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talk:Date formatting and linking poll - Misplaced Pages

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Statistics needed. Cui bono ("Who benefits?")

Statistics needed relating to cui bono (translated as "who benefits?"). Please see: Village pump (technical): How to count number of editors that actually set date preferences? I am amazed that we don't have the information already. Lightmouse (talk) 12:19, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd be very interested to know this too. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 15:32, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

From statistics provided at the Village Pump (link above), it looks like for registered editors only:

  • 7,242,868 have it set to the 'No preference' option
  • 84,787 have it set to the mdy option
  • 72,480 have it set to the dmy option
  • 4,702 have it set to the ymd option
  • 17,876 have it set to the ISO8601 option

Autoformatting is therefore only set for about 2 registered editors out of every 100. The article Misplaced Pages:About says Misplaced Pages has 684 million visitors per year. That implies another factor of 100 i.e. autoformatting set for 2 users out of 10,000. Lightmouse (talk) 12:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

All 48,492,054 registered users benefit from it, plus all the unregistered readers, since autoformatting would ensure consistent date formatting in an article. --Amalthea 14:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
How many of those 7 million editors are actually active? I'd guess only a percentage, possibly less than 10%, are actually active (if you want an actual definition of active; made edits in the past three months and made over 150 edits to article space). If we go with my 10% guesstimate, that's 724,287 active editors; editors who have a preference set consist of 42%. Go find out how many editors are actually active and aren't simply accounts that were created and subsequently abandoned, used for spamming, or blocked trolls abusing anonymous proxies. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:42, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't know how many are active. Nor do I know how activity relates to reading. Nor do I know how setting a preference relates to activity. If you have better evidence, it will be useful to inform the debate. Lightmouse (talk) 17:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Because reader accounts are indistinguishable from sleeper vandal accounts. Active editors and the percentage that use the feature are a better metric for determining how many use the feature. As an aside, I note Cui bono (read the lead of the article) seems to be an assumption of bad faith on your part; it's not like I'm SELLING the Foundation super sekrit code to enable date autoformatting for some lucrative sum of money (or for some other reason besides improving the experience of those who read this encyclopedia). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, according to Special:Statistics there are 160,436 "active users", defined as "users who have performed an action in the last 30 days". So your guesstimate is off by at least one order of magnitude. (I can't understand why it matters, anyway: we're talking about readers, so why would you exclude users who don't edit?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
There's no reliable way to determine how many are readers. Many accounts are created by vandals/trolls and kept as sleeper accounts to be used/discarded at some later date, and there's likely no way to tell the difference between a genuine reader and an account being held for other purposes.. hence my focus on active editors/contributors. This is not to say we shouldn't resolve this for readers (even unregistered readers), but trying to determine what percentage use the feature (again, amongst readers) would be fraught with problems. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
PS: Misplaced Pages:Editing frequency has more detailed data about that, but they date back to last September. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:45, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. Autoformatting doesn't work unless it has been set. Lightmouse (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Not yet, but adding a magic word {{DEFAULTDATEFORMAT}} similar to {{DEFAULTSORT}} would be easy. See also Anomie's support #1 and the comments at rev:48249. --Amalthea 14:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah. You are talking about 'Son Of Autoformatting' which doesn't exist. This section is only about how many people use autoformatting today. Lightmouse (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

This shows the laughably small proportion of registered editors who use the DA. The default is "No preference", and many people wouldn't know about the function or bother to change it. It took me almost a year to realise its existence. It is good that registered editors don't usually choose a preference, since they then see exactly what their readers do. This WYSIWIG situation is the best one for the project and should not be jeapordised by messing around with templates and tags and patches. Tony (talk) 17:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment Lightmouse, no disrespect, but this data is utterly and completely useless without some form of proper analysis. In order for it to have any value at all, you would have to go through and filter out everyone who has registered and then abandoned their account (i.e. vandals with "final warnings"), SPAs who were blocked, dedicated vandals who created dozens, hundreds, or thousands of accounts (Grawp, Serafin, EverybodyHatesChris, and others come to mind, and that's just my experience). Beyond that, the "684 million" figure appears to represent all Misplaced Pages sites, not just the English Misplaced Pages; while EnWiki is by far the largest, you would certainly have to adjust for that. Of that number, can you also identify how many are distinct users? The "2 out of 10 000" is nonsense. --Ckatzspy 20:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

A way to find out the information Lightmouse want would be setting up an array of six counters (one for each of the five possibilities in "Special:Preferences#Date and time", plus one for "not logged in"), and have the rendering engine update the n-th counter each time a HTML page is generated with the n-th preference in effect. Let it run for two weeks or so. As a bonus, numbers will also be weighed according to how many pages each person reads. (Dunno if it's feasible to implement that, though.) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 20:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

