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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sssoul (talk | contribs) at 04:50, 22 April 2009 (→Turning date linking off in one fell swoop: pass the caffeine). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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• WT:DATEPOLL

Raw Results

I believe these may be the final tallies:

Date autoformatting

Day-month linking

Year linking

--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)

Now, when will we have a final decision and the injunction against date delinking be lifted? RainbowOfLight 07:18, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't agree with Ryan's analysis. Option 1's subtitle should be added; which would make the second sentence "They should only be linked when the subject of the linked article is germane and topical to the subject." I find less than 50% of the year voters have a clear vote for option 1 as written. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:19, 17 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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.149.174 (talk • contribs)

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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.149.174 (talk • contribs)

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)

• Indeed, that would put participation rate at a more respectable 1:300. Ohconfucius (talk) 13:34, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

• Bit cynical Ohconfucius to call a turnout rate of 0.3% respectable. (BTW why a 30 day limit?) Arnoutf (talk) 13:40, 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)

• Yes, Ryan. Your and the ArbCom’s decision is the correct one. Greg L (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Action plan

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? --Ckatz_spy 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? --Ckatz_spy 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)

• I thought that was the point I was trying to make, A. di M. Greg L (talk) 01:59, 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)

• Yes. Brain fart. It just looks like crap for registered editors, which is no worse than what I see all the time since I leave my date preferences turned off to ensure I see what I.P. users see.

  I didn’t say that Lightbot’s error rate was 0% across a wider population of articles; I wrote that “on a sample of 40 articles was 0% false positives and 0% false negatives.” That is a true fact. My point is that there are literally millions of dates to be addressed. A bot is the only practical way to address this. Our tests showed that it left links alone in intrinsically chronological articles. It’s not like there is going to be a complete disaster if there are some false positives; the date would be there but no longer linked. It’s not the end of the world when this happens and one can always hit the link. Still, we need to keep the number of occurrences as low as possible.

  I would suggest that we just ask Lightmouse to delink, say, a hundred articles and wait for feedback. Tweak his bot if necessary, and then try, say, a thousand articles. Once it’s error rate is as low as the technology allows or is acceptable by normal community standards, then let it rip. Greg L (talk) 02:29, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Someone please explain this to me: What would turning off DynamicDates do to this: September 1. Would it leave the link but not autoformat it? Would turning off DynamicDates unlink it too? My reading above is that it would be that latter one. How can that be good? Articles like 1985 contain hundreds of linked dates and those are, by agreement, supposed to stay linked. What am I missing here? Greg L (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• As I understand it, turning off dynamic dates would stop the use of date links for autoformatting purposes. The square brackets would then function as they do on any piece of text. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:26, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• That makes sense, Ohconfucius. In which case, like Sapphic said, we clearly need to do both: 1) Turn off DynamicDates, which handily addresses the autoformatting issue. And, 2) to implement the community’s wishes on the linking of dates (icky poo in most cases), we simply must get Lightbot back into the saddle; there are far too many links to manually shake a stick at. I think I’ve captured the logical approach here. Yes?

  As I wrote above, we don’t have to have Lightbot soar through Misplaced Pages like an A‑10 through a tank column; we just ask Lightmouse to delink, say, a hundred articles and wait for feedback. Tweak his bot if necessary, and then try, say, a thousand articles. Once it’s error rate is as low as the technology allows or is acceptable by normal community standards, then let it rip. Greg L (talk) 03:46, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I completely agree with Greg that Lightmouse has been shat on from a great height throughout this whole affair, and we really should give him a break. I am not saying that we should let Lightbot completely loose, but a limited trial on a clearly defined sample would be a good way to go. As sapphic is interested in the potential for bot action, perhaps she could help improve Lightbot's functionality and eliminate false positives/negatives - that way, a small modification of the code may be sufficient to swing the function into a different gear to apply necessary markup when the time comes. Also, Lightbot could be used on categories of articles to unify all date formats and insert {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}} tags on each article it has passed through for future default display formats. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Your suggestion that Sapphic and Lightmouse could collaborate sounds interesting. Greg L (talk) 03:46, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I just realized I'm not at all familiar with what Lightbot had been doing, and was referring to the script which was (I think) written by Lightmouse. Maybe Lightbot really was operating with a 0% error rate.. I don't know. In any event, I don't think the error rate is going to be at all significant in comparison to the disputes over relevancy. A lot of people (though still a minority) consider birth/death dates to be relevant, and so I think you're going to encounter a significant amount of opposition if those are delinked en-masse. There will probably be opposition all across the board by people who think dates are relevant.

I would suggest letting Lightbot (or any bot for that matter, if somebody else wants to write one) start delinking all linked dates (except ones that are piped and/or colon-prefixed, since somebody presumably did that on purpose and thus the linking wasn't there to trigger autoformatting) and then be very conservative in re-de-linking any dates that people re-link. In fact, I'd suggest that if somebody re-links a date that has been delinked, and they do so based on the argument that the link is relevant (and not just because they're trying to cling to the — now genuinely disabled — autoformatting) then the link should be left linked (for now.) It's just not worth the arguments. The questionable links can be revisited after the "heavy lifting" of mass delinking has been completed. (Note that this is not a call for the pro-linkers to go ahead and undo all the delinking; obvious gaming of the system should be met with administrative action.)

