Support: among the options, this is likely the one to cut down the "sea of blue" best. Jappalang (talk) 01:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
20. Per Steve Crossin. –Juliancolton |  02:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
21. Support: Of all the options available, I support this one. I tire of seeing fields of blue date links that take me to places that are not germane to the topics I'm reading.SteveB67 (talk) 02:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
22. Support.-gadfium 03:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
23. Support: Year articles are almost entirely a bunch of coincidental happenings. I cannot find one year article that would provide the deeper understanding of a topic that you'd want it to (see Bishonen, above). The sea of blue looks seriously unprofessional in an article, dilutes the good links, and clutters the text. The "See also" section at the bottom is a better place if an editor feels an unbridled urge to link to one or two years, but I'd still want to see the justification—not just so people can indulge in discretionary browsing (I think we kid ourselves that readers hit such links, anyway). Tony (talk) 03:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
24. Support I find year links unnecessary and dislike the extra blue. bridies (talk) 04:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
25. Support. I strongly oppose the presumption in #2, that links to year articles (which contain mostly trivia) are somehow more relevant in the case of birth and death dates. If anything, they are less relevant. Random events occurring in some year are almost never relevant to the life of someone born in that year, for example.--Srleffler (talk) 05:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
26. Support—Chris! _ct 05:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
27. Support. links should be made when the articles they lead to are relevant. on the rare occasions when a year page might add some useful context, the "see also" section is the perfect place for it. i would also support renaming most year articles to something like "List of Events in ". Sssoul (talk) 05:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
28. Support, as with the date links. (Note that in a perfect world I would side with Pmanderson and vote for complete removal, but apparently some people need to be told more explicitly.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
29. Actually, I most support Option 4 (just as in the month/day section, so skip the rest if you know where this is going) - no guidance means nothing to edit war over, and the practical result would be identical to this guideline. Since the poll format ostensibly won't allow supporting multiple options (Why? Seriously, why?) I support this one on the basis already stated - it is identical to option 4 in practice, and more likely to be supported by others in practice. However, your poll format is broken in any case. — Gavia immer (talk) 06:17, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
30. Support There has to be an excellent reason to link to a year. These will be rare. Dougweller (talk) 08:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
31. Support. This is the only option that explicitly states that each date link must be relevant. No more, no less. That is the same with non-date links but after a long period of overlinking, editors need explicit guidance. Lightmouse (talk) 08:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
32. Support Why link to irrelevant years like birth years, unless they are relevant? So, only link to years if they are relevant. I was puzzled why I linked to years when I joined the project three years ago. It was and is a waste of time and adds nothing to articles.--HJensen, talk 09:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
33. Support with caveat that years are seldom "relevant" per se. Bongomatic 09:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
34. Support. I need say no more, as before. This, that and the other 09:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)\
35. Support. Years that aren't relevant don't need to be linked, which is most of them. Extremepro (talk) 09:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
36. Support There are many films set in a historical year which are worth linking to, otherwise I see date linking as unnecessary. Alientraveller (talk) 09:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
37. Support; useful if the year has some pertinence, not useful if the year has no relation. Good discretion is needed here. —Anonymous Dissident 10:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
38. Support. Links should always be judged based on relevancy and value to the reader. — TKD::{talk} 11:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
39. Support. If I understand correctly, then this is what we do now. I see no reason to change. Adding unhelpful links to articles harms Misplaced Pages, since readers are misled as to where they might find additional relevant information.--Kotniski (talk) 11:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
40. Support. I was going to write something witty, but Bishonen encapsulated it much better than I could have (or is it would have?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
41. Support Option 2 was also tempting, but Arther Rubin's comment down in the Comments section (that it's too open to interpretation) is a good point, and also there is the problem that it would add yet another detail to scare newbies. So I can't support Option 2 unless it is clarified (for example, to link only the year in the first sentence of the article, where it says when X person was born or X book was written), and even then I might still not support it. Option 1, on the other hand, can effectively allow the same kind of linking and delinking as Option 2, and is an easier "rule of thumb" to remember. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 13:21, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
42. Support The most reasonable proposal. Articles shouldn't be overlinked with trivial links. - Darwinek (talk) 13:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