We are going through all this to satisfy the whims of 180 thousand editors with preferences out of 7 million editors and 684 million readers. Arbcom take notice!
According to Alexa 54% of Misplaced Pages traffic is to the English site. For all sites, the United States is the largest source of readers, 22.6% from the US verses 4% from the United Kingdom. (And we allow those Brits to use "colour"!) Here is something to think about. What if the largest source of en.wikipedia.org readers is from the United States, should the default dates follow US customs? -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:04, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
According to Nielson Online, Misplaced Pages had 56 million unique visitors in April 2008. Thats 56 million readers without preferences set verses 180 thousand with preferences. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:32, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
According to Nielson Online, en.wikipedia.org had 56 million unique visitors in April 2008. It appears that around 275 thousand users in the history of Misplaced Pages have set a date preference. It is unknown how many of these people are still active and log in when reading Misplaced Pages. (If you are not logged in, date autoformatting doesn't work.) The best case with these numbers is that 1 out of 200 readers benefits from date autoformatting. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but by Locke's estimate, 90% of registered accounts are inactive, therefore there would clearly be only around 18 thousand active with preferences set :D --RexxS (talk) 23:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, whatever way people try to spin it, all roads lead to one inescapable conclusion: a vanishingly small proportion of users. Tony (talk) 03:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, whatever way people try to spin it, all roads lead to one inescapable conclusion: this is irrelevant, and yet another ploy by those on the other side to minimize the value of something they fiercely oppose. As per usual, all logic and reason have flown out the window for this. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
I've never known a vandal or SPA to bother setting their preference, but obviously your experience differs... —Locke Cole • t • c 04:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
So, Locke, how many vandals or SPAs do you know and how did you tell what preferences they set? Personally, I would have guessed that most inactive users simply stopped editing WP, but who knows? Is there any evidence that inactive users are any more likely or not to have set preferences? Of course not. You brought up the 90/10 inactive/active and I know you are able to accept rational arguments, so why not accept that is the best statistical estimate we can make, absent any other evidence? --RexxS (talk) 14:34, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Locke, if you or anybody else can get statistics on active registered users, please let us know. I started this thread because I wanted data on actual choices made by users rather than opinions. The truth will set us all free. Lightmouse (talk) 10:27, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Oh hell, to have had these statistics when there was the great big hooha when Greg posted that 99.9% of WP users did not/would not benefit... Stats solely on 'registered users' are meaningless because they are but a fraction of all users. These are figures which are clearly inconvenient to certain parties' push for 'son of DA', so I'm hardly surprised at attempts to rubbish it. Most of thes real users don't vote in WP polls about date formatting... Ohconfucius (talk) 16:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Greg was wrong about 99.9%, the number might be as low as 99.5% do not benefit. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 17:36, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Greg was indeed wrong. Only 160,436 out of 9,418,752 registered users are "active" (1.7%) and only 179,845 out of 7,422,713 registered users have set preferences (2.5%). Without further evidence that demonstrates any correlation between activity and setting preferences, the statistically "best" estimate is made by assuming independence. That yields a likeliest estimate of 3,887 active users with preferences set (0.04%) or 99.96% not benefiting. --RexxS (talk) 18:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC) I had a proof that 4,000 benefiting out of 56,000,000 readers gave 99.993% not benefiting but this margin was too small to hold it.
  • So basically, the stats say that approximately 180,000 accounts actually care enough about autoformatting to have turned it on. (We don't know what percentage of this is "active" accounts nor whether this amounts to double-counting of editors due to sock-puppetry/SPA/etc.) That leaves a large, large number of editors who may not mind that other people like autoformatting but who don't consider it important enough to turn the autoformatting on themselves. I wish we'd had those stats at the beginning of the poll. In my opinion, that is such a small percentage of editors and potential editors that it would be difficult to justify adding/keeping any complexity to the editing process. Karanacs (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • These stats are flawed and incorrect. Further, the question is irrelevant because auto formatting could be made to work for all editors. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I completely understand that it could be made to work for all editors. The key point of these statistics is that only a relatively small proportion of readers cares enough about autofomatting to want to turn it on. Why make editing more difficult when most readers don't care enough to use it now? Karanacs (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent talk page posts regarding this RfC - is it canvassing?

This question is for Tony1 and Lightmouse, in light of the objections to Sapphic's recent posts that were described as "canvassing"... recently, I noticed a post of Tony's encouraging another editor - who had previously opposed DA in an earlier poll - to vote in the RfC. As it turns out, that was part of a series of similar messages, samples of which include:

"To get to the point of my message, I notice that you participated in an RFC late last year on date autoformatting, and wrote of clutter in edit-mode. I'm afraid this issue is the subject of another RFC, with a new proposal to add long template strings to edit-mode dates."

"People are overwhelmingly against the blue-link date autoformatting, but now there's a push to add a template string to each date to re-introduce autoformatting for WPian editors who want to select a different dispaly for themselves."

"However, I'm afraid this issue is the subject of another RFC which proposes among other things the addition of long template strings to dates."

"I notice that you participated in an RFC late last year on these matters, and expressed opposition to the concept of date autoformatting and to overlinking... You may wish to make your views known again on this same issue, whatever your opinion now. It's open until Monday, I think"

Further to this, it also appears that Lightmouse has been contacting dozens of editors who have used his date-delinking script (ostensibly people who would already oppose autoformatting) to encourage them to vote. Now, this may or may not be legit - that's up to Ryan to decide - but given the concerns expressed about Sapphic contacting people who had already voted, I'd just like to know why they think this is acceptable. --Ckatzspy 09:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

  • (edit conflict) Pardon me, that is a ridiculous accusation. The injunction was put in place because dispute resolution is in progress. I was asked to tell people about the injunction; I contacted only a few. It would be bizarre to tell someone about the date linking injunction but not to mention the date linking RFC that is intended to resolve the injunction. This is a particularly strange complaint given the demands by your people that Lightmouse place a warning at the top of the script (which he did). FAC and FLC nominators and others need to remove DA on an occasional basis; it is not reasonable to complain when likely users and manual delinkers are warned to be cautious in the light of the injunction. I note that there have been blockings for minor instances of delinking (quite outside the scope of the injunction, but nevertheless in its name). Tony (talk) 17:25, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I think it is also more-than OK to contact Wikipedians who voted in previous RfCs and tell them about this RfC, Ckatz. The only prerequisite is that Wikipedians be contacted equally off a given list, using the same criteria, regardless of how they voted. Scores, if not hundreds, of people voted in the previous RfCs and naively thought that the issue was settled. In fact, they are now all disenfranchised voters.

    It’s hard to know the precise extent to which the arbitrators are considering the previous RfCs, but it is clear that this RfC carries a lot of weight. In fact, according to people like Locke, two out of three of the previous RfCs were fatally flawed and should be completely disregarded. So it is crucial that we get the widest possible participation in this one. It would be manifestly unfair if all those who had participated in the previous RfCs—regardless of whether or not their vote as “for” or “against” on the various issues—were not advised that a strong case was being made here that their previous votes no longer mattered. They need to be told that they must now come here and vote (again) to have any say in the matter. If these editors chose to ignore the invitation, that’s fine. But at least they are making a fully informed decision to turn their backs on this issue.