I'd be happy to help with any bot programming, although I'd probably be of more use in generating "work lists" from analysis of Misplaced Pages database (XML) dumpfiles, since that's more my area of expertise. I do know regular expressions pretty well though, so if the bot needs any debugging in that area, I could certainly help. --Sapphic (talk) 04:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• • I think we would be looking to completely delink on a first pass, combined with a no-go list for Lightbot, especially where notifications/complaints have been received. Also, there was a discussion a while back on WT:MOSNUM which was adjourned to Lightmouse's talk page where we discussed how Lightbot could potentially work by crawling already tagged articles and recording in a dump file the number of inconsistent date instances within an article requiring manual treatment. These are ideas which have started, and were stopped because of the Arbcom case. Now, perhaps some of these can be resumed. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
• Hopefully, Ryan will invite Lightmouse to weigh in here now. It seems there is a lot of programming smarts that, if combined into a team effort, could benefit Misplaced Pages. Greg L (talk) 04:08, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
• "There will probably be opposition all across the board by people who think dates are relevant"—remember that over 100,000 pages were delinked during Nov. 2008 alone—with proportionally trivial residual issues. An updated bot-comment will help explain the process, and will (hopefully) provide people with a link supplying a deeper explanation of what is happening.  HWV258  04:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought that those who specifically wanted birth/death dates linked would have voted for "Year option 2", but maybe not. Nevertheless, I still see people confusing the year of a person's birth with the wikipedia article bearing the title of that year. The actual year is relevant to the person; but the article with that title is almost invariably irrelevant for the purposes of option 1. Until we clear this piece of obfuscation out of the debate, this will remain a bone of contention. --RexxS (talk) 16:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Please don't start in with the annoying rhetoric again. The "proportionally trivial residual issues" include the past five months of argument, blocks, and ArbCom case, and several polls — in which a significant portion (over 40%) of respondents indicated that they'd rather keep autoformatting in its entirety. A good real life friend of mine (that many of you also liked or at least respected, given some of the comments left on his talk page) also got so fed up with the "process" here as a result that he's most likely left the project for good. So stop trivializing the number or importance of the people who disagree with you. I'm not claiming that it's going to be some overwhelming number — but if even 1% of the active editors disagree over whether a date link is relevant or not, that's still much higher than the probable error rate of a well-written bot (which I'm assuming Lightbot is.) With regards to the relevancy of birth/death dates, the percentage is even higher (though still very much in the minority.) People are going to complain about the delinking; the issue is finding a reasonable way of dealing with that situation. Being dismissive is not the way to handle it. --Sapphic (talk) 04:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Let's not get too worked up, I believe HWV was only referring to the incidence of specific individual complaints purely on the articles delinked. Of course it's always a shame that good editors leave the project, but I do not believe the comments were to denigrate or justify the departures or label them as "trivial", as you seem to have read it.Ohconfucius (talk) 04:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I have little idea of what you're talking about, and the facts are plain for everyone to see. In regards date-delinking, everything was going exceedingly smoothly before one editor (who pretended to speak for an entire sub-community) dragged us all through this mess. It has been a draining and harrowing experience for us who have been involved in the entire journey of this debacle. But the community has vindicated our stance. If you spend the time to investigate the results of the enormous bot activity last year you will understand that there are two distinct phases at play: the process that happened before the RfCs, and the process during the RfCs. Your comments above clearly refer to the RfC debates, whereas my post refers to the pre-RfC process. In no way was I "dismissive"—quite the contrary in that I'm pointing out how the bot edit comment needs to be adapted to point out the support of overwhelming community consensus. Also, could you please not order people around with bold text—I'm surprised you haven't realised by now that it has the exact opposite effect you're after. Greg_L is quite correct: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" (bolding tactfully removed).  HWV258  05:01, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Reply to Sapphic (talk) 02:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC) above: Actually, it's not as simple as "if DynamicDates is turned off, registered users will see things the same way as anons do now": DynamicDates also affects anons and "no preference" users: for example, it adds a comma and a space in April 152009 or 200915 April, removes the comma from 15 April, 2009, makes the single pair-of-double-brackets 2009-04-15 into two links instead than the single 2009-04-15, and maybe something else I'm not aware of. So the short term conseguences would be crappy (April 152009), but I don't consider that a downside. If an article contains some crap like April 152009, then as soon as someone with more than about fifteen spare seconds reads it, they will fix it, and I don't think anyone will oppose that. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 09:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, that was one of the advantages we were talking about if DA was switched off. We exlist a potential 7 million pairs of hands to sort out the mis-formatted dates. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:56, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The other thing that Dynamic Dates seems to do, in HTML terms, is to wrap the <a href > link in a <span class="mw-formatted-date" title= > tag. I don't know if that is used for anything else, so I'd suggest taking a short period where all the ramifications can be anticipated before the switch-off. --RexxS (talk) 16:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Clearly, we shouldn’t be turning DynamicDates off; it will instantly turn Misplaced Pages’s dates into a mass of ungodly ugliness. The proper way to do this is to go back to what we were doing before we got dragged here kicking and screaming into ArbCom and yet another RfC: let Lightbot unlink dates, which takes care of the overlinking and the attendant autoformatting in one step. The bot is smart enough to not unlink a single date in articles like 1985 and to de‑link the “15 April” from here in Politics of Turkmenistan.

  As I wrote above, we don’t have to have Lightbot soar through Misplaced Pages like an A‑10 through a tank column; we just ask Lightmouse to have Lightbot delink, say, a hundred articles and wait for feedback. He can then do any necessary tweaks and then try, say, a thousand articles. Once it’s error rate is as low as the technology allows or is acceptable by normal community standards, then let it rip. Greg L (talk) 16:56, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Greg L, i'm struggling to understand what's brought you back to "we shouldn’t be turning Dynamic Dates off". what seems clearly sensible is letting Lightbot get back to work and turning off Dynamic Dates (naturally as RexxS notes all the ramifications of turning it off need to be considered first). if delinking is done without turning off Dynamic Dates, the dates that do remain linked (in Lightbot's "no-go zone", and dates re-linked on purpose after the bot run) will be autoformatted, and why should they be, when there's no consensus for it?? meanwhile, if the "ungodly ugliness" you anticipate becomes visible only when Lightbot removes the links, i fear the long-suffering Lightmouse will be fielding miles of unfounded complaints that his bot is causing it. if the way dates are entered is really "ungodly ugly" i say let that be visible before Lightbot does its rounds. as you've often noted, we need to see it in order to fix it. Sssoul (talk) 17:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Sssoul, please read A. di M.’s 09:36, 15 April post, above. If what he says is true, DynamicDates also affects anons and “no preference” users (in addition to “Registered & Preferenced” editors). DynamicDates does more than just flip things around; it adds commas and bifurcates the month-day and the year into two separate links. So until Lightbot can catch up, this code: ], would be seen by everyone like this April 152009. Logged‑in, Preferences‑set editors would no longer see either April 15, 2009 or 15 April 2009 they used to see. Even I.P. users (99.97% of our readership) would no longer see what we used to consider as ugly: 2009‑04‑15; they too (everyone) would see April 152009. This is clearly no good at all.

  The proper thing to do is just (carefully) go back to what we were doing before: delink dates. The community is quite clear that unless one is in an intrinsically chronological article, such as April or 1985, which may contain lots of linked dates, date are to be very rarely linked. WP:MOSNUM is now clear on this issue.

  By leaving DynamicDates turned on, we won’t be upsetting the apple cart in articles like April or 1985. As I wrote above, we don’t have to have Lightbot soar through Misplaced Pages like an A‑10 through a tank column; we just ask Lightmouse to have Lightbot delink, say, a hundred articles and wait for feedback. He can then do any necessary tweaks and then try, say, a thousand articles. Once it’s error rate is as low as the technology allows or is acceptable by normal community standards, then Lightmouse can quicken the pace.

  What Lightbot was doing was somewhat controversial before, because MOSNUM wasn’t definitive and clear on the issue. Now what is and is not to be linked is a settled matter. Moreover, in a test of 40 articles, Lightbot demonstrated that it knew to leave articles like 1985 completely alone, yet it caught every single instance of things like “15 April” here in Politics of Turkmenistan. Lightbot may not yet be perfect, but Lightmouse has always been responsive to community feedback and has quickly tweaked his bot. So it’s just a matter of going slow at first, ensuring Lightbot is as compliant with MOSNUM as Lightmouse can make it, and letting technology go to work. There are far, far too many linked dates to address without using a bot. Greg L (talk) 18:41, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) thanks Greg L, but i feel like you've misunderstood what i wrote. i did read A di M's very interesting post about the "extra" things DD does; and i am thoroughly in favour of bot assistance with delinking. what i'm talking about is turning DD off in addition to getting Lightbot back on the job.

maybe this question will clarify what tree i'm barking up: even if DD is left "on", when Lightbot removes the date links, that will eliminate the DD-related "extras" that A di M pointed out. will Lightbot correct things like April 152009 at the same time as it removes the links?

if it will make that kind of correction, it's easier to see the point in leaving DD on until Lightbot has done its thing. Sssoul (talk) 19:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Removing the link markup while retaining an appropriate date format is a goal while it's delinking. Someone can double check with Lightmouse, but I'm almost positive that it makes these corrections as it delinks. To prevent ugly dates in articles site-wide, I think it would be best to let Lightbot delink and clean first, before turning off DD. —Ost (talk) 20:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Trying to sort out the facts, ma’am

• P.S. If we want to turn DynamicDates off, we should do so after Lightbot has delinked the vast majority of dates and turned them into plain text so the number of dates that might be affected will be greatly minimized. After the major delinking, Lightbot could even go back for a second pass through Misplaced Pages and correct the date‑formatting syntax so that when DynamicDates is turned off, there won’t be any junk like I wrote of, above. I should think it would be a trivial task for Lightbot to translate syntax like ] into syntaxes that will look proper after DynamicDates is turned off.

