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I've just found an excellent example of why it's EVIL:
Here's the link to me fixing the awful text: [1]
This has been in the article for over a year and a half. But date autoformatting meant noone noticed that the date was given, in prose, 1848-01-09. However, every non-Wikipedian reader of the article saw it that way. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 21:59, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
I know the death knell has tolled, but since you brought it up: Because no one set a default date format for IPs doesn't make autoformatting evil, it makes this autoformatting a flawed implementation that few were interested in fixing. — Ost ( talk) 23:10, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
This guideline contains a mixture of UK and US spelling, especially with respect to SI units. Apart from any sections that specifically address national varieties of English, shouldn't we make it consistent? (I don't care which variety is used.) -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 11:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
I’ve long held that great weight should also be given to *what* the article is about. If it is a generic article, like water, then we can expect the normal distribution with our readership (which is about 25% American, as I recall). Accordingly, “first major contributor” works fine and should avoid conflict amongst editors. However, if the article is about Spokane River Centennial Trail or Boston Red Sox, there will obviously be a much higher proportion of American readers and the dialect used in the article should be American English. If we had an article on the Bondville Miniature Village (something I visited while in England when I was in my 20s), it would, IMO, be most appropriate to be in British English. This mix of guidelines best serves, in my opinion, what is the primary objective of any encyclopedia: writing in a way that seems most natural, fluid, and least confusing for the target audience Greg L ( talk) 19:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
Apply the same rule as we do to articles. Simple. Why not? Most (all?) of these MOS pages have been predominantly (completely?) written in US English (examples not counted) for most (all?) of their lives. Let 'em stay that way (or whatever other consistant way each of them've been stable at). Inertia. JIMp talk· cont 15:11, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The {{
val}} template is used to make it easy to format a value according to the MoS. Using the template in the MoS itself causes a "circular referrence" where the MoS depends on the output of {{
val}} and {{
val}} is supposed to depend on what the MoS says. I suggest the MoS uses hard-coded examples; otherwise anyone could change {{
val}} and the MoS would change with it. —
SkyLined
(
talk) 23:43, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
If you want to subst {{
val}}, you'll have to subst those {{#ifeq ...}}'s as well (and any other templates) until you end up with the HTML output of {{
val}}. Also, different browsers and even different version of the same browsers may render the same HTML differently (there have been issues caused by this in the past). To prevent all these issues, it would be best for somebody to render an example correctly and create an image of the output. This image can then be used in the MoS because all browsers should render the image exactly the same, regardless of any template. —
SkyLined
(
talk) 01:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Special:ExpandTemplates can convert {{val|299792458|u=m/s}}
to <span style="white-space:nowrap">299,792,458 m/s</span>
automatically. I don't think using images would be useful, for the reason PMA gave above. --
___A. di M. 14:42, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
{{nowrap|1=6.022<span style="margin-left:0.25em">141<span style="margin-left:0.2em">79(30)</span></span> × 10<sup>−23</sup> [[kilogram|kg]]}}
(taking care to choose a true minus sign from the tool box for the negative exponent rather than use the visibly shorter keyboard hyphen) to obtain 6.02214179(30)×10−23
kg.Why? Because there is clearly no consensus in the community to change {{
Val}}. Coding {{val|6.02214179|(30)|e=-23|ul=kg}}
is much simpler. Like I wrote above, editors have every expectation of stability in the articles in which they’ve employed the {val} template. That little “padlock” icon in the upper right-hand corner of many of our templates—including {val}—is a *pinky promise* guarantee to the community of stability in a template so they can start using it with confidence; “anyone” can not change {{
val}}. The select few who have the ability to modify templates are expected to behave with the utmost care and responsibility.
Behavior that instills FUD about the stability of a now-well-used template is most unfortunate and such an offender should expect to have their privileges stripped. When there is as much widespread unanimity to change {val} as there was to design and make it in the first place, we’ll let the gate keepers know. Greg L ( talk) 19:54, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
SkyLined
(
talk) 15:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)SkyLined
(
talk) 20:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Per agreement reached
here on WT:MOS Archive 97, {{
delimitnum}} and {{
val}} were supposed to have thinspaces ( 
) on both sides of the times (×) symbol. Many people objected to the full-width spaces and wanted no spaces alongside the × symbol. The compromise, which made everyone happy, was to use thinspaces. My recollection is that {val} originally conformed with this agreement and generated scientific notation with the proper thinspaces. Perhaps I am mistaken, but this clearly isn’t the case now. Did someone change it? If so, please change it back.
Below, the top-most expression has the exponent, hard-coded with thinspaces on both sides of the × symbol. The one below it was created with {{ val}}:
6.02214179(30) × 10−23
kg
6.02214179(30)×10−23
kg
Greg L ( talk) 20:20, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
<span style="margin-left:0.25em">×<span style="margin-left:0.2em">10</span></span>
. Different browsers can have a precision of 0.05 em and still others go only to a tenth. This is being exploited here to keep the appearance as identical as possible across platforms.My objective here is only to make the gaps closer to the original compromise achieved on WT:MOS, where some editors wanted a full‑width non‑breaking space and another camp thought it looked too much like a formula and wanted no spaces. The thinspace was well-received and all agreed to that compromise.
Here’s another try:
Tests:
___A. di M. 10:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
The below screeshot is what I see with Safari 4.0.3 (the latest) and was captured 17:21:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC):
This last proposed one looks very good to me. In the MOSNUM examples, one might not link all or any of the "kg"s.
Tony
(talk) 22:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
<span style = "display:none">^</span>
→ (a hidden caret). This would be especially valuable when copying a formula containing {{val}}.Generally speaking, does anyone have any thoughts on whether there's any stylistic issue with having different spacing between the terms in a {{val}} expression, and an equation (which can be formatted with regular spaces, per WP:MOSMATH)? TheFeds 03:59, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd say that, since multiplication is associative, (1.37 × 1013) × (4.29 × 109) equals 1.37 × (1013 × 4.29) × 109, so that's a non-issue. But the horse appears to have long been dead. (And I like the suggestion of an invisible caret.) -- ___A. di M. 11:04, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Consider 1.37×1013 × 4.29×109 vs 1.37 × 1013 × 4.29 × 109, and for completeness 1.37×1013×4.29×109. Now, the unspaced (third) version is fairly obviously horrible, while the partially-spaced (first) version clearly indicates that you're talking about two distinct numbers being multiplied, with those numbers written in standard form, while the fully spaced (second) version looks like 4 separate numbers
As regards copy/paste, the CSS gaps in the significands are extremely convenient because they don’t appear in the pasted values, so Excel can use them directly. The gaps on each side of the × symbol are a moot point in Excel since you have to edit to change “×10” to “E” anyway. If an editor is doing work in Word or some other program and wants pretty looking results, they’ll just have to do a little work for themselves when they’re doing their homework.
As for chaining: What A. di M. said. Editors can also use middot; e.g. The “Theory of Everything” formula was eventually found to be nothing more than the product of 3.17×107 · 6.2568945×10−27 or use a hybrid; e.g. (3.17×107) · (6.2568945×10−27). In many circumstances, editors would start using math markup for this sort of thing. It’s rare that any single tool can “slice & dice” your food and lift the engine and trani out of your car. Greg L ( talk) 14:43, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
SkyLined
(
talk) 08:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)I propose that the following wording be considered for the policy:
In place of this:
I propose considering this wording:
My intention is not to change the policy but to express it more clearly and concisely. Any comments? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
I would split the difference:
This provides a rationale for the ruling, and allows for exceptions; there aren't many, but I foresee MGlass's text being used to demand conversions between calendar and tropical years, and other totally silly demands. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
SimonTrew ( talk) 12:56, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
SimonTrew ( talk) 14:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes, "topics" is much better. I just start a new subsection since we've not had a complete proposal written out for a while, and this is very similar to one above (has it been edited? I don't recall it being quite so similar) so here goes (the bold and strike are to indicate changes that may otherwise be too suble to be noticed; and are not intended to indicate proposed markup):
I am not that het up about "different than", but since others may insist on "different from", we might as well do that and avoid needless argument. The other rewordings are basically just simplifications or to remove being over-specific (e.g. "readers from those regions" -> "all readers", surely the intent is that anyone reading the article can undertand the measures in it.) SimonTrew ( talk) 12:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Leave it as is. It ain't broken, and at this point all we're doing is listing WP:BEANS scenarios. The original wording of "Use international units [...] usually this means SI, SI-related & units accepted with SI" is as both as clear and as vague as it needs to be. The subtleties are covered in the bullets. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 11:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
All these wordings are confusing in that they say "use", but in most cases, what is really meant is "list first", because conversions are usually provided. It would be nice to think that editors would read the manual from end to end and remember everything, but that just isn't going to happen, so wording that does not require the editor to read a different part of the manual to understand that "use" usually means "list first" would be better. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree that the wording is confusing in saying 'use' but meaning 'list first'. It is also inconsistent with later dot points. This is how the passage reads at the moment
This version replaces 'prefer' with 'put.....first'. I have also removed the reference to screen sizes as I thought this was a rather trivial example. Years are important, the use of feet for the altitude of aircraft is important, but the size of a television or mobile phone screen is not so important. With UK articles a useful guide to what unit has priority may be to follow the majority of sources of information for the article. Michael Glass ( talk) 13:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
My responses:
Michael Glass ( talk) 22:57, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Taking into account the criticisms above, here is another refinement of the suggested wording and the title:
Michael Glass ( talk) 13:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. I'll go with the word order above and see what the result is. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:51, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Best wishes. SimonTrew ( talk) 23:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
Simon, most of your proposed changes (above) are OK with me. Some of the wording (e.g. on scientific terms) you object to is unchanged from the previous version. They were just not noticed before. I agree with the idea of simplifying rather than complicating things. I would be happy to take up your revisions almost in full. I would insert is the words In general at the beginning and make a few other minor changes as shown below:
Michael Glass ( talk) 05:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Generally speaking, you should determine what unit is the most appropriate primary unit in the context of the measurement you are using, and then proceed to convert this into all units that are in common use in the English-speaking world in that context, so that all can understand it.
To determine which units should be primary, the following guidelines should be considered:
- In general, the primary unit is that which is in the most widespread use in the world. Usually, they are the units of the International System of Units (SI) and non-SI units accepted for use with SI; but there are various exceptions for some measurements, such as for periods of time longer than an hour or nautical miles to describe the distances that aircraft travel.
- Where a topic is strongly associated with a given place, time or person, use the units most appropriate to them first. In US articles, this will usually be United States customary units; for the UK Imperial units for some topics and metric units for others, and a mixture of units for others (see, for example, the Times Online style guide under "Metric").
- Give nominal and defined values in the units in which they are defined first, even if this makes the article inconsistent. Otherwise, use units consistently: write a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag of potatoes and a 5 kg (11 lb) bag of carrots, not a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag of potatoes and a 11-pound (5 kg) bag of carrots.
- In scientific articles, use the units used by the current scientific literature on that topic.
- Where a given discipline uses units not approved by the BIPM, or writes them differently from the way that BIPM says they should be written, use the units as commonly used in that discipline.
- Prefer familiar units over obscure ones.
- If there is no clear choice as to which unit is primary, put the source value first and the converted value second. If the choice is arbitrary, use the SI unit.
You should avoid using ambiguous unit names (e.g., write imperial gallon or US gallon instead of gallon), but do not change units in quotations. Place conversions in square brackets directly afterwards within the quotation if it is useful to do so.
Pfainuk, you make some telling comments about the proposed wording. You are quite right in noting the inconsistency in trying to balance competing requirements of both consistency of presentation and accuracy reflecting the sources. These differences became far more obvious in the revised version because the language was so much clearer, as clear wording makes any defect in logic far more obvious.
However, there are problems with your proposed solution.
The proposal below makes the language less prescriptive. I have also made other changes, including omitting the point about nominal and defined values. Without the example the point is quite obscure; with the example it belabours the point. I have also removed the bolding and added the introduction from the policy as it is at the moment (in italics).
The use of units of measurement is based on the following principles:
If there is trouble balancing these bullets, consult other editors through the talk page and try to reach consensus.
I have edited the above so that these are level 3 and level 4 headers, so that it's more obviously the same conversation. This is not intended to affect the proposal, but rather for convenience on talk. The first time I looked at this, I didn't notice the proposal because it was under a level 2 heading.
I notice that this proposal fails to take account of A di M's point that we're talking about which units to put first before we mention that we're supposed to be putting more than one unit. This was the intention of the opening paragraph in my version: start with the basic principle that we choose a unit to put first and then convert that unit into all the relevant alternatives, and then go into detail as to decide which unit to put first.
My other thought structure-wise was that all of the bullet points except the one on ambiguous unit names deal with which units should go first in the text. As such, it makes a bit more sense just to treat it as one list rather than two. The three bullets at the bottom would go below the point about consistency.
On the point on consistency, I would suggest that it is not necessary for a source value to be placed in a footnote. It may be appropriate to ensure that it is clear when the sourced value is not placed first - but use footnotes throughout and we'll potentially end up with articles littered with useless footnotes - thereby devaluing the useful ones.
On defined units - for the most part this should be common sense, and it is mostly covered by the people-times-and-places rule. I think it's best off going in, but I would hope that editors don't need to be told.
I would also point out that your proposal advises us to put the most widespread units in use in the world first, except that in general they should use the source unit, regardless of system. This is self-contradictory in a way that the current text is not. It may be a good idea to ditch the sources point entirely, and instead integrate it into the first paragraph or to place it, with the note on ambiguous units, in a separate paragraph at the end:
Placing this in a separate paragraph perhaps makes it clearer that this is an extension to, and not an exception to, the basic international-units-first rule (whereas the other points are exceptions to it). Sources-first is most appropriate when the other rules are not applicable since it inherently has the potential to introduce intra- and inter-article inconsistency when dealing with similar measurements in similar contexts. Pfainuk talk 10:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
We need to take account of the fact that different English-speaking people use different units; that is why we need to supply both traditional and metric measures in many contexts. The question is which unit should come first. Mostly it is clear-cut, because most of the world uses metric units and there is a clear rule about US-based articles. With UK based articles it may not be clear and this is where it is useful to go by the sources.
Now for specific comments:
If people are satisfied with the present wording it might be better to leave it be. I will try once more to see if I can improve on the wording, but if that doesn't work I'll let the matter rest. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
After giving the matter some further consideration I feel it is best to proceed step by step with any changes of wording. The first change I would make is to change this:
to this:
The reasons are as follows:
What do others think? Michael Glass ( talk) 02:42, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
<!--source: 42 in-->
. (Maybe identifying the source in the comment by its ref name
would be even better.) At least that way, a future editor will know what was intended, without having to refer back to the original document cited. If you've got Imperial and SI sources contributing to an article, I'd recommend sticking to one set of units (parenthesizing alternatives as necessary), unless the choice of units is critical to the understanding of the text. On the other hand, if it's necessary to alert the reader of the source unit, a footnote would be a good way to do it, but I don't think that it's important enough to mention for most situations.