    Now… I’ve advised both Tony and Lightmouse of precisely this point and they both understand the message. Moreover, they have been contacting Wikipedians out in the open on their talk pages to ensure there is complete transparency. I can’t prove what Sapphic et al. might or might not be up to. But there has been a suspicious pattern to the last handful of “support” votes on autoformatting as evidenced by a curious similarity to the vote comments. Now, over this suspicion, I’m not going to allow myself to get dragged down into a link-fest with you, where you try to seize the moral high ground by citing “failure to assume good faith” and I counter with WP:Snowball. I think you and I both know what’s probably going on here, Ckatz. Greg L (talk) 17:22, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

To Tony: No, it most certainly is not a "ridiculous accusation". You've done something that I felt was questionable, so I'm asking a question about it. Your response does little to ease those concerns, especially given that you were sending essentially the same DA-is-bad-vote-against-it message under such unrelated headings such as "Admiralty Islands, etc.", "Your detailed maintenance work", "Pictures, for once!" and "MilHist article for the Signpost".
To Greg: Greg, your veiled comments aside, it is pretty obvious what is going on here. --Ckatzspy 19:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you, Ckatz: …it is pretty obvious what is going on here. Sure: a bit of what happens in every RfC on Misplaced Pages. All you can do is try to keep the playing field as level as possible and reign in conduct that is beyond the line. And if you take away the effect of the borderline canvassing and Sapphic’s arm-twisting of people who have already voted, the overall effect on the outcome of the RfC is negligible to none. The ratios haven’t changed more than ±2 percentage points since day-one. It’s clear that the community has not requested that Sapphic, UC Bill, et al. come back with a smorgasbord of autoformatting ideas to chose from; far from it, they’ve said “don’t like it—come back two years from now.”

    As I mentioned above, if they want to keep pushing their cool‑beans ideas after this is over, they can do so in a less disruptive fashion; they can just submit their ideas to Misplaced Pages’s Chief Technology Officer. If someone comes up with an idea on how to make it so I.P. users have a preference setting too, or some other improvement that addresses a key community objection, and if our CTO thinks someone has finally come up with something worthy, I’m sure he would be more than pleased to advance it to the community for consideration.

    As for date linking, the RfC results are a cream. I ask that the arbitrators rescind their injunction on bot delinking activity ASAP so we can get the whole of en.Misplaced Pages delinked. The community couldn’t be clearer that links should always be germane and topical to the subject matter. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It most definitely meets the definition of canvassing, and was one of the reasons why I suggested to Ryan that he block all involved for the duration of the RFC. It's unfortunate he didn't heed the suggestion as now these results are tainted by the misbehavior of editors on the other side (editors who already overstate things in their "statements", but now resort to calling out the troops to try and skew discussion further). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:56, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You are soooo predictable, Locke. Tainted: That’s a metric ton of weapons-grade bullonium. Where were you when Sapphic was arm-twisting voters to change their votes? You were conspicuously silent. She even bragged about how her arm-twisting worked. This RfC's results have been 59/41 ±1 against delimiting all along. Deal with it. Greg L (talk) 04:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Continuing discussion is not "arm twisting", and what Sapphic was doing doesn't meet the definition of canvassing (unlike what's been done here). Tony and company, on the other hand, are trying to vote stack this by soliciting !votes from people they know will vote their way (people who haven't voted at all yet, unlike Sapphic, who merely contacted editors after the fact to discuss things further with them). No sir, you have only your compatriots to blame for tainting this RFC, and I sincerely hope ArbCom sees this disruption for what it is and acts accordingly (since none of you seem willing to back down from disruptive behavior or personal attacks). —Locke Cole • t • c 04:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Locke, you can claim "tainted" all you want, but the public opinion will drown you out. It is very simple: The community has clearly rejected date linking and there is at the least no consensus on autoformatting. Go ahead, cry wolf. Try to start another RfC, and see what happens. "Tony and company" won't have to do anything but watch the community angrily put down another attempt to stall the inevitable. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Dabomb87, the results have been tainted by this canvassing. It's unfortunate that when a supposed landslide victory on those two points was taking place, Tony and company decided to canvass for additional support. The problem is, the issue of auto formatting is still, at best, no consensus. My personal read is this: there was consensus for auto formatting years ago when the feature was developed and turned on, and that consensus has not been overturned (RFC2 and this RFC (RFC3)) are both showing no consensus; so we remain at the status quo). What that means for those insistent on delinking dates is that you can't do it. You don't have consensus, because delinking dates also removes the auto formatting. Where we need to go from here is to decide if we want to turn off the linking (but leave the formatting) and allow the devs to address the bugs in the auto formatter, or if we want Tony and company to try for another bite at the apple with yet another RFC to try and force their way. Personally I hope ArbCom sees reason here and gives us the former, not the latter... —Locke Cole • t • c 18:30, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
    Locke, there is no consensus either for or against the general concept of autoformatting, but there appears to be a somewhat strong consensus against its current implementation (Dynamic Dates). So I'd propose that for now we just turn Dynamic Dates off (i.e., $wgDynamicDates = false). If and when someone implements a new form of autoformatting, and there is consensus for using it, we'll turn that one on (although, with about 59% opposing the "general concept", it seems quite unlikely to me). --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Trolls using bully tactics dont just restrict themselves to MOSNUM, FAC has a reputation due to the inability of those same trolls to communicate in a reasonable and calm fashion. Sometimes you just have to either walk away or stay and fight. Seddσn 02:42, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I should disclose that I came here after I was emailed to contribute. I'll let the emailer own up. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Lest I be accused of unfair practice, it's clear that I need to provide an explanation. First, I have email contact with many WPians on a regular basis. Naturally, I have discussed the issues of DA and date-fragment linking for some time with wiki-associates. Although Peter and I had not previously emailed, his explicit opinions on his talk page, headed "Date links suck, but at least WP is onto it" and "Don't overlink" had come to my attention some time ago. I believe he has put his vote in perspective in his vote: "I was contacted privately to contribute after expressing an opinion last year, and would not have seen this discussion otherwise". I see that he had indeed voted on this matter already (as many voters have pointed out with a degree of irritation). In this case, there was every reason for us to communicate as WPians, since we are fellow countrymen and share strong beliefs on a number of issues, some of them pertaining here.
In the interests of openness, I have mentioned the poll as part of larger communication with seven users who have now voted; these are all people I would have communicated with about other matters; in particular, the FAC Delegate, User:SandyGeorgia, asked me last week to hunt for copy-editors to assist with the FAC process (I have regular contact with FAC and FLC nominators, on- and off-wiki). Two of the seven have responded on my talk page, here and here. In all seven cases, I warned of the need to exercise caution in unlinking, per the injunction. FA nominators often unlink, and are largely unaware of the injunction. It is bizarre that even a mention of an open poll on the same issue should be an offence.
I think this is far more reasonable than Sapphic's aggressive canvassing on wiki and no doubt off wiki, in which one user even responded by asking whether there is a "do not spam" template. By contrast, my communications were small in number, polite (extremely so), involved other matters, and were non-partisan. I do not believe my actions constitute unfair practice, unlike the attempts of Sapphic (and possibly other users) to change editors' votes. Tony (talk) 16:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Tony, be realistic about what was going on. The posts clearly show that you were making a direct appeal to people who held the same view as you did with respect to the poll, in an attempt to pull in more votes for your position. Why is it that you expect Sapphic to follow one standard, yet you hold yourself to a different one? --Ckatzspy 17:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, Ckatz, what started this was Sapphic’s stunt of going straight to people who voted “oppose” on autoformatting and trying to get them to change their vote. I will stipulate that what she did isn’t “canvassing” as defined by Misplaced Pages, but it was clearly intended to influence the results of the RfC in one particular direction. There shouldn’t have to be an explicit rule covering everything.