  I see no need whatsoever to rush into turning off DynamicDates at this juncture. I think some editors here are over‑minimizing the consequences of having so many dates to correct. I see no reason to have some of Misplaced Pages’s articles look poor for months and months as humans chase this stuff down and correct it by hand. That makes no sense to me at all. You don’t put a shotgun in your mouth to blow out a bad tooth; you go from bad to real bad in a hurry. Whatever we do, the objective should be to have the most benign impact for our I.P. users during the transition. Greg L (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

← I think I wasn't clear enough. With Dynamic Dates turned off, date links will work exactly like links to any other article, much like they did before Dynamic Dates was implemented in the first place. ], ] will look like April 15, 2008, ] ] will look like 15 April 2008, ] will look like 2008-04-15, ]] will look like April 152008, and so on. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Are you sure of this A. di M. (Army)? And were you mistaken when you wrote that ] will look like 2008-04-15, which is a broken link? If it is a broken link, that doesn’t sound good. And why did you write this(?):

If true, I see that as unnecessarily disruptive to our I.P. users. Note that I see that date example as April 152009 (linking disabled in this example). Is your date pref turned off? Mine is. Maybe you and I seeing different things here in these posts. Greg L (talk) 19:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes I have set "No preferences". As for the "So the short term ..." sentence, I meant that an ugly coding such as ]] would appear just as the code suggests, namely two links with no space between them. It's very rare compared to ], ], but I have seen it on a couple articles. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 21:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) ... Greg L wrote "After the major delinking, Lightbot could even go back for a second pass through Misplaced Pages and correct the date-formatting syntax so that when DynamicDates is turned off, there won’t be any junk like I wrote of, above." but DD doesn't work on dates that aren't linked - when Lightbot removes the links, the "junk" will be exposed. my point is that i'd rather have the "junk" exposed before Lightbot does its thing, so that there's no risk of people misperceiving Lightbot as *creating* the "junk".

meanwhile i'm surprised if you expect typos like April 152009 to be frequent enough to qualify as "disruptive". you may be right, but they may also not be that common; and in any case they can be corrected by anyone who sees them until Lightbot or its relatives gets around to it. Sssoul (talk) 20:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC) ps: for the record, i've had my date preferences turned off for months.

←

• Quoting you: …but DD doesn't work on dates that aren't linked - when Lightbot removes the links…: Yeah, I know. What I am talking about is that some date forms are particularly nasty for I.P. users. Examine this table:

What I am talking about is the bottom style. That little bastard, even with DynamicDates turned on, produces crap for I.P. users (the 99.97% of our readership referred to as “others” in the far-right column). When DynamicDates is turned off, it seems this style turns into even crappier looking stuff like April 152009 (need to confirm the facts on that one). What I was saying is that IF we want to turn off DynamicDates at some later date, the dates that haven’t been delinked by Lightbot will no longer format. Commas won’t appear. A number of things may happen. We need to get to the exact bottom of the facts (see below). But what I am saying is that after we’ve removed linking from most articlespace, and only our intrinsically chronological articles like 1985 have oodles of linked (and autoformatted) dates, IF we want to turn off DynamicDates (which I still think is unwise), we can first have Lightbot go through and convert dates formatted in the bottom style to dates in one of the two styles immediately above it. Greg L (talk) 20:42, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

ALL: I’m wearing my fingers out using trick aliasiing techniques to over-ride the cursed autoformatting to ensure that everyone sees the same thing when we write examples—even if someone has their date preferences turned on to one setting or another. Maybe all parties participating here can agree to turn off their date preferences so we are certain to all be seeing the same thing?

Short of that, here is “date‑link blue”: <font color="#002BB8"> April 152009 (example date that doesn’t link) </font color>. Maybe that will help. Greg L (talk) 20:12, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Question: Can we setup an example subpage where DynamicDates doesn’t work? If so, I will be more than pleased to contribute some example dates. Greg L (talk) 20:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Or, alternatively, if there is someone who really, fully knows exactly how DynamicDates works, add another column to the above table illustrating “DynamicDates disabled.” Greg L (talk) 20:54, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I really, fully know exactly how DynamicDates works, but AFAICT without it links to dates would work exactly like any other "ordinary" link, and I think I really, fully know exactly how "ordinary links" work. BTW, you can disable DynamicDates on a particular link by adding a colon after the opening brackets ([[:).

--A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 21:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• That seems to make sense now. I can wrap my mind around all of that. Thank you, A. di M., for adding the column to the top table and for adding the bottom mini-table.
  Greg L (talk) 00:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

  So… my point is that we wouldn’t want to disable DynamicDates right out of the gate. Even if Lightbot goes through and delinks 99% of the now‑linked dates in regular articespace, there will still be all those intrinsically chronological articles (1985, and April 15) that Lightbot will leave alone. These articles contain a wide variety of date syntax and three (now) four of the syntaxes don’t take well to having DynamicDates simply turned off. The type shown at the bottom would become a broken link (since it wouldn’t be parsed into its two component links) and two three other date syntaxes would look improper to our I.P. users. That’s no good at all. I simply can not see how it would be wise to have so many dates on Misplaced Pages look like crap (by simply turning off DynamicDates) and having humans chase all these ugly-ass dates down and manually repair them. What the hell(!), that’s what bots are for.

  Before DynamicDates could be turned off, an updated version of Lightbot would have to go through Misplaced Pages (after it’s delinked non‑MOSNUM-compliant dates), find these three four types of date syntax, and put them into a form that will look proper with DynamicDates turned off.

  As I mentioned above, whatever we do, any changes we make to Misplaced Pages should have the most benign impact for our I.P. users during the transition. That should be our main objective here. Dancing and getting drunk on the grave of date autoformatting can wait. As far as I can see, it is clearly best for our readership to leave DynamicDates turned on while Lightbot is let lose to make Misplaced Pages MOSNUM-compliant (assuming Lightmouse doesn’t tell us he’ sick to death of dealing with us. Poor bastard, he’s doing a bunch of the work here and he’s just a volunteer, like everyone else).

  I see the bottom line as this: we can table, for the moment, discussion of turning DynamicDates off, invite Lightmouse back into the fold (after being scolded “naughty naughty–you”) and see if he is willing to do a bunch of heavy lifting to make Misplaced Pages MOSNUM-compliant without being attacked left and right by editors who haven’t known of any of these proceedings but suddenly notice their precious linked dates being delinked. They’ll want to have Lightmouse turned into Soylent Green. There needs to be a decision by the ArbCom instructing that he is supposed to be responsive to legitimate concerns of editors if his bot activity is not in compliance with MOSNUM and/or has unintended behavior. But he also needs to know that he has the community’s backing if some editor flies in and claims that MOSNUM is all screwed up and he wants his linked dates back in his favorite article. No ANI's and no ArbComs. It’s settled. And Lightmouse can go back to providing the service to Misplaced Pages that he has long done (quite well too). Greg L (talk) 22:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

What happened to no polling?