TheFeds 20:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)I notice that all the comments have been on footnoting changes between the text and the source. I will let that matter rest for the moment and note something else. Nothing has been said about replacing the present shopping list with a more appropriate example.
From this:
to this:
Any problems? If there are none, I will make this change to the text. Michael Glass ( talk) 12:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
|adj=on
should be added to the convert template, for purposes of grammar (a 600-metre hill).
Pfainuk
talk 20:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Done, though not with the conversion templates. Michael Glass ( talk) 11:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
At present the policy reads:
This could be more clearly expressed to explain that the different measures would be used in different articles. Here is my proposal:
Any comments, suggestions or objections? Michael Glass ( talk) 11:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
It is impossible to work out exactly how many readers come from which countries, let alone what units they might prefer. This wording might be better:
Any problems or objections to this change? Michael Glass ( talk) 21:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, it takes up less space, that's for sure. The problem with giving only one example, as you propose, is that it could suggest that only articles with metric measurements first should have conversions. That's why the two examples are helpful here.
As we can't agree on what changes would be acceptable it is better to leave it at this time. Michael Glass ( talk) 01:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The present guidelines state:
I think it would be preferable to express this as:
It would seem to me to be a good general rule to follow the sources. However, the guidelines should provide guidance rather than a straitjacket. What do others think of this? Michael Glass ( talk) 01:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I note the complaints that the proposed rule contradicts the rule to be consistent. No it doesn't, unless the sources are inconsistent, and if they are inconsistent the guideline explains what to do if the choice of units is arbitrary. This problem is unlikely to arise in most of the world, because most of the world uses the metric system for most ordinary measures, In the USA, the US customary measures are used, so it is not so likely to arise there. That only leaves Britain where there is likely to be any real confusion, and this is where the rule would be most useful. If most authoritative sources are Imperial, that's the way to go. However, if they are closer to the usage of the Times Guide then that would be OK, too. If metric, then go metric. Or, if the authoritative sources were really at sixes and sevens, then metric would also be the way to go. The rule of following the sources is helpful for British articles because it's more objective than simply relying on the editors to make this decision without reference to the sources of information. Michael Glass ( talk) 15:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Neither the present wording nor the proposed wording state that the guidelines should only apply to UK-related articles. If the widespread usage rule applies as you have stated, then all articles should be metric first, as is the case with your examples. If this rule is to be tempered by an appeal to time, place or person, then how is this to be tested but by looking at the sources? The kind of thing that i would question is when an article is in Imperial units when most or all of the sources are metric. Michael Glass ( talk) 23:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The problems I see with your position are two assumptions that underlie them.
Michael Glass ( talk) 23:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Your first point is not my point. It may not have been as clear as one would have liked, but my point was not that British people use metric units for the sake of foreign tourists and no-one else. If it had been I would be arguing for full imperial units in British contexts - and I made it very clear in the last discussion that this is not something I think would be a good idea. My point was that, in literature for foreign tourists, the British will tend to use metric units in circumstances where imperial units would be more appropriate in a British context. This might, for example, include the speed someone is driving. Most Britons don't have a clear idea of what speeds in kilometres per hour mean in practical terms. The only circumstances under which one might think to use them would be when one's words are intended for a foreign audience. Using it in other contexts would appear to be the RL equivalent of being POINTy. But I'm sure you can find sources giving speeds in a UK context in metric measures.
Living in the UK, as I do, I am well aware that metric units are in use in some circumstances. But imperial measures are also used in some circumstances, and given that sources are not perfect, generally speaking - given that they do not always reflect Wikipedia's style guidelines - they not always the best guide to the most appropriate usage. Better to rely on a consensus of editors: we trust them to be able to choose which wording is most appropriate, why can't we trust them to choose which units are appropriate - falling back on source units where necessary as per the current wording?
All that said, I notice with interest that you fail to address the core issue with this wording. This wording clearly is not intended apply only in British contexts (indeed it's not clear that it's intended to apply in British contexts at all: they're an exception to one general rule, why not the other?) - it is intended to apply "in general". You have not adequately addressed the fact that, if we were to accept this rule, we would, in general, call upon users both to use most widely used units in a given context as primary and to use sourced units as primary - and that this is contradictory when the source uses a unit other than that which is most widely used in a given context. Pfainuk talk 16:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I really can't see how you can say that the current wording doesn't actually treat the US or UK as exceptions. Look at the wording:
Except in the cases mentioned below... ...In US articles... ...for the UK ...
Of course the wording treats both the UK and the US as exceptions to the general policy.
The policy for the UK gives the following latitude:
How is is possible to deny that this is so? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Exceptions are exceptions are exceptions. There are general exceptions of course, but there are also specific exceptions for both the US and the UK. Read the policy and you can see that there is also a huge difference between what is allowed for the US and what is allowed for the UK. Can the UK have Metrics? Yes they can! Can the UK have Imperial? Yes they can! Can the UK have a mixture? Yes they can! That is quite exceptional, and it applies to no other country. And no amount of obfuscation and chop logic can hide it. Michael Glass ( talk) 13:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I have seen some recommendations in the "Currency" section which contradict other parts of the MoS and common sense:
What d'y'all think? -- ___A. di M. 14:30, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
As for spelling out a first occurrence of a new monetary unit, I also agree. Experienced Wikipedians tend to fall victim to the phenomenon of assuming that the typical reader is nearly as familiar with “*basic common* knowledge” as we Wikipedians are. You can see this in our computer articles, where editors will often instantly launch into symbol‑itis in lead paragraphs (The Banana Jr. 9000 was the first consumer-grade computer to come stock with 1 MB of RAM). The saving grace does not lie in that we have provided a link to what is an unfamiliar term for someone who has no knowledge about computers and wants to read up on the subject; novices to a subject should not have to click back and forth from article to article to wade through and parse key sentences.
Clearly, certain minimum skill sets and knowledge must be assumed in our readership; they should be familiar with the “United States” and “ice” and these terms need not generally be linked. Distinctions between US$400 and AU$475 when they are juxtaposed in the same sentence are exceedingly subtle, easily overlooked, and assume far too much familiarity with currency symbology than should be expected of novices to the subject. Currencies of countries that are not primarily English speaking, the currencies of primarily English-speaking countries that are less well known, and the currencies of English-speaking countries whose symbols can easily be confused within the same article should generally be spelled out on first occurrence and their symbols parenthetically introduced.
As per your example, parenthetical conversions, such as 10,000 Swedish kronor (approx. €1000, US$1400, or £800 as of August 2009) are not spelled out in order to reduce wordiness. This broad principle is used for other units of measure on Wikipedia, such as The typical sack of sugar in the United States is sold in five-pound bags (2.3 kg) and the principle does not change just because the units of measure are currency.
A notable exception, in my opinion, would be in articles that are clearly about the United States or England. Take the example of an article on the World Trade Center. It seems to me that it should be sufficiently non-confusing for the intended readership if we write New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York getting a $335 million project or, in the London Bridge article, …it cost approximately £1,000,000 to build. The only other notable exception that comes to mind to this basic principle—that the first occurrence of the primary monetary unit should be spelled out—would be a highly advanced economics article directed to an obviously expert readership. Greg L ( talk) 16:36, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
As for justifying launching straight into symbol‑itis by citing the example of LSD, that’s not an appropriate example (although I now have a better appreciation for the hazards of arguing with you). It is simply common technical writing practice observed by everyone from Encyclopedia Britannica to the Associated Press to Aviation Week & Space Technology to write out “National Aeronautics and Space Administration” before using NASA. The same would apply in any encyclopedic treatment on a computer-related article: one spells out “megabyte” on first use as well as “random access memory”. However, for terms that are universally known by the general public only by their abbreviations, such as DNA and LSD, one flips this principle around; one uses the abbreviation first and then parenthetically spells it out.
It’s important to not seize upon examples and use them to justify practices without really considering all the implications. You have an influential role on WT:MOSNUM and others put great credence in your opinions. We already have far too many editors launching straight into editing WP:MOSNUM without first properly discussing things on WT:MOSNUM, where they can learn about broader implications and nuances that muddy the waters.
This reminds me of the king who would have people come up to him at social events and tell him this or that and he didn’t have a wise, kingly-sounding response. He asked his wise men to suggest a response that would be universally true and wise-sounding that would be suitable in nearly any circumstances. They came back and told him to respond “All things must come to an end.” I’ve recently discovered another phrase that will work for most any situation where someone is complaining about some right-wing practice or belief or some left-wing practice or belief, or any sort of issue that is imbalanced and extreme in some way. It goes “Well… when you dig down into the details, it’s a bit more complicated than that.” Try it yourself; it works exceedingly well. And that principle applies here, when it comes to diverging from the general practice of spelling things like “MB” out on their first occurrence and parenthetically introducing the acronym. Indeed, “LSD” is a flipped exception to the rule (as is “DNA”). So the same goes here: Well… when you dig down into the details, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Greg L ( talk) 18:46, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
As for precision in monetary conversions, your proposal of two significant digits passes my initial *grin test* for what would be appropriate as a general guideline. To be sure, I suppose I would need to see some examples in context—perhaps even some conflicting examples where one practice seemed more appropriate in one case, and yet another practice seemed more suitable in another case. Sometimes the rule-set can be obscure until you, uhm… dig down into the details.
Memorializing common sense into technical writing guidelines can be a tedious effort. Generally, my preference in these sort of matters is to not prescribe rigidity in guidelines and to instead provide a global proscription of what not to do and give examples of good practices and bad practices. For instance:
When showing a a conversion to another monetary unit, avoid excess or false precision. For instance, do not write The Manhattan Project cost the U.S. $2 billion at the time (equivalent to £14.1 billion in 2007).
BTW, here's my proposal, with changes from the current version marked:
Currencies
Which one to use
- In country-specific articles, such as Economy of Australia, use the currency of the country.
- In non-country-specific articles such as Wealth, use US dollars (US$123), the dominant reserve currency of the world. Some editors also like to provide euro and/or pound sterling equivalents, formatted as described in the next section.
Formatting
Fully identifyUse the full name of a currency on its first appearance (AU$5252 Australian dollars); subsequent occurrencesare normally given without the country identification or currency article linkcan use the symbol of the currency (just $88), unless this would be unclear. The exception to this is in articles related entirely to US-, EU-, or UK-related topics, in which the first occurrence may also be shortenedand not linked($34, €26, and £22, respectively), unless this would be unclear, and in places where space is limited such as tables, infoboxes, and parenthetical notes.Avoid over-identifying currencies that cannot be ambiguous; e.g., do not place EU or a similar prefix before the € sign.When there are different currencies using the same symbol, use the full abbreviation (e.g. US$ for the United States dollar and AU$ for the Australian dollar, rather than just $) unless the currency which is meant is clear from the context.- Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£, 123€), unless the symbol is normally written as such. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US).
- Currency abbreviations that come before the number are unspaced if they consist of or end in a symbol (£123, €123), and spaced if alphabetic (R 75).
- If there is no common English abbreviation or symbol, use the ISO 4217 standard.
- Ranges are preferably formatted with one rather than two currency signifiers ($250–300, not $250–$300).
- Conversions of less familiar currencies may be provided in terms of more familiar currencies, such as the US dollar, euro or pound sterling. Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, rounding to
the nearest whole unitone or two significant digit and noting the conversion as approximate, with at least the year given as a rough point of conversion rate reference; e.g.,1,000 Swiss francs (US$763 in 2005)10,000 Swedish kronor (approx. €1000, US$1400, or £800 as of August 2009).- For obsolete currencies, provide if possible an equivalent, formatted as a conversion, in the modern replacement currency (e.g., decimal pounds for historical pre-decimal pounds-and-shillings figures), or at least a US-dollar equivalent as a default in cases where there is no modern equivalent.
- When possible, always link the first occurrence of
a symbol forlesser-known currencies( ₮146)(146 Mongolian togrogs); some editors consider it unnecessary to link the symbols of well-known currencies, but doing so can often be helpful to readers, as many countries use dollars or pounds as their base currency, and not all readers are familiar with the euro.- The names of currencies, currency subdivisions, coins and banknotes should not be capitalised except where normal capitalisation rules require this (for example, at the start of a sentence).
- The pound sterling is represented by the £ symbol, with one horizontal bar. The double-barred ₤ symbol is ambiguous, as it has been used for Italian lire and other currencies as well as that of the British. For non-British currencies that use pounds or a pound symbol (e.g., the Irish pound, IR£) use the symbol conventionally preferred for that currency.
-- ___A. di M. 20:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
MoS has just imported much of MOSNUM's Units of measurement section, since we had some pretty iffy stuff that hadn't been reviewed for a while. Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Another_query. One import sticks out, though, concerning the old imperial versus metric units in UK-related articles:
... for the UK Imperial units for some topics and metric units for others, and a mixture of units for others (see, for example, the Times Online style guide under "Metric").
The Times online style guide says not to mix the systems within an article. Hmmmm. It strikes me as ludicrous that the primary and converted units should be switched here and there in the course of an article: heck, choose one as primary and stick to it, surely? To do otherwise is a really unprofessional look. MoS had this, until yesterday, which is much better, IMO:
UK-related topics may have either SI (generally preferred) or imperial units as the primary units.
Seems more professional and a lot simpler, don't you think? Can MOSNUM import MoS's previous point? I'm encouraging MoS to go back to it rather than to retain what we've just imported (on this matter alone—the rest is better). How about it? Tony (talk) 11:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Good luck! Michael Glass ( talk) 13:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
It was recently suggested to me at a FAC that dates should be given non-breaking spaces. Is that correct according to the MoS? Thanks. Parsecboy ( talk) 00:23, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm in the middle of a dispute at The Shells over the policy regarding dates formatted as MM/DD/YYYY. I was under the impression that this format is deprecated due to ambiguity issues and should be converted to YYYY-MM-DD (or spelled out) in every case. I would appreciate it if someone could take a look at the current discussion and provide some guidance as to whether this is policy or not. Thank you. ~ Paul T +/ C 07:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
At MoS, we realised that the Units of measurement section was in a bad mess. Michael Glass and A. di M. have both assisted by pasting in the more up-to-date version from MOSNUM's Units of measurement.
This highlights the absurdity of having two different pages, when MoS main covers just about all of the scope of MOSNUM. There is insufficient difference in the two scopes of MoS main and MOSNUM to warrant the fragmentation of guidance, discussion and monitoring. More importantly, it is undesirable for the two talk pages to be fragmented.