    But I agree with you that we don’t need to have any conduct that could undermine the legitimacy of this RfC. The RfC results have held steady at about 59% “oppose” and 41% “for”, ±1.5% for the entire duration of the RfC.

    It’s now 4:30 AM Sydney time (Tony’s time) and he’s gone to bed. I strongly encouraged him that if he wakes up before the RfC ends six hours from now, to stay out of anything related to this RfC until it’s over—completely off Misplaced Pages if he can. He agreed to abide by that restriction.

    I hope we can have some squeaky clean behavior from all parties for the last six hours? Greg L (talk) 18:31, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Unfortunately at this point it's irrelevant. The entire thing has been called in to question, after all, how do we know the canvassing is just a recent thing? That it's happened at all makes me wonder if canvassing wasn't happening earlier in the RFC, or perhaps before it even began. And it's frustrating that these good faith efforts to try and resolve this continue to be disrupted by the same group of people. As for Sapphic, well I've said it enough places, but why not one more: what she did was, in my view, entirely appropriate. Discussion is good, obviously it's best if the discussion is performed on the actual RFC, but Ryan seemed to want to avoid threaded discussions, so direct contact was the next best thing. But all of her communications, as far as I am aware, were on-wiki; totally transparent, and not an attempt to undermine the process (just continue it through discussion). What Lightmouse and Tony have done is not in the spirit of good faith discussion and instead seem intent on skewing the results their way. This is disruptive, pure and simple. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, we know what you want: To call the whole RfC into question and claim we need a whole ’nother RfC. Ain’t gonna happen. You sound exactly like Thunderbird2 and his arguments about how incivility invalidated previous RfCs so there needed to be continued discussion of the matter. No there doesn’t. Not in the case of our going back to “mebibyte”, and not with regard to date linking. In case you haven’t been keeping score, the community has consistently been tossing date linking and autformatting on its ear. It’s the end. All the double-bracketed date links have got to go. The community has clearly spoken enough times already. Greg L (talk) 18:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Perhaps we need to reduce the scope here. As I pointed out somewhere else, it's clear that the canvassing has been focused on autoformatting, as evidenced by the 2:1 ratio of votes on date autoformatting to date linking. Perhaps, if we must have another RfC (or a "Phase 2"), we should concentrate on autoformatting, and make the questions more detailed. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I will not participate in another RFC until the conclusion of the arbitration case. The editors who consistently disrupt these discussions must be dealt with before anything resembling reasonable discussion can occur. And another RFC will just be another opportunity for Tony/Lightmouse to engage in stealth canvassing to try and stack the vote again. No, the ArbCom case needs to go to voting and hopefully remedies there will make it possible to discuss this again some time in the future without the disruption. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:54, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Then we have found a common complaint. I, just as much as you (although for different reasons), want to see the case closed and finished. For whatever reason, ARBCOM seems to be taking unusually long on this one. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You don't understand Greg. I'm not trying to call it in to question, it is called in to question. What's been done cannot be undone, and the results of this RFC are irrevocably tainted. I'm not even interested in another RFC, because I expect the parties will simply engage in this stealth canvassing more carefully next time. I think the arbitration committee needs to start voting on sanctions on these disruptive editors, and only then we might be able to move forward with reasonable discussion. As for the rest of your comment... more garbage. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:50, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I see. Greg L (talk) 19:06, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Like Dabomb87 wrote, the RfC results regarding deprecating date linking was an utter slaughter. The past RfCs made that clear. This one did too. No amount of canvassing could possibly have influenced this RfC’s outcome on linking. And, more importantly, no canvassing has even been alleged with regard to date delinking, much less proven. Just because you can write a metric ton of weapons-grade bullonium about how the Arbitration Committee should disregard the RfC results with regard to date delinking, your arguments have to pass the ol’ *grin test*, which they don’t. Greg L (talk) 19:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Since Locke decided to repeat the same bollocks here as he wrote on Lightmouse's talk page, I repost this for everyone's benefit: "Campaigning is an attempt to sway the person reading the message, through the use of non-neutral tone, wording, or intent." (bold type my emphasis) Notwithstanding the voters' awareness of the poll, all the people contacted by her were on the 'oppose' side, and although some of the posts started off being neutral, others were not - some of the follow-ups were not neutral and could be considered 'badgering' those contacted to change their vote. As to there being "absolutely nothing wrong with what Sapphic was doing": nothing at all wrong my foot. Ohconfucius (talk) 19:20, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • We have had 4 RFC on date linking and formatting; all have shown the community does not want a sea of blue links. The results are not what Locke desired so every RFC was disruptive, confusing, tainted, stacked, and so on. We need to have a continuous stream of RFCs until one reaches Locke's desired results. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Just my perspective: yes, Tony emailed me. I would have preferred it if he had instead used my Talk page (which is open for anyone to see). If he had used my Talk page I would certainly have seen it. Although my User page says I'm on a break for Misplaced Pages, a look at my contributions will show that I've been unable to stay away :), with edits to 12 different articles over 6 different days during the time of the RfC. Despite this level of WP usage, I was unaware that the RfC was happening - if there was a banner at the top of the WP main page, I missed it. So while I think canvassing is a bad thing, I am nevertheless glad I was notified. As probably would be most contributors to earlier discussions, both for and against. I think the solution is, for future date-formatting-related RfCs, for a bot to automatically notify (via their Talk pages) all contributors to previous related discussions. Peter Ballard (talk) 00:58, 14 April 2009 (UTC) (Fixed 2nd sentence Peter Ballard (talk) 01:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC))
  • ROTFL. Thanks, Swtpc - I haven't been so tickled in quite a while. I'm sure plenty of people will support that automated voting scheme so we can be done with this nonsense perpetuated by arbs and clerks lacking cojones. Haha! We will need a naming convention just for the date-linking RfCs alone. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Closing time?