I'm sure we used to have several policies/guidelines/etc. saying we don't decide things by poll. (WP:PNSD, for example.) Stifle (talk) 10:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, given how divisive this dispute has been and numerous RfC's we've already had, we were left with little option than to have a poll. With the greatest respect Stifle, this has been advertised for months and the poll concluded on Sunday - why wait till now to voice your concern? Ryan Postlethwaite 11:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it is rather worth considering that that this was more than just a poll. The instruction at the top of each section was "Please indicate your vote under ONE option, accompanied by a concise explanation for your choice. Your explanation is important in determining the community consensus." By asking for an explanation of contributors' choice, it can be seen as half-way house to an RfC, without the distraction of having threaded responses. I actually think this style has some benefits over a full-blown RfC, particularly where the focus is on determining consensus on specific, narrowly-defined issues. --RexxS (talk) 15:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I was just interested in knowing. I like voting, myself; it's much cleaner. Stifle (talk) 08:32, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Autoformatting - take II

I wouldn't mind a little help here to get things worked through. What is clear is that dates are no longer going to be routinely linked (at this stage, I'm not wishing to look at how dates will be mass unlinked, but I'll look at this later as it's an important point). With dates not being routinely linked, autoformatting will not work correctly. A major problem is that the majority of dates that aren't linked won't be autoformatted, but the few that are will be autoformatted - that's something that I suspect most would believe is unacceptable. However, the autoformatting of dates in article histories and logs is still required. What I want to know is the options we have. Would disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php) lead to autoformatting being stopped in articles, whilst leaving the option to change date preferences in article histories and logs intact? Ryan Postlethwaite 21:48, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I think your concerns are addressed in my 22:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC) post, above. As to getting de-linked dates properly formated in fixed text, that is something Lightbot automatically does. Greg L (talk) 22:39, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Date autoformatting is not considered desirable by a majority of Wikipedians, but a significant minority of opinions expressed are interested in its potential. Linked dates are despised by an overwhelming majority of Wikipedians. I'm coming around to Greg's suggestion that delinking first followed by switching off Dynamic Dates would be the path of least disruption to giving the community what it wants within as short a timeframs as is possible/reasonable.

  BTW, I'm just assuming the discussion here is based on an informed view of the functionality of Dynamic Dates. If a more authoritative input is required, then let's take the time to get it before switching it off. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Bug filed

With a great deal of thanks to MZMcBride, I finally managed to get disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php) tested on a private wiki. The results are good - autoformatting of article text is disabled, whilst date preferences in article histories/logs are left intact. I've therefore gone and filed a bug here to make the change. Please keep discussion here, so to avoid filling the bug request up with threaded discussion and I'll link from the bug to here. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Where can we look at the results of what you are talking about? Are you saying that all the date formats shown in the big table, above, look OK simply by turning DynamicDates off? Greg L (talk) 22:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I would like to have access to this (or a similarly serving) test wiki. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • No, but the vast majority of dates are fine. If there are any that are broken, they can be fixed manually. This isn't something we need to worry a lot about. By far the greatest number of linked dates are in the format 15 April or April 15. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
    • About how long will it take for this request to be actioned upon? Dabomb87 (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
      • Most probably quite a long time - hence why I've got it in early. Although it could be quick - it's really hard to tell. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• With regard to turning off DynamicDates: I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Ryan. I’ve only got about two hours where I think I understand some of the ramifications. Anyway… What about date de-linking?? The community consensus on that issue couldn’t be clearer. With millions of linked dates, only a bot can handle it. What’s the plan? Greg L (talk) 23:18, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed, I'll get to that in the morning - That's going to be part two of the discussion as the autoformatting is close to being resolved. I'm about to go to bed, so it'll give me time to think. Hope that's ok. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:20, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent). Well, from Bill Clark’s reaction on the Bugzilla, he has a firm grasp of the risks. He sounds to be someone with wherewithal, as he will be gathering statistics on just how many of the above junk-style formats will be junked with this move. I especially liked his quick grasp of the big picture at the end: I expect to have that list ready later tonight, at which point a decision could be made to either fix those pages before disabling DynamicDates, or that the problem isn't widespread enough to be concerned with (since bots will be starting delinking of ALL lesser-relevant dates soon anyway. Sweet. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Tcncv's table

Below is what I believe may be a fair demonstration of the before and after effect of setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false on both well and poorly formatted dates. Many of these examples are contrived and some look just as bad either way. Best viewed with date preferences set to none. Feel free to add examples if needed.

Code	Recognized	Before	After
]]	Y	15 April2009	15 April2009
] ]	Y	15 April 2009	15 April 2009
],]	Y	15 April,2009	15 April,2009
], ]	Y	15 April, 2009	15 April, 2009
]]	Y	April 152009	April 152009
] ]	Y	April 15 2009	April 15 2009
],]	Y	April 15,2009	April 15,2009
], ]	Y	April 15, 2009	April 15, 2009
]	Y	2009-04-15	2009-04-15
]-]	Y	2009-04-15	2009-04-15
]]	N	200904-15	200904-15
] ]	N	2009 04-15	2009 04-15
] - ]	N	2009 - 04-15	2009 - 04-15
]]	Y	2009April 15	2009April 15
] ]	Y	2009 April 15	2009 April 15
],]	Y	2009,April 15	2009,April 15
], ]	Y	2009, April 15	2009, April 15
] , ]	Y	2009 , 15 April	2009 , 15 April
]	Y	15 April	15 April
]	Y	April 15	April 15
] ,]	Y	15 April ,2009	15 April ,2009
] , ]	Y	15 April , 2009	15 April , 2009
]··]	Y	15 April 2009	15 April 2009
]··,··]	Y	15 April , 2009	15 April , 2009
],,]	YN†	15 April,,2009	15 April,,2009
] ]	YN†	15 April 2009	15 April 2009
], ]	YN†	15 April, 2009	15 April, 2009
Recognized indicates whether or not the coded format is currently recognized and is reformatted. Before shows the current presentation and is dependent on your date preferences. After shows the expected presentation when $wgUseDynamicDates = false. †For these cases, the Day-month part is recognized, but is formatted separately from year.

(I suspect LightMouse can script a fix for these cases in next to no time.) -- Tcncv (talk) 00:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

…and back to our regularly scheduled programming

• Thank you very much for you list, Tcncv: Items #1, 3, 5, and 7 appear to me that they should be rather common on Misplaced Pages. We will have to await Bill Clark’s statistics to be sure just how common they are. I will certainly have a difficult time understanding the rush to turn off DynamicDates if instances of those four types prove as common as I suspect they might be.

  It would make much more sense to leave DynamicDates alone until after bots have deleted unnecessary links. Then we will have the opportunity of having a bot go through and revise the syntax on these. Changing, for instance, ]] to ] ] would be trivial for a bot, and it could do so fast. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. I’m an engineer. This conservative, stepped approach is least disruptive to our I.P. users and is how things would be handled in "the real world" of engineering. Greg L (talk) 01:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• Well, I now understand why DD wasn't turned off back in December after the two marathin RfCs. It's also good to know that UC Bill (Bill Clark) hasn't bailed out on us totally. Based on current knowledge, I would still be inclined to support swithing off DD immediately. Unfortunately, the only person who is able to tell us in detail how Lightbot works, cannot.