43. Support - This seems to be the best option. Camw (talk) 13:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
44. Support - this is what I've gotten used to in the past months, and it works just like any other links. This is equivalent to #4, but special guidance is necessary because of the history here. --NE2 13:42, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
45. Support, just like with month-day linking. — Emil J. 13:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
46. Support because it's the best choice, but year links are almost never relevant. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
47. Support Here, however, there are likely to be relevant articles that should have significant prose and could be linked via piped links (e.g. XXXX in European politics, YYYY in Asian art - where XXXX and YYYY might be years, decades, or centuries depending on the topic and time). Such links are generally more likely to be relevant than the useless year lists we currently have. It would be fine if the guidance suggested such piped context links as more likely to be of use to the reader. GRBerry 14:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
48. Support as per my response to the month-day poll - Dumelow (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
49. Strong support per month-day poll Cnilep (talk) 14:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
50. Support that years only be linked when absolutely relevant, primarily in chronological articles. I oppose the other options. Karanacs (talk) 15:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
51. Support per Bishonen. But again, I want this to be a bit stronger - the year articles are almost always irrelevant to the subject at hand and should almost never be linked to. If you want to reference an event that happened in a specific year, surely it's far more logical to link the event. Pfainuk talk 15:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
52. Perhaps in the future formal guidance on this issue can be removed. Since it's been a back and forth issue for a while, we need it for now, I think. --TreyGeek (talk) 15:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
53. Support Basically the same as above. Alan16 15:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
54. Strong support based on most of the above. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 15:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
55. Support Makes the most sense, although I personally see no point in links to year except in date articles. I think the piped links are a good idea and should not be discouraged, and discouraging direct year links will make them more visible. Orderinchaos 16:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
56. Suport What SandyGeorgia said. --Dweller (talk) 16:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
57. Support, partly for use in "what links here". I rate the options: 1,2,4,3. Let's get rid of the useless links to lists of irrelevant trivia, though option 2 is also tempting and I would happily accept it too. Certes (talk) 16:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
58. Support - Gran 16:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
59. Support, there is no need to needlessly overlink articles. Plastikspork (talk) 16:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
60. Support. Rettetast (talk) 16:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
61. Support. Personal logic prevails. I'm certain that there should be some guidance, but wonder how time consuming it could end up being... Greggers 16:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
62. Support. Whatever we can do to minimize the unnecessary overlinking of years. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
63. Support. This is concurrent with the general guideline to make onlyrelevant links. Debresser (talk) 16:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
64. Support. We have to veer toward quality links for our reader's benefit. This is a good step. -- Banjeboi 16:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
65. Support. It is important to distinguish between a year being relevant to an article and the year-article being relevant. Often the first is true; very rarely the latter. Clear guidance is essential to avoid future disputes. When year-articles reach the quality of 1345, 1346 and 1347, then links to them will likely be relevant. This option will remove the current state of overlinking, without prejudicing relevant links when year-articles are improved. --RexxS (talk) 17:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
66. When we link to articles whose content is not relevant to the context, we do our readers a disservice by distracting them from links to relevant articles. In the absolute majority of cases, year links are irrelevant to the context of the article from which they are being linked. –Black Falcon 17:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
67. Support Again, all links should have semantic value. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 17:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
68. Makes sense to me--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
69. Support All of the disadvantages to the other options resonate strongly with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
70. Support As per month-day links. RupertMillard (Talk) 17:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
71. Support. As above: This should be the "common sense" option as I don't see any reason for it to be otherwise. Dates should be linked under the same rules as anything else - if relevant. |→ Spaully† 18:20, 30 March 2009 (GMT)
72. Agree --Morten (talk) 18:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
73. Support per SandyGeorgia. --Philosopher  18:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
74. Support: Really can't see the point in linking them. Others supporting in this section have said it much better! Maedin\ 18:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