The heading reads:

"The poll runs from 00:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC) and concludes 23:59, 13 April 2009 (UTC)".

It may now be 13 April 2009 UTC (GMT), but is it 23:59 yet?

My date stamp below reads 06:56 (UTC).

(By the way, best wishes for Easter, Passover and whatever other spring holidays editors may be celebrating.)

—— Shakescene (talk) 06:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey! Poll has closed early! Why can't I vote? Peter Ballard (talk) 07:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
It was supposed to run for 2 weeks, so the cut off should have been 23:59, 12 April. Given I made a mistake with the dates, we'll leave it open for another day. Ryan Postlethwaite 09:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Canvassing

If anyone's been contacted off wiki about this poll, please contact me either by email or on my talk. Please don't post any emails on-wiki. Ryan Postlethwaite 16:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Resolution

Since there isn’t a snowball’s chance of radical turn in the RfC results, here are my observations:

Date linking

There is a clear consensus on date linking in this RfC. The wording the community prefers (both “Option #1”s) should now go into MOSNUM. The injunction against bot activity should be lifted because the bot’’s activity is clearly in compliance with MOSNUM.

While Lightbot does good work in general, I think the task descriptions need improvement. I'm surprised that the existing language made it through the approval process. All of those "may add, remove, or modify" items are essentially blank checks, unless conditions are specified to define when these actions take place. The same goes for the "will make other edits" with the "these will usually be..." qualifications. This language effectively authorizes the bot to sometimes do the unusual, without any constraints other than the operator's good judgment. If anyone objects to questionable or controversial results, it's too easy to defend the activities as "approved behavior". I'd rather see something along the lines of "Dates will be unlinked under the following conditions: (1) ... (2) ... (3)..." and "Dates will not be unlinked if any of the following are true: (1) ... (2) ... (3)..." and provide examples. I wouldn't rush to turn the bots back on until these activities are better defined. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Lightbot had a 100% success ratio in forty, randomly selected articles. See here for the results on twenty of those, where it demonstrated 0% false positives on ten articles that should left untouched, and 0% false negatives on ten articles that should have been delinked. Since there are millions of links, a bot is the only way to tackle something of this magnitude. The few false positives that Lightbot does goof on are easy enough to correct and pale in comparison to manually going in and delinking all those dates. Greg L (talk) 01:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Autoformatting

The old autoformatting method was deprecated in December. The RfC results on autoformatting has held steady with 57–60% saying they aren’t interested in new autoformatting ideas. Far from being consensus for autoformatting, it is a rejection of it. If Cole, UC Bill, Sapphic, or someone else wants to push some new kind of autoformatting (curly brackets with template names, magic words, whatever) they should first come up with something new that addresses the concerns of the community. Central to those concerns are that date linking isn’’t perceived as a problem worth the fuss. That sentiment is repeated over and over again in the RfC.

So, if they want to push some fussy ideas for autoformatting, it had better at least be something really good, like giving I.P. users the same benefits. Further, the current parties to the ArbCom should be enjoined from proposing autoformatting solutions to the community and starting RfCs on the subject for one full year. If the enjoined party is a developer, prohibited activities would include simply flat making behind-the-scenes changes to the way Misplaced Pages works for a year. I believe one year is the limit of the scope of decisions for ArbComs. Thereafter, the pro-formatting crowd can have their ideas vetted by Misplaced Pages’s Chief Technology Officer, Brion Vibber, to get permission to pitch or post their latest autoformatting ideas to the community. Greg L (talk) 19:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus that dates should only be linked when relevant. The clear majority is opposed to autoformatting. One important fact surfaced in this RFC, only about 200 thousand editors have ever set a date preference compared to more than 50 million readers that visit en.wikipidia.org each month. Since the consensus is to remove excessive date links, there is no need to maintain the autoformatting scheme that is used by less the 0.5% of Misplaced Pages readers. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
FYI, any supposed ratio is not a "fact" until someone produces a proper analysis of all relevant data. What has been repeatedly presented is just a meaningless series of numbers based on some data and a lot of speculation. --Ckatzspy 21:27, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • That’s simple, Ckatz. I’m busy. We can have Locke do the analysis and tell us what the true summary facts are regarding community consensus. Alternatively, maybe we might leave that up to the ArbCom members. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be appropriate to define what the "relevant" data is. Then we can ask the developers to run the queries for us. Considering that the numbers on the autoformatting side are not quite as lopsided as had been hoped, having the extra data might be very useful. Would editors, especially those on the "pro-autoformatting" camp, be willing to list the types of statistics they'd like to see on autoformatting? Karanacs (talk) 21:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
The Nielson Company has measured audiences for decades and they report that English Misplaced Pages had 55.8 million unique viewers in April 2008. There have been 48,492,054 named accounts the history of Misplaced Pages. That sets the upper limit of readers with date preferences at less than 17%. The number of registered users that have ever set a date preference is about 275,000. That has an upper limit of 0.49%. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 22:09, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia has some more measurements based on data from comScore. English Misplaced Pages had 140.7 million unique viewers in September 2008 and 41 thousand editors made 5+ edits that month. Lots of readers, small number of editors. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
That would set the upper limit at 0.03%. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • There’s the numbers I was looking for. Thanks SWTPC6800. I’ve long said that there was no point using autoformatting to benefit registered editors when it is of no use to 99.9% of our readership. In fact, autoformatting does no good for 99.97% of our readership. Absurd. Greg L (talk) 01:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Dates should be linked if key to the article. Therefore bot delinking should not continue and it should be accepted that the process requires human editors to make a concious choice about relavence to the article not a turbo charged bot without an ounce of clue. 86.132.128.230 (talk) 23:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • To I.P. user from London: We already had that discussion. Scientifically. The error rate of Lightbot in complying with these new guidelines was zero false positives. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • To 86.132.128.230: The point is that bots allow for a "clean slate" approach to date linking. After the dates have been unlinked, human editors can make conscious choices in order to link the relevant dates. It is too much work to manually unlink the enormous number of dates that currently have been linked purely because it seemed like a good idea at the time. By the way, can you give some examples of "relevant" dates? (this RfC demonstrated that it isn't even clear cut as to whether the community wants dates of birth and death to be linked).  HWV258  00:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Raw Results