The MoS pages as a whole are in an uncoordinated mess, and it would go some way towards serving the project better to merge MOSNUM into MoS main. All of the main sections (except, oddly, Currencies, which is a pretty important one for general editors), are there.
Why don't we make things easier for ourselves? Any highly specialised guidance in MOSNUM that is not here could easily be sequestered into either a separate subsection or—better IMO—an appendix, here. The merger should not add much text to MoS main (indeed, everything needs significant rationalisation on the micro-scale). Tony (talk) 10:56, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
These topics are what I see as being too involved for MoS, and suitable for retaining in a specialised MOSNUM (linked to from MoS):
It's quite large enough for a MoS subpage. What urgently needs to be removed is the common-person stuff that is already in MoS. Editors need to know a lot of stuff about numbers and dates, but the field crosses into engineering and science in a way that clutters the dummies' guide badly. Tony (talk) 15:31, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps the thing to do is to harmonize MOSNUM into MOS, but instead of having a “MOSNUM” for the specialized stuff, we merely have sub-pages of MOS that expand upon lengthy topics (such as scientific notation). I suspect little (or even none) of this need to have “Click here for main article”-stuff would be required if there was a concerted effort to streamline MOS and MOSNUM, which suffers from bloat‑itis in many areas.
I suspect one of the “yuck factors” for many of us is the unconscious realization that there is a somewhat different set of editors that frequent MOS and harmonizing will result in social chaos—similar to neanderthals and modern humans finding each other hunting the same game in France 80,000 years ago (“you funny looking”). Perhaps we can keep the dates and numbers section segregated below a border via transclusion so that MOSNUM can keep its discussions on a separate talk page. I think it would prove exceedingly unwieldily if we had an integrated talk page for all issues. Greg L ( talk) 15:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Nevertheless, I support simple guidance at MOS, with complicated guidance in main articles such as MOSNUM. TheFeds 16:42, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I thought the Manual recommended CE notation, but I am obviously mistaken. I am probably opening a can of worms, and pardon any cluelessness, but why does the MoS take such an ambiguous stance about the use of the Common Era year notation? It is becoming overwhelmingly dominant in academia. Most popular periodicals mandate its use in their house styles. Even a large number of explicitly Christian publishers now make use of the CE notation. While I can appreciate the pragmatic impossibility of mandating the Common Era notation, should we not follow the real world example and prefer its use? Or am I completely missing something? Or am I just hopelessly naive that a consensus could be built for such? Vassyana ( talk) 14:08, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Often we can look to the AP Manual of Style and the practices of Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book to see what English-speaking peoples are routinely exposed to and what therefore seems most natural and encyclopedic. Too often, ninth-graders smitten with the “Forget what Encyclopedia Britannica does, I can change the WORLD by editing Wikipedia” are the source of unnecessary grief here.
My preference, again, is to always use whatever writing style and words are most natural and interrupts the train of thought the least. I know: shocking. Greg L ( talk) 19:38, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the IEC didn’t retract their proposal to say A memory chip with a capacity of 256 kibibytes and we had a pack of editors pushing that here on Wikipedia for three years. (*sigh*)
The proper thing to do is not pretend that we are here to help change how the world communicates (our aborted effort with “kibibyte” showed Wikipedia doesn’t have that sort of influence), and simply *communicate* using good grammar, clear writing, and in a fashion that results in the least *!* brain interrupts and is most natural for the target readership.
Wikipedia needs to follow the way the English-speaking world communicates. Sometimes, that means we can look towards the Associated Press Manual of Style, sometimes towards how magazines that are devoted to a particular discipline communicate to their readership (like computer magazines), and sometimes it means looking towards other encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book to get a clue. Even the best of we Wikipedia editors could benefit from looking to these other sources for tips.
Sometimes, arguing with persistent editors here on WT:MOSNUM seems exceedingly unwise of me. Greg L ( talk) 22:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
In the computer business ISO 8601 is the preferred date format because 1) it's unambiguous, 2) you can sort dates easily, and 3) It involves less funky date arithmetic. I wish somebody had told Microsoft that before we spent all that money on the year 2000 problem.
If you are writing character dates for the general public, either the American or British character date format is okay, but if you are using computers the only numeric date format that is really foolproof and unambiguous is the ISO format. And, yes I do use ISO data format for all-numeric dates. RockyMtnGuy ( talk) 06:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I don’t know why we are discussing ISO 8601 on MOSNUM; MOSNUM is a style guide and not a bulletin board for Wikipedia developers trying to resolve data exchange protocols between servers. Greg L ( talk) 19:05, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
“ | ISO 8601 is an international standard for date and time representations… | ” |
The application of the standard is intended to be very broad. It applies to all written communications that contain dates, times, and time intervals regardless of the communication medium (printed, electronic, or hand written) or the location of the sender and receiver (either within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries). The application of the standard was never meant to be limited to dates and times processed, stored, and displayed by computers. It applies to all industries and all forms of human activity where accurate and unambiguous representations of dates, times, and time intervals are needed when communicating internationally, nationally, locally, internally, or even privately.
It is this sort of experience that makes me long for the practice observed by the German-version of Wikipedia: it’s my understanding that they have all articles guarded by gate keepers. That prevents articles from being mucked up by some kid who wears Spock ears at Star Trek conventions and leaves notes for his mom that read like this:
Mom,
I went to Steve’s house because he got a mint-condition PDP-11 computer when he was at his Linux meeting last night. I’ll be home by 2009-09-12T19:30:00.
Can someone please guide me or help me here? I am using one date format in citations, only to have an editor edit war with me over it. Is my below analysis correct? If so, how can I address the matter.
The date format style of citation that I am using, specifically MM/DD/YYYY is not prohibited by Wikipedia from what I can see, but is not directly discussed.
The guidance here states, however:
"Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that nation."
Here, the article is about a band from the USA. As it is written in [6], the MM/DD/YYYY style of citation is, in the United States:
"common or prescribed—particularly in military, academic, scientific, computing, industrial, or governmental contexts. See Date and time notation by country#United States."
This guidance also states, per the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
"it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one [acceptable style] to the other without substantial reason." Furthermore, "Edit warring over optional styles ... is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."
The guidance repeats these admonitions by in effect largely repeating itself when it states, a second time:
"Retaining the existing format -- If an article has evolved using predominantly one format, the whole article should conform to it, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic. In the early stages of writing an article, the date format chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used, unless there is reason to change it based on strong national ties to the topic. Where an article that is not a stub shows no clear sign of which format is used, the first person to insert a date is equivalent to "the first major contributor"."
In this instance the article was stable in the MM/DD/YYYY format. I had created the article and was the major contributor. Another editor, with whom I had just disagreed on a separate issue, has spent the last few days wikistalking me to all my edits, and seeking to delete or revise dozens of them, including all of the date format edits, despite my pointing him to the language of the guidance.
He argues "The date format you are trying to use is ambiguous and does not present an international view of the information." With that, he reverts all of my edits.
Am I correct here that since this is an article with a strong tie to the US, it is appropriate for me to use the common date format for that nation, and that it is wrong for him to wikistalk me to edit war by constantly reverting the date format? If so, what recourse do I have? This of course is especially disturbing given the background I just described. Many thanks.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 02:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I had understood that the reason the guidance by its terms allows for the common style of the English speaking country (and this is clearly a common style of the US), is that the subject of the article is clearly US, as stated in the first sentence, which is an indicator to the reader that the common US style is being used.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 03:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
See the discussion at Template talk:Convert#Some suggestions for changes to the default precision. -- ___A. di M. 21:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Looking at edit histories, it seems that all you want to do is argue about MOSNUM rather than MAKE ARTICLES BETTER. I tried. God knows I tried. Now can you please carry on in your little circle of wheter an inch is more than am mile while I go and make Wikipedia better?
In just one month I have realised why people abhor MOS. It is people masturbating, basically. We come to MOS for advice and it changes day by day. Which is about as much use as a snake in an arse-kicking competition. Let the whole thing go away, let it die, nothing good will come of all this bickering. Go away from MOS and do some real work improving the encyclopaedia, not laying down your laws.
I give an example: at {{
convert}}
.
User:Jimp who kinda runs those templates (with the help of many others) responds to comments, says it is right or wrong, if it is missing he adds it. That is CONSTRUCTIVE. Sometimes we have short discussions about how it should be put, and come to a consensus. That is CONSTRUCTIVE. More constructive work is done in Convert in practically improving the encyclopaedia than was ever done at MOSNUM.
S. SimonTrew ( talk) 14:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, given that exceedingly small groups of editors—only a handful really—can hijack MOSNUM and produce guidelines that sanctify garbage like making Wikipedia the only general-interest publication on this pale blue dot to use the IEC prefixes (a computer with 256 kibibytes (KiB) of RAM), and then spread such naive and shortsighted notions across literally hundreds of articles (making Wikipedia look utterly foolish), it is, IMO, important to prevent problems before they start. This is especially true with contentious issues in which some editors see things in black & white and have strong convictions. Greg L ( talk) 02:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Following Tony1's proposal, I've started writing a very brief summary (my goal is approx. 25% of the full text) of WP:MOSNUM, intended to eventually replace sections from 10 to 13 of WP:MOS. Feel free to collaborate at User:A. di M./MOSNUM. -- ___A. di M. 21:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I propose that
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.be changed to (new text underlined)
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.because some editors don't get that listing the acceptable date style implies that other styles are discouraged.
Any objections? -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 03:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
instead.) Because some perceive dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should only be used for dates in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar and in the year range 1583 through 9999.I'm not happy with "reasonably", and can the text be more concise? Does this mean every use of ISO 8601 will have to be changed? There's an awful lot of it.
This involves MoS main page as well; it is a textbook example of why the pages need to be rationalised. Tony (talk) 07:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) back to A di M's proposed wording: i find the double negatives in "that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999" unnecessarily convoluted/confusing. can we try "that format should only be used for dates in the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar and in the year range 1583 through 9999" instead? Sssoul ( talk) 11:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{editprotected}} Taking the previous points into account and shamelessly stealing good ideas, I propose:
* YYYY-MM-DD style dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and should not be used within sentences. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness. (If the only purpose why they are used in a particular table is ease of comparison, consider using
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.
be changed to:
In reply to VMAsNYC, I have always understood the word "through" to mean inclusive; do you have reason to believe otherwise? -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC) Revised 14:31 UT in response to Sssoul.
Hmmm. I only made the comment because I've seen phraseology along the lines of "1-10, inclusive." But I can't recall if I've seen exclusive ... and for the life of me I can't seem to google the rule. Perhaps in those instances that I recall the author was paid by the word ... Merriam Webster indicates one meaning of through is to and including, which matches what you are thinking.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 15:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{{dts|1776|July|4}}
" generates "July 4, 1776" which a
screen reader will read aloud as something like "zero one seven seven six hyphen zero seven hyphen zero four July four, seventeen seventy-six". (A text browser such as
Lynx will render it as "01776-07-04 July 4, 1776".) The MOS shouldn't recommend practices that have accessibility problems. Please remove the bullet "Tables which do not use the YYYY-MM-DD format should use
Template:Sort or
Template:Dts so that the rows can be sorted correctly." from the draft text.
Eubulides (
talk) 16:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC){{dts|1776|July|4}}
" as "01776-07-04 July 4, 1776". I'll follow up at
Template talk:Dts. The conversation here has quickly turned into the usual format flamefest and I doubt whether much progress can be made here right now.
Eubulides (
talk) 07:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)(outdent) not taking any stand on the templates, just responding to Tony's question: so far the proposed wording is:
Sssoul ( talk) 16:55, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Trimmed and tweaked version:
P.S. I folded your suggestion into my proposal. Greg L ( talk) 04:06, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Regarding Jc3s5h's recent edit summary "readers, not editors", I think that more than 95% of all readers will have no idea that an ISO standard about representation of dates and times, let alone expect that dates conform to it. It is some editors (IIRC, User:Gerry Ashton was one of them) who don't like using YYYY-MM-DD for non-Gregorian dates because of what the ISO standard says, even if not everybody would agree that said standard applies to dates displayed in the articles for humans to read them. -- ___A. di M. 16:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
←(outdent)
The simple fact is that an article about some relatively small city in England or Australia would be better off having its written-out dates formatted in the way that is most common and natural for readers in their respective countries. In just the same way, an article on Coeur d'Alene, Idaho should rightly use the date format most well-recognized by the disproportionate number of American readers: “November 28, 2007” and “11-28-2007”. General-interest articles are read by a general readership and whatever is most natural to them is what should generally be used on Wikipedia.
Arguments that some alphabet-soup standards organization has proposed “this ‘n’ that” don’t matter one twit here. The simple fact is that ISO 8601 was never intended for general encyclopedic, magazine, or newspaper use and it is profoundly naive to think that newspapers will soon start writing “A man was arrested in a residential burglary at 2009-09-12T19:30:00.” General-interest readers don’t write dates and times like this in real life and it is seldom indeed they are ever exposed to it in daily print of any sort. I’ve had arguments thrown my way in above threads on this page that boil down to nothing more than “well… any confusion will be short-lived and they’ll soon ‘get it’ ” and this simply proves in my mind that these editors don’t have a flying clue what technical writing is all about.
Again… it doesn’t ever matter if there is some standard out there that seems superior. The IEC had a proposal to replace “256 kilobytes” with “256 kibibytes” but we don’t simply adopt some new standard because it is good and holy; we simply follow the way the real world works. That’s just too much common sense. All encyclopedias endeavor to write with minimal confusion and in a manner that causes the fewest interruptions in the train of thought. Introducing unfamiliar ways to write out dates and/or times is the last thing any publication should do.
Now, the simple fact is that en.Wikipedia finds itself in a unique situation because it is electronic and at the top of the heap in the breadth of its content amongst the other-language Wikipedias. Further, because of the inexorable adoption of English as a second language, many readers for whom English is their second language come here to polish up on their knowledge of a given subject as well as their English skills. And, given that Wikipedia is free for anyone to contribute to, there are many would-be authors who have no knowledge whatsoever about technical writing or the customs and practices of other peoples. Accordingly, having a manual of style is the only thing that prevents Wikipedia from degenerating into total crap.