75. Support. I don't value linking the years...I never use them myself so it scores as code-cruft to me.
    ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 19:08, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
76. Support this option, seems the best of those presented. Mjroots (talk) 19:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
77. Support. As with date linking, it's only useful occasionally. Mr Stephen (talk) 19:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
78. Support Most logical. Kellen 20:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
79. Support It is the most logical and most practical option. ~EdGl ★ 20:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
80. Support. Same as the dates; years can occasionally be relevant, but very rarely and therefore much be linked to with caution. – Joe N 21:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
81. Support per Hans Adler. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
82. Support This is the only option that makes any sense and avoids linking to articles that are irrelevant to the first article. - Ahunt (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
83. Support. Linked years are typically even less relevant that linked month+days. RossPatterson (talk) 22:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
84. Support. As with the month-day linking poll, option 1 is the best option by a distance. Useful rarely, overused massively. Julianhall (talk) 22:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
85. Support faithless () 22:55, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
86. Support - I see no point in having these links, and like I said above, I haven't missed them in cases where they have been removed. Giants2008 (17-14) 00:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
87. Support, agree this is the best option and brings year linking into compliance with general linking guidelines - if its relevant, fine, but just linking Year in films, year in Sports, year itself, etc is not. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 02:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
88. Support. The bright blue is a visual distraction and it's only relevant to numerologists. VikSol 02:42, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
89. Support, Option 1 not only means that date links will be treated like other links, but there will also be a guideline to put an end to revert wars. We need a guideline because linking has already been done and de-linking means a change: imagine if the word imagine had been linked every time, then suddenly it wasn't. A guideline will prevent any short term confusion. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 02:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
90. support and also support mass delinking of all such dates to get to where we should be: few links Hmains (talk) 03:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
91. Support. Most years are highly overlinked and irrelevant to article content. RainbowOfLight 03:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
92. First choice. shoy (reactions) 03:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
93. Support. Best choice to limit over-linking and improve the readability of articles and the utility of links is to treat years just like any other word- only link if it's a related or useful topic. --Clay Collier (talk) 05:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
    Support the first choice. Years and dates are like any other links, they should only be linked if relevant. Better yet, link the thing that makes linking the date relevant, and leave the date as an unlinked event. SDY (talk) 05:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
94. The year in which a person is born is seldom relevant. A wp:mos should point that out. Support this option or No. 4. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
95. Support. Again, another thing that has always puzzled me since I joined Misplaced Pages. Links should always be relevant. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 06:23, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
96. Support but that does not mean no autoformatting. Especially for negative years (before year 0). If we want more cool tools exposing Misplaced Pages data in interesting ways, we must write years in a very explicit way. Nicolas1981 (talk) 06:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
97. Support: only articles with relevant information should be linked to, otherwise why link? Other uses are trivia. NJGW (talk) 07:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
98. Support: I was leaning towards option 2, but in reality, I don't see the benefit of finding out more about a year someone was born. -- WORMMЯOW  08:21, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
99. Support Again, this seems the best option to reduce unnecessary blue links. --JD554 (talk) 11:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
100. As with month/day, above.  Sandstein  11:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
101. Support but option 1 doesn't give a good example of a reason to link to a general year article like 1795. Colin° 12:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
102. Support. I would also suggest to avoid linking to articles like 1964 in sports because they are rater useless. Timeline of World War II (1942) is fine. --Apoc2400 (talk) 15:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
103. Support. Bubba73 (talk), 15:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
104. Support. Best of the options. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
105. Support, but the outlook on what would be a meaningful link to a year should be rather tight. Gwen Gale (talk) 16:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
106. Support, as above. noq (talk) 17:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
107. Support There is no point in irrelevant links. That they might be "interesting" is not the point (and is also a rather unlikely outcome anyway: have you tried reading those articles?). Richard75 (talk) 17:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
108. Support. Only link if the year is directly relevant to the article. Less is more when it comes to links. The more links, the less impact each link has. SlimVirgin 17:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
109. Support As most logical. Option 4 doesn't seem to preclude the re-creation of mosdate guidelines after they are removed. All options except 1 will lead to an overly high link density in too many situations. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
110. Support so once more we stick with linking relevant links only and not inundating our readers with a bunch of unrelated links. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:14, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
111. Support. I think the date policy at WP:OVERLINK justifies itself. Daniel J Simanek (talk) 18:46, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
112. Support - It's all about context. 99% of an article about a year has no relevance to the subject of another article that contains that year. With regard to the "Background" statement, piped links should always be contextual. "Year in whatever" links almost always belong in a "See also" section. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:14, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
113. Support: only when directly relevant, to reduce the burden on readers. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
114. Support, second choice. Option #2 is my first choice. – Quadell 20:04, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
115. Support. Context-irrelevant links are worth avoiding, and there is no reason to make an exception for dates. ~ mazca 20:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
116. Support, just adds visual clutter and very low-value links. Ground Zero | t 23:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC).