  In my travels, I have found that formatting errors are rife throughout WP. I already see many of those abominations because I have my preferences disabled. While there are a majority of correctly formatted dates, there is a significant incidence of errors which Lightmouse's scripts work to address. However, Lightbot nor the scripts touch any ISO date formats, nor any of the more weird and wonder permutations such as the ambiguous "12/12/06" and "12-12-06" which also exist across WP. The function was disabled because, I believe, there were a significant number of false positives - most frequently with web links and image names. This may be a significant challenge because the vast majority of references/footnotes I have come across use the ISO format in part or in full. Although MOSNUM guides us to use a uniform date format within the body of an article, the issue of harmonising date links to include footnotes may still need to be discussed. It seems that switching off DD would lead to some red-linked ISO dates, which some editors may be inclined to fix rather than simply remove. Incidentally, I use the code written by Lightmouse in my own script, and need to review all the changes to weed out those false positives.

  Another issue which isn't addressed by Lightbot is the inconsistent date formats. It is a bot, and as such is unable to determine the rule as to whether dmy or mdy should apply. However, the monobook scripts perform that function under human supervision/discretion, and can be applied to categories in semi-automated mode in conjunction with AWB. I think there may still be false negatives when running the script, but false positives are now few and far between because the script has been continuously revised following error reports from users. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• I added a few more examples above. It appears that the current date formatting process handles any number of spaces and at most one comma between the day-month and year parts, replacing whatever it finds with a single space or comma-space combination, depending on selected format. --Tcncv (talk) 02:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• I have actually seen most of those forms manifest, so it's not contrived. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Wait a minute. Quoting you, Ohconfucius: It's also good to know that UC Bill (Bill Clark) hasn't bailed out on us totally. Do I understand this correctly? If Bill Clark, the individual who responded to Ryan’s Bugzilla 18479 and pledged to come back soon with more statistics, is, in turn, UC Bill, who is a the puppetmaster of Sapphic, who is under an indefinite block, then it appears we are in a rather awkward working relationship with Bill Clark, who is UC Bill, who is now also blocked for other sockpuppetry violations, particularly a threat using an account known Wclark xoom. Misplaced Pages is one odd place. And I’ve worked in odd places before. I don’t think I would ever want to be an admin. Greg L (talk) 06:37, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• Well <wiping a bit of egg off face>, that was before I became aware of the sockpuppetry which was 'UC Sapphic'. 'His' anger and disruption are clearly no longer welcome here. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:55, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• Confirmed. We will need luck and a large amount of goodwill on Sapphic’s part to obtain date syntax statistics from “Bill Clark.” The Wclark_xoom account that was blocked as a sockpuppet of Sapphic/UC Bill is the e‑mail address (wclark@xoom.org) of the “Bill Clark” upon whom we are/were waiting upon for statistics in Ryan’s Bugzilla #18479. XOOM (from the account Wclark_xoom and from wclark@xoom.org) is a web‑hosting service and Sapphic made a series of edits to that article. I believe the truest identity of this individual is female—the one that does yoga and pilates—and is best described by the profile that used to be on the userpage of “Sapphic” (aka Bill Clark, UC Bill, I.P. User:169.229.149.174, Wclark_xoom, and the e-mail wclark@xoom.org).

  I would be mildly surprised if Sapphic provides us further statistics on Ryan’s bugzilla given the latest events (a series of permanent or indefinite bans). Do we have someone else who can step up to the plate and provide statistical information as to whether problematical date syntaxes shown in Tcncv’s above table are rare or common?

  Or can we use the ol’ *grin test* and intuition to advance an assessment as to whether or not it would be a wise thing to first (maybe ever) shut DynamicDates down? I should think that the date syntax that generates April 152009 ought to be extraordinarily common. I can see no reason at all to cause so many dates to break. I, frankly, am quite skeptical that it would be a good thing to turn off DynamicDates before a bot can first clean this up (even though doing so anyway might be emotionally appealing at some levels).

  Frankly, I’m not catching on with how turning off DynamicDates can be all that appealing; doing so doesn’t get rid of any of the links (other than to turn a few of the blue ones into broken red ones), it just makes many of the dates look incorrectly written, and still others to become essentially unreadable. Come on guys. Lose (most of the links), and keep the blue-linked dates that remain looking half-way nice until there is a sensible plan here. Baby steps. You don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Greg L (talk) 15:14, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• How about this profile of Sapphic, before some of the more interesting userboxes (ancestries, UC Berkeley) were removed? Ohconfucius (talk) 02:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

!! <rest pre-emptively self-censored>--Goodmorningworld (talk) 08:32, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

An important point

The majority of people don't have date preferences set. We're worrying what will happen to the people that have date preferences set, well we should thing of what's happening right now. If a date is linked as 2009-04-15, then the majority of users see a red link - it's already broken and will stay broken if dynamic dates are turned off. These dates need to be fixed regardless of what happens to dynamic dates and it shouldn't effect our thinking at all here. Ryan Postlethwaite 18:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

that's apparently not quite right, Ryan Postlethwaite - according to the discussion above Dynamic Dates masks certain errors - like your example - even for people who don't have preferences set. i don't have preferences set, and i see your example as a healthy blue link; some of the charts above show what i'll see when DD is turned off. a bot can start spotting and fixing those errors even before DD is turned off, and GregL is right that that should start ASAP. (but for me that doesn't mean there's a reason to postpone turning off DD - both things should happen.) Sssoul (talk) 19:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC) Sssoul (talk) 19:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• OK, Sssoul. I see you are pretty much on my side here. Thanks. But I would love to see some explanation from you justifying how turning off DynamicDates right now could possibly be a good thing for our I.P. users and Misplaced Pages. Doing so would obviously generate a bunch of undecipherable and poor-looking dates while bots scramble to clean up the mess. Do you have reasoning that wouldn’t fall under the heading of “I would have a mind‑numbing orgasm when DynamicDates is shut off”?? Greg L (talk) 20:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

smile: okay, i'll try. if DD is kept on, diehards will keep marking up dates just to see them autoformatted; and pages where there are some linked dates and some unlinked dates will look inconsistent to some users (those who have their preferences set to a different format than the fixed-text dates for a given page). meanwhile, you predict that a whole lotta "ungodly ugliness" will be revealed when DD is turned off, but i don't expect it to be too dire. and i trust that the enlisted bots will clean up any ugliness really quickly, and will be given thanks & praises, which they'll enjoy. 8)

in short, as noted above: sure, let the bots start cleaning up faulty formats without waiting for DD to be turned off, but let's not delay turning off DD either. Sssoul (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hmm. Then what do you think of this, Sssoul: What if the decision was to get a bot quickly going (within, say, a week from now), that swept through Misplaced Pages and did cleanup like this:

1. ]] → ], ]
2. ],] → ], ]

Without these fixes, the above two syntaxes will render as April 152009 and April 15,2009 respectively once DynamicDates is turned off. The bot would do the sweep, with the objective that DynamicDates is to be turned off in the next month. I take note of your …diehards will keep marking up dates just to see them autoformatted-concern. We can change the advise here on MOSNUM to advise that support for autoformatting will soon be turned off and dependencies orphaned.