I, for one, am just disgusted by the amount of bickering that has transpired over the years here on dates. My stopping here and reading what some people have written above makes increasingly makes me think it is exceedingly unwise of me to make the effort here. I see a clear tendency in some of the arguments in this thread for editors to assume (or wish) that “[insert favorite numeric format here] is soooooo well recognized it will cause little or no confusion.” Horse hooie. Readers from all walks of life on this globe have been exposed largely to one way of writing all-numeric dates in only one particular way and will quite often be confused when confronted with an unfamiliar format. Now…
My above proposal makes it exceedingly clear that it should be a rare date indeed that is all-numeric. I don’t think they have a place in footnotes (under the pretense there isn’t enough room down there). Of course there is; footnotes are an unconstrained space that grows as you add. My proposal makes it entirely clear that all-numeric dates should be used only where space is at an extreme premium and that abbreviated months should be considered as an alternative to all-numeric dates where possible to minimize confusion. Finally, my proposal introduced some sort of *profound* concept that should have been adopted here long ago: that if editors are going to have a table with all-numeric dates, that header of the table include a parenthetical legend disclosing the format used; e.g., Date inducted into the Hall of Fame (month‑day‑year).
If editors here are still laboring under the misperception that they are going to somehow prevail and convince everyone else that there is some single way to format dates that is universally good for all God’s Internet creatures and Wikipedia ought to exclusively adopt that one single practice, well… wake up and smell the coffee. There are multiple ways of doing so and we should be focusing on crafting guidelines in our manual of style that ensure the most appropriate practices are used for a given article and confusion is minimized to the greatest extent possible. Read my 02:44, 13 September 2009 proposal, above, to see just how amazingly simple that can be. Greg L ( talk) 20:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, I really wish people would read my proposal and understand what it actually says, rather than assume it is saying something that it does not. It makes these seven, simple points:
I also agree with you, however, that these all-numeric date formats are generally unsuitable for use on Wikipedia. The use of all-numeric dates of any sort is fraught with the potential for confusion because the American-style way of numeric dates is just that: the American way of doing it and is not observed in many other English-speaking countries.
This is why what I proposed above couldn’t possibly make it any clearer that all-numeric dates should be looked upon with great disfavor and used only where absolutely necessary (which, I suspect should be nearly never since work-arounds aren’t nearly as elusive as some editors might like to admit). Moreover, where the darned all-numeric dates are used, what I proposed calls for including a legend to always make it perfectly clear what order the temporal data is organized; e.g. Date inducted into the Hall of Fame (month‑day‑year).
To suggest that American audiences would be any less confused by 2009/9/13 than 9/13/2009 because the former is “just sooooo much clearer” seems to be founded upon wishful thinking rather than an understanding of the real-world practices of various peoples.
To those editors here who pretend to promote any one particular custom or practice as being The One and Only True Way™©® and ought to therefore be *universally* adopted on Wikipedia: I hope you would soon realize such efforts are invariably doomed for failure. You might like things to be simple, but, if you dig down into the details, things are a bit more complicated than you might like. Greg L ( talk) 23:29, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason whatsoever to display any form of all-numeric date at all on WP. Eliminate ISO dates altogether. Where space is tight use three-letter month abbreviations. Sorry Greg but I wouldn't even bother with the Associated Press format. Space is either limited or not, if it is, use three-letter abbreviations, if not, spell the month out.
- Dates are given with the month fully spelt out (12 September 2009, September 12, 2009) or, where space is limited, abbreviated to three letters (12 Sep 2009, Sep 12, 2009).
- Do not use ambiguous date formats such as 09/12/2009 (9 December or September 12).
- Do not use ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) format. Template:dts produces hidden ISO dates for automatic sorting tables.
JIMp talk· cont 14:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I support Sssoul's revised proposal. JIMp talk· cont 17:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
6 May
or May 6
).This version last updated 17:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Do not use YYYY-MM-DD format except where required as hidden input code in templates such as {{ dts}} and {{ Birth date}}, which chronologically sort tables.
it might be a different matter. But if people insist on keeping this instruction in, in a spirit of compromise I will not press the point to a dispute. I just think nobody will take any notice of it. --
Alarics (
talk) 08:47, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Besides, Alarics compromised and dropped his objection to providing example abbreviations. The flip side? Others—including me—compromised as to the number of bullet points in the above wording because we restored an explicit bullet point proscribing YYYY/MM/DD, which Alarics felt was important. Greg L ( talk) 22:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
By all means, I have no problem with your adding that bullet point back. I was trying to address a concern of others that we need our guidelines to be as succinct as possible. But you raise an important point and it is probably better to be clearer.
We’ve got a single-purpose I.P. editor, which is a Verizon account tracing to Herndon Virginia, who has been putting un-cited fantasy imaginations in our ISO 8601 article that states that IS 8601 “applies to all written communications … [even] hand written … when communicating internationally, nationally, locally, internally, or even privately.” Of course, the ISO themselves say no such thing and their own description of the standard makes it quite clear what the standard is all about.
I recognize that “Herndon VA” I.P. location from before (I can’t quite remember exactly remember the circumstances) and I suspect this individual is a registered editor who logs out for the express purpose of intentionally POV-pushing with un-cited fantasy material. So…
Indeed, debate surrounding how to unambiguously communicate dates sure brings out odd behavior here on Wikipedia.
As for brevity and stripping out things like how to abbreviate months, it’s really important to remember that a lot of would-be editors don’t have any idea as to what is the proper way to do things. WP:MOS and WP:MOSNUM are, for very many volunteer editors, the only manual of style to which they have ever been exposed. The above information takes up very little room, is to-the-point, and will help to improve the readability of Wikipedia and greatly minimize confusion—at least to the extent editors will follow it. One thing is for certain, if we don’t have the information, it is quite difficult for inexperienced editors to do the right thing. Having explicit mention that the YYYY/MM/DD format is now proscribed is important to you; providing clear guidance on how one properly makes abbreviated and short-form months is important to me. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
←(outdent)
I will contact Tony on his talk page, direct him to this thread, and ask him to consider this and the related threads and advise as to whether he believes a general consensus exists on this issue. If so (fireworks be damned) we move forward and post. Why? Because we all did a pretty good job, IMO, of consensus-building here and the resulting product is straight out of Technical Writing 101. I think this approach at finalizing it all is the right thing to do. Greg L ( talk) 20:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I do see that TheFeds has arrived way-late to the discussion. As I advised him below, “general consensus” does not require that 100% of editors be in full agreement and it never did. Those who wish to have significant input here are expected to fully participate. I see no reason for someone to arrive at a party after the guests are heading out the door to go home, and demand that everyone turn around, go back into the party, and have the discussions all over again with him participating this time. Greg L ( talk) 21:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I still see no need for these AP dates. If there's enough room, spell it out fully. Simplicity and consistancy seem good enough reason to stick only two options. We have enough consistancy strify with day-month vs month-day. ISO is not required for {{ dts}} input (but it does accept ISO). It seems that the real point here is that it's not necessary to display ISO in order to get dates to work in autosorting tables (the simplest way of avoiding this being the use of {{dts}}, where it's the ISO output whichis hidden). I'm not sure that we need start talking about template input at the MoS. However, the point about the line wrapping is worth noting. So I'd go with something like
- Dates are given with the month fully spelt out (12 September 2009, September 12, 2009) or, where space is limited, abbreviated to three letters (12 Sep 2009, Sep 12, 2009).
- Do not use numbers to represent months, as it can be ambiguous (09/12/2009 could be 9 December or September 12); even when the day is greater than 12, spelling out the month minimises confusion.
- Do not use YYYY-MM-DD format. (When automatic table sorting is needed, Template:dts produces hidden YYYY-MM-DD dates along with visible dates in an acceptable format.)
- Where line-end word wrap can occur, best practice is to insert a non-breaking space between the month and day (
6 May
orMay 6
).
JIMp talk· cont 00:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, given that Wikipedia is “the encyclopedia to which *anyone* may contribute,” we need style-guide advise that helps editors and (very hopefully) leaves less clean-up work for experienced editors. What is in the above pink-div doesn’t take up much room and prevents articles from being mucked up with schemes like four-letter-only abbreviations (“Sept. Octo., Nove.” that might seem sensible to some, but aren’t used in professional publications); that is, until someone who knows better and is willing to fix it stumbles across it. Greg L ( talk) 01:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
It's not clear what precise edit is requested here. Could you settle on a specific change with explicit wording you would like to make and get consensus for that please? Given the controversy surrounding MOSNUM, I'd rather not leave room for ambiguity or unilateral alterations. Cheers, Skomorokh 18:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
At the risk of stoking this rather unfortunate fire; the eventual wording needs to allow for the use of YYYY-MM-DD format in templates such as {{ Birth date}}, {{ Start date}} and their relatives. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:03, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
This core of this rephrased version is probably a little more succinct, per Tony's comment. However, I have restored the ordinal suffix part, and just incorporated non-breaking spaces as standard. (If an editor leaves them out, no big deal—the meaning is unchanged, and a bot can deal with it later.) We don't necessarily need to state the full reasons for everything in the MoS, though. (We can add explanations in footnotes using <ref group = "Note">reason</ref>
, to reduce clutter in the prescriptive language.)
This offers the YYYY-MM-DD format as an alternative only when space is tight, stating that ISO 8601 compliance is not required or implied:
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelt out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009), instead of using numbers to represent months (to avoid confusion between month-day and day-month interpretations). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, and only when space is limited, YYYY-MM-DD format may be used. Use leading zeroes for months and days.
Or, there's this, which gives uses abbreviated month names and ignores ISO 8601 and YYYY-MM-DD:
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelt out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009), instead of using numbers to represent months (to avoid confusion between month-day and day-month interpretations). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, and only when space is limited, the month may be abbreviated with the first three letters of the month name (optionally followed by a period).
- When a sortable format is required, {{ dts}} may be used to generate sortable output, with dates fully spelt-out.
I don't think we need the AP list; there's a very limited set of cases where an abbreviation is helpful, but where a 3-letter abbreviation is not sufficient. TheFeds 04:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
date=YYYY-MM-DD
, and others don't. Using the date parameter is an alternative to using the (redundant) year, month and day parameters, and makes for symmetry with the accessdate and publicationdate parameters (which don't have individual year, month and day equivalents). If we want to make a change that could affect the output guidelines for those citations, we should probably ask around before doing so. Also, I think reference lists are a harmless place to use a short-form date, because they're not read as prose.(unindent) TheFeds, you wrote "I'm trying to convey the converse, that YYYY-MM-DD isn't necessarily ISO 8601." I know you would like to convey that, but you can't. The vast majority of the instances I've seen where someone within or without Wikipedia (including the Chicago Manual of Style get some aspect of it wrong. So rather than trying and failing to teach people how to use the format properly (and "properly" depends on whether you claim conformance to the standard or not) we should regard it as permanently contaminated by the ISO, and ban it in any context where it is likely to be misused. It's OK for computer-generated timestamps, but should not be used in articles. The effort to get people to use it as if it were covered by ISO just in case our readers think it is seems to just cause more confusion. Ban it, just like it is illegal to mark a gasoline tanker truck (petrol tanker lorry) "inflammable" in the USA, due to possible confusion. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelled out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009). Do not use all-numeric formats (e.g. 2009-09-12). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, particularly when space is limited, the month may be abbreviated with the first three letters of the month name (optionally followed by a period).
- When a sortable format is required, {{ dts}} may be used to generate sortable output, with dates fully spelled-out.
All you’ve demonstrated with the above list (which must have taken quite some time to dredge up), is that you are fascinated with “standards.” Either that, or you think that by throwing standards organization alphabet soup on this talk page that you might get your way. The trouble is, all-numeric dates don’t look professional and have no place whatsoever in an encyclopedia. I suggest you place greater credence in looking towards the manuals of styles of professional publications that are inhabited by professional writers; you know—those individuals who have journalism degrees because they went to college to get an advanced education on how to write clearly.
The practical effect of TheFeds’ blue-box above (“Conformance with ISO 8601 is not required, and is not implied by this format”) is that all-numeric dates would still be permitted. Just pardon me all over the place for thinking that might have been the intended effect. That’s also precisely why most everyone else here doesn’t want that wording and understands that the practice of any all-numeric date must now be tossed out on its ear with an explicit proscription, as is shown in the pink-div, above.
Your bold emphasis, above “international standard” is entirely beside the point. There’s an international standard to write out “75%” as “75 %” (with a space before the percent symbol). Perhaps I should start railing here about how Wikipedia is flouting the rule of SI with regard to the percent symbol. After all, it is an international standard that is backed by the BIPM, which is the god of all standards organizations and that means the standard has been washed in unicorn tears (yadda yadda yadda). No one gives a rip about standards if they are being misapplied to such an extent that common sense good-writing practices have to be abandoned. Wikipedia follows the way the real world works and is always at great peril of looking like it’s been hijacked by another “IEC prefix” crowd whenever we depart from well-known manuals of style. Greg L ( talk) 05:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
RockyMtnGuy has got hold of the wrong end of the stick here, I think. We're not talking about producing technical documentation for a foreign-language audience, we're talking about an English-language encyclopaedia. In his bullet point beginning "the fundamental problem with ...." everything he says is correct, and it is what we have all been saying at various points on this now very confusing and jumbled page. He sets out clearly the reasons for not using either the American or the British/international numerical form. We are all agreed on that now, I think. But the point is, we have already gone further than that and said that we also don't want dates in any numerical form, including YYYY-MM-DD. Most of us agree that YYYY-MM-DD is the least likely numerical form to be ambiguous, and is probably fairly widely understood, but not everybody agrees that it is absolutely unambiguous, and anyone not familiar with it has to stop and work out what it means. In any case, all that is eclipsed by the other arguments against using any numerical date form except in special, tightly-defined circumstances (tables perhaps, but NOT footnote references). -- Alarics ( talk) 10:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Just my three farthings worth.