117. Support - it settles the issue by setting a policy. The policy doesn't need to be rigidly enforced and awareness of it doesn't need to be high. Hawthorn (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC) clarification: Would prefer no date linking at all. Hawthorn (talk) 09:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
118. Support the only sensible option provided, link the date to a relevant listing that connects to the article's content. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 01:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC).
119. Support - Relevence good - Irrelevence bad. --Kbh3talk 01:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
120. Support per summary. don't see the need for linking birth / death years, already linked to year of birth and death categories and onwards, and several million links to years does nothing really worthwhile.--ClubOranje 01:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
121. Support. Most years do not need linking. Only a few add anything to the article by having a link. --Bduke (Discussion) 02:38, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
122. Support as the most logical option. Again to avoid edit wars, guidance should be to only use if you can make a strong case for adding the link. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
123. Again, not sure when a year link would help a reader. –thedemonhog talk • edits 06:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
124. Support. Ruslik (talk) 07:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
125. Support. The most relevant option. --Popiloll (talk) 07:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
126. Support—As with day-month links, year links should be treated like any other potential link. However, we're not ready for option 4 yet. Explicit guidance not to overlink will be a helpful maybe even essential part of reversing the damage done so far. JIMp _talk·cont 08:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
127. Support. SilkTork * 11:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
128. Support Too many year links are annoying, and they're usually worthless. CheesyBiscuit (talk) 12:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
129. Support This is the best option, we don't need to overlink VJ (talk) 13:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
130. Support. Same arguments as for day-month linking. Matt 13:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC).
131. Support Virtually none of out year articles are worth linking to, and we need specific guidance to roll back the existing overlinking. Any metadata these links provide is so vague as to be worthless. It's not helpful to anyone to know that some unspecified event, related to the subject of the article in some unknown way happened in that year. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
132. Support Year links are over-links. --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
133. Support - I was born in 1985; but I don't think I deserve having my birthday listed in 1985. However, noting Kristallnacht in the 1938 article would help show a timeline of what was happening around that time. Fightin' Phillie (talk) 18:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
134. Support. Link years only for very exceptional reasons. Every link must be revelant to the article, something like "read more about that subject", not confusing, not irrelevant. Birth/death dates should not be linked, this is overlinking. The same reasoning I would follow for common terms such as "municipality", "astronomer", "German", etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
135. Support - Per WP:OVERLINK. EdJohnston (talk) 19:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
136. Support. Relevant year links only. Powers 23:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
137. Support - as per day-month linking. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
138. Support Pointless links dilute the value of useful links and are distracting. Johnuniq (talk) 02:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
139. Support In nearly all cases, date links are irrelevant and distracting. Exceptions can be made for the few that aren't. Rivertorch (talk) 05:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
140. Support Again per Rivertorch, who appears to be reading my mind.--Aervanath (talk) 05:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
141. Support. I've never followed a year link and found anything of relevance or interest, so they are a waste of time to put in, and dilute hight value links. A few relevant year may benefit from linking, but rarely.YobMod 09:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
142. Support The sea of blue which can be found in some articles is worsened by having irrelevant date links. Only relevant links are useful, and as such only these should be highlighted in blue. See WP:OVERLINK -m-i-k-e-y- 11:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
143. Support. Year links should be done at most to year articles on specific subjects. −Woodstone (talk) 11:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
144. Support, pretty much for the same reasons as supporting Option #1 on month/day links. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
145. Support too many articles linked to a specific year, and that makes "what links here" link useless --NullSpace (talk) 15:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
146. Support, per WP:OVERLINK: "...avoid cluttering the page with obvious, redundant and useless links.". --Rosiestep (talk) 17:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
147. Support, since there was no option for "Never link a year". "World War II (1942)" or "US films of 1942" are linkable. "1942" is hardly ever. --Alvestrand (talk) 18:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
148. Support. Seems the most reasonable option: Don't link years that are just factual timeline markers, which is by far the most common. Optionally link years if the year article provides relevant context. Esobocinski (talk) 20:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
149. Support. Link years only when necessary for context or usefulness, as we do for everything else. I really wonder why this was controversial all these years. Steve 22:08, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