The two key distinctions of this is we would 1) Do some cleanup first so we aren’t scrambling to fix stuff the world can see, and 2) Before even doing so, a formal statement goes onto MOSNUM formally declaring the impending inactivation of DynamicDates and the resultant orphaning of autoformatting. What do you think of this? Greg L (talk) 23:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

GregL, that sounds way more reasonable than keeping DD on indefinitely. i'm still not that bothered by the idea of the world seeing some of the typos that DD has been masking, and then seeing (and assisting the bots with) some of the clean-up, but yes, that sequence of events you've outlined above sounds sensible.

i also understand Tcncv's reasoning below about commissioning a separate bot to do just the date-typo-fixing - but i do want to know where delinking fits into the proposed sequence of events. commissioning a separate typo-fixing bot wouldn't collide with lifting the temporary injunction against delinking, would it? obviously bots are needed for these tasks but people can assist in the meantime, using Lightmouse's script to correct errors and delink. Sssoul (talk) 06:09, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed, you aren’t understanding the technical issues correctly, Ryan. Please examine Tcncv's table, above. I don’t give a dump either about what registered editors, (those who have their date preferences set to something other than “No preference”) see or don’t see. In the above table, the Before column shows what regular I.P. users see now. The After column shows what all I.P. users would see if we turned DynamicDates off. Everyone (I.P. users and the privileged elite) would see a bunch of crap in many cases. We don’t want to do that. It is not a viable solution because there are many instances on Misplaced Pages of syntaxes coded in ways that would become April 152009 and 15 April2009. Please see my 5:14, 16 April 2009 post above; particularly the last two paragraphs. Turning off DynamicDates is not a solution we can avail ourselves of, at least not early on. Greg L (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

  P.S. The red-checkmarked entries in the Before column are ‘what-ifs’, most of which wouldn’t be found on Misplaced Pages because they instantly generate broken red links for all editors. These are for illustrative purposes to show us they were examined to evaluate what DynamicDates is or is not capable of parsing. The point is that the syntax shown in rows 1, 3, 5, and 7 should be very, very common on Misplaced Pages. Even if Lightbot unlinks everything it is supposed to, there will be articles like 1985 that will continue to contain lined dates. Many of the dates in these intrinsically chronological articles have been coded with syntax that will generate the hammered dog shit shown in the After column were we to turn DynamicDates off. Everyone would see that. Greg L (talk) 19:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• I added footnotes to the table above to clarify the column meanings. Below is my suggestion for fixing the problem dates.
  Proposed date fix up process
  1. Hold off disabling auto-formatting until the majority of the potential poorly formed dates can be cleaned up.
  2. Confirm with someone who knows the software that we have properly identified the cases that need fixing.
  3. Commission a limited scope bot to perform the task of changing the poorly formatted dates into well formatted dates.
      a) The bot would fix the spacing and comma usage to be appropriate for the date style.
      b) The bot would not remove the links. (This can be done later.)
      c) The bot would not change the currently coded the date style (even if inconsistent within the article).
      d) For yyyy-mm-dd style dates, the code would be changed to ]-] to simulate current link behavior.
  4. Get bot approved. The rules defined above should hopefully minimize controversy and potential objections.
  5. Identify and update affected main space pages.
  6. Revisit the request for disabling auto-formatting.
  I believe the limited function bot can get the job done fairly quickly once approved. Also, with the limited functionality should minimize the risk of having undesirable or controversial results, and would also require little operating supervision and intervention (once testing is satisfactorily completed). I expect that even dates in quoted text would not be an issue, because any poorly formatted, linked dates are already being modified by auto-formatting. I suspect the number of pages that need to be fixed will be numerous (1000's?), but not overwhelming.

  One loose item I can think of is templates: Are there any templates that currently emit portly formatted dates? If so, these will need to be fixed manually. Such cases may not be apparent until after the switch, but I would expect their number to be few (if any) and they should be easy fixes.

  Although some might prefer to rush this through, I think a slow methodical approach is better. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Remember that these ISO dates are deemed acceptable within tables to save space and enable sorting. In these cases, it would make more sense to simply delink the dates altogether, rather than this conversion in step 3 above. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• This proposal makes sense in general. But why hold off delinking? Greg's suggestion that it all be done in one shot seems like a more efficient way forward, bearing in mind just how unpopular the vast majority of date links are... Ohconfucius (talk) 02:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Woa. Where did I make such a suggestion? Hold off; don’t start quoting me. If I made such an assertion (that it “all be done in one shot”) it was purely unintentional.

  I strongly, urgently suggest that DynamicDates be left on until bots have A) removed all the overlinking on Misplaced Pages, and B) searched through the remaining dates for code syntax that would read improperly if DynamicDates was turned off. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. There is simply no justification for a rush to set some parameter to “false” (oh, soooo easy) and instantly make hundreds, perhaps thousands of dates look like crap (or worse: become unreadable or have broken links).

  I wholeheartedly agree with Tcncv’s enumerated plan, above. Good job, Tcncv. By design, since his preamble stated he was intending to address only the the challenge of “fixing the problem dates”, the only important step unmentioned is that a bot also needs to get to work removing the excess links and converting them into plaintext. Greg L (talk) 03:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, now struck. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't know how long it would take to delink 2,800,000 articles, but I assume that it would be quicker to initially concentrate on the poorly formatted dates so that auto-formatting can be turned off sooner. As for not delinking, I am assuming that there are some dates that should remain linked (not that this is well defined at this point or that I have any idea what they might be), so some operator monitoring might be needed in the general delinking process. I also expect that the general delinking process might involve decisions on date formatting consistency in those articles with a mix. My intent was to define limited activities that are pretty much no-brainers with no decision-making needed, so the bot would be pretty much autonomous. The limited activity might also make it easier to review edits to confirm expected results without seeing unrelated activity. But I'm not a bot expert, so I may be seeing imaginary advantages. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Most of the commonest formatting problems are satisfactorily dealt with by Lightmouse's script, which will also render a uniform date format per article (except ISO). One pass of the script over articles will sort out most of them in a non-piecemeal manner. However, it would involve semi-automated editing would be most efficient. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• You will all be happy to learn that Bill Clark is still working on the data concerning the various incorrect date formats. He should have some statistics tomorrow. Furthermore, he advises: "DynamicDates should NOT be turned off until we at least know how many links will be affected, and maybe not until they've been corrected. " By correction, I presume this must mean 'with or without delinking'. To repeat what I have said earlier, I see the best way is to set our gnoming/AWB editors free to run Lightmouse's monobook script which delinks dates and corrects most of the badly formatted ones; we could set a target of switching off only the relevant part of Dynamic Dates, say, three months after the injunction has been lifted. By then, the incidence of any messy dates should be minimised. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:07, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Ohconfucius wrote: "I see the best way is to set our gnoming/AWB editors free to run Lightmouse's monobook script which delinks dates and corrects most of the badly formatted ones" - do you mean in addition to commissioning a bot like the one Tcncv has described? letting the script-users go to work makes sense, certainly, but a bot is needed too.

someone above said Lightbot can almost certainly make this kind of typo-correction at the same time as it delinks - has that been confirmed? can someone ask Lightmouse? Sssoul (talk) 09:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Of course. While script users can go to work immediately once the injunction is lifted (and apply judgement to whether to use dmy or mdy), bot action is needed as bots work faster and more systematically. I have asked Lightmouse for clarification, and he will no doubt reply on his talk page. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the clarification, and for asking Lightmouse for more detail. i see he's already pointed out that Lightbot isn't currently authorized to delink autoformatted dates - which means either getting the authorization changed or turning off DD before Lightbot resumes its work. Sssoul (talk) 09:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

It is time to hear from Lightmouse

Ryan, all:

In trying to figure out the roll of bots in moving forward, we now have a bunch of Wikipedians wandering around in dark caves, curious as to which tunnel to head down to avoid dead ends or pitfalls—and Lightmouse has the torch at the cave’s entrance! Can you address the “naughty naughty—you” stuff in a different venue and time and politely and graciously invite him to this discussion? Misplaced Pages needs his volunteer services and, right now, we could greatly benefit from his expertise and counsel (and his services to Misplaced Pages should he elect to contribute them). Greg L (talk) 14:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• To heck with this. I’m going to Lightmouse’s talk page and am going to find out what can and can not be done technically and what he would like to do. That all is, after all, a bit relevant here. Anyone interested can look on and participate there. Greg L (talk) 16:44, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Conclusions

When all the dust has settled, could someone please remember to add in a prominent place at the top of the main poll page a summary of the poll's results and any consequent actions taken. Thanks! 86.161.41.37 (talk) 03:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC).