dts|15 Mar 1944
}} → "15 Mar 1944".JIMp talk· cont 10:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Oppose all proposals which forbid the use of 2009-09-17 format, as this is the standard international way of writing dates, and should be allowed on Wikipedia. Offliner ( talk) 14:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Those citation templates now just give back what you put in. If we were to have them convert ISO to spelt-out month, then we'll have the day-month vs month-day problem. Probably the best thing to do is fix things on the input end. Of course we're not dotting May but it won't look good next to a bunch of dotted abbreviations. We stipulate no dots with abbreviations/symbols for units of measurement. Some like these specks, some don't; we can't please everyone. I agree with you about the relative uselessness of AP on WP. JIMp talk· cont 20:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 120 | ← | Archive 123 | Archive 124 | Archive 125 | Archive 126 | Archive 127 | → | Archive 130 |
I've just found an excellent example of why it's EVIL:
Here's the link to me fixing the awful text: [1]
This has been in the article for over a year and a half. But date autoformatting meant noone noticed that the date was given, in prose, 1848-01-09. However, every non-Wikipedian reader of the article saw it that way. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 200 FCs served 21:59, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
I know the death knell has tolled, but since you brought it up: Because no one set a default date format for IPs doesn't make autoformatting evil, it makes this autoformatting a flawed implementation that few were interested in fixing. — Ost ( talk) 23:10, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
This guideline contains a mixture of UK and US spelling, especially with respect to SI units. Apart from any sections that specifically address national varieties of English, shouldn't we make it consistent? (I don't care which variety is used.) -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 11:45, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
I’ve long held that great weight should also be given to *what* the article is about. If it is a generic article, like water, then we can expect the normal distribution with our readership (which is about 25% American, as I recall). Accordingly, “first major contributor” works fine and should avoid conflict amongst editors. However, if the article is about Spokane River Centennial Trail or Boston Red Sox, there will obviously be a much higher proportion of American readers and the dialect used in the article should be American English. If we had an article on the Bondville Miniature Village (something I visited while in England when I was in my 20s), it would, IMO, be most appropriate to be in British English. This mix of guidelines best serves, in my opinion, what is the primary objective of any encyclopedia: writing in a way that seems most natural, fluid, and least confusing for the target audience Greg L ( talk) 19:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
Apply the same rule as we do to articles. Simple. Why not? Most (all?) of these MOS pages have been predominantly (completely?) written in US English (examples not counted) for most (all?) of their lives. Let 'em stay that way (or whatever other consistant way each of them've been stable at). Inertia. JIMp talk· cont 15:11, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
The {{
val}} template is used to make it easy to format a value according to the MoS. Using the template in the MoS itself causes a "circular referrence" where the MoS depends on the output of {{
val}} and {{
val}} is supposed to depend on what the MoS says. I suggest the MoS uses hard-coded examples; otherwise anyone could change {{
val}} and the MoS would change with it. —
SkyLined
(
talk) 23:43, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
If you want to subst {{
val}}, you'll have to subst those {{#ifeq ...}}'s as well (and any other templates) until you end up with the HTML output of {{
val}}. Also, different browsers and even different version of the same browsers may render the same HTML differently (there have been issues caused by this in the past). To prevent all these issues, it would be best for somebody to render an example correctly and create an image of the output. This image can then be used in the MoS because all browsers should render the image exactly the same, regardless of any template. —
SkyLined
(
talk) 01:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Special:ExpandTemplates can convert {{val|299792458|u=m/s}}
to <span style="white-space:nowrap">299,792,458 m/s</span>
automatically. I don't think using images would be useful, for the reason PMA gave above. --
___A. di M. 14:42, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
{{nowrap|1=6.022<span style="margin-left:0.25em">141<span style="margin-left:0.2em">79(30)</span></span> × 10<sup>−23</sup> [[kilogram|kg]]}}
(taking care to choose a true minus sign from the tool box for the negative exponent rather than use the visibly shorter keyboard hyphen) to obtain 6.02214179(30)×10−23
kg.Why? Because there is clearly no consensus in the community to change {{
Val}}. Coding {{val|6.02214179|(30)|e=-23|ul=kg}}
is much simpler. Like I wrote above, editors have every expectation of stability in the articles in which they’ve employed the {val} template. That little “padlock” icon in the upper right-hand corner of many of our templates—including {val}—is a *pinky promise* guarantee to the community of stability in a template so they can start using it with confidence; “anyone” can not change {{
val}}. The select few who have the ability to modify templates are expected to behave with the utmost care and responsibility.
Behavior that instills FUD about the stability of a now-well-used template is most unfortunate and such an offender should expect to have their privileges stripped. When there is as much widespread unanimity to change {val} as there was to design and make it in the first place, we’ll let the gate keepers know. Greg L ( talk) 19:54, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
SkyLined
(
talk) 15:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)SkyLined
(
talk) 20:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Per agreement reached
here on WT:MOS Archive 97, {{
delimitnum}} and {{
val}} were supposed to have thinspaces ( 
) on both sides of the times (×) symbol. Many people objected to the full-width spaces and wanted no spaces alongside the × symbol. The compromise, which made everyone happy, was to use thinspaces. My recollection is that {val} originally conformed with this agreement and generated scientific notation with the proper thinspaces. Perhaps I am mistaken, but this clearly isn’t the case now. Did someone change it? If so, please change it back.
Below, the top-most expression has the exponent, hard-coded with thinspaces on both sides of the × symbol. The one below it was created with {{ val}}:
6.02214179(30) × 10−23
kg
6.02214179(30)×10−23
kg
Greg L ( talk) 20:20, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
<span style="margin-left:0.25em">×<span style="margin-left:0.2em">10</span></span>
. Different browsers can have a precision of 0.05 em and still others go only to a tenth. This is being exploited here to keep the appearance as identical as possible across platforms.My objective here is only to make the gaps closer to the original compromise achieved on WT:MOS, where some editors wanted a full‑width non‑breaking space and another camp thought it looked too much like a formula and wanted no spaces. The thinspace was well-received and all agreed to that compromise.
Here’s another try:
Tests:
___A. di M. 10:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
The below screeshot is what I see with Safari 4.0.3 (the latest) and was captured 17:21:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC):
This last proposed one looks very good to me. In the MOSNUM examples, one might not link all or any of the "kg"s.
Tony
(talk) 22:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
<span style = "display:none">^</span>
→ (a hidden caret). This would be especially valuable when copying a formula containing {{val}}.Generally speaking, does anyone have any thoughts on whether there's any stylistic issue with having different spacing between the terms in a {{val}} expression, and an equation (which can be formatted with regular spaces, per WP:MOSMATH)? TheFeds 03:59, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd say that, since multiplication is associative, (1.37 × 1013) × (4.29 × 109) equals 1.37 × (1013 × 4.29) × 109, so that's a non-issue. But the horse appears to have long been dead. (And I like the suggestion of an invisible caret.) -- ___A. di M. 11:04, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Consider 1.37×1013 × 4.29×109 vs 1.37 × 1013 × 4.29 × 109, and for completeness 1.37×1013×4.29×109. Now, the unspaced (third) version is fairly obviously horrible, while the partially-spaced (first) version clearly indicates that you're talking about two distinct numbers being multiplied, with those numbers written in standard form, while the fully spaced (second) version looks like 4 separate numbers
As regards copy/paste, the CSS gaps in the significands are extremely convenient because they don’t appear in the pasted values, so Excel can use them directly. The gaps on each side of the × symbol are a moot point in Excel since you have to edit to change “×10” to “E” anyway. If an editor is doing work in Word or some other program and wants pretty looking results, they’ll just have to do a little work for themselves when they’re doing their homework.
As for chaining: What A. di M. said. Editors can also use middot; e.g. The “Theory of Everything” formula was eventually found to be nothing more than the product of 3.17×107 · 6.2568945×10−27 or use a hybrid; e.g. (3.17×107) · (6.2568945×10−27). In many circumstances, editors would start using math markup for this sort of thing. It’s rare that any single tool can “slice & dice” your food and lift the engine and trani out of your car. Greg L ( talk) 14:43, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
SkyLined
(
talk) 08:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)I propose that the following wording be considered for the policy:
In place of this:
I propose considering this wording:
My intention is not to change the policy but to express it more clearly and concisely. Any comments? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
I would split the difference:
This provides a rationale for the ruling, and allows for exceptions; there aren't many, but I foresee MGlass's text being used to demand conversions between calendar and tropical years, and other totally silly demands. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
SimonTrew ( talk) 12:56, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
SimonTrew ( talk) 14:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Yes, "topics" is much better. I just start a new subsection since we've not had a complete proposal written out for a while, and this is very similar to one above (has it been edited? I don't recall it being quite so similar) so here goes (the bold and strike are to indicate changes that may otherwise be too suble to be noticed; and are not intended to indicate proposed markup):
I am not that het up about "different than", but since others may insist on "different from", we might as well do that and avoid needless argument. The other rewordings are basically just simplifications or to remove being over-specific (e.g. "readers from those regions" -> "all readers", surely the intent is that anyone reading the article can undertand the measures in it.) SimonTrew ( talk) 12:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Leave it as is. It ain't broken, and at this point all we're doing is listing WP:BEANS scenarios. The original wording of "Use international units [...] usually this means SI, SI-related & units accepted with SI" is as both as clear and as vague as it needs to be. The subtleties are covered in the bullets. Headbomb { ταλκ κοντριβς – WP Physics} 11:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
All these wordings are confusing in that they say "use", but in most cases, what is really meant is "list first", because conversions are usually provided. It would be nice to think that editors would read the manual from end to end and remember everything, but that just isn't going to happen, so wording that does not require the editor to read a different part of the manual to understand that "use" usually means "list first" would be better. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree that the wording is confusing in saying 'use' but meaning 'list first'. It is also inconsistent with later dot points. This is how the passage reads at the moment
This version replaces 'prefer' with 'put.....first'. I have also removed the reference to screen sizes as I thought this was a rather trivial example. Years are important, the use of feet for the altitude of aircraft is important, but the size of a television or mobile phone screen is not so important. With UK articles a useful guide to what unit has priority may be to follow the majority of sources of information for the article. Michael Glass ( talk) 13:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
My responses:
Michael Glass ( talk) 22:57, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Taking into account the criticisms above, here is another refinement of the suggested wording and the title:
Michael Glass ( talk) 13:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. I'll go with the word order above and see what the result is. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:51, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Best wishes. SimonTrew ( talk) 23:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
Simon, most of your proposed changes (above) are OK with me. Some of the wording (e.g. on scientific terms) you object to is unchanged from the previous version. They were just not noticed before. I agree with the idea of simplifying rather than complicating things. I would be happy to take up your revisions almost in full. I would insert is the words In general at the beginning and make a few other minor changes as shown below:
Michael Glass ( talk) 05:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
Generally speaking, you should determine what unit is the most appropriate primary unit in the context of the measurement you are using, and then proceed to convert this into all units that are in common use in the English-speaking world in that context, so that all can understand it.
To determine which units should be primary, the following guidelines should be considered:
- In general, the primary unit is that which is in the most widespread use in the world. Usually, they are the units of the International System of Units (SI) and non-SI units accepted for use with SI; but there are various exceptions for some measurements, such as for periods of time longer than an hour or nautical miles to describe the distances that aircraft travel.
- Where a topic is strongly associated with a given place, time or person, use the units most appropriate to them first. In US articles, this will usually be United States customary units; for the UK Imperial units for some topics and metric units for others, and a mixture of units for others (see, for example, the Times Online style guide under "Metric").
- Give nominal and defined values in the units in which they are defined first, even if this makes the article inconsistent. Otherwise, use units consistently: write a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag of potatoes and a 5 kg (11 lb) bag of carrots, not a 10-kilogram (22 lb) bag of potatoes and a 11-pound (5 kg) bag of carrots.
- In scientific articles, use the units used by the current scientific literature on that topic.
- Where a given discipline uses units not approved by the BIPM, or writes them differently from the way that BIPM says they should be written, use the units as commonly used in that discipline.
- Prefer familiar units over obscure ones.
- If there is no clear choice as to which unit is primary, put the source value first and the converted value second. If the choice is arbitrary, use the SI unit.
You should avoid using ambiguous unit names (e.g., write imperial gallon or US gallon instead of gallon), but do not change units in quotations. Place conversions in square brackets directly afterwards within the quotation if it is useful to do so.
Pfainuk, you make some telling comments about the proposed wording. You are quite right in noting the inconsistency in trying to balance competing requirements of both consistency of presentation and accuracy reflecting the sources. These differences became far more obvious in the revised version because the language was so much clearer, as clear wording makes any defect in logic far more obvious.
However, there are problems with your proposed solution.
The proposal below makes the language less prescriptive. I have also made other changes, including omitting the point about nominal and defined values. Without the example the point is quite obscure; with the example it belabours the point. I have also removed the bolding and added the introduction from the policy as it is at the moment (in italics).
The use of units of measurement is based on the following principles:
If there is trouble balancing these bullets, consult other editors through the talk page and try to reach consensus.
I have edited the above so that these are level 3 and level 4 headers, so that it's more obviously the same conversation. This is not intended to affect the proposal, but rather for convenience on talk. The first time I looked at this, I didn't notice the proposal because it was under a level 2 heading.
I notice that this proposal fails to take account of A di M's point that we're talking about which units to put first before we mention that we're supposed to be putting more than one unit. This was the intention of the opening paragraph in my version: start with the basic principle that we choose a unit to put first and then convert that unit into all the relevant alternatives, and then go into detail as to decide which unit to put first.
My other thought structure-wise was that all of the bullet points except the one on ambiguous unit names deal with which units should go first in the text. As such, it makes a bit more sense just to treat it as one list rather than two. The three bullets at the bottom would go below the point about consistency.
On the point on consistency, I would suggest that it is not necessary for a source value to be placed in a footnote. It may be appropriate to ensure that it is clear when the sourced value is not placed first - but use footnotes throughout and we'll potentially end up with articles littered with useless footnotes - thereby devaluing the useful ones.
On defined units - for the most part this should be common sense, and it is mostly covered by the people-times-and-places rule. I think it's best off going in, but I would hope that editors don't need to be told.
I would also point out that your proposal advises us to put the most widespread units in use in the world first, except that in general they should use the source unit, regardless of system. This is self-contradictory in a way that the current text is not. It may be a good idea to ditch the sources point entirely, and instead integrate it into the first paragraph or to place it, with the note on ambiguous units, in a separate paragraph at the end:
Placing this in a separate paragraph perhaps makes it clearer that this is an extension to, and not an exception to, the basic international-units-first rule (whereas the other points are exceptions to it). Sources-first is most appropriate when the other rules are not applicable since it inherently has the potential to introduce intra- and inter-article inconsistency when dealing with similar measurements in similar contexts. Pfainuk talk 10:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
We need to take account of the fact that different English-speaking people use different units; that is why we need to supply both traditional and metric measures in many contexts. The question is which unit should come first. Mostly it is clear-cut, because most of the world uses metric units and there is a clear rule about US-based articles. With UK based articles it may not be clear and this is where it is useful to go by the sources.
Now for specific comments:
If people are satisfied with the present wording it might be better to leave it be. I will try once more to see if I can improve on the wording, but if that doesn't work I'll let the matter rest. Michael Glass ( talk) 22:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
After giving the matter some further consideration I feel it is best to proceed step by step with any changes of wording. The first change I would make is to change this:
to this:
The reasons are as follows:
What do others think? Michael Glass ( talk) 02:42, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
<!--source: 42 in-->
. (Maybe identifying the source in the comment by its ref name
would be even better.) At least that way, a future editor will know what was intended, without having to refer back to the original document cited. If you've got Imperial and SI sources contributing to an article, I'd recommend sticking to one set of units (parenthesizing alternatives as necessary), unless the choice of units is critical to the understanding of the text. On the other hand, if it's necessary to alert the reader of the source unit, a footnote would be a good way to do it, but I don't think that it's important enough to mention for most situations.