150. Support – While some editors might interpret this rule more loosely than others (such as using various "rationals" to support the linking of all years in an article), a formatting change is needed to reduce link density and irrelevance. In addition, piped year links, such as ], are useful to readers. momoricks (make my day) 01:21, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
151. Support - As per Months and Days. Relevance isn't a difficult thing to determine with years. Australian Matt (talk) 02:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
152. Support - All links must be relevant for users. Cacycle (talk) 02:34, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
153. Support - relevant links can prevent overlinking. MathCool10 04:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I support Option #2 (Option #1 plus birth/death years, etc)

1. Again, this seems the best solution for readers of the article, with further discussion probably required to determine the exact circumstances where year links should be allowed and/or encouraged. I would rank the options 2,4,1,3. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Support. Years are much more often relevant than month, day articles and should generally be linked to provide chronological context where relevant. I would rank the options 2,4,1,3. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

   Support, birth years, death years should all be tied together in some way. dm (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC) Switched to option 4 dm (talk) 06:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

   Support. Say yes to global historical context. -- Earle Martin 08:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC) Changing to option 4; however, this is the only non-4 option that makes sense. -- Earle Martin 11:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

3. Support. Like date links, years should not be linked to unless relevant. Unlike date links, however, there is some relevance to being able to quickly find out what else happened the year that someone was born or died. YLee (talk) 09:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Support I would like birth dates to be linked. Reywas92 14:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Support. As a reader, I rather like having birth dates etc linked, and I know some who are fairly obsessed with it. Every "On this day ..." speaks to the popularity of this kind of link. — the Sidhekin (talk) 15:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Support. As a long-time fan of printed almanacs, I like this option best. — Bellhalla (talk) 15:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Support This has been the practice on Misplaced Pages before the controversial change to the MoS last summer; & as Bellhalla notes, these are of demonstrable interest to many of our users. (And, in the spirit of Eluchil404's note above, I would be inclined to vote with option #1 if it weren't for the fact I can't assume good faith that this is simply a way to eliminate year-linking completely by then arguing there are no relevant years which justify a link. So my first alternative to this would be #4 -- eliminate the section entirely.) -- llywrch (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Support davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Support per llywrch --Cybercobra (talk) 19:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Not too bothered really, but I think it is better when the days & months are linked.
11. Support, But only for certain dates (like birth and death) I am going to be the apparent oddball here and say that I think that overlinking is bad but there is nothing wrong with linking the dates the first time, or maybe even twice if one is an infobox and 1 is in the article itself. We have to remember that WP is not a paper encyclopedia, it is a 4 dimensional online encylclopedia that allows pages to be "linked" to other pages. I alot of folks have argued that it adds little value to them, but if I am reading an article and want to look at the date why should I have to type it in to go see it. Also, if we are going to remove links to dates then should we also consider deleting the date articles themselves, we are going to get quite a few orphaned date articles of we remove all links.--Kumioko (talk) 20:20, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Support. I would be inclined to vote with option #1 but I suspect that would be too heavily weighted towards elimating all year-links. I don't think all births and deaths should be year-linked, but the etc would provide some help for the pro-link argument in specific cases. CS 20:55, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
13. I also support option 4. 1000% support of Gavia immer's comment above. AKAF (talk) 07:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
14. Support with reservations: what I'd really prefer is #1 without the "don't link birth and death years" language. Gareth McCaughan (talk)
15. Support: as another commenter said above, just say yes to global historical concept. -- The Anome (talk) 01:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
16. Support: Birth and death years can be helpful for providing a quick historical context. — D. Wo. 06:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
17. Support, by reference to the usual content of the years' own articles, which are heavy on b/d. David Brooks (talk) 17:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
18. Support, first choice. #1 is second choice for me. – Quadell 20:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
19. Support, birth/death years should be linked when historical context is relevant. — Xavier, 21:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
20. Support - Again, seems the most sensible way to go about it, giving relevant links for readers to follow. Colds7ream (talk) 07:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