I believe these may be the final tallies:

Date autoformatting

Sup: 209 : 40.1%
Opp: 287 : 55.1%
Neu: 25 : 4.8%
TOT: 521

Day-month linking

Op1: 256 : 79.0%
Op2: 18 : 5.6%
Op3: 8 : 2.5%
Op4: 42 : 13.0%
TOT: 324

Year linking

Op1: 208 : 71.2%
Op2: 41 : 14.0%
Op3: 6 : 2.1%
Op4: 37 : 12.7%
TOT: 292

--RexxS (talk) 00:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Partly implemented

I've partly implemented the results of the poll. Option 1 for month-day and year linking had by far the greatest support so I've added it into Misplaced Pages:Linking and Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Datestempprotectedsection. I think this should be fairly uncontroversial - the results aren't ambiguous at all. There's still the autoformatting issue and I'm thinking how to handle it. Ryan Postlethwaite 10:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Good. Personally, rather than duplicating the text, in WP:MOSNUM I would just write:

==== Linking and autoformatting of dates ====
Dates should not be linked purely for the purpose of autoformatting (even though in the past this was considered desirable). They should only be linked when the linked article is germane and topical to the subject, per Misplaced Pages:Linking#Chronological items.

So, as far as linking is concerned, the second stage of the RfC should just ask how excessive links should removed (essentially, whether to use bots to do that). As for autoformatting, since many people supporting the "general concept" appear to oppose its current implementation, question #1 should read:

Do you support the de-activation of the Dynamic Dates feature, which autoformats linked dates? If accepted, this will be implemented by adding $wgDynamicDates = false to the configuration file, and will have the effect that date links will be rendered as any other link, regardless of user preferences.

A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 11:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Autoformatting

I've just been having a discussion with a sysadmin regarding autoformatting and the poll. There is no consensus to use the {{#format}} autoformatting style (consensus against it infact) and the current method of autoformatting by looking for linked dates can no longer continue because dates aren't going to be linked. We're therefore left with no other options for autoformatting at present. Would everyone agree that autoformatting is not viable at this stage in time given the result of the poll? I'm willing at this stage to file a bug to have it turned off completely (i.e. removed from preferences). Ryan Postlethwaite 11:20, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Ryan, please implement Sapphic's proposal, which amounts to disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php, not disabling date preferences entirely, as they're used for things other than DynamicDates) and barring the opponents of autoformatting that are named in the ArbCom case from interfering in any future discussions to develop a new software replacement. --169.229.149.174 (talk) 15:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Interesting post above. Nnow it seems there is a distinction between dynamic dates and user preferences not widely known about, which could/should be elaborated upon. Ohconfucius (talk) 15:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Date preferences apply to the "last modified" date at the bottom of pages, as well as other places. I'm not sure where the other places are, honestly, and don't particularly care. Other people brought it up below. It doesn't have anything to do with dates in articles, doesn't impact editing of articles in any way, and doesn't have anything to do with DynamicDates.

Be careful of wording such as "interfering in any future discussions to develop a new software replacement". Opponents of a system have a right to a seat at the table in discussions - perhaps some of their objections could be satisfied; if not, they can still work as a devil's advocate to make sure that nothing is proposed that could cause a greater burden on editors. It's always wise to get a wide variety of opinions to create the best possible specification. Otherwise, it is more likely that any proposal will get derailed quickly in the first poll. Karanacs (talk) 15:38, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Opponents of autoformatting have no reason to participate in developing new software, though if they want to contribute constructively they're perfectly welcome (any such development discussions will occur on this site anyway) although the named parties in the ArbCom case have actively disrupted the development process in the past and there is every reason to believe they'll do so in the future. Those particular people should be banned from any discussion on date autoformatting software. Anyone who disrupts the process should be similarly warned by ArbCom, or blocked.