TheFeds 20:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)I notice that all the comments have been on footnoting changes between the text and the source. I will let that matter rest for the moment and note something else. Nothing has been said about replacing the present shopping list with a more appropriate example.
From this:
to this:
Any problems? If there are none, I will make this change to the text. Michael Glass ( talk) 12:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
|adj=on
should be added to the convert template, for purposes of grammar (a 600-metre hill).
Pfainuk
talk 20:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)Done, though not with the conversion templates. Michael Glass ( talk) 11:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
At present the policy reads:
This could be more clearly expressed to explain that the different measures would be used in different articles. Here is my proposal:
Any comments, suggestions or objections? Michael Glass ( talk) 11:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
It is impossible to work out exactly how many readers come from which countries, let alone what units they might prefer. This wording might be better:
Any problems or objections to this change? Michael Glass ( talk) 21:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, it takes up less space, that's for sure. The problem with giving only one example, as you propose, is that it could suggest that only articles with metric measurements first should have conversions. That's why the two examples are helpful here.
As we can't agree on what changes would be acceptable it is better to leave it at this time. Michael Glass ( talk) 01:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The present guidelines state:
I think it would be preferable to express this as:
It would seem to me to be a good general rule to follow the sources. However, the guidelines should provide guidance rather than a straitjacket. What do others think of this? Michael Glass ( talk) 01:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
I note the complaints that the proposed rule contradicts the rule to be consistent. No it doesn't, unless the sources are inconsistent, and if they are inconsistent the guideline explains what to do if the choice of units is arbitrary. This problem is unlikely to arise in most of the world, because most of the world uses the metric system for most ordinary measures, In the USA, the US customary measures are used, so it is not so likely to arise there. That only leaves Britain where there is likely to be any real confusion, and this is where the rule would be most useful. If most authoritative sources are Imperial, that's the way to go. However, if they are closer to the usage of the Times Guide then that would be OK, too. If metric, then go metric. Or, if the authoritative sources were really at sixes and sevens, then metric would also be the way to go. The rule of following the sources is helpful for British articles because it's more objective than simply relying on the editors to make this decision without reference to the sources of information. Michael Glass ( talk) 15:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Neither the present wording nor the proposed wording state that the guidelines should only apply to UK-related articles. If the widespread usage rule applies as you have stated, then all articles should be metric first, as is the case with your examples. If this rule is to be tempered by an appeal to time, place or person, then how is this to be tested but by looking at the sources? The kind of thing that i would question is when an article is in Imperial units when most or all of the sources are metric. Michael Glass ( talk) 23:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The problems I see with your position are two assumptions that underlie them.
Michael Glass ( talk) 23:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Your first point is not my point. It may not have been as clear as one would have liked, but my point was not that British people use metric units for the sake of foreign tourists and no-one else. If it had been I would be arguing for full imperial units in British contexts - and I made it very clear in the last discussion that this is not something I think would be a good idea. My point was that, in literature for foreign tourists, the British will tend to use metric units in circumstances where imperial units would be more appropriate in a British context. This might, for example, include the speed someone is driving. Most Britons don't have a clear idea of what speeds in kilometres per hour mean in practical terms. The only circumstances under which one might think to use them would be when one's words are intended for a foreign audience. Using it in other contexts would appear to be the RL equivalent of being POINTy. But I'm sure you can find sources giving speeds in a UK context in metric measures.
Living in the UK, as I do, I am well aware that metric units are in use in some circumstances. But imperial measures are also used in some circumstances, and given that sources are not perfect, generally speaking - given that they do not always reflect Wikipedia's style guidelines - they not always the best guide to the most appropriate usage. Better to rely on a consensus of editors: we trust them to be able to choose which wording is most appropriate, why can't we trust them to choose which units are appropriate - falling back on source units where necessary as per the current wording?
All that said, I notice with interest that you fail to address the core issue with this wording. This wording clearly is not intended apply only in British contexts (indeed it's not clear that it's intended to apply in British contexts at all: they're an exception to one general rule, why not the other?) - it is intended to apply "in general". You have not adequately addressed the fact that, if we were to accept this rule, we would, in general, call upon users both to use most widely used units in a given context as primary and to use sourced units as primary - and that this is contradictory when the source uses a unit other than that which is most widely used in a given context. Pfainuk talk 16:53, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
I really can't see how you can say that the current wording doesn't actually treat the US or UK as exceptions. Look at the wording:
Except in the cases mentioned below... ...In US articles... ...for the UK ...
Of course the wording treats both the UK and the US as exceptions to the general policy.
The policy for the UK gives the following latitude:
How is is possible to deny that this is so? Michael Glass ( talk) 12:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Exceptions are exceptions are exceptions. There are general exceptions of course, but there are also specific exceptions for both the US and the UK. Read the policy and you can see that there is also a huge difference between what is allowed for the US and what is allowed for the UK. Can the UK have Metrics? Yes they can! Can the UK have Imperial? Yes they can! Can the UK have a mixture? Yes they can! That is quite exceptional, and it applies to no other country. And no amount of obfuscation and chop logic can hide it. Michael Glass ( talk) 13:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
I have seen some recommendations in the "Currency" section which contradict other parts of the MoS and common sense:
What d'y'all think? -- ___A. di M. 14:30, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
As for spelling out a first occurrence of a new monetary unit, I also agree. Experienced Wikipedians tend to fall victim to the phenomenon of assuming that the typical reader is nearly as familiar with “*basic common* knowledge” as we Wikipedians are. You can see this in our computer articles, where editors will often instantly launch into symbol‑itis in lead paragraphs (The Banana Jr. 9000 was the first consumer-grade computer to come stock with 1 MB of RAM). The saving grace does not lie in that we have provided a link to what is an unfamiliar term for someone who has no knowledge about computers and wants to read up on the subject; novices to a subject should not have to click back and forth from article to article to wade through and parse key sentences.
Clearly, certain minimum skill sets and knowledge must be assumed in our readership; they should be familiar with the “United States” and “ice” and these terms need not generally be linked. Distinctions between US$400 and AU$475 when they are juxtaposed in the same sentence are exceedingly subtle, easily overlooked, and assume far too much familiarity with currency symbology than should be expected of novices to the subject. Currencies of countries that are not primarily English speaking, the currencies of primarily English-speaking countries that are less well known, and the currencies of English-speaking countries whose symbols can easily be confused within the same article should generally be spelled out on first occurrence and their symbols parenthetically introduced.
As per your example, parenthetical conversions, such as 10,000 Swedish kronor (approx. €1000, US$1400, or £800 as of August 2009) are not spelled out in order to reduce wordiness. This broad principle is used for other units of measure on Wikipedia, such as The typical sack of sugar in the United States is sold in five-pound bags (2.3 kg) and the principle does not change just because the units of measure are currency.
A notable exception, in my opinion, would be in articles that are clearly about the United States or England. Take the example of an article on the World Trade Center. It seems to me that it should be sufficiently non-confusing for the intended readership if we write New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner objected to New York getting a $335 million project or, in the London Bridge article, …it cost approximately £1,000,000 to build. The only other notable exception that comes to mind to this basic principle—that the first occurrence of the primary monetary unit should be spelled out—would be a highly advanced economics article directed to an obviously expert readership. Greg L ( talk) 16:36, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
As for justifying launching straight into symbol‑itis by citing the example of LSD, that’s not an appropriate example (although I now have a better appreciation for the hazards of arguing with you). It is simply common technical writing practice observed by everyone from Encyclopedia Britannica to the Associated Press to Aviation Week & Space Technology to write out “National Aeronautics and Space Administration” before using NASA. The same would apply in any encyclopedic treatment on a computer-related article: one spells out “megabyte” on first use as well as “random access memory”. However, for terms that are universally known by the general public only by their abbreviations, such as DNA and LSD, one flips this principle around; one uses the abbreviation first and then parenthetically spells it out.
It’s important to not seize upon examples and use them to justify practices without really considering all the implications. You have an influential role on WT:MOSNUM and others put great credence in your opinions. We already have far too many editors launching straight into editing WP:MOSNUM without first properly discussing things on WT:MOSNUM, where they can learn about broader implications and nuances that muddy the waters.
This reminds me of the king who would have people come up to him at social events and tell him this or that and he didn’t have a wise, kingly-sounding response. He asked his wise men to suggest a response that would be universally true and wise-sounding that would be suitable in nearly any circumstances. They came back and told him to respond “All things must come to an end.” I’ve recently discovered another phrase that will work for most any situation where someone is complaining about some right-wing practice or belief or some left-wing practice or belief, or any sort of issue that is imbalanced and extreme in some way. It goes “Well… when you dig down into the details, it’s a bit more complicated than that.” Try it yourself; it works exceedingly well. And that principle applies here, when it comes to diverging from the general practice of spelling things like “MB” out on their first occurrence and parenthetically introducing the acronym. Indeed, “LSD” is a flipped exception to the rule (as is “DNA”). So the same goes here: Well… when you dig down into the details, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Greg L ( talk) 18:46, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
As for precision in monetary conversions, your proposal of two significant digits passes my initial *grin test* for what would be appropriate as a general guideline. To be sure, I suppose I would need to see some examples in context—perhaps even some conflicting examples where one practice seemed more appropriate in one case, and yet another practice seemed more suitable in another case. Sometimes the rule-set can be obscure until you, uhm… dig down into the details.
Memorializing common sense into technical writing guidelines can be a tedious effort. Generally, my preference in these sort of matters is to not prescribe rigidity in guidelines and to instead provide a global proscription of what not to do and give examples of good practices and bad practices. For instance:
When showing a a conversion to another monetary unit, avoid excess or false precision. For instance, do not write The Manhattan Project cost the U.S. $2 billion at the time (equivalent to £14.1 billion in 2007).
BTW, here's my proposal, with changes from the current version marked:
Currencies
Which one to use
- In country-specific articles, such as Economy of Australia, use the currency of the country.
- In non-country-specific articles such as Wealth, use US dollars (US$123), the dominant reserve currency of the world. Some editors also like to provide euro and/or pound sterling equivalents, formatted as described in the next section.
Formatting
Fully identifyUse the full name of a currency on its first appearance (AU$5252 Australian dollars); subsequent occurrencesare normally given without the country identification or currency article linkcan use the symbol of the currency (just $88), unless this would be unclear. The exception to this is in articles related entirely to US-, EU-, or UK-related topics, in which the first occurrence may also be shortenedand not linked($34, €26, and £22, respectively), unless this would be unclear, and in places where space is limited such as tables, infoboxes, and parenthetical notes.Avoid over-identifying currencies that cannot be ambiguous; e.g., do not place EU or a similar prefix before the € sign.When there are different currencies using the same symbol, use the full abbreviation (e.g. US$ for the United States dollar and AU$ for the Australian dollar, rather than just $) unless the currency which is meant is clear from the context.- Do not place a currency symbol after the value (123$, 123£, 123€), unless the symbol is normally written as such. Do not write $US123 or $123 (US).
- Currency abbreviations that come before the number are unspaced if they consist of or end in a symbol (£123, €123), and spaced if alphabetic (R 75).
- If there is no common English abbreviation or symbol, use the ISO 4217 standard.
- Ranges are preferably formatted with one rather than two currency signifiers ($250–300, not $250–$300).
- Conversions of less familiar currencies may be provided in terms of more familiar currencies, such as the US dollar, euro or pound sterling. Conversions should be in parentheses after the original currency, rounding to
the nearest whole unitone or two significant digit and noting the conversion as approximate, with at least the year given as a rough point of conversion rate reference; e.g.,1,000 Swiss francs (US$763 in 2005)10,000 Swedish kronor (approx. €1000, US$1400, or £800 as of August 2009).- For obsolete currencies, provide if possible an equivalent, formatted as a conversion, in the modern replacement currency (e.g., decimal pounds for historical pre-decimal pounds-and-shillings figures), or at least a US-dollar equivalent as a default in cases where there is no modern equivalent.
- When possible, always link the first occurrence of
a symbol forlesser-known currencies( ₮146)(146 Mongolian togrogs); some editors consider it unnecessary to link the symbols of well-known currencies, but doing so can often be helpful to readers, as many countries use dollars or pounds as their base currency, and not all readers are familiar with the euro.- The names of currencies, currency subdivisions, coins and banknotes should not be capitalised except where normal capitalisation rules require this (for example, at the start of a sentence).
- The pound sterling is represented by the £ symbol, with one horizontal bar. The double-barred ₤ symbol is ambiguous, as it has been used for Italian lire and other currencies as well as that of the British. For non-British currencies that use pounds or a pound symbol (e.g., the Irish pound, IR£) use the symbol conventionally preferred for that currency.
-- ___A. di M. 20:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
MoS has just imported much of MOSNUM's Units of measurement section, since we had some pretty iffy stuff that hadn't been reviewed for a while. Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Another_query. One import sticks out, though, concerning the old imperial versus metric units in UK-related articles:
... for the UK Imperial units for some topics and metric units for others, and a mixture of units for others (see, for example, the Times Online style guide under "Metric").
The Times online style guide says not to mix the systems within an article. Hmmmm. It strikes me as ludicrous that the primary and converted units should be switched here and there in the course of an article: heck, choose one as primary and stick to it, surely? To do otherwise is a really unprofessional look. MoS had this, until yesterday, which is much better, IMO:
UK-related topics may have either SI (generally preferred) or imperial units as the primary units.
Seems more professional and a lot simpler, don't you think? Can MOSNUM import MoS's previous point? I'm encouraging MoS to go back to it rather than to retain what we've just imported (on this matter alone—the rest is better). How about it? Tony (talk) 11:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
Good luck! Michael Glass ( talk) 13:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
It was recently suggested to me at a FAC that dates should be given non-breaking spaces. Is that correct according to the MoS? Thanks. Parsecboy ( talk) 00:23, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm in the middle of a dispute at The Shells over the policy regarding dates formatted as MM/DD/YYYY. I was under the impression that this format is deprecated due to ambiguity issues and should be converted to YYYY-MM-DD (or spelled out) in every case. I would appreciate it if someone could take a look at the current discussion and provide some guidance as to whether this is policy or not. Thank you. ~ Paul T +/ C 07:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
At MoS, we realised that the Units of measurement section was in a bad mess. Michael Glass and A. di M. have both assisted by pasting in the more up-to-date version from MOSNUM's Units of measurement.
This highlights the absurdity of having two different pages, when MoS main covers just about all of the scope of MOSNUM. There is insufficient difference in the two scopes of MoS main and MOSNUM to warrant the fragmentation of guidance, discussion and monitoring. More importantly, it is undesirable for the two talk pages to be fragmented.