Linked dates statistics

I have created a bunch of new pages, whose directory is here as sub-pages of this discussion. I will rename this and continue using this as the central link when more data are available. So far, the data-extraction of ISO formatted dates indicates that ISO dates are far more commonly linked as ] (some 58,000 articles concerned), whilst the ]-] form appears only in about 2000 articles throughout the various spaces of WP. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both very much. It would also be useful to scan for dates with non-standard space-comma combinations between the parts. These are the ones that look good now, but will show their faults when autoformatting is turned off. I've done quite a bit of testing and it appears that in addition to the yyyy-mm-dd style formats, autoformatting recognizes dates with the following formats:

• ]...]
• ]...]
• ]...]
• ]...] - A very poor format, but it is recognized.

Where:

• ... is a combination of zero or more spaces and zero or one comma anywhere in the string (·*(,·*)?). This could be no characters. This could be many spaces with a comma at the beginning, end, or anywhere in the middle.
• Day is one or two digits (\d{1,2})
• Month is the case insensitive full month name or three letter abbreviation (Jan(uary)?|Feb(ruary)?|Mar(ch)?|Apr(il)?|May|June?|July?|Aug(ust)?|Sep(tember)?|Oct(ober)?|Nov(ember)?|Dec(ember)?) - (Adapted from Lightmouse's scripts)
• Year is one to four digits (\d{1,4})

Note that the above are less-that-formal pseudo- regular expressions. They will need to be tailored to whatever tool is used. I used "·" to represent a space. Autoformatting does not appear to recognized other types of whitespace such as tabs or newlines. Three digit days (001), five or more digit years, and alternate month abbreviations such as "Sept" are not recognized. The month-day and day-month part must have exactly one space between day and month. Note that this is the result of testing and reverse-engineering. It would be nice if someone who knows the software could independently confirm these results.

To locate for problem cases (those with other than the expected space-comma combination), I would propose running another scan using search strings similar to the following:

• ](·*|,|,··+}|·+,·*)] - Excludes the comma + single space case.
• ](|··+|·*,·*)] - Excludes the single space case.
• ](|··+|·*,·*)] - Excludes the single space case.
• ]·*(,·*)?] - All such cases need reformatting.

It would also be useful if Lightmouse could update his scripts to recognize and correct the general spacing variations before they are used for any large-scale delinking. Although I would expect the number poorly formatted dates to be relatively small (compared to the yyyy-mm-dd date counts), I think they still need to be identified and fixed before turning autoformatting off. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The doc is at meta:Help:Date formatting and linking. You're essentially right except it also recognizes lowercase months and years BC. --80.104.235.89 (talk) 09:42, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Got it covered with the case insensitive qualification. I've found that the software also recognizes odd cases such as ]], although the result is typically a red-link like: "ApRiL 1 2009". It also doesn't like months outside the range 01-12, so ]] displays as "2009-13-01" (empty). However, these cases are already broken. My goal here is to identify those cases that display correctly now, but will break when autoformatting is turned off.

If the above appears sufficiently well defined, who should we contact to request another scan? -- Tcncv (talk) 15:26, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

A new batch of processed wikilinks — involving articles with incorrectly formatted mdy dates — have now been posted (see Misplaced Pages:Date formatting and linking poll/List of articles with potential issues post Dynamic Dates). So far, the data-extraction of mdy formatted dates indicates that these dates are far more commonly {incorrectly) formatted as ]<without comma> (some 120,000 articles are concerned). Note that some of the formatting of foreign language titles are incorrect due to char substitution, which I will attempt to remedy. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark.Ohconfucius (talk) 12:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

"other brands" of DA

just before the poll opened a new (?) autoformatting template was announced: {{formatdate|dmy}} or something like that. i've also recently become aware of the {{date}} template (it's worth checking out that page for a description). so what happens to those now - will they be deactivated along with Dynamic Dates? Sssoul (talk) 07:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed, it seems to involve perhaps 2 thousand article-level transclusions. These templates will indeed be affected as these go against the agreed position. The templates support a wide number of date formats. Ohconfucius (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikitext marked up with the {{date}} template is probably there for a reason, such as in an infobox. All of its occurrences ought to be relatively easy for a bot to find. As it outputs text correctly formatted for wikipedia, its formatting is not really a problem. That is, it doesn't autoformat, but outputs a style dictated by the second parameter (e.g. |dmy) - what you might call "fixed formatting". Nevertheless, it is also capable of producing linked dates by using a second parameter like |ldmy or |lmdy. I would again suggest that changing an |ldmy parameter to |dmy would be trivial for a bot, where the linking is to be removed. --RexxS (talk) 21:39, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

but ... 1] where i saw it in use it was in the main body of the article, not an infobox (and the template description specifies that it's for use in articles as well as infoboxes);
2] it looks to me like when the second (optional) parameter isn't set, it does format according to user settings (and when if it's used for "fixed formatting", why not just enter the dates as fixed text??); and 3] it goes right against a view that a whole lot of people expressed in the poll: that date formatting doesn't warrant complicating the mark-up at all. sorry, but it (and the other {{formatdate}} template) seem way too much like potential fodder for months of further strife over whether/how to mark up dates. Sssoul (talk) 06:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

When the second parameter isn't set, it uses the day-month-year format. As for "why not just enter the dates as fixed text", I guess it is used for stuff such as {{date|{{{year}}}-{{{month}}}-{{{day}}}|myd}} (doing that without the template would require {{#switch:{{{month}}}|January|February|...}}). --80.104.234.195 (talk) 10:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) okay, thanks for the correction about it defaulting to dmy - some comments from editors who use the template indicate that they think it formats dates in accordance with user settings, but i guess they're wrong, so i'll strike that misconception from my earlier post. but i don't understand - at all - what you wrote about "stuff such as " . maybe i don't have to understand it, but if it can be explained simply/briefly i'd be interested. thanks Sssoul (talk) 12:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

When can we expect results?

I have asked this above in another section and haven't heard back, so perhaps I should ask in a new section. I've never been involved in arbitration before. When can we expect a decision from ArbCom and go back to editing dates (i.e. when will the date editing injunction be lifted)? RainbowOfLight 06:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I have the same question. I did not align with either side but don't see why a portion of the issues that are decided on should continue to block editing. For example it seems to me there is consensus on the common sense position that date links should have no special status- that although we could link every single word in an article we instead eliminate links that readers would most likely would see no reason to click on. It is baffling to me why after 4 months there is still a ban on removing date links that make no sense and there is consensus support for allowing their removal. It seems to me that the consensus position is pretty simple to understand, but surely we could have a single document that spells the rules out crisply and thoroughly, then the link ban could be lifted.