21. Why is there not a duplicate of this option above in regards to month-day linking? neways, i support this because, again, it provides great level of depth to the non-paper encyclopedia. Addtionally, while the "you can use Search" arguement might work with search terms like March 2 (regional differences being ignored), if I wanted to find events that happened in the year 105 i would likely get a multitude of false positives i'd have to wade through. Again, not all years should be linked, but any that are extremely important in regards to the subject are potentially linkable. -- ΖαππερΝαππερ _Alexandria 08:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
22. Support I would like WP:Popups or some other script to allow me to go to a year page for any year (which might be easier if there was the autoformatting meta data present), but in general excessive irrelevant visible links is bad. Mark Hurd (talk) 02:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
23. Support Although a link to decade, era or similar might be better than the year article for birthyears. Taemyr (talk) 06:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
24. Support Birth and death dates are relevant and really should be included in option 1 to begin with (especially when the people listed are already on the linked year page) - Mgm| 10:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
25. Support Birth and death years certainly seem "relevant" in any case. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 13:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
26. Support To me, birth/death years are relevant links. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
27. Support Birth/death years of people, organisations, etc are relevant links. -Arb. (talk) 22:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
28. Support I would prefer that users have the option to see all dates linked, including years, via some improved version of the date autoformatting/autolinking software — but I think something like option 2 should be the default. I think date/birth years are always relevant to a person, so I don't actually distinguish between this option and option 1. --Sapphic (talk) 06:16, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I support Option #3 (link all on first occurrence)

1. This is how everything else is linked, I don't see why years should be treated any differently.-Jeff 00:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
2. As above, I think it should be like this, it can be interesting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dottydotdot (talk • contribs)
3. Support Lets give the readers as many opportunities to find new information as possible, relevance is subjective and secondary. Unomi (talk) 16:51, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
4. strong Support. Year links give access to have an overview about what happened around a certain date. This is relatively important while doing research, because this can add (historical) background information for those who which to know more about what happened at a certain time, what events might have also influenced public opinion etc. Also, what is relevant to one may be unrelevant to someboedy else... How do you want to determine what is relevant or what is not? For me, these links are relevant since they give the opportunity to find and discover other interesting articles better than any other feature. Old Death (talk) 21:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I support Option #4 (removal of guidance)

1. Strongly support. All links are required to be relevant and helpful to the reader. what more do we need to say about these? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:32, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
   • This is the only way to ensure that date links are treated like other links. I observe that, despite the successful campaign to remove this objective from this poll, this equality has received support from support for all forms of language.
   • Even #3 has been read to impose restraints on date links which do not apply to other links, as in These comments. #1 and #2 have been used to justify extreme and sweeeping removals.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:41, 30 March 2009
2. Yes please; take as much as possible out of the hands of the hands of the people who made this clusterfuck in the first place. Mr.Z-man 01:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Support. I agree that years have been linked too much, but option #1 is over-reacting; on the other hand option #3 is silly (who would make any link in "Retrieved on 30 March 2009" at the end of a citation?). Option #2 is sane in principle, but the word seminal remembers me more of sperm than of anything which has anything to do with hypertextual links. The point is, I would make links if the historic context when something happened is relevant: I wouldn't link to 1824 in "However, there is no formula for general quintic equations over the rationals in terms of radicals; this is known as the Abel–Ruffini theorem, first published in 1824, which was one of the first applications of group theory in algebra": that theorem could have been published in 1624, or in 1924, and that would make no difference to the point being made about quintic equations. But I don't think I would be able to put down in words all the rules I would use to decide when a link to a year is relevant: I know it when I see it. This issue is best left to editors' common sense than to blind application of a list of rules. (FWIW, my preferences are 4-2-3-1 in decreasing order.) ---A. di M. (talk) 09:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Support As above, incl. metadata commentary and options. billinghurst (talk) 10:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Support MOS should not be dictating content decisions to editors (and really, even style issues per Requests for arbitration/Jguk), so all such language should be removed. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Support Anything more than this will result in overcorrection. Wrad (talk) 17:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Strong 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 strongly oppose #1 and #2, and think #3 is too arbitrary. ···日本穣 19:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Support. I find these proposals CREEPY. This is much more than when to use italic text or in what way bullet points should be used in an article. This is about links, the fundamental infrastructure of the web and the connections between articles on Misplaced Pages. Whether or not a specific date article requires a link is not the point, such a blanket guideline is too much and it'd be better handled on a case by case basis. --Bill  20:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