The MoS pages as a whole are in an uncoordinated mess, and it would go some way towards serving the project better to merge MOSNUM into MoS main. All of the main sections (except, oddly, Currencies, which is a pretty important one for general editors), are there.
Why don't we make things easier for ourselves? Any highly specialised guidance in MOSNUM that is not here could easily be sequestered into either a separate subsection or—better IMO—an appendix, here. The merger should not add much text to MoS main (indeed, everything needs significant rationalisation on the micro-scale). Tony (talk) 10:56, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
These topics are what I see as being too involved for MoS, and suitable for retaining in a specialised MOSNUM (linked to from MoS):
It's quite large enough for a MoS subpage. What urgently needs to be removed is the common-person stuff that is already in MoS. Editors need to know a lot of stuff about numbers and dates, but the field crosses into engineering and science in a way that clutters the dummies' guide badly. Tony (talk) 15:31, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps the thing to do is to harmonize MOSNUM into MOS, but instead of having a “MOSNUM” for the specialized stuff, we merely have sub-pages of MOS that expand upon lengthy topics (such as scientific notation). I suspect little (or even none) of this need to have “Click here for main article”-stuff would be required if there was a concerted effort to streamline MOS and MOSNUM, which suffers from bloat‑itis in many areas.
I suspect one of the “yuck factors” for many of us is the unconscious realization that there is a somewhat different set of editors that frequent MOS and harmonizing will result in social chaos—similar to neanderthals and modern humans finding each other hunting the same game in France 80,000 years ago (“you funny looking”). Perhaps we can keep the dates and numbers section segregated below a border via transclusion so that MOSNUM can keep its discussions on a separate talk page. I think it would prove exceedingly unwieldily if we had an integrated talk page for all issues. Greg L ( talk) 15:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Nevertheless, I support simple guidance at MOS, with complicated guidance in main articles such as MOSNUM. TheFeds 16:42, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
I thought the Manual recommended CE notation, but I am obviously mistaken. I am probably opening a can of worms, and pardon any cluelessness, but why does the MoS take such an ambiguous stance about the use of the Common Era year notation? It is becoming overwhelmingly dominant in academia. Most popular periodicals mandate its use in their house styles. Even a large number of explicitly Christian publishers now make use of the CE notation. While I can appreciate the pragmatic impossibility of mandating the Common Era notation, should we not follow the real world example and prefer its use? Or am I completely missing something? Or am I just hopelessly naive that a consensus could be built for such? Vassyana ( talk) 14:08, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Often we can look to the AP Manual of Style and the practices of Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book to see what English-speaking peoples are routinely exposed to and what therefore seems most natural and encyclopedic. Too often, ninth-graders smitten with the “Forget what Encyclopedia Britannica does, I can change the WORLD by editing Wikipedia” are the source of unnecessary grief here.
My preference, again, is to always use whatever writing style and words are most natural and interrupts the train of thought the least. I know: shocking. Greg L ( talk) 19:38, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the IEC didn’t retract their proposal to say A memory chip with a capacity of 256 kibibytes and we had a pack of editors pushing that here on Wikipedia for three years. (*sigh*)
The proper thing to do is not pretend that we are here to help change how the world communicates (our aborted effort with “kibibyte” showed Wikipedia doesn’t have that sort of influence), and simply *communicate* using good grammar, clear writing, and in a fashion that results in the least *!* brain interrupts and is most natural for the target readership.
Wikipedia needs to follow the way the English-speaking world communicates. Sometimes, that means we can look towards the Associated Press Manual of Style, sometimes towards how magazines that are devoted to a particular discipline communicate to their readership (like computer magazines), and sometimes it means looking towards other encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book to get a clue. Even the best of we Wikipedia editors could benefit from looking to these other sources for tips.
Sometimes, arguing with persistent editors here on WT:MOSNUM seems exceedingly unwise of me. Greg L ( talk) 22:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
In the computer business ISO 8601 is the preferred date format because 1) it's unambiguous, 2) you can sort dates easily, and 3) It involves less funky date arithmetic. I wish somebody had told Microsoft that before we spent all that money on the year 2000 problem.
If you are writing character dates for the general public, either the American or British character date format is okay, but if you are using computers the only numeric date format that is really foolproof and unambiguous is the ISO format. And, yes I do use ISO data format for all-numeric dates. RockyMtnGuy ( talk) 06:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I don’t know why we are discussing ISO 8601 on MOSNUM; MOSNUM is a style guide and not a bulletin board for Wikipedia developers trying to resolve data exchange protocols between servers. Greg L ( talk) 19:05, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
“ | ISO 8601 is an international standard for date and time representations… | ” |
The application of the standard is intended to be very broad. It applies to all written communications that contain dates, times, and time intervals regardless of the communication medium (printed, electronic, or hand written) or the location of the sender and receiver (either within an organization, between organizations, or across international boundaries). The application of the standard was never meant to be limited to dates and times processed, stored, and displayed by computers. It applies to all industries and all forms of human activity where accurate and unambiguous representations of dates, times, and time intervals are needed when communicating internationally, nationally, locally, internally, or even privately.
It is this sort of experience that makes me long for the practice observed by the German-version of Wikipedia: it’s my understanding that they have all articles guarded by gate keepers. That prevents articles from being mucked up by some kid who wears Spock ears at Star Trek conventions and leaves notes for his mom that read like this:
Mom,
I went to Steve’s house because he got a mint-condition PDP-11 computer when he was at his Linux meeting last night. I’ll be home by 2009-09-12T19:30:00.
Can someone please guide me or help me here? I am using one date format in citations, only to have an editor edit war with me over it. Is my below analysis correct? If so, how can I address the matter.
The date format style of citation that I am using, specifically MM/DD/YYYY is not prohibited by Wikipedia from what I can see, but is not directly discussed.
The guidance here states, however:
"Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the more common date format for that nation."
Here, the article is about a band from the USA. As it is written in [6], the MM/DD/YYYY style of citation is, in the United States:
"common or prescribed—particularly in military, academic, scientific, computing, industrial, or governmental contexts. See Date and time notation by country#United States."
This guidance also states, per the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
"it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one [acceptable style] to the other without substantial reason." Furthermore, "Edit warring over optional styles ... is unacceptable. If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason. Where in doubt, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."
The guidance repeats these admonitions by in effect largely repeating itself when it states, a second time:
"Retaining the existing format -- If an article has evolved using predominantly one format, the whole article should conform to it, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic. In the early stages of writing an article, the date format chosen by the first major contributor to the article should be used, unless there is reason to change it based on strong national ties to the topic. Where an article that is not a stub shows no clear sign of which format is used, the first person to insert a date is equivalent to "the first major contributor"."
In this instance the article was stable in the MM/DD/YYYY format. I had created the article and was the major contributor. Another editor, with whom I had just disagreed on a separate issue, has spent the last few days wikistalking me to all my edits, and seeking to delete or revise dozens of them, including all of the date format edits, despite my pointing him to the language of the guidance.
He argues "The date format you are trying to use is ambiguous and does not present an international view of the information." With that, he reverts all of my edits.
Am I correct here that since this is an article with a strong tie to the US, it is appropriate for me to use the common date format for that nation, and that it is wrong for him to wikistalk me to edit war by constantly reverting the date format? If so, what recourse do I have? This of course is especially disturbing given the background I just described. Many thanks.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 02:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I had understood that the reason the guidance by its terms allows for the common style of the English speaking country (and this is clearly a common style of the US), is that the subject of the article is clearly US, as stated in the first sentence, which is an indicator to the reader that the common US style is being used.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 03:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
See the discussion at Template talk:Convert#Some suggestions for changes to the default precision. -- ___A. di M. 21:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Looking at edit histories, it seems that all you want to do is argue about MOSNUM rather than MAKE ARTICLES BETTER. I tried. God knows I tried. Now can you please carry on in your little circle of wheter an inch is more than am mile while I go and make Wikipedia better?
In just one month I have realised why people abhor MOS. It is people masturbating, basically. We come to MOS for advice and it changes day by day. Which is about as much use as a snake in an arse-kicking competition. Let the whole thing go away, let it die, nothing good will come of all this bickering. Go away from MOS and do some real work improving the encyclopaedia, not laying down your laws.
I give an example: at {{
convert}}
.
User:Jimp who kinda runs those templates (with the help of many others) responds to comments, says it is right or wrong, if it is missing he adds it. That is CONSTRUCTIVE. Sometimes we have short discussions about how it should be put, and come to a consensus. That is CONSTRUCTIVE. More constructive work is done in Convert in practically improving the encyclopaedia than was ever done at MOSNUM.
S. SimonTrew ( talk) 14:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, given that exceedingly small groups of editors—only a handful really—can hijack MOSNUM and produce guidelines that sanctify garbage like making Wikipedia the only general-interest publication on this pale blue dot to use the IEC prefixes (a computer with 256 kibibytes (KiB) of RAM), and then spread such naive and shortsighted notions across literally hundreds of articles (making Wikipedia look utterly foolish), it is, IMO, important to prevent problems before they start. This is especially true with contentious issues in which some editors see things in black & white and have strong convictions. Greg L ( talk) 02:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Following Tony1's proposal, I've started writing a very brief summary (my goal is approx. 25% of the full text) of WP:MOSNUM, intended to eventually replace sections from 10 to 13 of WP:MOS. Feel free to collaborate at User:A. di M./MOSNUM. -- ___A. di M. 21:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I propose that
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.be changed to (new text underlined)
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.because some editors don't get that listing the acceptable date style implies that other styles are discouraged.
Any objections? -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 03:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
instead.) Because some perceive dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should only be used for dates in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar and in the year range 1583 through 9999.I'm not happy with "reasonably", and can the text be more concise? Does this mean every use of ISO 8601 will have to be changed? There's an awful lot of it.
This involves MoS main page as well; it is a textbook example of why the pages need to be rationalised. Tony (talk) 07:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) back to A di M's proposed wording: i find the double negatives in "that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999" unnecessarily convoluted/confusing. can we try "that format should only be used for dates in the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar and in the year range 1583 through 9999" instead? Sssoul ( talk) 11:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{editprotected}} Taking the previous points into account and shamelessly stealing good ideas, I propose:
* YYYY-MM-DD style dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and should not be used within sentences. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness. (If the only purpose why they are used in a particular table is ease of comparison, consider using
{{
sort|2008-11-01|1 November 2008}}
.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current
ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic)
Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.
be changed to:
In reply to VMAsNYC, I have always understood the word "through" to mean inclusive; do you have reason to believe otherwise? -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 13:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC) Revised 14:31 UT in response to Sssoul.
Hmmm. I only made the comment because I've seen phraseology along the lines of "1-10, inclusive." But I can't recall if I've seen exclusive ... and for the life of me I can't seem to google the rule. Perhaps in those instances that I recall the author was paid by the word ... Merriam Webster indicates one meaning of through is to and including, which matches what you are thinking.-- VMAsNYC ( talk) 15:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
{{dts|1776|July|4}}
" generates "July 4, 1776" which a
screen reader will read aloud as something like "zero one seven seven six hyphen zero seven hyphen zero four July four, seventeen seventy-six". (A text browser such as
Lynx will render it as "01776-07-04 July 4, 1776".) The MOS shouldn't recommend practices that have accessibility problems. Please remove the bullet "Tables which do not use the YYYY-MM-DD format should use
Template:Sort or
Template:Dts so that the rows can be sorted correctly." from the draft text.
Eubulides (
talk) 16:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC){{dts|1776|July|4}}
" as "01776-07-04 July 4, 1776". I'll follow up at
Template talk:Dts. The conversation here has quickly turned into the usual format flamefest and I doubt whether much progress can be made here right now.
Eubulides (
talk) 07:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)(outdent) not taking any stand on the templates, just responding to Tony's question: so far the proposed wording is:
Sssoul ( talk) 16:55, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Trimmed and tweaked version:
P.S. I folded your suggestion into my proposal. Greg L ( talk) 04:06, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Regarding Jc3s5h's recent edit summary "readers, not editors", I think that more than 95% of all readers will have no idea that an ISO standard about representation of dates and times, let alone expect that dates conform to it. It is some editors (IIRC, User:Gerry Ashton was one of them) who don't like using YYYY-MM-DD for non-Gregorian dates because of what the ISO standard says, even if not everybody would agree that said standard applies to dates displayed in the articles for humans to read them. -- ___A. di M. 16:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
←(outdent)
The simple fact is that an article about some relatively small city in England or Australia would be better off having its written-out dates formatted in the way that is most common and natural for readers in their respective countries. In just the same way, an article on Coeur d'Alene, Idaho should rightly use the date format most well-recognized by the disproportionate number of American readers: “November 28, 2007” and “11-28-2007”. General-interest articles are read by a general readership and whatever is most natural to them is what should generally be used on Wikipedia.
Arguments that some alphabet-soup standards organization has proposed “this ‘n’ that” don’t matter one twit here. The simple fact is that ISO 8601 was never intended for general encyclopedic, magazine, or newspaper use and it is profoundly naive to think that newspapers will soon start writing “A man was arrested in a residential burglary at 2009-09-12T19:30:00.” General-interest readers don’t write dates and times like this in real life and it is seldom indeed they are ever exposed to it in daily print of any sort. I’ve had arguments thrown my way in above threads on this page that boil down to nothing more than “well… any confusion will be short-lived and they’ll soon ‘get it’ ” and this simply proves in my mind that these editors don’t have a flying clue what technical writing is all about.
Again… it doesn’t ever matter if there is some standard out there that seems superior. The IEC had a proposal to replace “256 kilobytes” with “256 kibibytes” but we don’t simply adopt some new standard because it is good and holy; we simply follow the way the real world works. That’s just too much common sense. All encyclopedias endeavor to write with minimal confusion and in a manner that causes the fewest interruptions in the train of thought. Introducing unfamiliar ways to write out dates and/or times is the last thing any publication should do.
Now, the simple fact is that en.Wikipedia finds itself in a unique situation because it is electronic and at the top of the heap in the breadth of its content amongst the other-language Wikipedias. Further, because of the inexorable adoption of English as a second language, many readers for whom English is their second language come here to polish up on their knowledge of a given subject as well as their English skills. And, given that Wikipedia is free for anyone to contribute to, there are many would-be authors who have no knowledge whatsoever about technical writing or the customs and practices of other peoples. Accordingly, having a manual of style is the only thing that prevents Wikipedia from degenerating into total crap.