I strongly oppose removing the date format option from preferences. It is necessary to get readable dates in page histories, watchlists, edit diffs and so forth, and it was never disclosed during this poll that the absence of autoformatting in articles would also result in date preferences disappearing from the rest of the user interface. You cannot use the people who complained about the existence of article markup for dates (let alone those many who based their opposition on not wanting dates to be linked) as support for not letting us have YYYY-MM-DD dates in lists. What will be next, forcing times in watchlists to be displayed in Florida time because timezones are confusing? –Henning Makholm (talk) 11:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
You know, I give up. Go for it. Never mind that there's already evidence that canvassing has occurred, let's just use these (now flawed) results anyways. You have my blessing Ryan, auto formatting should never have been turned on in the first place. Clearly Misplaced Pages is also flawed, and we should take the entire site down and use print instead. I'm sure we'll be there soon enough if we keep removing features only possible online. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have elaborated. I'm looking into the canvassing privately - At this stage, I don't think the results would have been too different but I'm not doing anything until I know for sure how many emails were sent and who by. Ryan Postlethwaite 11:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I doubt you'll honestly ever know how many were sent, it's unlikely those who canvassed will be forthcoming with exact details (and even if they are, given the secrecy used, is it really likely they'd tell you the truth; it's not to their benefit at this stage). As to recipients, again, depending on how important this is to them, it's unlikely they'd be willing to "out" the person who canvassed them. My faith in Misplaced Pages as a project is severely shaken by this, and I don't believe good faith efforts are at all possible in an environment where this conduct is rewarded (as you are doing here). —Locke Cole • t • c 11:53, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
You seem to be shooting the messenger here. I think it is the community you should 'blame' for not delivering what you wanted. Ohconfucius (talk) 12:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Not at all. The community that showed up could be made up of a large number of people contacted by Tony, Lightmouse or even you. I was interested in what a real sampling of the community thought on these issues, not what a group of people selected and contacted by Tony/Lightmouse thought. —Locke Cole • t • c 12:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I've written a short essay on this here. —Locke Cole • t • c 12:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm glad common sense has finally prevailed, and I am sure the community will heave a huge sigh of relief that this is not the start of more RfCs. As to Locke's reply, it's a shame it has come to this. I would say it has been clear to me since before December the consensus view about not wanting a technical solution to a problem which few believe exists, and which benefits few. Nevertheless, I would salute Locke's tenacity. Ohconfucius (talk) 11:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
To Locke Cole. If you were truly interested what a real sampling of the community thought on these issues, neither yourself nor Tony should have been involved. A random sample of all registered editors, as well as of regular IP editors should have been invited. That is the problem and the reason why Misplaced Pages is not a democracy and why polling is evil. You are not likely to get a true sample of the community ever, as you are most likely to get a sample of editors who are more than averagely interested in the topic in hand. In this case a rather technical solution, so you were more likely to get an overrepresentation of editors interested in technical solutions and thus the likelihood you would get a "support" in your sample while the idea was not supported in the larger community at all. (Trust me, I know what I am talking about, I am statistics and methods teacher at university)
If you would use this as a vote, we are no longer talking (random) sampling but a true representation by the Wiki population (community). In that case the turnout of this poll (approx 500 on 7 Million registered editors) is lower than 1 in 10,000. Any democratic election with this kind of turnout would be called ridiculous. Hence the vote can at best be an indication of the feelings of the community and should not be seen as a vote of the community.
I also disagree with Ryan Postlethwaites original assessment that there is consensus against adoption as there is a rather modest majority against, which is something else entirely than consensus.
So in that light, the (supposed) canvassing is only one problem with the sampling. Arnoutf (talk) 12:16, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that neither Tony or myself (or anyone else closely involved with the subject) should have been allowed to be involved, hence why I suggested this long before the RFC opened. Unfortunately my request was not heeded, and here we are... —Locke Cole • t • c 12:25, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I think getting in a representative and unbiased sample of all Misplaced Pages editors would be the most difficult issue here. But some of the problems might have been prevented if your suggestions had been followed. There is nothing in the Misplaced Pages project however that could have made that so. Arnoutf (talk) 12:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
The simple truth is that people who don't care about the issue don't vote. Therefore, we basically miss the opinions of the most moderate of our editors, and get those who feel more strongly about the issue and tend to polarise a discussion. In the case of a poll, of course, polarisation is encouraged; look at how few the neutral votes are. It's inevitable—the sample will never be representative unless the subject is so important as to convince a large chunk of Wikipedians to participate. I doubt this is such a subject. Waltham, The Duke of 14:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Only 157,493 users have made any edit in the last 30 days (see Special:Statistics). And there aren't anywhere near 9,424,769 distinct persons registered to Misplaced Pages. There are people having used thousands of sockpuppets, people who left Misplaced Pages and then came back with another username (including me), etc. So the "lower than 1 in 10,000" is irrelevant. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 13:26, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I suggest that you read what I wrote carefully. Li'l ol' me a bit cynical? It beats your previous attempt to mislead by a factor of 30. Pray, remind me who said "there are lies, damn lies and statistics"? Ohconfucius (talk) 14:37, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Nobody knows for sure, but the statement is most frequenty attributed to Disraeli. But you do have a point I only took the number provided somewhere above in the discussion without checking them myself, or even looking whehter they were at all likely; not very methodologically sound, I agree; as for many things statistics lives and dies with the GIGO principle. Arnoutf (talk) 14:44, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Same reply I guess goes for the 'why 30 days' question - its what numbers the query generated. Possibly 90 days would be more indicative as to the "real" level of editor activity... Ohconfucius (talk) 14:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • The date formatting is visible to all Misplaced Pages readers. Depending on which professional web measurement is used, English Misplaced Pages has between 50 and 150 million unique visitors each month. What samples size is needed for 100 million readers? -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 16:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
And only 286 viewed my article on Model Rocketry (magazine). -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 16:36, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • It is not as much the sample size as the sample composition that is the problem. In this case people with a strong opinion about the topic are overrepresented (by many magnitudes). My statement is that such a sample is likely to overrepresent supporters (as they are most likely to have been involved and most likely to know of this debate). Locke Cole states that, within the already biased towards strong opinion sample, the opponents are overrepresented because of the supposed canvassing. Both claims cannot be supported by facts as we don't know all Wikipedians. It is in my opinion very likely though that the sample is not representative of the larger community. Arnoutf (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

The overall majority against auto-formatting may not have been overwhelming enough for all to comfortably interpret as consensus, but this is only half the picture. Not all of those supporting the principle are in favour of the proposed new style, and indeed some are against it, while by definition all who are against the principle are also rejecting said new style. Therefore, the adoption of the style has been arguably defeated with a much greater majority than the principle of auto-formatting, easily large enough to be considered a consensus. In conjunction with the second and third questions, which are clearly against universal linking of dates and years, Mr Postlethwaite has correctly stated that there is only one viable course of action right now. I am not sure about special pages, logs, and statistics (I'd never thought of that until now), but on regular Misplaced Pages pages auto-formatting should be turned off.

Balancing different needs is an integral element of any large and complex system involving great numbers of people, and we all know Misplaced Pages is no exception. The debate on date auto-formatting has shown how hard this thing can sometimes be. No matter how great or small the majority of one side, some people will invariably be disappointed. Many fine colleagues have spent significant time and effort and made great arguments to support their case. I know how disappointing it is to see such efforts failing to achieve the desired effect, but my honourable colleagues can take heart at the fact that no matter what the poll's outcome, many of those arguments continue to ring true, and indeed, there is always the possibility to re-examine the matter in the future, if and when sufficiently sophisticated technical means are developed to address the objections now raised against auto-formatting in general.

I haven't participated nearly as much as I had wanted to in the long debate that preceded this poll, but that's just as well—the auto-formatting issue may have been over-analysed, and I don't think I am the only one to see the end of it with relief. It has generated much tension and drained significant resources, and although this is to be expected of such discussions, their duration should not be over-extended. Now we can put this behind us and close the cycle that started six years ago. We have seen how it is to have the feature; let us now see how it will be the other way. And with this in mind, take a breath and move on towards other endeavours. There are always vandals to fight, statements to source, and typos to correct, the familiar tasks Misplaced Pages's continued improvement depends on. Little will change now. Uninvolved editors may notice a few differences. Most readers will never know. Waltham, The Duke of 14:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Ryan, whatever the interpretation of the result, the better solution lies in encouraging or discouraging behaviour, rather than in software changes. First off, any software changes would have to be confined to EnWiki, not across all Wikimedia sites. Second, disabling the "Preferences" option would affect much more than just autoformatting, as it also controls how dates and times are presented in article histories, watchlists, and other lists. Finally, based on the responses, there appears to be stronger opposition to the method of autoformatting, rather than the concept of it. As such, any move now should not unduly compromise the possibility of introducing a different system should the community support it. Thoughts? --Ckatzspy 20:07, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