9. I also support option 2. 1000% support of Gavia immer's comment above. AKAF (talk) 07:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Support Let the editors maintain control over what is and isn't relevant. bots do enough as it is — Ched ~ /_© 21:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Support We need exactly one rule for when to use links, dates are not special. When I click on a link I expect useful information in the context of what I am reading. Use dated categories to serve the purpose of linking in time similar events and can be specific to the type of article. --NrDg 00:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Support Many dates require linking, regardless. Infoboxes look much nicer when dates are highlighted. Hence, I support #4. Daniel Benfield (talk) 01:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
13. Support It just doesn't matter so let people do what they want. hulmem (talk) 03:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
14. Support Switched from option 2 as per Pmanderson. It's the only way to be sure.dm (talk) 06:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
15. Support. Switched from option 2 as well. Date links are not special. -- Earle Martin 11:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
16. Support removal of all guidance (changed from option 1). This whole issue reeks of WP:CREEP and WP:BIKESHED. Editors can make their own decisions. I would always choose Option #1's logic, but don't feel that this justifies having a written guideline for it. This whole tempest in a teapot is reminiscent of people getting hot and bothered about the correct dash to use. When we hit the WP:DEADLINE, we can clean up the little stuff before we send it to the printers. SDY (talk) 15:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
17. Strong support. Let's rid the MoS of such useless naval-gazing. Physchim62 (talk) 19:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
18. Strong support fewer rules=good J04n(talk page) 01:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
19. BAM! The Man has too much power. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 09:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
20. Strong support I really agree with J04n's comment that fewer rules=good. With Misplaced Pages edited by many contributors, with different ideas of appropriateness, imposing one Procrustean solution is stupid. -- BRG (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
21. Support Let editors determine appropriate implementation at the article or project level. Content discussions are not under the purview of MOS. --guyzero | talk 20:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
22. Support Editors should be allowed to link particularly important years to provide readers with background information about the events that occurred in that year, in order to better contextualize the current article's subject. Option 1 appears to disallow this; option 2 focuses on birth and death dates, which are the least relevant when talking about the events in a person's life; option 3 dilutes the value of year links. This leaves only option 4 for me. AxelBoldt (talk) 03:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Other comments

• Only Option 1 will be some assurance there will not be a 'sea of blue' on each article. Ohconfucius (talk) 23:27, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
• Both options 2 and 4 require additional interpretation to determine their meaning, even though I consider them the only marginally acceptable forms. Furthermore, option 1 is mis-titled; it should read "link to only (presently) relevant year articles". Where "link to only relevant years" would appear in the spectrum from option 1 to option 3 would also be a subject for discussion. (All these proposals explicitly amend WP:OVERLINK as well as WP:MOSLINK, so comments referring to WP:OVERLINK may be irrelevant.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:54, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
• You may take my "per WP:OVERLINK" comment above to mean that I support the current consensus version of this guideline and think the dilution effect of adding links which are valueless on a random basis throughout our articles to cause far more harm than benefit to our users. Thus I am in favor of retaining the guidance against adding low value links which year articles surely are. --John (talk) 00:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• To repeat what I said at the month/day question: Requiring voters to pick exactly one option is broken. It's possible for a rational person to find two options generally acceptable, and at least one option unacceptable, and this format essentially requires voters to pick one of their preferred options at random and hope that everyone with identical properties picks exactly the same way rather than splitting down the middle. An Acceptable/Unacceptable vote for each choice would have been far better. — Gavia immer (talk) 06:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I think making this a questionaire with multiple choices would make it very difficult to interpret the outcome. Also, it would open up for the critique that people should ideally weight their votings; this would obviously make the process extremely complicated. This is a poll. There, I think you should make only one choice (as in votings in democracies). Whether the poll is designed good enough is another issue, but note that it is the outcome of a long and terribly heated process. So the fact that a poll has been designed by parties who can, how shall I put it, be quite disrespectful towards each other, is quite remarkable.--HJensen, talk 09:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• I wonder how people used years links in one way or the other to do something? Were they useful to you? How did you go about? <<"site:wikipedia.en" to a google search for years>> doesn't strike me as particularly convenient way. -- User:Docu