I, for one, am just disgusted by the amount of bickering that has transpired over the years here on dates. My stopping here and reading what some people have written above makes increasingly makes me think it is exceedingly unwise of me to make the effort here. I see a clear tendency in some of the arguments in this thread for editors to assume (or wish) that “[insert favorite numeric format here] is soooooo well recognized it will cause little or no confusion.” Horse hooie. Readers from all walks of life on this globe have been exposed largely to one way of writing all-numeric dates in only one particular way and will quite often be confused when confronted with an unfamiliar format. Now…
My above proposal makes it exceedingly clear that it should be a rare date indeed that is all-numeric. I don’t think they have a place in footnotes (under the pretense there isn’t enough room down there). Of course there is; footnotes are an unconstrained space that grows as you add. My proposal makes it entirely clear that all-numeric dates should be used only where space is at an extreme premium and that abbreviated months should be considered as an alternative to all-numeric dates where possible to minimize confusion. Finally, my proposal introduced some sort of *profound* concept that should have been adopted here long ago: that if editors are going to have a table with all-numeric dates, that header of the table include a parenthetical legend disclosing the format used; e.g., Date inducted into the Hall of Fame (month‑day‑year).
If editors here are still laboring under the misperception that they are going to somehow prevail and convince everyone else that there is some single way to format dates that is universally good for all God’s Internet creatures and Wikipedia ought to exclusively adopt that one single practice, well… wake up and smell the coffee. There are multiple ways of doing so and we should be focusing on crafting guidelines in our manual of style that ensure the most appropriate practices are used for a given article and confusion is minimized to the greatest extent possible. Read my 02:44, 13 September 2009 proposal, above, to see just how amazingly simple that can be. Greg L ( talk) 20:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, I really wish people would read my proposal and understand what it actually says, rather than assume it is saying something that it does not. It makes these seven, simple points:
I also agree with you, however, that these all-numeric date formats are generally unsuitable for use on Wikipedia. The use of all-numeric dates of any sort is fraught with the potential for confusion because the American-style way of numeric dates is just that: the American way of doing it and is not observed in many other English-speaking countries.
This is why what I proposed above couldn’t possibly make it any clearer that all-numeric dates should be looked upon with great disfavor and used only where absolutely necessary (which, I suspect should be nearly never since work-arounds aren’t nearly as elusive as some editors might like to admit). Moreover, where the darned all-numeric dates are used, what I proposed calls for including a legend to always make it perfectly clear what order the temporal data is organized; e.g. Date inducted into the Hall of Fame (month‑day‑year).
To suggest that American audiences would be any less confused by 2009/9/13 than 9/13/2009 because the former is “just sooooo much clearer” seems to be founded upon wishful thinking rather than an understanding of the real-world practices of various peoples.
To those editors here who pretend to promote any one particular custom or practice as being The One and Only True Way™©® and ought to therefore be *universally* adopted on Wikipedia: I hope you would soon realize such efforts are invariably doomed for failure. You might like things to be simple, but, if you dig down into the details, things are a bit more complicated than you might like. Greg L ( talk) 23:29, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I see no reason whatsoever to display any form of all-numeric date at all on WP. Eliminate ISO dates altogether. Where space is tight use three-letter month abbreviations. Sorry Greg but I wouldn't even bother with the Associated Press format. Space is either limited or not, if it is, use three-letter abbreviations, if not, spell the month out.
- Dates are given with the month fully spelt out (12 September 2009, September 12, 2009) or, where space is limited, abbreviated to three letters (12 Sep 2009, Sep 12, 2009).
- Do not use ambiguous date formats such as 09/12/2009 (9 December or September 12).
- Do not use ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) format. Template:dts produces hidden ISO dates for automatic sorting tables.
JIMp talk· cont 14:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I support Sssoul's revised proposal. JIMp talk· cont 17:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
6 May
or May 6
).This version last updated 17:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
• Do not use YYYY-MM-DD format except where required as hidden input code in templates such as {{ dts}} and {{ Birth date}}, which chronologically sort tables.
it might be a different matter. But if people insist on keeping this instruction in, in a spirit of compromise I will not press the point to a dispute. I just think nobody will take any notice of it. --
Alarics (
talk) 08:47, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Besides, Alarics compromised and dropped his objection to providing example abbreviations. The flip side? Others—including me—compromised as to the number of bullet points in the above wording because we restored an explicit bullet point proscribing YYYY/MM/DD, which Alarics felt was important. Greg L ( talk) 22:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
By all means, I have no problem with your adding that bullet point back. I was trying to address a concern of others that we need our guidelines to be as succinct as possible. But you raise an important point and it is probably better to be clearer.
We’ve got a single-purpose I.P. editor, which is a Verizon account tracing to Herndon Virginia, who has been putting un-cited fantasy imaginations in our ISO 8601 article that states that IS 8601 “applies to all written communications … [even] hand written … when communicating internationally, nationally, locally, internally, or even privately.” Of course, the ISO themselves say no such thing and their own description of the standard makes it quite clear what the standard is all about.
I recognize that “Herndon VA” I.P. location from before (I can’t quite remember exactly remember the circumstances) and I suspect this individual is a registered editor who logs out for the express purpose of intentionally POV-pushing with un-cited fantasy material. So…
Indeed, debate surrounding how to unambiguously communicate dates sure brings out odd behavior here on Wikipedia.
As for brevity and stripping out things like how to abbreviate months, it’s really important to remember that a lot of would-be editors don’t have any idea as to what is the proper way to do things. WP:MOS and WP:MOSNUM are, for very many volunteer editors, the only manual of style to which they have ever been exposed. The above information takes up very little room, is to-the-point, and will help to improve the readability of Wikipedia and greatly minimize confusion—at least to the extent editors will follow it. One thing is for certain, if we don’t have the information, it is quite difficult for inexperienced editors to do the right thing. Having explicit mention that the YYYY/MM/DD format is now proscribed is important to you; providing clear guidance on how one properly makes abbreviated and short-form months is important to me. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
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I will contact Tony on his talk page, direct him to this thread, and ask him to consider this and the related threads and advise as to whether he believes a general consensus exists on this issue. If so (fireworks be damned) we move forward and post. Why? Because we all did a pretty good job, IMO, of consensus-building here and the resulting product is straight out of Technical Writing 101. I think this approach at finalizing it all is the right thing to do. Greg L ( talk) 20:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I do see that TheFeds has arrived way-late to the discussion. As I advised him below, “general consensus” does not require that 100% of editors be in full agreement and it never did. Those who wish to have significant input here are expected to fully participate. I see no reason for someone to arrive at a party after the guests are heading out the door to go home, and demand that everyone turn around, go back into the party, and have the discussions all over again with him participating this time. Greg L ( talk) 21:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I still see no need for these AP dates. If there's enough room, spell it out fully. Simplicity and consistancy seem good enough reason to stick only two options. We have enough consistancy strify with day-month vs month-day. ISO is not required for {{ dts}} input (but it does accept ISO). It seems that the real point here is that it's not necessary to display ISO in order to get dates to work in autosorting tables (the simplest way of avoiding this being the use of {{dts}}, where it's the ISO output whichis hidden). I'm not sure that we need start talking about template input at the MoS. However, the point about the line wrapping is worth noting. So I'd go with something like
- Dates are given with the month fully spelt out (12 September 2009, September 12, 2009) or, where space is limited, abbreviated to three letters (12 Sep 2009, Sep 12, 2009).
- Do not use numbers to represent months, as it can be ambiguous (09/12/2009 could be 9 December or September 12); even when the day is greater than 12, spelling out the month minimises confusion.
- Do not use YYYY-MM-DD format. (When automatic table sorting is needed, Template:dts produces hidden YYYY-MM-DD dates along with visible dates in an acceptable format.)
- Where line-end word wrap can occur, best practice is to insert a non-breaking space between the month and day (
6 May
orMay 6
).
JIMp talk· cont 00:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Moreover, given that Wikipedia is “the encyclopedia to which *anyone* may contribute,” we need style-guide advise that helps editors and (very hopefully) leaves less clean-up work for experienced editors. What is in the above pink-div doesn’t take up much room and prevents articles from being mucked up with schemes like four-letter-only abbreviations (“Sept. Octo., Nove.” that might seem sensible to some, but aren’t used in professional publications); that is, until someone who knows better and is willing to fix it stumbles across it. Greg L ( talk) 01:08, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
It's not clear what precise edit is requested here. Could you settle on a specific change with explicit wording you would like to make and get consensus for that please? Given the controversy surrounding MOSNUM, I'd rather not leave room for ambiguity or unilateral alterations. Cheers, Skomorokh 18:51, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
At the risk of stoking this rather unfortunate fire; the eventual wording needs to allow for the use of YYYY-MM-DD format in templates such as {{ Birth date}}, {{ Start date}} and their relatives. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:03, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
This core of this rephrased version is probably a little more succinct, per Tony's comment. However, I have restored the ordinal suffix part, and just incorporated non-breaking spaces as standard. (If an editor leaves them out, no big deal—the meaning is unchanged, and a bot can deal with it later.) We don't necessarily need to state the full reasons for everything in the MoS, though. (We can add explanations in footnotes using <ref group = "Note">reason</ref>
, to reduce clutter in the prescriptive language.)
This offers the YYYY-MM-DD format as an alternative only when space is tight, stating that ISO 8601 compliance is not required or implied:
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelt out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009), instead of using numbers to represent months (to avoid confusion between month-day and day-month interpretations). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, and only when space is limited, YYYY-MM-DD format may be used. Use leading zeroes for months and days.
Or, there's this, which gives uses abbreviated month names and ignores ISO 8601 and YYYY-MM-DD:
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelt out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009), instead of using numbers to represent months (to avoid confusion between month-day and day-month interpretations). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, and only when space is limited, the month may be abbreviated with the first three letters of the month name (optionally followed by a period).
- When a sortable format is required, {{ dts}} may be used to generate sortable output, with dates fully spelt-out.
I don't think we need the AP list; there's a very limited set of cases where an abbreviation is helpful, but where a 3-letter abbreviation is not sufficient. TheFeds 04:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
date=YYYY-MM-DD
, and others don't. Using the date parameter is an alternative to using the (redundant) year, month and day parameters, and makes for symmetry with the accessdate and publicationdate parameters (which don't have individual year, month and day equivalents). If we want to make a change that could affect the output guidelines for those citations, we should probably ask around before doing so. Also, I think reference lists are a harmless place to use a short-form date, because they're not read as prose.(unindent) TheFeds, you wrote "I'm trying to convey the converse, that YYYY-MM-DD isn't necessarily ISO 8601." I know you would like to convey that, but you can't. The vast majority of the instances I've seen where someone within or without Wikipedia (including the Chicago Manual of Style get some aspect of it wrong. So rather than trying and failing to teach people how to use the format properly (and "properly" depends on whether you claim conformance to the standard or not) we should regard it as permanently contaminated by the ISO, and ban it in any context where it is likely to be misused. It's OK for computer-generated timestamps, but should not be used in articles. The effort to get people to use it as if it were covered by ISO just in case our readers think it is seems to just cause more confusion. Ban it, just like it is illegal to mark a gasoline tanker truck (petrol tanker lorry) "inflammable" in the USA, due to possible confusion. -- Jc3s5h ( talk) 18:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
- Within sentences, write dates with the month fully spelled out (e.g. 12 September 2009 or September 12, 2009). Do not use all-numeric formats (e.g. 2009-09-12). Do not use ordinal suffixes (i.e. -st, -nd, -rd and -th). Use non-breaking spaces between the month and day (e.g.
6 May
orMay 6
).- In tables, references and template output, particularly when space is limited, the month may be abbreviated with the first three letters of the month name (optionally followed by a period).
- When a sortable format is required, {{ dts}} may be used to generate sortable output, with dates fully spelled-out.
All you’ve demonstrated with the above list (which must have taken quite some time to dredge up), is that you are fascinated with “standards.” Either that, or you think that by throwing standards organization alphabet soup on this talk page that you might get your way. The trouble is, all-numeric dates don’t look professional and have no place whatsoever in an encyclopedia. I suggest you place greater credence in looking towards the manuals of styles of professional publications that are inhabited by professional writers; you know—those individuals who have journalism degrees because they went to college to get an advanced education on how to write clearly.
The practical effect of TheFeds’ blue-box above (“Conformance with ISO 8601 is not required, and is not implied by this format”) is that all-numeric dates would still be permitted. Just pardon me all over the place for thinking that might have been the intended effect. That’s also precisely why most everyone else here doesn’t want that wording and understands that the practice of any all-numeric date must now be tossed out on its ear with an explicit proscription, as is shown in the pink-div, above.
Your bold emphasis, above “international standard” is entirely beside the point. There’s an international standard to write out “75%” as “75 %” (with a space before the percent symbol). Perhaps I should start railing here about how Wikipedia is flouting the rule of SI with regard to the percent symbol. After all, it is an international standard that is backed by the BIPM, which is the god of all standards organizations and that means the standard has been washed in unicorn tears (yadda yadda yadda). No one gives a rip about standards if they are being misapplied to such an extent that common sense good-writing practices have to be abandoned. Wikipedia follows the way the real world works and is always at great peril of looking like it’s been hijacked by another “IEC prefix” crowd whenever we depart from well-known manuals of style. Greg L ( talk) 05:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
RockyMtnGuy has got hold of the wrong end of the stick here, I think. We're not talking about producing technical documentation for a foreign-language audience, we're talking about an English-language encyclopaedia. In his bullet point beginning "the fundamental problem with ...." everything he says is correct, and it is what we have all been saying at various points on this now very confusing and jumbled page. He sets out clearly the reasons for not using either the American or the British/international numerical form. We are all agreed on that now, I think. But the point is, we have already gone further than that and said that we also don't want dates in any numerical form, including YYYY-MM-DD. Most of us agree that YYYY-MM-DD is the least likely numerical form to be ambiguous, and is probably fairly widely understood, but not everybody agrees that it is absolutely unambiguous, and anyone not familiar with it has to stop and work out what it means. In any case, all that is eclipsed by the other arguments against using any numerical date form except in special, tightly-defined circumstances (tables perhaps, but NOT footnote references). -- Alarics ( talk) 10:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Just my three farthings worth.
dts|15 Mar 1944
}} → "15 Mar 1944".JIMp talk· cont 10:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Oppose all proposals which forbid the use of 2009-09-17 format, as this is the standard international way of writing dates, and should be allowed on Wikipedia. Offliner ( talk) 14:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Those citation templates now just give back what you put in. If we were to have them convert ISO to spelt-out month, then we'll have the day-month vs month-day problem. Probably the best thing to do is fix things on the input end. Of course we're not dotting May but it won't look good next to a bunch of dotted abbreviations. We stipulate no dots with abbreviations/symbols for units of measurement. Some like these specks, some don't; we can't please everyone. I agree with you about the relative uselessness of AP on WP. JIMp talk· cont 20:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)