Whether or not we can phase in certain aspects of what has been decided, I echo RainbowofLight's question. Is there any sort of guesstimate on when this arbcom ruling is going to finished with? I have family of date templates whose consideration at MOSNUM is crying out for an RFC but it's pointless to solicit wider input now since the results of the arbcom decision will undoubtedly have dramatic impact the opinions solicited. To remove doubt of the validity regarding any consensus positions reached, I would have to rerun the RFC. From where I stand, everything having to do with dates is in gridlock. I'm a patient guy, but I'd like to have a reading on how much time I should be expecting on resolution of this matter. -J JMesserly (talk) 21:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem right now is that auto formatting has not been rejected (at present it's "no consensus"), and delinking dates would also remove the auto formatting (which still has the previously existing consensus until such time as it is rejected). I'm not willing to sacrifice all the marked up dates we have currently, especially if any agreed upon auto formatting system ultimately utilizes the link syntax (which would mean all the effort to delink dates would be for naught). It makes more sense to continue discussion and try to determine what would satisfy people regarding auto formatting. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

But auto formatting would use that new wikitext thing (sorry, I forget the syntax- that recent mediawiki extension that does what the date links did). So date linking for the purposes of formatting is obsolete and there aren't any scenarios where we would still be using the old date link approach, right? I've not been following this super closely, but I don't see why all editors can't be removing links that make no sense just because they happen to link to a year article with a kajillion inbound links that also make no sense. Either auto formatting is approved or not, you keep the meaningful date links, but the rest of them get the red pen. If that is not fair to some side for some reason, then fine, I'll sit down. I just thought there was agreement from both sides on that much. -J JMesserly (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should leave Locke alone with his rather "unique" interpretation of the consensus. He didn't get it on 25 December 2008, it doesn't look like he's getting it any better on 13 April 2009. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should leave Ohconfucius alone with his rather silly ideas regarding "consensus". —Locke Cole • t • c 11:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Ohconfucius and Locke, just carry on hitting each other on the head with your sandbuckets if you’d like to see me propose a page ban for you on ANI. At a minimum, please say something actually witty to each other next time. Bishonen | talk 15:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC).

Trout, anyone? ;-) Ohconfucius (talk) 15:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Bishonen slaps Ohconfucius around a bit with a ginormous shark. Bishonen | talk 15:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC).

• Hey, I hope you're gonna be even handed with the shark, Locke will be extremely jealous. Ohconfucius (talk) 15:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The formatdate parser function? People argued that the existing systems syntax was "too complicated" by virtue of it using square brackets (as with normal links). I can only imagine the kind of complaints we'd receive if we forced people to mark dates up using <code>{{#formatdate:November 11, 2001}}</code>... There's been a proposal to simply remove the linking in the software, but for whatever reason this continues to be resisted. It's simpler, doesn't involve the use of bots, and keeps dates auto formatted. (And of course the other issues can be fixed with time, assuming opponents don't try for RFC5 and a half...). —Locke Cole • t • c 11:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Off topic... What's formaldehyde got to do with anything? Ohconfucius (talk) 15:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• Ohconfucius, yeah, it's an attempt at humour, but please be sensitive to the feelings of people on both sides of this former argument. It is in everyone's interest that the temperature be cooled down. We all need to live with each other productively. Tony (talk) 15:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Throwing fuel onto the fire - Google Timeline

Google has recently (last few days?) put up a new method of data aggregation, Google Timeline. It combined metadata from several sources to create a at-a-glance timeline for the information and probably will be expanded in the future. Presently it is pulling three streams of data from WP: "Misplaced Pages events", "births" and "deaths".

Unfortunately, I can't find out how they are pulling date data, but the last thing we want to do is limit what they are doing. I realize it is entirely possible they are pulling from unlinked data, but it would be helpful to know if they are in any way taking advantage of date autoformatting or if they're using other means. --MASEM (t) 01:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• Google's success isn't an accident. I don't think the sages there would built an entire timeline system relying on something which they couldn't control, and which could change at any minute. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
  • And even if they did, Google shouldn't have any bearing on how we do things here. That's not our problem. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) 02:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree we are not a back end for google applications, but regarding all these map and now timeline applications, if Misplaced Pages is not the premier destination for their links, we are doing something wrong. Strategically, I think we should feel little threat from them, and ought to regard them as doing valuable R&D for the Foundation. Here's what I mean. In 1994, the commercial publishers were the last word in electronic encyclopedias. Misplaced Pages has left them in the dust. Similarly, long term, it is inevitable that the Foundation will provide free software that supplants Google Earth and these Timeline things. As an engineer, I recognize that these visualization systems are not trivial, but the technology is a relatively stationary target, and ultimately the power of collaborative systems will leave Google Earth and Timelines in the dust. So we should welcome them and see how our material best works with theirs.

As for the specifics of the Google timeline as of the time of this post: They really have not done much work on the data extraction. If you take a look at Year 1865 by Month, you will see that all the graphics for all the battles are the same, and they all link to the same article: American Civil War. Really, they don't need to do much more than code filters for a half dozen infoboxes, and they basically have all they need regardless what we do.

An obvious improvement is to link the time coordinates to location coordinates using google earth. Google Earth now allows the encoding of timespans inside markers, and KML supports them so basically all the other virtual earths will be able to follow suit. Some geewhiz and technical observations here. Some elaboration of time, metadata, and strategic implications for Misplaced Pages as a global knowlegbase for these sorts of applications here (link to entire thread). -J JMesserly (talk) 04:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

And just to reinterate, it is inconceivable that Google would use the old square-bracket system to locate dates. It is blindingly easy to automatically locate dates in WP's text without them. Tony (talk) 04:34, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree.-J JMesserly (talk) 04:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

"Dates" case and temporary injunction: likely timing?

I have made a formal request for information about when we are likely to see movement on these matters. Tony (talk) 09:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Turning date linking off in one fell swoop

In the discussion around the DynamicDates config option, I think we missed something discussed very early on. Someone, and I unfortunately think it was UC Bill (what a sad situation that is, regardless of position) who suggested a one line change to the autoformatting code to turn off date linking within the current version of autoformatting. This would *not* turn off autoformatting, it would just fix the "sea of blue" All without editing one article, let alone millions. Before we unleash the bots, I thought it would be good to at least consider that option for a minute. Personally, I think this is just a first step, but I like the effect it would have of addressing the clear consensus regarding unlinking dates quickly while giving time for the options where there was more balance and which might require more discussion. dm (talk) 11:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

As you say, this could be a decent first step. It definitely wouldn't be appropriate as the only solution, as many of us opposed because we don't like the increased complexity for editing. It also assumes that autoformatting will continue, and I don't think there is consensus for that. Karanacs (talk) 15:57, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

... there are two long sections above ("action plan" and "bug filed") discussing that very idea, its repercussions, why it's not that simple, etc. Sssoul (talk) 16:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe we're talking about two different things Ssoul. Above is discussion about the Dynamic Dates config line which would disable autoformatting entirely. I'm referring to a patch which would not touch autoformatting per se (which is what all the complication above appears to be about) but merely modify it to not link dates. dm (talk) 02:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) ah - sorry! you mean the patch that uses linking markup for dates but instead of linking them it autoformats them, apart from serious problems handling punctuation and date ranges? that was thoroughly discussed while the last RfC was being constructed, and even the pro-DA people decided it was not a good idea to propose that route to the community. someone else can i'm sure direct you to that discussion. Sssoul (talk) 04:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)