• Everyone please have a look at 1345, 1346, and 1347 for examples of how some year articles have been improved. 1929 is currently undergoing improvement. Wrad (talk) 15:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• I have found a case where, for the life of me, I don't see why the year was not linked: Year Without a Summer. (A list of events for that year would be of understandable interest to a reader: any curious person would want to know how life continued when faced with a massive, world-wide crop failure.) Despite all of the arguments above about year links are useless, the only reason I could understand why 1816 was not linked in that article was due to an ban on links to years without exception. -- llywrch (talk) 16:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Looking at 1816, there is not a single bit of info that is relevant to the aforementioned crop failure. That link should not have been added. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:25, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
    • • As I said above, "any curious person would want to know how life continued when faced with a massive, world-wide crop failure" -- in that case, everything that happened in 1816 is relevant. And if the number & types of activities did not noticeably change, that's relevant too: it proved to be a hardship, not the end of the world as a similar situation was portrayed in Dies the Fire. -- llywrch (talk) 17:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Are you sure you got the right year? Year Without a Summer is in the header; Tambora is the first item in the list of events; at least two others are arguably the product of famine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
      • Two facts that are already in the Year Without a Summer article and two that might be related (though I can't even tell which ones you're referring to). How is that going to help anyone's understanding? Colonies Chris (talk) 09:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • This is why I chose option 4. I think option one is far too prone to an over-reaction against year links. Just treat year links the way you would any other link! That's the whole point of option 1 anyway! Wrad (talk) 17:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • In that article, even "summer" got delinked .. -- User:Docu
    • What would be the point of linking it? Is it likely that anyone reading the article would not know what 'summer' means? Colonies Chris (talk) 09:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
      • I guess you aren't old enough to experience the occasional (& embarrassing) lapse of memory where you are unclear about something you know, & need a helpful prod to get the facts straight. It's not so much that a reader wouldn't know that summer is the warmest season of the year, but may forget (for example) that summer in the Southern Hemisphere falls on different months than in the Northern Hemisphere; July in Portland, Oregon is far warmer than July in Auckland, New Zealand. -- llywrch (talk) 17:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
• Option 1 is mis-titled, since the proposed text is not in fact saying "link only when relevant" but "link only when relevant, and by the way X and Y are not relevant". I would support option 1 if it were less dogmatic about not linking things like birth and death years. Gareth McCaughan (talk) 21:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Good point. I wonder how many people voting for option #1 implicitly assume birth/death dates are relevant links. I guess Wrad is right about the need for another poll on the matter. -- llywrch (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't like overlinking any more than the next guy, but I really think that option 4 will lead to editors overreacting. We don't want to kill all year links, and if you have a special guideline for year links that says they can only be linked in X, Y, or Z situations, then people will think: "If year links have a special section, then that means they must be judged more strictly than any other links." I don't think that is what most people supporting the first proposal intend to support. I much prefer option one. Year links need to just quietly slide into the same mass of rules all other links abide by. If we overreact, then we will, I guarantee you, be back in a few months, after several edit wars, having another poll. Wrad (talk) 17:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

• The only issue I see with #4 is that there appears to be a disagreement over when a year is relevant. Some people think birth/death years are relevant; many don't. Some people think a year link is relevant if the article subject is listed at the year article; other's don't. Without some guidance, we're likely to continue to have a lot of edit-warring and talk page disagreements that waste everyone's time. Karanacs (talk) 17:12, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Looks to me, then, like we're doomed to see edit warring with any and all of these options, and we're also doomed to have this poll again in the near future. Wrad (talk) 17:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
• I'm against any year links but there is no such option in the poll. Loosmark (talk) 04:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• Potential insertion of Option 0 moved to talk page. Please discuss there whether that option should be added at this stage or not. Karanacs (talk) 19:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Karanacs: You first changed my vote to another option. Then when I reverted that you deleted my vote. You do not delete my vote. Here it is again. And don't you dare deleting it, changing it or moving it:

I support Option #0 (don't link years)

1: Support - I prefer not linking year numbers at all. If you want to link the year, then do a proper link that more clearly says what it is linking.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• I would support an autoformat feature with automated parsing of plain text. Dates would be input like 2009-04-02 only (no brackets, no functions, no format string). Anything of the form yyyy-mm-dd would be interpreted as a date, unless explicitly escaped. Specific formatting would be applied, based on preferences or environment variables. −Woodstone (talk) 11:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)