That's an important point that I was unaware of until today. I had a suggestion on my talk that disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php) would have the affect of disabling autoformatting of articles without affecting users changing their preferences for article histories e.t.c. Would that be the case? Ryan Postlethwaite 21:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Ryan, the config would appear to enable/disable the feature (per this Mediawiki page). I've no idea how or if it will affect the "formatdate" function. A question, though - is it even necessary to disable the feature? If Arbcom decides that the RfC has not shown support for the use of autoformatting at this point in time, and if the links are proposed to be stripped out anyway, there is no need to actually disable the software feature. This would allow the use of autoformatting (if desired) on personal pages, or perhaps in guidelines or other such pages that are part of the "infrastructure", rather than article space. Thoughts? --Ckatzspy 00:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't affect the {{#formatdate}} parser function. Werdna's patch does make use of the same code, but they're triggered in different ways, and disabling DynamicDates would have no impact on the parser function. There are two good reasons to disable DynamicDates entirely: 1) It would immediately cause all editors to see dates the way anons do, including the inconsistency of format on some pages (which everybody has always acknowledged to be a genuine problem) and 2) It would allow links to dates to work like any normal link, without having to use a strange syntax to avoid triggering the autoformatting. --Sapphic (talk) 00:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • We should just let the bot go back to delinking. The advantage of this is dates like 1941‑12‑07 can be converted into human-readable form by a bot. If we just turn off autoformatting, it would leave these abominations. That’s been the trouble all along with autoformatting: it made *pretty* results for 0.03% of our readership (Locke and a few others) like this:

(Fixed-text preview of what a U.S.-style preference produces)


• After the March 30, 1791 order by the French government instructing the Academy to…

• After Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 the U.S. Congress on…

…but 99.97% of our readership (these are authenticated numbers) have long been looking this crap:

(Fixed-text preview of what all regular I.P. users see)


• After the March 30, 1791 order by the French government instructing the Academy to…

• After Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on 1941-12-07 the U.S. Congress on…

Back in December, we started fixing all of this with Lightbot but Locke put a halt to it. We had it all figured out. We weren’t going to fool around providing custom content for registered editors; they could look at what everyone else sees. The community consensus in December was clear enough for this and the injunction against Lightbot needs to be lifted so it can continue its magic. Even though these proceedings have taken on an apparent importance of letting North Korea have a nuclear reactor, it’s not. Just let us get back to doing what we were doing before Locke claimed that all past RfCs were horribly flawed. The only RfC he will ever think is correct is the one that gives him what he wants. I think bot delinking is far preferable to just turning off date autoformatting. It is most beneficial to those for whom we have really been authoring Misplaced Pages: the rest of the world, not use privileged few.
The solution for the ArbCom is simple here:
  1. Rescind the injunction on Lightbot activity,
  2. Enjoin the pro-autoformatting crowd from pushing autoformatting for one year,
  3. And when they do come back, have their ideas vetted by Wikipeida’s CTO before advancing their ideas to the community for consideration.
Greg L (talk) 23:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
But if Dynamic Dates is disabled, then everybody will see this crap:

• After the March 30, 1791 order by the French government instructing the Academy to…

• After Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on 1941-12-07 the U.S. Congress on…

Many fewer people will oppose the unlinking of dates, then. As a bonus, these few dates which will be linked won't need to be coded as ] in order for all readers to see them the same way. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 00:26, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Greg: Nobody is suggesting that DynamicDates be turned off instead of delinking, they're suggesting that both things should be done (if either is.) Leaving DynamicDates turned on will require editors to jump through extra hoops to link dates that should be linked, because they'll have to write dates as either ] or ] instead of the simpler ]. That doesn't benefit anybody. DynamicDates can be turned off right away, which will let all editors see dates the way anonymous users currently do — which will help make more editors aware of the inconsistent format in many articles. Please stop fighting every single thing your "opponents" suggest, simply for the sake of fighting it — in this case, the people who have opposed your plans are actually helping to implement them in an orderly fashion, since that's better than the alternative. --Sapphic (talk) 00:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Like I often say: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. If you know how to clearly help Ryan and the rest of the ArbCom to carry out the wishes of the community, then I accede to your expertise. Lead away. Greg L (talk) 01:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • P.S. As A. di M. wrote above (and the point I was trying to make), is that if DynamicDates is turned off, there could be a period of real crap on Misplaced Pages. Really, Lightmouse and his bots have been doing an extraordinary job keeping Misplaced Pages a much better place. Lightbot does so much housekeeping, it’s nearly impossible to describe it all. The guy has been dumped on a bunch throughout this ArbCom and many an editor would have said “you can take this (volunteer) job and shove it.” We are lucky he didn’t just bail. We really need his input to coordinate on how long it would take for Lightbot to go through Misplaced Pages and deprecate the links. We just don’t want to have DynamicDates turned off if it’s going to take a week or two for Lightbot (operated by the man) to do its thing. As I’ve mentioned before, the error rate on Lightbot, on a sample of 40 articles was 0% false positives and 0% false negatives. If I am seeing this issue correctly, Sapphic, then please coordinate with Lightmouse. Greg L (talk) 01:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Ryan: It would be nice if we didn’t have to start watching Sapphic’s and Lightmouse’s talk pages to see what is being discussed on these techno‑issues. Others, such as A. di M. have a hell of a lot better insight into the technobabble than you or I do and it will be a lot easier on all of us if we can all participate at one venue. I ask that you please formally “unbanish” Lightmouse and invite him to speak to the technical issues here on this page. Does that sound reasonable, given the task ahead? Greg L (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Greg, A. di M.'s point was that if DynamicDates is turned off, registered users will see things the same way as anons do now. It won't affect anons (or anyone with "no preference" set) one way or the other if it's turned off. There's no "mess" created by turning it off now. ..and the error rate for Lightbot was a lot higher than 0% — there were numerous complaints of delinking things like image filenames that contained a date, etc. that were all errors. I tend to think bots should really have a 0% error rate before they're allowed.. but since I hope to be using a bot to put markup back around the dates at some later point anyway, I'd rather have that bot judged by the same (more lenient) standards that Lightbot is now. Anyway, the real issue with using a bot to delink isn't going to be mistakes, it's going to be disagreements over which dates are relevant to the article. --Sapphic (talk) 02:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC)